Irish documentary making is on a roll

Eilis O’Hanlon W

RITER Sara Baume went to art school, but spent most of her time filling notebooks with sketches and scraps of ideas rather than working on her larger form sculptures. In the end, a lecturer suggested she make such artists’ books her field of study. On RTE Radio One’s Book Show, Baume went in search of similar projects — “a book chronicling the passing of shadows across a brick wall... a book with no text and no images, only string and paper cut through with small holes which makes a whispering sound as the pages turn”.

The more she delved, the more fascinating her subject became. One of Baume’s favourite examples of what she calls “the book transformed” comes from multimedia artist Kate Wilson, who has cut out all the words in Virginia Woolf ’s essay A Room Of One’s Own and re-arranged them into a novella, Of One Woman Or So.

The new text makes sense as literature, and has also been exhibited as a piece of art. Baume made a convincing case that such projects Nairg e el“lt a hL e amwsoos n tl Hoigciecn al da reesrpcoianmse to the over-studfefes d truam ge rteh m at in we e stli , v il e mino”d. iIat was a bold decqiusaiot n ur faour t TfhuegiBt oaot k urSnhnokwkl to replace the traditional review/interview format this series for dedicated features inspired by participants’ own passions, but one that has paid some exciting dividends.

The Lyric Feature is also on something of a roll right now — though, come to think of it, when is it not? Sunday’s In The Wind was a meditation on the loss of a shared language for the natural world. Do we need these words in an increasingly urbanised world? Does it matter if we can no longer name what we see? Mary Brophy thinks that it does, praising the “precise, pragmatic poetry crafted by our forebears out of centuries of close attention”. The programme was a beautiful lament for a “lost... way to relate to nature or place.”

Such innovative programme-making is absent from general talk radio at the moment. It’s the same on BBC radio, which has long been a bellwether of quality for other broadcasters, but which, Radio Three aside, now feels predictable, timid, choked by box-ticking political correctness.

Not all change is good, of course. Tracey Thorn, best known as one half of pop duo Everything But The Girl, was this week’s castaway on Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs, which has been going strong since 1942. Back in the day, original presenter Roy Plomley would probe guests on how they thought they’d cope on this hyWpoatthce tiIc T al NdOeWsert island. It threw up unHeaxrpde y cBteu d cki s nisiog n htsh.eNRoT w E Ptlhaay t ereulenmtilent haD s ebceem n bela r r3g0e; ly rtde.iitec/hplea d yeirn favour of conSiv x eNnatitoionas l Rcueglbe y br is ito y n i3nPtlearyvei r euwnst.il

DEevc en mbteh r e 1s6e; cttvi3o. n ie/ap s laty o erwhat book and luxSuim ry pli y teNmigeTllaho is rn on wBoBu C ld iPlbaryien r g -c wuirtr h enhtle y r ntoot theaviasilabnl d e two av s ieswqeu rs ee in zeI d relhanudr.riedly into the final two minutes of the conversation. For the record, her choices were War And Peace (because “A. I’ve never read it, and B. It’s really long”) and moisturising lipstick — not terribly useful on a desert island, but less controversial than Norman Mailer’s amusing choice in 1979, which was “a stick of the very best marijuana”.