Youghal 4 All would like to welcome any emerging or established poets the town has to offer; young or old, merry and bold; in plucking on their heartstrings to let the music be told. The book: ‘Painters and Poets’ will be a celebration of local culture through poetry and art. The idea: Poets will submit their finest piece of poetry anonymously and an artist will depict their interpretation.

One page will have a poem – fruitful or rueful – the opposite page will be the artist’s impression; and so on for the remainder of the book. The artists will not know who wrote the piece that they are to interpret. An element of the unknown with each painting and poem will add to a great day.

The purpose of the book is to raise well needed awareness and monies for mental health Ireland. We aim to further aid in lifting the stigma which cruelly hinders our society.

The unveiling of ‘Painters and Poets’ will be part of the Moby Dick Festival, which takes place on the 31st of May to June 2nd 2013.

A meeting of minds will be celebrated through local culture and so we look forward to seeing you all there.

 

You can submit your writings to youghalcc@gmail.com, or you can just slip it into Padraig Hyde &Sons (next to Cree’s Card shop) with ‘A Call to Poets’ wrote on the envelope. March 20th will be the closing date for entries.

 

Related Video

The Youghal Moby Dick Literary Festival 2012. One of the highlights of the festival was the panel discussion on the famous novel which took place on Friday 16th March 2012 in the Walter Raleigh Hotel, Youghal, Co Cork, Ireland.
Click on the video below to see the panel discussion which was chaired by Tim Magee

The panel consisting of Dr. Laurie Robertson-Lorant (Melville specialist and author), Tim Severin (Leading adventure author) and John Stack (Youghal man and leading novelist) who discussed the Moby Dick Novel and why it is still relevant to today’s literary students both in the US where the book is studied in High School and here in Ireland. This discussion was broadcast live to the USA.

Youghal theatrical troupe ‘Harmony’ with Finbar Hannon performing at the inaugural Moby Dick Literary Festival 2012 in Youghal. Click on the video below

‘Harmony’ is an entirely voluntary and open group and new members are always very welcome. It doesn’t ask for financial assistance from the already hard-pressed local community – it is self-supporting. ‘Harmony’s’ shows are always to a very high standard and thoroughly enjoyable. Among it’s many successes are ‘Many Young Men of Twenty’, ‘Some Enchanted Evening’, ‘From Here to Broadway’, ‘A tribute to John B & Showtime’ and ‘Guys and Dolls’, along with various recitals, concerts and Christmas Shows.

Related Video

 

 

 

John Stack best-selling author speaking at the inaugural Moby Dick Literary Festival 2012 in Youghal, Co Cork, Ireland.

Click on the video below – The event was broadcast live on webcam from the Walter Raleigh Hotel, Youghal, on 16th March 2012.

One of the highlights of the festival was the panel discussion on the famous novel taking which took place on Friday 16th March 2012 in the Walter Raleigh Hotel, Youghal, Co Cork, Ireland.
Chaired by Tim Magee the panel consisting of Dr. Laurie Robertson-Lorant (Melville specialist and author), Tim Severin (Leading adventure author) and John Stack (Youghal man and leading novelist) discussed the Moby Dick Novel and why it is still relevant to today’s literary students both in the US where the book is studied in High School and here in Ireland. This discussion was broadcast live to the USA.

On Culture Night 21st September 2012, a Youghal based writer Richard Keane won the Flash Fiction Rapid Fire event for his very short story “The Whether Forecast”. The award, worth €250, sponsored by The Farmgate Café, in The English Market was held in the Triskel Arts Centre, Cork as part of the Cork International Short Story Festival organised by the Munster literature Centre.

Click on the HD video below to see Richard Keane read his award winning short story

This was the first time an award was available in this category of Short Story and highlights the growing interest in Flash fiction as a specific style and form of writing. The Judge for this award was Nick Parker who was also reading from his own independently published “the exploding boy” which was the first independently published collection to be reviewed by The Guardian.
Next for the Youghal writer include the final stages of a predominantly poetry collection called ‘What I Hate About Poetry Books’ and he is close to finishing his own short short story collection. He has also joined the organising committee of the Moby Dick Writing Festival which will be held in Youghal on the June bank holiday weekend of 2013 and would like to hear from other writers in the East Cork, West Waterford area with a view to creating an arts based newsletter supporting local artists of all genres. If interested to hear more contact sayrichiek@gmail.com
http://corkshortstory.net/flash_fiction.html

The Youghal “Queen of the Sea” festival calendar for 2013 is now on sale. The calendar which was launched at Youghal Life boat station on Monday is available to buy from Youghal Tourist office and a number of other retail outlets in Youghal for just €7.99.

