Teresa Kane

Fermanagh’s Women Aloud Part 3

March 4, 2016 fcwg Uncategorized Antoinette Rock, Mary McElroy, Northern Irish writers, poetry, Teresa Kane, Women Aloud Fermanagh, Women Aloud NI, women writers

There’s more yet. Let’s meet a few more of the women who are part of Women Aloud Fermanagh 2016: Teresa Kane, Antoinette Rock and Mary McElroy.

Teresa Kane: She has worked as a freelance journalist for BBC and for many years as a regional leader for Pushkin Prizes Creative Writing Trust. She has a long history of working with children in their poetry writing. Currently she is Principal in Magheralough Primary School, Trillick.

Antoinette Rock: She had a great interest in words from an early age. She is an avid reader. In recent years she has dared to write a word or two herself.

Mary McElroy: Mary lives in Enniskillen. She’s had work published in the Babble Anthology and in “Moment” from the Community Arts Partnership. In 2013 she won both the Babble Literary Festival Slam and the Regional Section of Funeral Services NI Poetry Competition. She is currently working on her memoir.

Thoughts on Point of Absence

November 15, 2015 fcwg Uncategorized poetry, Teresa Kane

An Appreciation by Tony Brady

In the recent All Ireland Poetry Slam Final, held in Blakes of The Hollow, watering place and home of Fermanagh Writer’s, Poet Teresa Kane was placed in the final three competitors. My personal view, and no reflection on the excellent judges, polemics delivered by the first and second contenders won over poetry – otherwise Teresa would have gained first place.

Teresa Kane – a Member of Fermanagh Writers – is a poet who finds inspiration in the natural world and its ever changing presence. She communes with nature, transposing her reflected emotions into verse, fixing them in poetry on the pages for the reader to savour. Her humanity is mirrored in her poems and attributes of her unique character pervade: elegance, taste, goodness, kindness of heart. Throughout her poems there is a consistent thread of empathy with stillness and movement: water, light, air and seasonal change abound, blended together in an harmonic sense of the moving power of music.

This unpublished Collection – Point Of Absence – provides a variety of experiences signified by sensations of separation caused by death of loved ones and significant others against a background of rural life and family situations. Teresa conveys the connectivity of absence as: “Gossamer threads that have ribbonned through generations.” The Dressmaker. Another poem recalls a deliberate absence by a water bird: “ You left the flock to feather your own nest.” There is acute observation in the lines – “I watched , waiting in the rhythm of your stillness.” Porcelain Eggs. A permanent absence of a dead uncle who danced at weddings is cherished as “the dance ends on an arpeggio – a staccato note.” A Heavy Coat.

The poet’s inner life is glimpsed in the poem: A Surrendering. Lines associated with such simple tasks as lighting a turf fire – “Each sod smoulders in memory layer by layer, it surrenders smoke secrets into the sky of a slow half moon.” The task “..speaks poetry; pitched words banked in wisdom”. In Ancient Child the cost of a bartered for alabaster doll is not an imagined exchange of emblems: the moon, the sun and the stars, rather maternal emotion “In the end the currency I used was love; loose coins falling golden into the safe hold of my soul.”

Each of the poems display variations in mood, tone and pace. Free verse is the favoured form. Sometimes, a poem is a series of questions. For example Voice. “Am I still? Am I an echo in time? Is that where I am?” Elsewhere, as in Limited Travel it is completion: “I have travelled through time; I have walked barefooted; I have skimmed my wings and I have lived off berries. ” By contrast, there are imperatives, as in Wake Me.

Your range is quite impressive: it reaches easily across natural perspectives and into personal human depths of sentiment, emotion and introspection. Your voice, as expressed in this selection, I have read it more than several times, is quiet, restrained, at times commanding, but always controlled. Echoes of past experienced places are vividly presented.

The sensual tone in some of the poems borders effectively on the erotic sensations that inspire your poetry. The shared experience in those areas holds the reader’s attention, because the power of suggestion rather than explicit description attracts rather than repels. This is the secret of conveying an erotic sense and vision.

