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Days of Clear Light – 1 Feb 2021

1st February 2021 @ 21:00 GMT

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We are delighted to join with our friends to mark the occasion of 40 years of Salmon Poetry and to celebrate the work of Jessie Lendennie. To mark that achievement 100 writers have come together in contributing to a special Festschrift presented as a complete surprise to Jessie at Christmas 2020. Editor Nessa O’Mahony interviews Jessie for the ILS and a number of the poets have contributed recordings of their poems for this online celebration. The marvellous Festschrift, so assiduously shaped in secret by our friends the editors Alan Hayes and Nessa O’Mahony, gathers together poetry, prose and memoir, full of love, gratitude and acknowledgement of the central role Jessie and Salmon have played in Irish literature. The President of Ireland Michael D Higgins writes in the foreward of Salmon publishing his first volume of poetry, The Betrayal back in 1990 and notes of Jessie’s grá for experimentalism: ‘For Jessie, the world of publishing has always been a space of offering new possibilities and exciting opportunities. In exercising choice on what to publish she has been unafraid to take a risk, to follow her heart and her instinct down roads untravelled. In doing so she has also brought many readers down new pathways, introducing them to remarkable writers who may have remained undiscovered or ‘off the beaten track’ if it were not for Jessie.’ Alan Hayes in his introduction writes of the transformative effect of Salmon’s redress of the gender imbalance in Irish publishing, his work at Arlen House also deserves great credit in publishing and reviving Irish women poets. The quality of the collections which stream from Salmon today stand up to the great work of Eva Bourke and Rita Ann Higgins on which the Press was founded. Alan quotes the late Eavan Boland writing of Salmon as “one of the most innovative, perceptive and important publishing houses in the UK and Ireland. It has fostered and supported the work of new writers and has established them in the public consciousness.” The book is available from Salmon. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is first up and reads for us from her poem In Ostia, then Nessa O’Mahony joins Jessie in conversation and some of the poets from the volume have recorded their readings to share with us, we’re delighted to have Gerry Dawe, Martina Evans, Jane Clarke and Nessa reading their work. Brava Jessie, happy anniversary Salmon!


Speaker: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Born 1942 in Cork, she is an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, where she has taught, researched and written on Renaissance literature and translation, since 1966; with her husband Macdara Woods, Leland Bardwell and Pearse Hutchinson, she was a founder and (since 1975) co-editor of the Irish poetry journal Cyphers. Her seventh collection of poetry, The Sun-Fish, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Griffin International Prize for poetry in 2010; The Boys of Bluehill was published in 2015 by Gallery Press, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award and the Pigott Prize at the Listowel Writers’ Week.

Speaker: Jane Clarke
Jane Clarke

Jane Clarke is the author of two poetry collections, The River and When the Tree Falls (Bloodaxe Books 2015 & 2019), and an illustrated chapbook, All the Way Home, (Smith|Doorstop 2019). She grew up on a farm in Co. Roscommon and her work explores enduring connections to people, place and nature. Jane’s awards include the 2016 Hennessy Literary Award for Poetry and the 2016 Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year. She now lives in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow where she combines writing with teaching & mentoring creative writing. www.janeclarkepoetry.ie

Speaker: Gerald Dawe
Gerald Dawe

Gerald Dawe is a retired Professor of English and Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. He has published eight collections of poetry and several volumes of essays, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the Macaulay Fellowship in Literature. His latest poetry collection Mickey Finn’s Air, was published in 2014; Of War and War’s Alarms: Reflections on Modern Irish Writing appeared in 2015. In Another World is available from online retailers and the Irish Academic Press.

Speaker: Martina Evans
Martina Evans

Martina Evans is a poet, novelist and teacher. She grew up in County Cork in a country pub, shop and petrol station and is the youngest of ten children. She is the author of ten books of prose and poetry. She is currently Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University, London and a Lector for the Royal Literary Reading Round 2014-2016. Watch, a pamphlet was published by Rack Press in January 2016 and The Windows of Graceland, New & Selected Poems was published by Carcanet in May 2016. Her latest collection Now We Can Talk Openly About Men was published by Carcanet in May 2018. It featured in the Times Literary Supplement, Observer and Irish Times Books of the Year and has been shortlisted for the 2019 Irish Times Poetry Now Award as well as the Pigott Poetry Award. Currently she is Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow and poetry reviewer for the Irish Times.