The calendar has some fantastic pictures from the 2012 Festival, including all of the queens. The calendar also has some excellent scenic pictures of Youghal and would make a great present for family and loved ones who are living abroad. All the proceeds from the sale of the calendar will go towards the Youghal Queen of the Sea Festival which also supports Childline and the Youghal lifeboat.

The 2013 dates for the festival are 12th – 14th July and promises to be action packed with free events for the entire family. For more information contact 024-92447 or info@youghalchamber.ie thank you for your support

Youghal Chamber of Tourism & Development

Market Square
Youghal
Co. Cork
T: 024 92447
E: info@youghalchamber.ie
W:www.youghalchamber.ie

Over the past number of months Youghal4All have run several successful festivals, a number of clean up and dog litter initiatives’ and a community ambassador scheme to meet and greet visitors to the town. The committee invited all those interested in the future of Youghal to a public meeting where ideas, comments and suggestions were discussed.

The meeting began with a talk from Emily of Cat Catchers, an east cork based group who aim to reduce the numbers of Wild cats in the region. Attendees were told that there are 1 million wild cats in Ireland and that neutering them could reduce the population drastically. Projects have been undertaken in Midleton, Cloyne and Ballycotton previously and it is hoped to start a project around the historic quarter in Youghal over the coming months.

Matters moved to festivals next. Dickens events for December will appear in the press over the next few weeks. This should add greatly to other events being held in the town in the lead up to Christmas. Don’t forget to keep some good toys aside for the Giving Santa to redistribute to more needy children. The meeting were told that Youghal4All are in midst planning for three festivals in 2013. The program will begin with Moby Dick festival over the June Bank holiday weekend. This festival is aimed at the American market and will combine a host of street entertainment with writing and reciting literary events. The subcommittee for this event have had some meetings already but more ideas and volunteers would be welcomed. Contact Ruth on youghalcc@gmail.com. The second festival for 2013 will be the Mackerel festival. A great event at the end of August this year will be built on and expanded for 2013. Further details will be available in due course. The final large event will be the Youghaloween Spooktacular, which was an outstanding success this October. The subcommittee involved in that event are already looking out for spooktacular events for next year.

Progress on making Youghal’s Trinity Cross has been great. The (three legged Bridig’s crosses) are available for sale in local shops now priced at €5. The cross would make great gifts for family abroad this Christmas as they are distinctly Youghal and light to package and send. They come with a brief history and details.

Youghal’s XO project is gathering momentum. Volunteers are getting great information about who lived in various old houses along the main street as well as who is buried in the graves of the various churches. This information will be put on a database for descendants to investigate their past. It should be a great benefit also for The gathering festival

Youghal4All would encourage family’s to invite friends, relations, groups etc to the town during one of the festivals. Lots of Gathering events will take place during these events.

Finally. if you know a black spot in the town which needs to be tackled, have an idea for an event which could be incorporated into a festival, or want to comment on past events the group want to hear your views. Like us and comment on facebook or email Youghal4All at youghalcc@gmail.com

 Website: http://youghalcc.com/

Issued by Ruth Lee,

PRO Youghal4All,

Telephone: 086 3252278

Want to do something for our town, your family, our young people. Join us to pray the novena to Blessed Dominic Collins. 9 Days of prayer which begins on Tuesday 23rd October and finishes Wednesday 31st October, Feast of Blessed Dominic Collins. Mass will be celebrated in Holy Family Church, Youghal, in his honour at 7.30pm, 31st October 2012. Bearing witness to faith. All Welcome. Click on the short video below to find out more about the life of Blessed Dominic Collins

“Taken to Youghal on 31st October 1602, he was marched by a troop of soldiers through the streets to the place of execution”

Blessed Dominic Collins (1566-1602) Irish martyr, Jesuit brother
When the Desmond Rebellion was put down in 1583, Dominic Collins of Youghal became a professional soldier in the Catholic armies of Europe. Ten years later he joined the Jesuits in Santiago de Compostela. Sent back to Ireland in 1601 as a companion to Fr James Archer SJ with the Spaniards going to Kinsale, he was eventually captured and put to death for his faith. Patrick Duffy tells his story.

Early life: a soldier of fortune
Dominic Collins was born into a leading Catholic family in Youghal, Co Cork in 1566. Both his father and his brother served as mayor in the town.and he may have attended the Jesuit school set up in the town in 1577.
The local people recognised Elizabeth as Queen, but did not want Anglicanism as the new religion. So when the Desmond Rebellion was crushed (1583), there was little else for a young Catholic man of ambition to do but to seek a career on the continent. Sailing to France, Dominic enlisted in the Catholic army of the Duke of Mercoeur and quickly became a military governor. He later transferred to the Spanish army and was in the garrison at La Coruña.

