RTE comrades deliver a delightful library reading
A large audience at Enniscorthy Libraryw as recently treated to readings by the delightful duo of author and poet John McKenna and local poet Paddy Kehoe. Both men soldiered together, so to speak, at RTE, John McKenna explained before reading from his latest book Once We Sang Like Other Men.
John is the author of 19 novels, short story collections, memoirs, non-fiction and poetry and is a frequent contributor to Sunday Miscellany. He read a story about Laz from Once We Sang Like Other Men that has an uncanny similarity to the story of Lazarus from the New Testament with a modern day twist and full of beautiful descriptive phrases – ‘ the moons sister sleeping in the sea’, ‘ the almost living smell of timber’ and ‘darkness creeps up like a big grey cat, soft and easy’.
Paddy Kehoe then treated us to poems about the past and spoke about his parents particularly about his late father saying that it seems to be a common trait among poets as they age that they write about their parents. Paddy read Bree and the Mercy Bell – ‘ telling the time to the awake and the wandering’ then he read Father’s Music and the Old Avenger which he referred to as a Ford Avenger only to be told later by a friend that there was no such thing it was a Hillman Avenger – but the poem remains the same – Paddy said.
John McKenna added some of his poetry to the occasion in the form of High Summer, a poem about youthful happiness in Castledermot and the very beautiful poem A Wedding Song which he penned for his son and new bride.
Both poets read poems about their parents sitting together and conversing or not and Paddy finished up with Mother’s Dublin Train, The Gap Years, Invisible Mending, Thread and Seasons at St Peter’s which talks about ‘Opera singers downtown savouring delicious sin’.
Librarian Jarlath Glynn wrapped up the pleasant proceedings by saying that both men made it all sound so easy and reminded attendance that this Thursday November 9, the library would be hosting a Masterclass in Beauty with local sisters Laura and Jade Mullett – a must for Enniscorthy’s fashionistas, Jarlath said.