Your ability to vary the pace of narrative is a definite strength. You can also contain more than one effect in short poems. You have an affinity to landscape and possess a skill for conveying its atmosphere and it earthly characteristics. Every now and then a sense of your spiritual and mystical awareness informs your poetry.

Lastly your poetry shows your ability to recall past experience and recast it to move the reader in the present moment.

Overall, the Collection entitled – Point of Absence – compels this reader writing an Appreciation, to compare and contrast the work with established poets such as Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh, simply because of their geographical proximity and Teresa Kane’s deference to their inspiration and influence. Even so, her own words are the best conclusion:

“Find old words, barnacled onto
the richness of stone. Drop them
one by one into waters still with secrets.
I will listen as ripples unfold back
onto themselves.” The Dance.

Fermanagh Writers At FLive Festival

October 9, 2014 fcwg Uncategorized Anthony Viney, Ardhowen Theatre, Dianne Trimble, Fermanagh writers, FLive Festival, Jenny Brien, John D Kelly, John James, John Monaghan, Kathy May, Ken Ramsey, Mary McElroy, May Morris, Teresa Kane, Trish Bennett

Last weekend Fermanagh Writers participated in the FLive Festival, performing on Friday afternoon at the Ardhowen Theatre and on Saturday lunchtime at the Bridge Centre in the Presbyterian Church. Both sessions were lively and members of the audience praised the performers afterwards.

Our Chair, Tony Brady, tell us about the performance at the Ardhowen Theatre:

Friday 3^rd October 2014 was a day for me to take a step back as John Monaghan had organised a line up of 13 from our poets and prose writers. I arrived early at what must be one of the most beautifully positioned theatres in the whole of Ireland. The Long Bar was the venue and I joined the audience while Bob Baird, of The Flive organising committee, finessed the essential in situ arrangements and made the Introduction.

First to read was John Monaghan: his two poems, Hobnobs and Wisdom Tooth, were remembered mouth watering pleasure and painful surgery. Bob Baird then regaled with An Australian Tale – not a shaggy dog story, more a black sheep fable. A change of mood came with Jenny Brien introducing a classical Irish mythic tone with her saga The Calf. Our imaginations were then carried to France by John Llewellyn James as a Paris weekend there, was described in a risqué poem Elodie. Next up came Kitty: shy, retiring, she was propelled to the lectern by collective encouragement and gave an assured performance of two poems: “On the back of his phone call…” and These Hands.

Kathy May followed with a questioning poem – Betrothal – seeking undying promises, and an emotionally lacerating poem, Inside of A Cell, invoking scenes of mental illness. Humour was expected and welcome as May Morris followed intoning Hey Diddle Diddle with its subtle hint of drug taking and a contrasting taste of cheeky bedroom hanky-panky in Kathy and Liam.

A mix of nature, dreams, poultry and hints of les liaisons

dangereuse/amoureuse were poetry conveyed in 4 poems recited by Teresa Kane. Pinned viewed a butterfly trapped in a jar. Wake Me was a call to be aware of beauty in natural surroundings while Porcelain Eggs recalled, not without a sting, tactile seeking and finding. Finally, her poem Shadows characterised a sensual, coquette, temptress; all come and get me; vampish but seductively ambivalent while being attractive/repellent simultaneously.

An example of theatrical Military Action Poetry was next presented by “Corporal” Tony Viney. His Rudyard Kipling inspired monologue Fuzzy Wuzzy blended 19^th century British army discipline with contemporary Taliban activity in present day Afghanistan. Very appropriate for a theatre event, Tony was in army uniform, parade ground boots and topped by an authentic battle field helmet. There’s a medal (yet uncast) for this performance reprised from the Ballinamallard Festival.

Barrack square pitch changed to dulcet toned level when Trish Bennett recited her funny Cleaning with Parrot’s Help and contrasted it with an ironic funereal poem Boxed Up. She continued with Magic Aid and completed with Sweet Spot – a poem which she could have just composed on the spot; so redolent it was of the view visible from the room’s panoramic windows.

