Bloomsday celebrated at Lucia Joyce's resting place
KINGSTHORPE Cemetery in Northampton may seem an unlikely setting for Bloomsday celebrations — but for those marking James Joyce's signature day, it is in fact a place of deep resonance.
On June 16th, the Triskellion Theatre Company will return once again to honour Ulysses , and to pay tribute to the Joycean legacy rooted in Northampton through the figure of Lucia Anna Joyce.
Bloomsday commemorates the events of June 16th, 1904, the day on which Ulysses unfolds.
The connection to Northampton is through Lucia, James Joyce's only daughter.
Born in Trieste — where the Joyces lived for over a decade and where much of Ulysses was written — Lucia was once a gifted dancer and a noted figure in artistic circles.
In the 1920s she had a brief romance with Samuel Beckett, but her life was increasingly marked by mental illness.
Diagnosed with schizophrenia, she was treated by Carl Jung in Zurich and spent her final decades as a patient at St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton, where she died in 1982.
She is buried in Kingsthorpe Cemetery.
This year's event will once again include a performance of Letters to Lucia , a play written by local writers and staged at her graveside by Triskellion Theatre Company, led by Gerry Molumby of Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
The day will also feature readings from Ulysses , live music from folk band The Tim Finnegans, and guest speakers exploring the Joycean ties to Northampton.
Richard Rose will speak on Lucia Joyce's long and poignant connection to the town.
Triskellion has been bringing turn-of-the-century Dublin to Kingsthorpe each Bloomsday since 2005, with cast members dressed in period costume and a spirit of both celebration and reflection.
Previous years have seen contributions from the local branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, and performances by Sean Cannon of The Dubliners.
As Bloomsday marks the ordinary made extraordinary, Kingsthorpe Cemetery becomes, just for a moment, a corner of Dublin transplanted to Northampton — a place where memory, art and identity meet.
See More: Bloomsday, Northampton, Triskellion Irish Theatre Company
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Irish Post
a day ago
- Irish Post
Bloomsday celebrated at Lucia Joyce's resting place
KINGSTHORPE Cemetery in Northampton may seem an unlikely setting for Bloomsday celebrations — but for those marking James Joyce's signature day, it is in fact a place of deep resonance. On June 16th, the Triskellion Theatre Company will return once again to honour Ulysses , and to pay tribute to the Joycean legacy rooted in Northampton through the figure of Lucia Anna Joyce. Bloomsday commemorates the events of June 16th, 1904, the day on which Ulysses unfolds. The connection to Northampton is through Lucia, James Joyce's only daughter. Born in Trieste — where the Joyces lived for over a decade and where much of Ulysses was written — Lucia was once a gifted dancer and a noted figure in artistic circles. In the 1920s she had a brief romance with Samuel Beckett, but her life was increasingly marked by mental illness. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, she was treated by Carl Jung in Zurich and spent her final decades as a patient at St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton, where she died in 1982. She is buried in Kingsthorpe Cemetery. This year's event will once again include a performance of Letters to Lucia , a play written by local writers and staged at her graveside by Triskellion Theatre Company, led by Gerry Molumby of Thurles, Co. Tipperary. The day will also feature readings from Ulysses , live music from folk band The Tim Finnegans, and guest speakers exploring the Joycean ties to Northampton. Richard Rose will speak on Lucia Joyce's long and poignant connection to the town. Triskellion has been bringing turn-of-the-century Dublin to Kingsthorpe each Bloomsday since 2005, with cast members dressed in period costume and a spirit of both celebration and reflection. Previous years have seen contributions from the local branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, and performances by Sean Cannon of The Dubliners. As Bloomsday marks the ordinary made extraordinary, Kingsthorpe Cemetery becomes, just for a moment, a corner of Dublin transplanted to Northampton — a place where memory, art and identity meet. See More: Bloomsday, Northampton, Triskellion Irish Theatre Company
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Irish Times
Bloomsday was a sporadic, boozy and ill-mannered affair before becoming an annual event in 1994