Chair: Nessa O’Mahony
Nessa O'Mahony

Nessa O’Mahony is a Dublin-born poet and novelist. She has published four books of poetry – Bar Talk (1999), Trapping a Ghost (2005), In Sight of Home (2009) and Her Father’s Daughter (2014). She is co-editor with Siobhán Campbell of Eavan Boland: Inside History (Arlen House, 2016). Her first novel, The Branchman (Arlen House, 2018) was recently published. O’Mahony won the National Women’s Poetry Competition in 1997 and was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Prize and Hennessy Literature Awards..

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1st February 2021
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21:00 GMT
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JOHN O’KEEFFE (1747–1833)

The Blind Playwright

The effort to be envied, rather than pitied, often proves a successful stimulus to the greatest actions of human life.

Recollections of the Life of John O'Keeffe (1826)

Introducing John O’Keeffe, a man who in his own time in fact needed no introduction – one of the most prolific and significant playwrights of the 18th century. A playwright of cosmopolitan London and Dublin who was a crucial conduit for representing the positive qualities of Ireland and its culture to London’s theatrical audiences.

Despite writing mainly comedies, O’Keeffe foregrounded subjects of the greatest social and political importance, including such issues as the plight of the poor and the marginalised, equality and the abolition of the slave trade. He was a socially engaged writer who knew how to make people think as well as laugh. His achievements are all the more remarkable due to his loss of sight at around the age of thirty, my work in part is to achieve recognition of O’Keeffe’s place in the lineage of Irish writers of disability (Charles Joseph Kickham, James Joyce, Christy Brown, Lynn Buckle, Rosaleen McDonagh…).

O’Keeffe was born in Abbey Street, Dublin, on 24th June 1747. His early schooling was under the learned Jesuit Father Austin, through which he became proficient in the Greek, French and Latin languages and acquired a considerable knowledge of mathematics. Upon his parents’ desire for their sons to become artists, John and his only brother Daniel were sent to study under Mr West at the Royal Dublin Society. O’Keeffe’s skill with a paintbrush led to numerous commissions in both portraiture and landscape. The keen observational skills he learnt there served him well in his later art-form, in the rich descriptions on what he envisaged in a production, from the physicality and subtle nuances of his characters to set design and costumes. 

In 1761, O’Keeffe visited London and attended a performance by David Garrick. In the first part of his memoir he recalls the transformative effect of the experience:

My fancy soon strayed to Shakespeare, Old Ben, Congreve, Cibber and Farquhar. The first edition of Farquhar’s comedies, set me studying and acting private plays among my schoolfellows; and this transition from drawing to poetizing was ultimately (as my sight began to fail at seven and twenty) very fortunate for me – a man can compose with his pen in the hand of his amanuensis; but the pencil he must hold in his own hand.

Recollections of the Life of John O’Keeffe (1826)

Soon the stage would take all his attention, an acting career touring the theatres of Ireland to considerable success followed and his memoir recounts the pleasure he took in the parts of Jaffier, Warwick, Jessamy, Young Meadows, Linco and others. But sadly, this happiness was not to last. After a night out with friends in Dublin, the twenty-two-year-old thespian fell into the River Liffey.

The first cause of this injury to my sight was from a cold I got by a fall off the south wall of the river Liffey, Dublin, on a dark December night, by going out to sup with my party for some hours in my wet clothes, and in about a fortnight the effects appeared in a violent inflammation of my eyelids. I then tried many remedies, each crossing the other, which increased the malady, and my persisting to use the pen myself impaired my sight beyond all hope. Although, from the opinion of the first medical people, my complete recovery of sight was quite hopeless, yet I never had an ambition to be pitied; and, indeed, effort to be envied, rather than pitied, often proves a successful stimulus to the greatest actions of human life.

