Books Available From:

Our Story by The Rossport 5 is available from independent bookshops in Ireland. In Britain ask for the book at your local bookstore. In north America the book will be available in the Spring. The book will be available online from mid-January, and through Amazon and eBay.
If you have hit this page 
and have no navigation:
Click Here
Exclusive Extract from
Our Story
 

 
by The Rossport 5
 
"What worried us all the time was that there was nobody asking questions"
- Micheál and Caitlín Ó Seighin

 

Search Now:  
Amazon Logo












Background

MICHEÁL: The first time I came here was with a bunch of graduates from Galway in June 1962. It was a gorgeous weekend. I had taken the job at that stage in the secondary school in Rossport. It was just a tiny secondary school run by Gael Linn. At the time I was Tánaiste of Comhchaidreamh (The Society of Irish Speaking Graduates) who had established Gael Linn some years before. I had volunteered to come here as a teacher. At the time there was a great difficulty in getting teachers for here for all sorts of reasons. So I volunteered, intending to stay for two years.

I came therefore for two years and I've been here since! There wasn't any reason to leave. And the strange thing was that there are quite a number of men from my own area, which was high in the mountains in East Limerick, who married girls from this area. Many did so in England. So there was an empathy with the place unknown to myself. I found it easy to fit into the place.

CAITLÍN: I was born and reared here up the road from where we now live. I have lived all my life here apart from two years when I taught in Bangor Erris and in Dublin. I came back to Ceathrú Thaidgh to finish research work that I had been doing on local phonetics with An tAth Cairián Ó hUallacháin. I met Micheál and I didn't leave again! We married and settled down here.

I just love the place, the history of it, the people, the songs, the stories and the way of life here in Dún Chaocháin. When I was growing up we were full of stories about our own area in particular. It was a poor enough time of course. People had to go to England. But I love the whole area and everything connected with it.

MICHEÁL: A friend of mine from Cork used to say to me that he wouldn't need a car if he was painting here. He could spend all his time painting in the one spot, he said. I could understand that though I remember saying to him early on that there must be very little colour because of the bleakness of the area. He said no, in fact the light makes up for any lack of variety. The light, the overall colour, is constantly changing. He said that he could paint the same thing, like water lilies, over and over and I'd still be on the surface, he said, because all I'd be doing is painting what you could see on the outside. But I would have no shortage of subject matter.

Maybe he had hit on something faster than people normally would. There is a means of connecting with this place through the Irish language. I'm sure this is the case throughout the country. You also had it in my own place. I could understand it from my mother before the remains, the echoes, of the Irish language disappeared. With Irish the entire area is a unity, whereby the place where things happen becomes part of the event itself. So the placenames become a record of any particular event. You have got milestones in the place for any story whether it is something that happened to me recently or something that happened a hundred years ago. You have these indicators in the place all the time. In telling anecdotes you find yourself spatially establishing them all the time. Place seems to give credibility to the experiences of the people. As a language that is not borrowed but indigenous, its idioms and dialectic difference have been honed to represent and describe a world always changing which has the effect of tying the people and the area together. I find it shocking now to hear people in areas where Irish is declining, even in Rossport, where for example many of the young people don't know where the carraig dhubh is. The carraig dhubh is a very important rock, an indicator, to keep a boat coming in from the rocks. If you don't know where the carraig dhubh is then there is an element of the economic survival of the area that you don't have.

There is a unity of experience in the language. You need those codes to understand the area. Differences in dialect seem to reflect differences in the origin of population, even in various parts of Erris which hasn't a particularly big population. You do need to know that there are different nuances, different ways of seeing reality that different parts of the area have. It is very important to know this. The people realise that.

I remember the first evening I was in Rossport in 1962. I was staying in the house of Anthony John (who died a year afterwards), a wonderful, remarkable man. He took me for a walk and I didn't know at the time why. He took me along to the shore and around the sweep that is Rossport and back along the other side. He was pointing out the houses to me and saying "my uncle is there', "my first cousin is there" and "that man up there is my relative". I was young but by the time I had ended the walk I had known exactly what Anthony was doing. What Anthony was saying to me was keep your mouth shut until you know where you're going and everything will be okay.

