Bloomsday comes to Cork

JAMES Joyce, one of the most influential of Irish writers, hails from Cork - not many people know that!

His father, John Stanislaus Joyce, was born in Anglesea Street, baptised in the South Parish Church in Dunbar Street, and was prepared for his Holy Communion by the nuns at the South Presentation Convent in Douglas Street.

Joyce himself, although not raised in Cork, is said to have had a lilting Cork accent which can be heard in recordings of his voice.

In his first novel, Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, he wrote about his childhood visit to the city with his father in 1894, when it became necessary to sell their properties in the South Parish.

In the novel, Joyce’s alter-ego Stephen Dedalus describes their wanderings around Cork, visiting his father’s old haunts. They stayed in the Victoria Hotel, walked to the Mardyke and Queen’s College, now UCC, and talked with characters in the pubs and markets.

Joyce’s writing is imbued with references to Cork, and as far as Cobh, Crosshaven and Youghal, and the stories that he would have heard from his father.

John Stanislaus Joyce was also a great singer - he performed in amateur dramatics and at concerts in Cork city while he attended Queen’s College as a medical student, and gained favourable notices in the Cork Examiner.

He passed this love of singing onto his son James, who almost became a singer instead of a writer.

This musical influence is apparent in Joyce’s work and will be a major feature of the Cork Bloomsday Festival 2023, running over Friday, June 16 and Saturday, June 17.

Ms Brid Drake and Dr Eva McMullan have been working hard to put together an exciting concert in the Dora Allman Room, the old medical building on UCC Campus, on the Friday night. A 40-strong choir will perform songs such as Siúil a Rún and The Last Rose Of Summer to the accompaniment of tenor Eoin Leahy, and piano, harp, and trumpet.

The music, an evocation of Edwardian Ireland parlour songs, all appears in Joyce’s work and will be interspersed with readings from Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist, and Ulysses.

As a Joyce scholar and graduate of UCC myself, I have been drawing attention to the Cork Joyce Connection for the last couple of years, and was the co-curator of the Odysseys exhibition at the Crawford Art Gallery last year, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the publication of Joyce’s Ulysses.

Iwas initially asked by Brid Drake and Eva McMullan to take part in the organisation of their concert, and decided to make it a two-day event.

June 16 is the traditional day to celebrate all things Joyce, and is known worldwide as Bloomsday. 

Supported by Cork City Library, Friends of the Crawford Art Gallery and Nano Nagle Place, a series of events will take place in Cork on the Friday and Saturday.

In addition to the Friday concert, Irish artist Angie Shanahan will talk about the influence of Irish literature in her paintings at 12.30pm in the Crawford Art Gallery, and The Fresh Air Collective with Ruti Lachs will perform in the City Library at 5pm, featuring a Yiddish tribute to Molly and Leopold Bloom.

There will be pop-up events around the city in Waterstones, the City Library, and shop-windows.

On the Saturday, an all-day event will take place at Nano Nagle Place. Starting at 10am, there will be Round Table discussions bringing together the history of the South Parish and the Joyce family that lived there.

James’s grandfather, a salt and lime merchant, wed Ellen O’Connell, whose family had a large drapery business in Georges Street (now Washington Street).

Ellen’s sister and her niece are both buried in the nun’s graveyard at Nano Nagle Place and other members of the Joyce family are buried at St Joseph’s cemetery, Ballyphehane.

Discussions are open to both scholars and the general public and it is hoped that there will be much multi-disciplinary history unearthed. In fact, audience participation is very much encouraged.

This event at Nano Nagle Place will also include two Cork writers who have written on James Joyce themes. At noon, William Wall will be in conversation with Dr Heather Laird from UCC about his new novel Empty Bed Blues. It is set in Italy but his protagonist is a Joyce scholar and her ‘exile’ abroad does much to release her from the nets of her past history.

In the afternoon, at 4pm, Mary Morrissey will be reading from her forthcoming novel, Penelope Unbound, which imagines what would have been the outcome if Nora Barnacle, Joyce’s wife, had become the renowned modernist writer instead of himself.

Not finished with books, Cork City Library will be hosting former Ambassador Dan Mulhall at 5pm to talk about his Reader’s Odyssey, a personal reading of Ulysses.

Attendees of the day’s events are invited to gather together later in the evening for a ‘shindy’, with songs and stories at the former home of John Stanislaus Joyce.

See https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/bloomsday-2023-tickets-623698518057

See https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/uncork-joyce-concert-tickets-627129640637