Joins the Jesuits
Here in 1598 he met the Jesuit priest, Father Thomas White from Clonmel, who had earlier founded the Irish College at Salamanca and had come to La Coruña to hear the confessions of Irish soldiers during Lent. Dominic confided in Fr White his intention of joining the Jesuits. Fr White explained the difficulties of studies for the priesthood. Dominic said was happy to be a Jesuit brother.
The Jesuits were reluctant to accept him, feeling that a battle-hardened soldier would not settle into religious life, but Dominic persevered and was admitted to the novitiate in Santiago de Compostela. Here he proved his mettle when the Jesuit College was struck by a plague. Dominic tended the victims, nursing some of them back to health and comforting the others in their last hours.
A report sent to Rome at this time describes him as a man of sound judgment and great physical strength, mature, prudent and sociable, though inclined to be hot-tempered and obstinate.
Battle of Kinsale
At this time Ireland was in turmoil. O’Neill and O’Donnell had revolted in Ulster and in 1601 King Philip III of Spain decided to send an army to help them. An Irish Jesuit, Father James Archer, who was acting as O’Neill’s envoy with Rome and Spain, asked that Dominic, who knew the needs of soldiers, be sent with him to Ireland.
Siege of Dunboy Castle
After the shock defeat of the Irish and the Spanish at the Battle of Kinsale, Fr Archer went back to Spain. Dominic went with O’Sullivan Beare’s men to the Beara peninsula and was along with a group of 143 soldiers under the command of Richard McGeoghegan, who took refuge inside Dunboy Castle. This was a small square fortress on the mainland overlooking Beare Island. Here Lord Carew, the president of Munster and an army of 4,000 soldiers besieged them for several months.
During the siege, Dominic, though a veteran of many battles, could not as a religious take part in the fighting, but he could and did give bodily and spiritual assistance to the wounded and the dying. Knowing too how keen Carew would be to capture a Jesuit, he thought that by handing himself over as a hostage he could negotiate an honourable cease-fire. But Carew refused any negotiations and the besieged surrendered. Carew ordered Dominic and two others to be kept prisoners while the rest were hanged in the market-place, fifty-eight on that day, and the remaining twelve four days later. A plaque on the ruins of Dunboy Castle today commemorates their brave struggle.
Interrogation and torture
The three surviving prisoners were brought to Cork for interrogation. As the other two had little to reveal, they were soon executed. But Carew interrogated Collins, hoping he could persuade him to become a Protestant and thus gain a propaganda victory. He alternately tortured Dominic and made him primises of preferment to high ecclesiastical office. Some of Dominic’s own family visited him, urging him to save his life by pretending a conversion which he could afterwards repudiate. But Dominic would have none of it, and clearly made a choice of a martyr’s death.

Martyrdom
Taken to Youghal on 31st October 1602, he was marched by a troop of soldiers through the streets to the place of execution – the first time he had seen his home town in fifteen years. He wore his black Jesuit gown and addressed the crowd in Spanish, Irish and English, cheerfully telling them that he had come to Ireland to defend the faith of the Holy Roman Church, the one true path to salvation. So moved were the crowd that the hangman fled and a passing fisherman was forced to do the job.
Influence
Left hanging on the gallows, the rope eventually broke and Dominic’s body fell to the ground. Under cover of darkness, local Catholics took his body away and buried him with respect in a secret place. From that day he was venerated as a martyr in Youghal and his fame quickly spread throughout Ireland and Europe. In the Irish Colleges of Douai and Salamanca the Jesuits showed his portrait and many favours and cures were attributed to his intercession.
Although used to the rough life of the army camp, Dominic always kept a strange innocence and gentleness. He is one of the most attractive of all the Irish martyrs.

‘Culture Night 2012’ in Youghal,where arts and cultural organisations open their doors until late with a series of free events, talks, musical performances and tours for all the family to enjoy.

Crochet & Knitting Demonstration – In Stitches, Youghal
In Stitches presented a crochet and knitting demonstration at their new premises on 131 North Main Street as part of Culture Night 2012.

In Stitches
131 North Main Street
Youghal
Co. Cork

 

Thomas McCarthy poetry reading at the Youghal Moby Dick Literary Festival 2012

The seaside town of Youghal hosted their first ever Moby Dick Festival on 16-18th March 2012. A voluntary group from the town on the South Coast of Ireland have rekindled relations with New Bedford with this fun filled festival. Youghal was chosen by Huston when he filmed Moby Dick the movie as the town in the 1950′s scenically mirrored New Bedford in the late 1880′s. The quays in Youghal still stand nearly identical to the quayside in New Bedford during the height of the whaling trade in the late 1880′s.
Click on the video below to see Thomas McCarthy reading poetry at the Youghal Moby Dick Literary Festival 2012

FILM BELOW: Beat the Devil is a 1953 film directed by John Huston. The screenplay was written by Huston and Truman Capote, and loosely based upon a novel of the same name by British journalist and critic Claud Cockburn, writing under the pseudonym James Helvick. It was intended by Huston as a tongue-in-cheek spoof of The Maltese Falcon (1941), also directed by Huston, and films of the same genre.

