Cavan Caomhnú Festival

I spent Saturday in Cavan at the Caomhnú Festival. This was well attended with all the workshops full or nearly full. I attended the Writing for Theatre Workshop with John McArdle. It's always interesting to experience the different approaches taken by workshop facilitators. John made us work and we ended up with the outline of a play each - not necessarily the same play. He started by getting a line from each of us and then trying to make dialogue of these lines. That led into consideration of what, who, where and when. A very enjoyable and useful workshop.

Noel Monahan gave a poetry workshop which participants seem to enjoy. Part of this involved discussion of poems the participants brought to the session. The other workshop was Claire Keegan's one on the short story. Again a different approach seems to have been taken here. Participants really enjoyed her discussion of the approach to and process of writing a short story.

All this made for great discussion and exchanges during the lunch and tea breaks.

Our LitLab reading took place at 5pm. Seven of us read, a mixture of prose and poetry. I was asked to start and read two poems. It can be difficult to choose work for reading and I chose what I thought were accessible pieces that the audience would "get" without too much introduction. One was the "I Taught You How to Drive" poem which was a prizewinner at Dromineer last year. I felt both pieces went down well. (Picture above.) The LitLab reading were very well received by the audience and we got numerous compliments. The mixture of prose and poetry, seriousness and lighthearted went down well.

The dinner followed and there were more reading and performances after that. A very full enjoyable day.

Today's events, including the presentations of the competition awards has been postponed because of the snow.