Writer shares memories of 1979 Fastnet Race and links to two well-known Cork pubs 

Award-winning writer John O’Donnell may be a Dubliner born and bred, but there’s no denying his strong Cork pedigree.

“My father was from Cork,” he explains, “and his two brothers, my uncles, both ran bars. My uncle Bill ran a bar in Bantry called The Anchor Bar and my other uncle, Brian, ran the Hi-B on Oliver Plunkett Street.”

Both men were well known in their localities and beyond. Bill was a writer himself. “He went on a series of adventures”, John says of his uncle, who he has immortalised in his poem, Anchor, “and travelled around the world, in the course of which he met his wife, Tui”.

Bill and Tui eventually settled in Bantry to run The Anchor Bar.

John, who will return to Bantry in July to introduce his second short story collection, Mr Hoo And Other Stories, at this year’s West Cork Literary Festival, has fond memories of summers and Christmases in the Rebel County.

John’s work, which he has published across many forms - poems, short stories, novels, plays - is hugely varied in theme, but imagery of the sea, boats, and sailing frequently arise. His days at sea off the coast of West Cork, he says, have been a source of inspiration.

“I learned to sail in Kinsale,” he notes of the town where his grandmother lived. Not only that, but his time aboard a trawler with his Uncle Bill would ultimately have a profound impact on his life, as he recalls.

“When we went to visit Bantry, Bill would have taken us out in his trawler, a boat called the Colleen, and showed us how to fish for mackerel. Later on, as a result, I became a sailor and I sailed with my father and my brother in the Fastnet Yacht Race.

“In 1979, there was a very serious storm. A lot of people were killed. But myself and my father remembered something that Bill had told us when we were on the Colleen. He said, if you’re stuck at sea and it’s rough, you should tie two ropes onto yourself in case one comes loose, to make sure you stay on board.

“We had safety harnesses, but we tied rope on as well just in case. And during that race, one of the crew went overboard. His harness clip opened, but because he had the rope, we were able to get him.

“So, you know, in one sense Bill saved somebody who might otherwise have died”.

John would go on to produce a documentary about the 1979 Fastnet disaster, which was broadcast on RTÉ.

Less dramatic, but certainly no less fond, are John’s memories of visiting his Uncle Brian at the Hi-B in Cork city. It’s where he discovered this very paper.

“I remember being in the Hi-B,” he reminisces, “and hearing the newspaper salesman across the road under the GPO selling the Echo. He would call out the word ‘Echo’ and just the name of the newspaper still echoes in my head! I can still hear it.”

John does not underestimate the iconic status of the Hi-B, nor his Uncle Brian as one of Cork City’s great characters.

“Brian was an artist and he used to do drawings of famous people,” he remembers. “He would then post the drawings out to the people in question and ask them to sign them and send them back, and they would!”

As patrons of the bar will know, the Hi-B has an array of drawings adorning the walls, including - as John has written in his poem about the establishment - one signed by Albert Einstein. The piece, entitled The Ark, sums up the enduring nature of the pub:

‘When the deluge comes, if anything survives it will be this place, an ark filled with chairs and tables from another turn-of-century ship, the picture signed by Einstein and the letter from Cole Porter’

While John’s most recent publication may be a short story collection, he was first and foremost a poet. “For years I only wrote poems,” he says. “I never wrote stories. And then, about 14 years ago, somebody came up to me at work and said they were compiling an anthology of short stories for charity, and would I write a story?”

The resulting piece was shortlisted for the New Irish Writing Prize. “I said, ‘Oh well, maybe I can do this’.” His next story won the prize, so he “kept at it”.

Mr Hoo And Other Stories is described as a collection of “compelling stories of schemers and survivors”. “There are a number of stories”, says John, “about people who find themselves on the wrong side of the law, or something has happened to them or they may have done something which we only find out as we read it through.”

These kind of ambiguous characters and stories examining the darkest aspects of human nature are common across John’s writing, but he’s also no stranger to them in his day job as a barrister.

“The first time I see somebody is when they come to me after the event has happened,” he considers. “So I see them in the aftermath of something very sad or awful. And some of these stories start with us not quite knowing what has happened, but knowing that something has happened.”

John’s work as a barrister fuels his deep interest in human complexity, as he elaborates.

“You see people at their most vulnerable, their most angry, their most gracious. You see a huge variety of human emotions, and that’s a privilege...

“And the other thing is that I’m conscious, as a lawyer, that there are usually two sides to a story and sometimes only one side gets told. That’s why, in these stories, I’m looking at the accounts of people whose stories aren’t always told.

“I think there’s no such thing as an ordinary person. Everybody has an extraordinary story to tell if people will just listen to it.”

While his day job may seem worlds apart from his life as a storyteller, John stresses that the craft of writing is essential in the courts, noting that “when you’re addressing a court, judge or jury, you’ve got to hold your audience. If you bore them, your case is not going to go well. That’s the first thing.

“And the second thing is that, in law, you are looking for the absolute precise word, especially when you’re looking at legislation. You know, what precisely does that word mean and how does what happened fit into the definition of that word?”

The need for this precision, says John, “is very good training to be a writer”.

This training has undoubtedly paid off, as John has won numerous accolades for his work over the years.

He is a regular on the festival circuit, and looks forward to both his appearance in Bantry this summer and an upcoming visit to the city in October for the Cork International Short Story Festival.

The Rebel County has frequently served as a source of inspiration for him throughout his life, and he expects this year’s trips to be no different, as he concludes: “Certainly, there are a number of poems that I have written directly as a result of visits. I very rarely come out of Cork without getting a poem of it!”

John O’Donnell, author of Mr Hoo And Other Stories, will be at the West Cork Literary Festival on Friday, July 10, at 6.30pm in the Maritime Hotel as part of the Annual Presentation of New Writing published by Doire Press.

The West Cork Literary Festival takes place in Bantry from July 10-17, see www.westcorkliteraryfestival.ie