I thought Bloomsday was last bank holiday weekend in Phoenix Park? No, that was Bloom, Ireland's largest gardening festival. Bloomsday is a celebration of James Joyce 's literary masterpiece, Ulysses, named after its anti-hero, Leopold Bloom, and based on his all-day peregrinations around Dublin on June 16th, 1904. So it's been celebrated annually since 1904? Not quite. The novel is set then but was first published in Paris in 1922. The first mention of a celebration is in a letter from Joyce received by his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver on June 27th, 1924, which refers to 'a group of people who observe what they call Bloom's day – 16 June'. Adrienne Monnier, the partner of Ulysses' publisher Sylvia Beach, celebrated the 25th anniversary of the first Bloomsday in 1929 with a Déjeuner Ulysse at the Hôtel Léopold near Versailles. So it's been celebrated annually since the 1920s? Again, not quite. Joyce may be a national treasure today but he spent most of his life in exile and Ulysses, although not banned, was not available in Irish bookshops or libraries until the 1970s. When Joyce died in Zurich in 1941, Joseph P Walshe, the secretary of the Department of External Affairs in Dublin, asked the Irish envoy, 'Did he die a Catholic?' and instructed him not to attend the funeral. In 1954, however, the writers Flann O'Brien, late of this parish, Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin, together with publisher and publican John Ryan, Joyce's cousin Tom Joyce and AJ Leventhal, a lecturer in French at Trinity College, set out on an all-day pilgrimage in two horse-drawn cabs, starting at the Martello tower in Sandycove and continuing in Davy Byrnes pub on Duke Street (where Bloom eats a Gorgonzola sandwich with a glass of burgundy). But the inebriated party got no farther than the Bailey pub, which Ryan owned. The drunken spectacle is immortalised in video, including some public urination on Sandymount Strand. READ MORE So it's been celebrated annually since 1954? Er, not quite. On Bloomsday in 1967, Kavanagh, O'Brien and Ryan 'rescued' the door from 7 Eccles Street, the home of Leopold and Molly Bloom, which was being demolished to make way for the Mater Private Hospital, and placed it in the Bailey Pub. 'I declare this door shut,' Kavanagh reportedly said. The door was later donated to the James Joyce Centre, which in 1994 organised the first weeklong Bloomsday Festival. Right. So it's been celebrated annually since 1994? Yes! It's an ideal opportunity to dress up in your Edwardian finery, eat offal and listen to reams of rich and ribald prose. This year's highlights include a two-hour walking tour leaving James Joyce Centre, 35 Great George's Street North, at 11am daily until the 16th and Jim Norton reading from Ulysses on June 16th at 11am at the James Joyce Tower & Museum. Bloomsday Festival
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Irish Times
Paradise House by Paul Perry: A fascinating, original and well-executed speculative fiction about James Joyce
Paradise House Author : Paul Perry ISBN-13 : 9781036907952 Publisher : Somerville Press Guideline Price : €20 In dire straits, as he often was, James Joyce latched on to a casual remark from his sister Eva, who was visiting her brother in Trieste, about the lack of a cinema in Dublin. Securing Italian syndicate backing, Joyce returned to Ireland and the Cinematograph Volta opened on Mary Street in December 1909. Once it was up and running Joyce retreated to Italy but the nascent business ran aground soon after and the struggling author remained, for the time being at least, potless. But what if Joyce's picture palace had taken off? This is the notion behind Paradise House by UCD professor of creative writing Paul Perry. If his last novel, 2021's excellent The Garden, evoked American masters like McCarthy, Steinbeck and Hemingway then this one takes inspiration from F Scott Fitzgerald, specifically The Great Gatsby. Here the Volta is renamed Paradise House and its success in a Dublin that's 'a city of half-truth and half lies' seen through the eyes of narrator Jacob Moonlight, has brought Joyce (called Kinch, the nickname bestowed by Oliver Gogarty, throughout) the financial rewards which previously eluded him. Like F's Jay however, what he truly longs for is love. This 'magical venue' has only one purpose: 'Kinch was trying to win Norah back'. [ Author Paul Perry: 'The myth of the starving genius is harmful nonsense' Opens in new window ] Upstairs at the House there's an after-hours club, The Worm's Ditch, which brings 'a sensuous kind of alternative reality' to 'a dreary outpost of colonial rule' and allows Joyce to throw Gatsby-esque, champagne-soaked get-togethers where luminaries such as Caruso can enjoy themselves, while he gazes longingly towards the green light of Norah's dock. READ MORE Perry's Joyce is a might-have-been who 'wrote a book and it was pulped' and was fired from his teaching job 'for turning up ossified'. Moonlight, a Jewish outsider like the Bloom this Joyce never gets to finish writing about because he's determined to drown any such ambition, doubts the Kinch he knows would ever want bridges or buildings named after him or to have his face on the currency or have 'ignorant, power-hungry politicians quote him without a clue' anyway. This alternate history also takes in to account war in Europe and rising unrest back home, and further borrows from Fitzgerald for the fates of supporting characters. It's a fascinating, original and well-executed what-if conceit, and highly entertaining to boot.
