A review of Cúirt's
All-Ireland Schools Poetry Slam
I was at the
all-Ireland schools poetry slam in the Town Hall Theatre in Galway
which took place as part of the Cúirt Literary Festival. It was a
free event, where transition-year students from different parts of
the island came together to perform their poems in front of a
rapturous audience of friends, family and peers. I was absolutely
captivated; my breath was well and truly taken. It bamboozled me to
think that the individuals before me were at the very least, in their
mid-to-late teens. A simultaneously spellbinding and sobering
thought.
The Masters of Ceremony
were Irish poets Dave Lordan and Stephen Murray, who, in addition to
enthusiastically revving up the crowd in between the efforts of
contestants, performed some of their own work, but it was the
unabridged vitality of youth that most impressed.
The honesty of these
kids was somewhat startling. Here, children confessed to worries of
the future, fears of rejection and recalled the intoxication of
alcohol consumption. Girls and boys alike lamented romantic
near-misses and naively mused on economic devastation. It was pure
raw. It was invigorating, utterly refreshing to take in the candid
observations of these beacons of hope. For a moment, I was almost
convinced that humanity wasn't, in fact, so bad after all.
I wondered, as the
locations of the schools were read out, if this was actually worthy
of the title of “all-Ireland”: Connacht, Munster, Leinster... but
no Ulster (not even Cavan, Monaghan or Donegal). It struck me
afterwards that this kind of event liberated. It liberated both the
performer and the audience, the energy was infectious. This kind of
liberation is what is sorely needed in the north. It permits
transcendence of both mind and soul. It reduces barriers to nothing.
It is true freedom.
