After last year’s very successful launch the Enniskillen ComicFest returns on 5th and 6th May 2017, bigger and better, to celebrate all aspects of storytelling and sequential art. ComicFest 2016 proved that there was a great demand for an event of this type in the Enniskillen area.
Author: Paul Trimble
Women Aloud Fermanagh
For the second year in a row, the female members of Fermanagh Writers joined other women writers in Northern Ireland on 8th March to celebrate International Women’s Day.
A Colourful Debut
2016 may have been a tough year for music, but that certainly wasn’t the case for emerging Fermanagh band Anto & the Echoes. After only a few short months of forming and honing their sound, they took on their debut gig in July. Punters were turned away from Charlie’s bar as the crowd reached maximum capacity early in the night. A series of well-received gigs around Northern Ireland followed, and the band returned to Charlie’s to close the year with another sell-out show.
Time Passing and to Come
This two-headed stone figure on Boa Island is often called a Janus, after the two-faced Roman god of doorways who gives his name to January – and janitors. There may be no connection, but each generation makes its own meaning, as can be seen by the coins that regularly appear next the figures.
Free Your Voice! Free Your Writing!
Valerie Whitworth writes:
Together One Voice are starting the New Year with a challenge to free your natural voice and increase your singing skills!
This term we will be focusing on releasing the voice, vocal development, singing skills, confidence building with some small group work on pitch, and harmony work. Many people come to my classes with stories of how they were told not to sing by a parent or teacher, or not allowed to join the choir.
The truth is – if you can speak you can sing.
The Seventh Day
Between the years, with this year still unknown
There was, as when the Earth was made
A Seventh Day – a day to rest
Room, Room, Room for Mummers’ Rhymes
The start button on the vintage cassette player makes a loud clunk. The tape hisses and crackles, then my father’s voice fills the room with with a tumbling run of words:
Room, Room, my gallant room, give me room to rhyme
I’II show you some activity about this Christmastime
The active youth, the active age
Our act was never acted on the stage….
The Brick – a Prequel
In the summer of 2001 I decided to build a low red brick wall around the back garden of my house in Enniskillen. Being a money-canny Ulsterman I looked for the cheapest cheapest bargain bricks I could find.
Those are all the seconds, the yard-man at Acheson and Glovers brickworks informed me, Their colours vary too much so they don’t match our best bricks.
They are all rejects I pointed out, and haggled a deal. Continue reading “The Brick – a Prequel”
The Vanburgh Quartet
The Vanbrugh Quartet (Gregory Ellis, Keith Pascoe, violins; Simon Aspell, viola; Christopher Marwood, cello) has enjoyed a successful international career throughout Europe, the Americas and the Far East. Based in Cork since 1986, it has brought string quartet music to audiences throughout Ireland and has given more than one thousand concerts in venues ranging from small country schools to the major city halls.
When a Tree Falls in the Forest
A 2,000 year old Sequoia Tree falls over in the forest and dies. No one heard it fall. It was a famous tree – they even gave it a name, the Pioneer Cabin Tree and carved a tunnel through its great trunk. Yet now it lies in state on the floor of the forest. Continue reading “When a Tree Falls in the Forest”