Recollections of the Life of John O’Keeffe (1826)

By 1781 O’Keeffe was finding success as a playwright in Dublin with his works The She Gallant and Tony Lumpkin in Town (a sequel to Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer). In this same year the now blind O’Keeffe, bolstered by his theatrical triumphs, decamped to London to find fame and fortune.

His genius was recognised in his youthful productions of The Son in Law and The Agreeable Surprise, both performed at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Following on the immense success and popularity of these pieces, he began to write exclusively for the Theatres Royal of the Haymarket and Covent Garden. His works were filled with laughter, high spirits, fun, frolic and farce. His friend and contemporary, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, commented, ‘O’Keeffe is the first to have turned the public taste from the dullness of sentiment… towards the sprightly channel of comic humour.’  O’Keeffe used his celebrity and his pen to voice his opinions on many controversial matters, an example of this can be found in his play, The Basket Maker (1789).  In the same year, there was a debate in the House of Commons on the Petitions for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. O’Keeffe included in his character, Reuben Sadboy’s dialogue:

…on my return to America, every slave of mine shall be as free as the air he breathes”. With the finale firmly declaring, “Hail Fellows! Black , yellow.  Souls are all of one colour.

Reuben Sadboy in The Basket Maker

O’Keeffe’s theatrical portfolio totalled above seventy-nine pieces, and between 1778 and 1798 fifty-seven of these, amounting to over two thousand performances, were performed on the London stages. In 1793, John Barnard the New York critic stated: ‘Shakespeare and O’Keeffe guarantee audiences.’  In 1788 he was the first to dramatise, as a harlequinade, Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp, with its first performance on the stage of the Theatre Royal Covent Garden. O’Keefe’s librettos attracted celebrated composers such as Dr Samuel Arnold and William Shield. Essayist and drama critic, William Hazlitt, defines O’Keeffe’s talents thus:

‘O’Keeffe, the English Moliere. In light careless laughter, and pleasant exaggeration of the humorous, we have no equal to him.’

William Hazlitt

The finest actors, actresses and musicians of the 18th century performed in O’Keeffe’s works, regulars included John Edwin, Dorothea Jordan, William Lewis, Ann Catley, Michael Leoni and Mrs Powell. He was at this time at the zenith of his fame, admired, courted and praised. He was respectfully accosted or singled out in the streets, visited more than he wished in his own home and received with acclamations and enthusiasm whenever he appeared in the boxes of the theatres. O’Keeffe also enjoyed royal patronage from King George III, and was lauded and praised by illustrious friends and peers, including Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Sarah Siddons, Charles Macklin, Elizabeth Inchbald, Kane O’Hara and Oliver Goldsmith.

But while O’Keeffe was building his career, attention must be drawn to the struggles he underwent due to his disability and his attempts to conceal it. To avoid exciting compassion, he would feign better vision than he really possessed, often attended by the most ridiculous and whimsical effects, about which on reflection he says, ‘No one laughed more heartily than myself.’ O’Keeffe devised a series of strategies: first was that his daughter, Adelaide, became his lifelong amanuensis from the age of twelve. She described her job thus:

As my father’s amanuensis (not secretary), I am only a machine worked by the power of mind, the mere preserver of the overflowings of a memory and imagination which habit and necessity had rendered so retentive, that he can dictate above ten or twelve verses, mentally corrected, which seem to flow like inspiration from his lips.

John O’Keeffe, O’Keeffe’s Legacy to his Daughter, (1834)

With a keen mind for mathematics and a brilliant memory, O'Keeffe also formulated a grid system that enabled him to manoeuvre around obstacles safely in his home. He adapted this for the stage too, making sure he knew the exact position of cast and props – a forerunner of the grid system used in modern film-making. The financial success of his work allowed that O’Keeffe could employ a guide for his walks about town, a sure-footed nimble fellow with quick reactions, able to swiftly avoid the baskets on vendors’ heads and easily sidestep any obstructions. O’Keeffe would stand behind his guide, placing his right hand with his arm outstretched on the guide’s left shoulder and by this means they would safely traverse London’s busy streets. At home, he employed domestic staff including a valet who attended to O’Keeffe’s wardrobe and toilette requirements - although he always shaved himself.

