Dublin – One City, Many Stories: ‘Joyce's legacy washes over every writer like the waves at Sandymount'
A new six-part video series celebrates Dublin's literary talent
The idea for Dublin, One City, Many Stories was sparked by an article in The Guardian that noted Ireland's 'outsized contribution to world literature'. It's a familiar sentiment – one that sometimes invites the question: 'What's in the water over there?' I feel that there is something in the water. And in terms of Dublin, it's in the Liffey and Dublin Bay and the life around it.
But every idea needs an ignition point and ours landed after a conversation with Anne-Marie Kelly, director of Dublin Unesco City of Literature, who was eager to mark the 15th anniversary of Dublin's designation as a city of literature. From that chat came a vision: to showcase the depth and diversity of voices writing in and about Dublin today – voices rooted in the city's Viking past as well as those newly arrived to its shores.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RTÉ News
2 days ago
- RTÉ News
The Summer of CMAT - how Ireland's gobbiest pop star conquered the music world
It's out with the cigs, the Bic lighters, the "strappy white tops with no bra" and all the other garish lime green accoutrements; time to drag out the cowboy hats and boots, tooth jewels and brightly coloured tights from storage. 2024 may have been 'Brat Summer' thanks to Charli XCX, but there's a new pop hero in town: 2025 is shaping up to be the Summer of CMAT. How did a young musician from Ireland become the kind of performer that can play to tens of thousands of fans (as she did last week), encouraging them to do the 'Dunboyne, County Meath two-step" at Primavera Sound? Barcelona has never seen the likes - but if anyone can achieve such a feat, it's Ciara Mary Alice Thompson. The 29-year-old musician's rise has been a slow but steady one over the last five years. Considering she launched herself as a solo artist at the same time as a pandemic - which gave her little to no opportunity to promote her debut single Another Day (KFC) - she's doubly defied the odds. I remember interviewing her around the time that that song (a heartache-addled tune inspired by her debit card failing in KFC after being dumped) began to gain traction. "I feel if you make the song good enough, structurally and sonically, then you can literally do whatever you want with the lyrics," she said. "I also find that if you make a song really funny, you also free up a lot of space to talk about serious issues without coming across as po-faced. I think a lot of people, when they write a song, they put it on a pedestal – and it shouldn't be. Music should not be that serious, it should not be treated as such a high art form – because a lot of the time, it's not." Even in those early days - although she had previous experience in the industry as one-half of indie duo The Bad Sea - CMAT's vision was striking. She was referring to herself as a 'global pop star' long before anyone else did, but she also had the musical chops to go with the self-confidence. It was clear that she was an artist who knew her onions, speaking about influenced by Dory Previn and the McGarrigle sisters as well as Villagers, and writing songs about people like comedian Rodney Dangerfield and actor Peter Bogdanovich - figures that most of her fellow Gen Z brethren would be baffled by. Despite her prowess on record, it's arguably CMAT's dogged touring schedule and her reputation as an outstanding live performer that has been key to spreading her gospel. She was also a journalist's dream: an interviewee eschewing the bland media-trained responses of her young peers and unafraid to speak her mind. It's something that she has continued to do to this day. In a recent interview with The Guardian newspaper - which referred to her as "pop's gobbiest, gaudiest star", she spoke about the fallout from cancelling her set at last year's Latitude festival due to its sponsorship by Barclays. "They ghosted me," she said of a planned endorsement deal with a big brand that fell through. "I lost a lot of money. But who f**king cares? I'm aware of the fact that my career is going to struggle as a result of this stuff, but I also think everyone else in music needs a kick up the hole. Where's all the f**king artists? Where's all the f**king hippies?" Listen: CMAT introduces her favourite songs for RTÉ Radio 1's Mixtape Born in Cedarwood Avenue, a subsequent move to Clonee and then the aforementioned Dunboyne saw her spend her teenage years languishing in suburbia and honing her songcraft. In her early days as a solo artist, following brief spells living in Denmark and Manchester and after the break-up of The Bad Sea, she used an out-of-hours yoga studio on Camden Street as a makeshift rehearsal and recording studio, sharing it with fellow artists Aoife Nessa Frances and Rachael Lavelle as she worked a humdrum day job. Her 2022 debut album If My Wife New I'd Be Dead made her a star in Ireland, thanks to hits like the country-pop-infused I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!, but it was 2023's Crazymad, for Me album that made international audiences sit up and take notice. High profile appearances on the BBC's Later with Jools Holland and The Graham Norton Show, as well as radio hits like the wistful pop rollick of Stay for Something, saw her plant her flag on UK territory. Suddenly, there were BRIT Award nominations (including a red carpet kerfuffle with that fabulous bum-baring dress); Robbie Williams was calling her duet with John Grand 'majestic', and Elton John himself was heaping praise on the album, calling it "All the things I love… bold, eccentric and a touch mad!" Despite her prowess on record, it's arguably CMAT's dogged touring schedule and her reputation as an outstanding live performer that has been key to spreading her gospel. Her 5-star homecoming gigs at Dublin's Olympia Theatre in November 2023 were the real signifier that something special was happening. Here we had not only a woman who could write pop bangers with emotional depth, but who knew, alongside her excellent band, how to entertain an audience. In simple terms, she had star quality - and a forthcoming sold-out 3Arena gig this December to prove it. Fame, of course, has not been without its pitfalls. In true CMAT style, however, she has spun at least one of them into something positive with her new single Take a Sexy Picture of Me - a song written in response to the online trolling she has had in response to her body - and it's even spawned its own TikTok dance. The Apple Dance? That was so last year, babe. On his recent appearance on Louis Theroux's podcast, Ed Sheeran said that you need three things you need to succeed - work ethic, personality and talent - and if you have the first two, the third doesn't quite matter as much. CMAT possesses all three in abundance, so who knows where she might land with her forthcoming third album Euro-Country. She has, by her own admission, been living life on the edge in recent times: "The kind of headspace that good songs come from is one of extreme emotion, extreme depth of feeling," she said, "which has an impact on my life. I do live in that really heightened state of emotion all the time. I'm crazy and I do crazy things, and I have crazy relationships with people." Hopefully she's savvy enough to recognise when it might be time to step back from the madness. For now, at least, we can relish the Summer of CMAT. Giddy up.
