The Unusual Suspects – Rhymers Club and Rubberbandits Rock Uisneach
Uisneach was quite an experience, and the crowd who we feared may have been hostile to our traditional poetry styles, were instead interested and activly reacting to the pieces as they were read out.
James Delaneys delivery of his pieces showed his experience in music bands as he had the crowd – and the ladies – eating from his hand as he roared out his pieces in pure metal music fashion.
Cormac Lally’s measured metre and funny yet topical verses gave folk something to identify with, Camillus Boland’s folk style poetry gave a touch of the old ballad to the set, and apart from struggling in bits where I coulnt read the paper due to poor lighting, mine went down well.
David Mallaghan delivered close to the bone verses to the mirth of the adults and the bemusement of the younger ones, leaving us all in stitches laughing.
MC’d by Ken Hume, as Anthony Sullivan could not be there, who read his verse to a great reaction, the simple choreography of the “revolving gun” technique dreamed up by Cormac Lally worked very well.
But, we had some acts to follow ourselves, most stunningly young girl Ashley Tubridy who had everyone singing along to her music for a whole half hour or more, as if she was singing at home into the mirror.
SacredSite launched their CD of meditations from last years Festival of the Fires, and a reading from it and an introduction to the site and its history was preformed.
I read “I Heard Not“, “Let Blaze the Flames of Uisneach” and “The Walking People” among other verses, struggling on the last one as the lighting was so bad, a point the organisers could do well to work on for next year.
