JUNO CHILLING IN THE WORD TENT
Well, it was my first muddy Electric Picnic - the other times I went there was no mud, so that was new...and difficult to drag a baby's buggy through. I have muscles on my muscles. Not sure I'd go with a young baby again - nowhere to change nappies in comfort, general dirt and piddly smells, cold breezes and open-air feeding, gazillions of potentially dangerous drunk people falling about. Somehow Flat Lake wasn't as stressful. Anyway, I did enjoy it but Baby can stay home next time, I think.
My reading went very well - my first reading from
Nude. I read 'Woman in the Waves' - something amusing and punchy for the EP age profile (!). It went down well. I also read a few poems. I enjoyed the reading (a more frequent occurence since leaving pregnancy behind) and the audience looked and acted alive despite their collective hangover.
ANDRÉ KAPOR
A barefoot and sunlassed André Kapor from Sarajevo was one of my fellow readers and he delivered a very slick set that the audience loved. Very spoken wordy and seamless between-poem chat and start-of-poem delivery.
DELTA O'HARA
Delta O'Hara from Mexico also read/performed. I liked her funny poems about being a sex line phone operator in Dublin, complete with impressions of her scanger boss and his inane mobile phone conversations. Good fun.
We wandered about for a bit, exploring the MindField and beyond: Oxfam had their charity shop again, and there was stall after stall of yummy veggie food and handcrafted jewellery and clothes. There was a new Green Craft area where you could weave flower garlands, make a silver ring or carve a wooden spoon, among lots more.
BILLY RAMSELL
Back at the WORD, Cork poet Billy Ramsell delivered his usual wry and excellent set. Some new poems too, one of which was like a modern Yeats epic. Billy is always worth a listen - go see him if he's playing a village near you. I think he's pretty unique - a highly literary poet who commits his poems to memory and delivers them with style.
MAIGHRÉAD MEDHBH
Maighréad Medhbh and Miceál Kearney read in the same set as Billy. Maighréad the original Irish performance poet was consummately professional as always. Miceál is new to me and I enjoyed his concise pseudo-crabby farmer poems.
MICEÁL KEARNEY
Apart from that we wandered, chatted to friends, writers and strangers; missed things we wanted to see, saw things we didn't expect to see; heard the sublime Lisa Hannigan sing and carried Baby and dragged the pram through the muck. Fun!
