The Works of James Joyce

THE LOTUS EATERS - A Bloomsday Odyssey

From Bray, Co.Wicklow, Ireland

The Lotus Eaters:

Kieran and Gaye Griffin: co-founders of the Oscar Wilde Autumn School, which ran in Bray for 8 years. Guest speakers included actors Sheridan Morley, Donald Sinden and Stephen Berkoff; poets Derek Mahon, Bernard O'Donoghue, Paul Durcan, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Richard Murphy; journalists Joanathan Philbin Bowman and Anne Doyle; academics Senator David Norris, Declan Kiberd, Ulick O'Connor, Terry Eagleton and David Rose.

Michael Sheridan: acted with Garry Hynes and Marie Mullen in Galway University and is former principal of a large mixed school in Bray. He is a founder member of the Bray Arts Group, which campaigned successfully for the building of what is now the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray. He recently performed the Christmas Dinner scene from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1, Martello Terrace Bray, (where the scene is set) with Gaye Griffin. Other members of the group also read and performed extracts from Joyce. He attended the centenary of Oscar Wilde’s death in Paris in 2000, and has taken Bray students to Pére Lachaise Cemetery to see Epstein’s tomb of Wilde.

He is married to:

Brigid Murtagh: studied English Literature and Drama in University College Dublin and read and wrote on James Joyce’s Ulysses. In drama she studied, interpreted and performed Samuel Beckett’s short plays. She first read Ulysses while in school and attended workshops, lectures, films and courses etc. She is a frequent reader of Ulysses in Sweny's chemist in Dublin on a weekly basis. Every year she attends Bloomsday breakfast hosted by Gaye and Kieran Griffin. This involves performing passages from Ulysses and other Joyce works. She regularly attends artistic events on Irish and Anglo-Irish literature, and attended the centenary commemoration of Oscar Wilde’s death in Paris in November 2000 with his grandson Merlin Holland and the actor Donald Sinden.

Ken Kavanagh: a former senior Health Service manager, he has over 25 years' involvement in amateur dramatics as both actor and director. He has a particular interest in the works of Joyce, Synge and O’Casey

http://lotuseaters.info/index.html

Interested in a BLOOMSDAY BRUNCH....

Watch this space..............

In Finnigans Wake, Anna Livia Plurabelle

"Or where was he born or how was he found? Ungothland, Tvistown on the Kattekat? New Hunshire, Concord on the Merrimake."

Which of course in plain English is

Merrimack River, Concord, New Hampshire

The River Merrimack this year will be duplicated for the River Liffey

A walk by the River Merrimake, Concord,  New Hunshire with reading from ULYSSES

Bloomsday 16th June, 2012

Watch this space for further information and time.

1st June - 30th June, 2011

Peterborough Town Library

Concord Street

Peterborough

New Hampshire

The Works of James Joyce

Failte!

This exhibition is my collection of works by James Joyce and works about James Joyce.  

My collection started with the purchase of Brenda Maddox’s book on Joyce’s wife Nora.

Last year, I became aware that New Hampshire had its very own Dublin and that the Dublin Town Hall was built in 1882, the same year James Joyce was born. Seeing that connection gave me the impetus to organize the first Bloomsday celebration in Dublin last year. While that project was going on,  I  discovered the Padraic Colum connection to this area.  Padraic and Mary Colum were friends of Joyce, and  you will find their book “Our Friend James Joyce” in this exhibition.  The Colums spent thirteen summers at the McDowell Colony. They had also spent a lot of time in Paris with Joyce. 

At the McDowell Colony,  Padraic Colum got to know Thornton Wilder. Wilder had met Joyce in Paris and in later years began corresponding with Adaline Glasheen on Finnegans Wake.  In 2001 “A Tour of the Darkling Plain” was published in Dublin, Ireland.  These are the letters of Wilder and Glasheen, who had spent 25 years corresponding on Finnegans Wake. It was only earlier this spring that I stumbled on the Wilder connection.

I believe Joyce was a connector also, planting little allusions here, there and everywhere and then artistically tying them together in his works. I am by no means a Joyce scholar although I did go to Harvard Extension and studied “Ulysses” and Joyce’s early works. And NO I have not read the complete “Ulysses,” but I got an understanding of it down through the years. For anyone who would be interested in starting to read it the best advice I know of, which was given by my Harvard Professor, is first to read “Dubliners” and “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”

Imelda Murphy