O’Keeffe’s blindness was a major contributing factor to the changes that developed in his character during his lifetime. From being a confident and cheerful young man, he became introverted and often reclusive, but then in the blink of an eye, he would almost instantly become exuberant and flamboyant. In the company of strangers he was invariably silent and uncomfortable. He suffered with bouts of depression, anxiety and vulnerability, yet demonstrated confidence and enthusiasm writing and creating his theatrical masterpieces. 

As if the challenge of blindness wasn’t enough to surmount while O’Keeffe’s career was rising to such exalted heights, his personal life began to crash down around him. Familial tragedy and loss marked his life, two incidents wrought a mental change: the death of his second son in infancy and the end of his marriage to Mary (née Heaphy). In 1787, O’Keeffe was dealt another devastating blow by the unexpected death of his brother Daniel, whom he had adored. The impact of Daniel’s death resulted in  O’Keeffe becoming reclusive and withdrawn, his work stalled.

In 1791, there is one mention of Henry, an illegitimate son approximately ten years old and after extensive research it can only be assumed that he too died.  From this year forward, O’Keeffe’s writing is in serious decline, although he received plaudits for his new work, his heart was not in it, and he began to sink further into a hermetic life. He spends his days at home with his daughter, Adelaide who would read psalms and poetry to him, whilst he secluded himself from friends, acquaintances and kind strangers who may wish to visit.

Still living in London, albeit quietly, O’Keeffe struggled as the brio and go of his work starts wanes. In 1803, his only surviving son, Reverend John Tottenham O’Keeffe was offered the position of Chaplain for the Duke of Clarence in Jamaica. Although O’Keeffe is unhappy about the post and its far-flung destination, he says goodbye to his son. Three weeks after his arrival in Jamaica, John Tottenham dies from a fever, aged twenty-eight. It is at this point that O’Keeffe decides to leave London and retire to Chichester.

In his writing and person O’Keeffe would show support for gender equality, female authorship and the abolition of slavery; his conscience found a ready outlet in his work for the stage. Curiously, there is no reference to his disability in his works, nor are there any characters portraying disability. In this respect, he accepts rather than represents disability, in that proud acceptance he rails against its defining of him. His example in and commitment to socio-political issues remain just as relevant in our modern times and resonate loudly with current equality movements and issues of modern slavery and human trafficking, immigration and world poverty:

Good health is everything, to enjoy physical and mental health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being regardless of race, religion, economic or social conditions.

Although the name of John O’Keeffe is not familiar to most people today, even those who flock to Aladdin at Christmas, his plays are still performed and appreciated. Wild Oats, for example, first staged in 1791, remains a popular choice with modern theatre companies: hugely successful productions were staged in 1976 by the Royal Shakespeare Company, with a cast including Zoë Wanamaker, in 1997 by the National Theatre, and in 2012 by the Bristol Old Vic.  A review of the RSC production by Bernard Levin states:

With “Wild Oats” the RSC have struck gold and oil at once, and rubies and diamonds to the utmost profusion, mingled with vintage champagne, lightly chilled, caviar is there… A farce by an altogether forgotten Irish born man of the theatre.

Bernard Levin

For many years O’Keeffe’s fondest wish was to return to his beloved native land, there to pass the remainder of his days with the promise to show his daughter the grand cities of Dublin, Cork and Limerick. With animation and marked gesture he would proclaim to Adelaide, ‘If ever I again set foot in Ireland, let who will see me, be they hundreds or thousands, I’ll kneel down and kiss the ground, the blessed ground!’ But he was never to return to his cherished home. Aged eighty five, John O’Keeffe died in Southampton on 4th February 1833 in poverty. Only four people attended his funeral, a man set aside all too soon at the end of his own life after so many years of being feted in the spotlight.

Status

The Irish Literary Society is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) entered onto the Register of Charities with the Registered Charity Number 1193684.