Thomas McCarthy (born 1954) is an Irish poet, novelist, and critic, born in Cappoquin, Co. Waterford, Ireland. He attended University College Cork where he was part of a resurgence of literary activity under the inspiration of John Montague. Among his contemporaries, described by Thomas Dillon Redshaw as “that remarkable generation,” there were Theo Dorgan poet and memoirist, Sean Dunne, poet, Greg Delanty, poet, Maurice Riordan poet and William Wall, novelist and poet. McCarthy edited, at various times, The Cork Review and Poetry Ireland Review. He has published seven collections of poetry with Anvil Press Poetry, London, including The Sorrow Garden, The Lost Province, Mr Dineen’s Careful Parade, The Last Geraldine Officer (“a major achievement”, in the view of academic and poet Maurice Harmon[1])and Merchant Prince, described as “an ambitious and substantive book”. The main themes of his poetry are Southern Irish politics, love and memory. He is also the author of two novels; Without Power and Asya and Christine. He is married with two children and lives in Cork City where he works in the City Libraries. He won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1977. His monograph “Rising from the Ashes” tells the story of the burning of the Carnegie Free Library in Cork City by the Black and Tans in 1920 and the subsequent efforts to rebuild the collection with the help of donors from all over the world.

In his work “the ludicrous and the homely go hand-in-hand but the relaxed, conversational style can switch from emphatic narration to literary observation, as when the poet quotes Henry James’s remark, ‘As the picture is reality so the novel is history/And not as the poem is: a metaphor and closed thing.”[1]

Claud Cockburn
Francis Claud Cockburn of Brook Lodge, Youghal, County Cork, Munster, Ireland was a British journalist. He was a well known proponent of communism. His saying, “believe nothing until it has been officially denied” is widely quoted in journalistic studies. He was the second cousin, once removed, of novelists Alec Waugh and Evelyn Waugh.

In 1947, Cockburn moved to Ireland and lived at Ardmore, County Waterford, and continued to contribute to newspapers and journals, including a weekly column for The Irish Times. In the Irish Times he famously stated that “Wherever there is a stink in international affairs, you will find that Henry Kissinger has recently visited.”

Among his novels were The Horses, Ballantyne’s Folly, Jericho Road, and Beat the Devil (originally under the pseudonym James Helvick), which was made into a film directed by John Huston with script credit to Truman Capote (the title was later used by Cockburn’s son Alexander for his regular column in Truman Capote ).
Photo inset of Claud Cockburn by Eric Hands

Beat the Devil (film)
Beat the Devil is a 1953 film directed by John Huston.[2] The screenplay was written by Huston and Truman Capote, and loosely based upon a novel of the same name by British journalist and critic Claud Cockburn, writing under the pseudonym James Helvick. It was intended by Huston as a tongue-in-cheek spoof of The Maltese Falcon (1941), also directed by Huston, and films of the same genre.
The script, which was written on a day-to-day basis as the film was being shot, concerns the adventures of a motley crew of swindlers and ne’er-do-wells trying to lay claim to land rich in uranium deposits in Kenya as they wait in a small Italian port to travel aboard an ill-fated tramp steamer en route to Mombasa.[3] The all-star cast includes Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre and Bernard Lee.
This Huston opus does not easily fit into the standard set of film categories; it has variously been classified as a “thriller,” a “comedy,” a “drama,” a “crime” and a “romance” movie. It is above all else a parody of the Film Noir style[citation needed] that Huston himself had pioneered and as such has developed cult status in the ensuing years.
A quartet of international crooks — Peterson, O’Hara, Ross and Ravello — is stranded in Italy while their steamer is being repaired. With them are the Dannreuthers. The six are headed for Africa, presumably to sell vacuum cleaners but actually to buy land supposedly loaded with uranium. They are joined by others who apparently have similar designs.

The movie was not well received critically (although it was to become a National Board of Review winner) and was to mark the closure of the “quest movies” period in Huston’s career. Despite its disappointing performance, Beat The Devil has gone on to garner mild cult status.
Humphrey Bogart never liked the movie, perhaps because he lost a good deal of his own money bankrolling it, and said of Beat the Devil, “Only phonies like it.” Roger Ebert notes that the film has been characterized as the first camp movie. In the biographical film dramas Infamous (2006) and Capote (2005), Truman Capote, portrayed by Toby Jones and Philip Seymour Hoffman, reminisces about life during the filming of Beat the Devil.