Wednesday 25 February 2015

DMU Cultural Exchanges 2015

Yesterday I went back to my roots and visited my university DMU for the first cultural exchange event of 2015 which was the Post Graduate Showcase. It was warmly welcomed by one of my former  Creative Writing tutors Simon Perril  who introduced the 3 speakers on stage.

One speaker showed her writing through the medium of visual flash fiction (a sci-fi adaptation) in which she read out a few passages along to the images she illustrated on the power point slide which really worked well. It included flashing lights, futuristic landscapes, human antonym and aeroplanes firing on screen and I had really captivated me.

 The second speaker poetry reading was looking at the Irish Dialects and the way language sounded out to the audience. He read out 3 short flash fiction stories each in third and first person each with a different moral about Irish Culture.

The third speaker was describing the  art form of exphrastic poetry. Each piece was uniquely crafted with themes of sexual nature with some funny thought provoking words describing female anatomy  and other poems relating to time and place i.e. visit to a museum.


Today I've just seen a very moving tribute to the great Graham Joyce who recently passed away in September. Each piece was describing how his work influenced other writers and how he had inspired the people that knew him.There were 5 speeches in all the first one was an heartwarming speech read out by his wife Sue Graham who read out bits on his life and childhood which included his love of football which influenced him to write as he was always interested in hearing the football commentaries. Also that he loved the solitude of being in his room writing in which he was at his happiest point. It was also interesting to know how he was always thinking and writing at the same time and that his characters weren't just constraints to the page but were related to his real life.

The 2nd speaker knew and met him through studying English and American Studies at university she loved poetry but Graham Joyce had told her his hatred of this written form. She read out some of her poems in tribute to him on his local origins.

Third speaker read how she was a student and that Graham had offered to attend an open mic night held in Northampton and that he agreed to attend and then wrote a poem to her called poem to Beth which involved the "ten stages of being a writer" and had a comical effect and was a delight to hear then her poem in response to his entitled poem poem to graham was just as beautifully written and read out about so many images and metaphors.


Forth speaker was a journalist who knew him a long time and had interviewed him on his work and came of snippets with topics of socialism, where he came from, his influences and even spoke of his love of football too.

The last speaker was a former student taught by Graham she showed us a slide show power point with a talk between him and Michael Rosen which involved on how his dialect and how his poem was performed. There was also a recording of Graham reading out a passage of his novel "dreamside" and finally a passage from "clarity of cancer" which was one of the last things he wrote. The images of the dragonfly been compared to the areoplane was very clairvoyant  and how the images of death with the bombings of the planes and even the symbol of raven at the end of the passage was very powerful showing  how time can be so significant and how easy it is to take it for granted. This last speech was moving and was the final part of the talk.