All Sorts of Accents at Accents Café
As per invitation, we arrived at Accents Café on Lower Stephens Street for seven-ish. OK, for once, I was actually early, arriving at the cafe dubbed Dublin’s friendliest business in 2013, and was shown to the downstairs room which was full and abuzz with Irish, Slavic and Latin accents, to which I was to add my pure bog in the imminent reading.
David Mallaghan was in town too for the gig, at the invitation of the MC and Tullamore Rhymers conscript David Hynes – he of no pants fame, though this time he kept them ON!!! – and the set list included Poetry Bus mechanic Peadar O’ Donoghue, an Italian girl Cinzia Loi, and a few Scene of the Rhyme regulars including Paul Curran and Sean Ruane.
An old SOTR veteran from a couple of months back, Saul Delmore Philbin Bowman was on site, opening the show, reading a short story before making a hasty stage left to go to a horror film festival!
Next up, a published author, Deidre Sullivan read from her stories that she writes for teenage girls, and a horror one of a chap that masks himself in human cadavers. Very Burke and O’Hare!
David Mallaghan – featuring poems “Irish Soldier Minding Cash Van”, Bridge House Carvery Dinner” among others, got a very good reception from an appreciative audience.
Yours truly broke the ice on the second round, reading among others “Fiddling at Longford“, “The Long Acre” and staples such as “Give to Me an Angry Sea“, “The Silent Diner“, as well as reading and giving the background to the poem “Long May Horses Shit the Streets“, before finishing up with a historic poem relevant to Dublin, and with a family connection “Battle of Bloody Banks”
Cinzia Loi, the Italian girl, read a poem she wrote a few days before, about the passing of a friend through suicide. The chap – Fabio – was a cheerful person, but the Dianaesque outpouring of grief on his Facebook wall was not something, she told us, she wished to wallow in. She cried all right, for a part of her life was missing, and in a unique insight, said how some did not like him, for him being always smiling.
Sometimes smiles can hide a million tears it is said, a thought I put into verse after the tragic death of Lucy Stack, and it seems so in this case…
We all have been touched by suicide, including me personally, but perhaps its easier when you know the person had problems, and you are happy that you done all you could to alleviate them as much as you were able. When the public face is smiling, and the problems are not seen, it is harder to understand and accept and deal with.
The night was tied up by Sean Ruane and Paul Curran, the latter doing his piece on the taxi driver and small talk, as well as the story of him being young, the first date and death of his freind. An excellent piece indeed, and we all have those stories, bar we cannot tell them as well as he did.
David Hynes as MC treated us to some of his poems and comedy gags, and afterwards I enjoyed a good chat and yarns about Houghs in Banagher with Peadar O Donoghue, who introduced me to the lovely and long suffering fellow Poetry Bus Mechanic (editor!) Colette, his wife.
Looking forward to this Thursdays Scene of the Rhyme here in Tullamore, with some of the usual suspects, and maybe a few surprises too!