One of our prize winning poets, Mary McElroy no less, and in person from the lectern, commanded the audience’s rapt attention with varying emotional and visual themes in 3 of her poems: Hands – The Uninvited – Blind. William Shakespeare was next: in a manner of speaking that is, for Jennie Brien skilfully reworked into modern, innovative idiom 4 sonnets by the immortal Bard. Lots more favourite and famous poets were liberally name-checked in Frankie McPhillips original vignette Beautiful Bundoran. His seaside reverie/elegy contained a skilfully interwoven pastiche of W.B Yeat’s poem The Lake Isle of Innishfree.

Any further thoughts about “I will arise and go now…” were banished as Dianne Trimble recited her amusing poem Yer Man followed by But I’m Here. Then a change of tone in Barbed Boundary, subtle hints of a rural interface there. Two further offerings were When Haymaking’s Done and the second, one of her published poems: The Thing on a String.

This appreciative member was then called from the reserves bench, and recited three poems from Fermanagh Writer’s Seamus Heaney Tribute booklet by three contributors who were unable to attend. Death of a Hero by Ken Ramsey. The Unexpected by Rosemary Bland. Looking Upstream by John D. Kelly.

John Monaghan’s arrangement of the overall variety of contributions was inspired. Among the audience were the Director of the Flive Festival, Evelyn Hassard accompanied by Rosie & Nicholas Watts. I just cannot resist by ending this overview with a touch of luvviedom: Darlings! You were wonderful! Simply Divine!

She’ll Do Rightly

August 12, 2014 fcwg Uncategorized Heaney Tribute, Seamus Heaney, Teresa Kane, Tony Brady, William Carleton Summer School

Tony Brady tells us about Fermanagh Writers contribution to the Heaney tribute at the William Carleton Summer School:

Tuesday 5th August 2014, William Carleton Summer School, Public Open Session, to receive Personal Appreciations of Seamus Heaney, Corick House Hotel, Augher, Tyrone.

Fermanagh Writers were asked to participate at the planning stage in January. The organisers were aware of our proposed booklet and invited readings from it. In the event, it was not ready but I had a contingency specimen. By the day, our small team of planned readers was reduced to just Teresa Kane and me. I was not prepared for what became an (initially) quite nerve rendering time…

We were due to read in the session running from 4pm to 5pm. I got there at 2.00pm having arranged to link up with Teresa at 3.45pm. However, a serious hitch in the techno side of the presenter due on at 3.00pm meant the sessions were switched. The first 20 minutes passed as the well known quartet of poets/writers on the panel gave their memorial impressions. When the public contributions began, I was pitched up on stage to perform first off, without Teresa who of course being en route, was unaware of the programme change.

I laid down a marker for Teresa – telling the audience about her – while hoping the session would not be over by the time she arrived: for it started 15 minutes late. About 50 people looked up at me, slightly puzzled, as they were there principally to hear a presentation from a distinguished architect about renovating classical buildings in Ireland. I read The Forward, JDK’s poem – Looking Upstream – and Seamus Heaney’s poem – From The Republic of Conscience.

With about 15 minutes to go Teresa arrived (on her scheduled time) and without waiting for the Chair of the panel, I introduced her from the floor and to my relief, he invited her up to the mike and she read her Tribute superbly: best of the lot as it turned out. The audience were very warm and appreciative.

A bonus was that Teresa brought her mother along, so we went for coffee in most splendid surroundings. There was a wedding on, and as I stood at the bar to make our order, I commented to the groom that he has a lovely bride and conveyed my best wishes. He was pleased and said to me: “She’ll do rightly!”

Later, we went out onto the terrace and one of the organisers took pictures of Teresa, her mother and me. Behind us and out of sight, four foot high letters spelling out L O V E were framed by beautiful shrubbery and admirable view.

All was well and ended well.