Listowel Connection

This blog is a personal take on Listowel, Co. Kerry. I am writing for anyone anywhere with a Listowel connection but especially for sons and daughters of Listowel who find themselves far from home. Contact me at listowelconnection@gmail.com

Tag: Listowel Writers’ Week 2015 Page 3 of 5

Writers Week and a US wedding in St. Mary’s

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On June 9, 2015

In Uncategorized

Opening Night Writers’ Week 2015

It may seem that I did, but I did not take everyone’s photo who attended opening night.

 I did take quite a few!

Children’s author, Philip Ardagh, looked an imposing figure at the door of the Listowel Arms.

 Some of the following people I know well and some I have no name for so if you recognize someone, do tell them that they feature in my blog today.


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Full Circle

Andrea wrote to me from the U.S. to tell me that her daughter is to be married in St. Mary’s in summer 2015. The wedding will see this bride back in the church where her great great grandmother was baptized.

The ancestor is Catherine McCoy, known in the family as Kate. She was 1 of 8 , John, Patrick, Mary, Margaret, Joanna, Daniel and Ellen all born between 1857 to 1868. Their parents were Lawrence McCoy and Margaret Collins. Margaret was born in 1827 and had a sister Mary  born in 1825. Their parents were John Collins and Mary Lynch. Kate  came to the states at 18 and met up with her sister Joanna. They settled in Albany Ny. Kate married Oliver English.  They had 5 children. Andrea’s grandma was the oldest, Margaret. She lived to a ripe old age of 103 and was very dear to Andrea. 

Ellen McCoy stayed in Ireland and lived to a good age, but Andrea is not sure if she married. Kate’s family lived in a area of Listowel  called Coolnaleen.

This is all the information Andrea has and this was got from the records in Listowel. If anyone knows anything else about this family, do drop me an email please.


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Jason at Ballybunion Prints posted this great photo of goats on the cliffs at Ballybunion.



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Meanwhile in Scoil Realt na Maidine




Boys are gardening, running in the park, going on outings as well as playing a football league, all part of their well rounded education.



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Adare Now. June 7 2015




It is so sad to see this image of Adare. It was taken last Sunday by Knockanure Local.

The MacMahon River Walk at Writers’ Week 2015

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On June 8, 2015

In Uncategorized

Heather at Bromore Cliffs, Ballybunion, Co. Kerry, June 2015

Photo: Bromore Cliffs

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A Writers’ Week Walking Tour

Vincent Carmody organizes a programme of walking tours every year at Writers’ Week. For many people these are among the high points of the festival and such is the reputation of the walks that it is now getting difficult to cope with the big numbers of people wanting to follow.

Last year’s river walk with Owen MacMahon was so talked about that this year I resolved not to miss it. So here I was (with my camera) at The Listowel Arms on Saturday morning May 28 2015 ready for a treat. I got it.

Owen MacMahon was our guide. Along the way he sang his late brother, Gary’s, songs, he read from his father’s works and he told anecdote after anecdote to the delight of his enthralled audience.

Our first stop was at Listowel castle. He told us a bit about the history of the castle and the famous siege.

We headed off for our walk along the banks of The Feale. We heard of a time when the river was teeming with fish and Owen’s late uncle, Bubs, liked nothing better than to slip away from his home and surgery on Market Street for a few hours fishing.

We learned that when the pontoon bridge linking the town with the racecourse collapsed into the Feale, the people who fell in were compensated with a new trousers. One man got two.

Owen telling another amusing tale of judges, courts of law and drinking.

Some people found a picturesque place to sit and listen.

Walkers hung on every word.

Owen and Vincent seemed to have identified appropriate perches along the way so we could see as well as hear them.

We stopped at the ball alley for another rann or two of a song.

At the Garden of Europe we listened amid reminders of Europe’s darkest hour. The tour finished in the nearby graveyard where  many of the people remembered along the way in so many anecdotes are buried. There were a few more footballing stories and a song or two before we dispersed, having made a great start to a memorable Writers’ Week Saturday. This Saturday was to end for me with a trip to Listowel Community Centre to see Graham Norton.

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Only in Kerry


Some well known local people pick the winning tickets from a very valuable ‘hat” in Brosnan’s Bar  at the charity fundraiser on Friday Night. Photos by John Kelliher.

Norah Browne
Sean Moriarty
Gerry O’Carroll

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Wild Atlantic Way Seaweed Festival

(Photo: Facebook)

This group were on the beach foraging for edible sea weed as part of the first Wild Atlantic Way Seaweed Festival in Ballybunion on Saturday June 6 2015.

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Adare, Saturday June 6 2015









These photos from the internet show the devastating fire that destroyed part of the picturesque terrace of cottages in Adare on Saturday. There was no loss of life but one lady who was renting one of the houses lost all her  possessions. It would appear that the fire started in one of the chimneys.

Photos from Opening Night Writers’ Week 2015

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On June 3, 2015

In Uncategorized

Are we there yet?

Here is another tranche of the great and the good and some in between arriving at the hotel for opening night of Writers’ Week 2015.

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Tomorrow I’m going to get to some children’s events but meanwhile here is the best shop window display at Finesse Bridal Shop in Church Street and the  the best window dresser, Cora O’Brien. The lady who has given us some of our best days out has now given us the best laugh of LWW2015.