Irish Examiner
2 days ago
- Irish Examiner
Film Reviews: How to Train Your Dragon makes superb use of Northern Irish scenery
You don't have to be mad to live on the remote northern island of Berk, but it helps if you're the kind of deranged Viking who enjoys nothing more than a good old dust-up with a fire-breathing beastie. The live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon (PG), which is slavishly faithful to the 2010 animation, opens with the teenaged Hiccup (Mason Thames) a frustrated apprentice in the village armoury and barred — despite being the son of the chief, Stoick the Vast (Gerald Butler, reprising his role in the original) — from playing a part in defending the island from the dragons that regularly descend on Berk to pillage its livestock and barbecue its humans. Until, that is, Hiccup manages to snare the most fearsome of all the dragon species, a Night Fury ('the unholy offspring of lightning and death'), at which point a previously unthinkable proposition arises: could human and dragon somehow learn to work together? Written and directed by Dean DeBlois, this version of How to Train… is a lively blend of live action and animation that makes superb use of a variety of Northern Ireland settings (Dunseverick Castle and the Giant's Causeway both feature). Its central message, that of bitter foes learning to co-operate to their mutual benefit, remains intact and as timely as ever, and the action sequences are neatly executed, particularly when Hiccup and his new pal Toothless go swooping through the sea stacks off the Northern Ireland coast. Mason Thames isn't especially dynamic in the lead role, but there's strong support: Gerald Butler gnawing great chunks out the scenery as the Viking chief Stoick, Nick Frost providing comic relief as Hiccup's mentor Gobber, and Nico Parker as Astrid, the fiery warrior-in-training who brings a blowtorch intensity to pretty much everything she does, romance included. Lollipop. Lollipop ★★★★★ Theatrical release Kafka meets Catch 22 in Lollipop (15A), which opens with Londoner Molly Brown (Posy Sterling) leaving prison after serving a four-month sentence. Now living in a tent, and desperate to get her kids out of foster care, Molly discovers that she can't have her kids if she can't provide them with a home, and she can't get a home if she doesn't have any kids to house. An ostensibly straightforward dilemma, but one fiendishly difficult to unravel as Molly grows increasingly frustrated with the various social services, who argue, very reasonably, that her children's welfare is their primary concern. Written and directed by Daisy-May Hudson, Lollipop is a brilliant, stress-inducing slice of social realism featuring terrific performances from TerriAnn Cousins as Molly's alcoholic mother, and Idil Ahmed as Molly's former schoolfriend and a woman who finds herself in a similar plight. That said, the whole film revolves around the superb chemistry between Posy Sterling, who is in blistering form here, and the wonderfully natural Tegan-Mia Stanley Roads and Luke Howitt, playing her daughter and son. Tornado ★★★☆☆ Theatrical release Set in 1790, on the wintry Scottish moors, Tornado (15A) stars Kôki as the eponymous heroine, a Japanese girl who has stolen a sack of gold from a gang of outlaws led by Sugarman (Tim Roth) and Little (Jack Lowden), and is now fleeing for her life. But as the outlaws stride across the lawless moors killing and burning with impunity, they fail to consider one crucial question: what happens when Tornado, the daughter of a samurai warrior, stops running and turns to fight? Writer-director John Maclean (Slow West) recreates the Wild West in the Scottish Highlands, an amoral world where life plays out on a barren, windswept landscape devoid of civilisation and pity. Kôki's performance is a touch stiff at times — to be fair, her young character, recently orphaned, spends much of the film semi-paralysed with mortal terror — but Tim Roth and Jack Lowden have a whale of a time as the dead-eyed sociopathic killers.
Irish Independent
2 days ago
- Irish Independent
Dublin – One City, Many Stories: ‘Joyce's legacy washes over every writer like the waves at Sandymount'
A new six-part video series celebrates Dublin's literary talent The idea for Dublin, One City, Many Stories was sparked by an article in The Guardian that noted Ireland's 'outsized contribution to world literature'. It's a familiar sentiment – one that sometimes invites the question: 'What's in the water over there?' I feel that there is something in the water. And in terms of Dublin, it's in the Liffey and Dublin Bay and the life around it. But every idea needs an ignition point and ours landed after a conversation with Anne-Marie Kelly, director of Dublin Unesco City of Literature, who was eager to mark the 15th anniversary of Dublin's designation as a city of literature. From that chat came a vision: to showcase the depth and diversity of voices writing in and about Dublin today – voices rooted in the city's Viking past as well as those newly arrived to its shores.