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Believe it or not!




A lady left this piece of junk into a recycling centre in California. Luckily an alert worker at the centre guessed that it might be more significant than it looked. It is one of only 200 early computers made by Steve Jobs and co. and it is worth €200,000. The last I heard they were still waiting for the woman to come forward to reclaim her”junk”.

Writers Week 2015 continued

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On June 2, 2015

In Uncategorized

More From Opening Night


Máire Logue was meeting and greeting the stars of the show. Here she is with a man who grew up within yards of my family home in Kanturk. Will Collins has gone on to great things as a scriptwriter. His Song of the Sea script will be hitting our screens soon. Well worth seeing. He was in Listowel as part of Listowel Writers’ Week’s Operation Education.

Poet, Paul Durcan was another participant in Operation Education.

This prizewinner and her parents got here in good time

Margaret and Jerry making their way to the Arms.

Máire with the winner of the Kerry Book of the Year Eoin McNamee.

Anne Enright and Paul Durcan have a quiet chat.

Carol and Dick are part of the welcoming committee.

These people had not too far to come to enjoy the opening of the 2015 event.


Others came a little farther and came prepared to stay.


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Closing Time






One of the very popular speakers on Sunday May 31 was Michael Murphy. Michael was a familiar face to us all when he read the news on RTE. He is now more famous as a psychotherapist and a writer. He also happens to be a gay man.

The past few weeks have been a very emotional time for him. He celebrated the vote of acceptance Irish people made on May 22 and a short week later he was mourning the death of his beloved mother.

It is a measure of the professionalism of the man that he kept his commitment to Listowel Writers’ Week a day after his mother’s funeral. He read some heartfelt and highly charged poems. He told us about the importance of the gaze and the voice. He told us a lot about love.

His mother suffered from Alzheimers disease and “in the end there was no word”. Michael himself has had prostate cancer which left him impotent and he has suffered all the rejection and abuse gay people felt in the past in the old Ireland. All of this story is well told in his poetry, but it is the lovely love poem to the love of his life on the occasion of their tying the knot that had us all in tears. He wrote of “a day in Dublin in June when I felt truly loved.”

The rawness of all the emotional trials he had been through so recently became too much for the consummate professional broadcaster and his voice cracked. As he regained his composure and finished his talk the audience, as one,  rose to their feet and we all put a metaphorical Listowel hand under Michael’s elbow and helped him over the line.

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Today’s Something Completely different


My friend Jos at Kiteman Photographs alerted me to a great blogpost by Colm Moriarty about the Listowel section of the National Archive’s folklore collection. It is all about piseogs and superstitions and includes the lovely old photos of the town from the National Library collection.

Irish Archeology

Writers’ Week 2015

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On June 1, 2015

In Uncategorized

The Biggest Gig of the Weekend


Photos: Kathleen Griffin

It has been a marvelous Writers’ Week. The high point in a few days of really high points was the Graham Norton gig on Saturday night. I had a front row seat, but by then I had used up my 2 batteries for my camera and my phone was dead.

To the rescue came Kathleen Griffin who took two much better photos than any I would have taken anyway. Thank you, Kathleen!

Because I am committed to the marvelous children’s festival I don’t get to too many adult events. The ones I got to were brilliant; Healyracing’s A.P. McCoy tribute, the superb Owen MacMahon river walk, Diarmuid Ferriter’s  and Michael Murphy’s lectures and only two launches, Inheritance by Hilda McHugh and Curiouser and Curiouser by Colourful Spirits. I have photos from all of these in the coming days. So if you have no interest in Writers’ Week and photos of people at this year’s event tune out now. I’ll see you in a week or two.

Back to opening night and who was there. Here is Monday’s tranche of photos:

 (photo: Facebook)

Opening Night sees the distribution of prizes and awards. One of the most popular winners at  this year’s festival was Joe Murphy who was given a lifetime achievement award for his contribution to the Arts. The photo shows Joe with his wife, Jennifer and his daughter, Mirelle.

Listowel has always acknowledged its own high achievers and Joe is up there with the best promoters of The Arts in Ireland. He was presented with a specially commissioned piece by Listowel born silversmith, Eileeen Moylan. She designed and crafted a beautiful piece which referenced Joe’s two great loves, St. John’s Theatre and Nature and the countryside.

 This is Eileen with the piece which depicts St. John’s surrounded by trees; a silver piece standing on a bog oak base.

 The winner of Kerry Book of the Year was Eoin McNamee for his novel, Blue is the Night. He was interviewed by Pascal Sheehy for the RTE News.

Anne Enright, Aisling Wren, Gerry McDaniel, Liz Dunn and Carol Stricks

 On the ticket desk were Jack Wall and Lisa Doody.

Carmel Moriarty, Mairead Costelloe, Morella Moriarty and Rose Wall

Norella met up with her brother, who was there with his family to collect his daughter, Sive’s drama prize.

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Greatly Missed at This Time of Year



photo: Stair na hEireann

The anniversary of John B.’s death occurs on May 30. To mark the day, Stair na hEireann posted this picture from their archive.

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And now for something completely different;


Walking the dogs

When Rosaleen and Patricia set out to walk the dogs, they have a big task on hand.  I met them last week in The Square as they exercised their charges.

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