The whole area is looking to the sea rather than looking to land. But even within Erris there are distinctions between one part of the area and another. You would engage with the people inside Belmullet in a different way from the people in Doohoma or Bangor. Sometimes this is associated with Irish. But I think most of the time it's associated with the Irish language only to the extent that colour is used as an identifying factor. But I believe these distinctions are deeper than that. To me it seems to reflect different populations, different colonisations. Castlebar is not this area.

CAITLÍN: Shell of course didn't see or understand the people of this area. They came in here and thought there was nobody to stop them. "You can go in there, they're grand people, there's no one there to do anything, just get the "leaders" on your side and that's it." They got an awful shock.

MICHEÁL: It never occurred to them that they would have to deal with the people of the area. Because they had all their dealing done. Their dealing was only necessary, as in any post-colonial country, on the level of those in charge. Who would you find in charge in Nigeria? It's not the old chiefs who hadn't the training for it - not the traditional leaders at all - it's the new civil service and the new politicians who were elected under this new imposed system. That's who they were used to dealing with wherever they were, whether in East Timor or Nigeria. They dealt with the post-colonial establishment as they would have seen it. Maybe they never analysed it like that. But that's how they would have seen how things work. Our establishment may be post-colonial but we are not.

CAITLÍN: As we say in Irish, shíl siad nach raibh anseo ach scata amhais. They thought that there was nobody left in Erris, it's plagued by emigration, that the best people are gone. They never expected to have to meet people.

But Ireland from the 1960s embraced multi-national development. Why was that resisted here? all the evidence would have said this would be welcomed, that people would be delighted?

MICHEÁL: I think that by the 1990s it had gone beyond that stage. The relationship between developers and their dependents, which obviously included the civil service, had gone beyond that stage. It had gone to the stage where it didn't occur to them at all that people counted, people anywhere. There was a Shell sourced graphic in The Connaught Telegraph in August this year that shows Shell's ideal Erris - no houses, no people, no Broadhaven Bay and one little miserable dolphin as the only sign of life. Shell heaven - no people!

They didn't even have to consider attempting to con us about jobs. They were actually very reasonable about jobs from the word go. They were saying that there would be seventy permanent positions. Now we know it would only be twenty-seven but that's only out by about three to one. They didn't put a huge amount of resources in at the start into pointing out to the people what the advantages would be. They said you'll all be rich, but only in a general sort of way. They didn't have to put the work in because the State system and its leadership had become so subservient to the multinationals that they had stopped caring, had stopped being careful.

What they are having to do now, that is actually consider what people are saying to them, is something they haven't had experience of for years and years. This is definitely so since the late 1980s when there was a final change from the old political guard to the next generation, the "me generation". The "me generation" in public administration and in politics preceded the "me generation" of ordinary people that has emerged in its present extent in the Celtic Tiger. We definitely have been led from the top by our leaders on this.

So, when the company came in here, they met with that political culture of dependency and facilitation. For example, I know that when Enterprise Oil had their first formal meeting with the county councillors they expected to be stiffly questioned on the dangers of the project and on its risks and gains. Instead, what they got, and they were absolutely shocked and delighted about this, was "jaysus, this is great, we have our own gas, God it will be great." Every county councillor was simply seeing the gas as money for free! I can remember one councillor at the time issuing a statement saying that broadband was coming with the pipeline but it was only coming as far as Lahardane. I had an image of a broadband pipe sticking up in the middle of the little square in Lahardane where people could go out and tap into it! That was actually the level of understanding. They didn't have to take seriously anything. All you had to do was go through the forms. I think the oil companies were very badly led astray on this as a result of this infatuation.

What were your first dealings with Enterprise/Shell?

CAITLÍN: We were here one night in 2000 and a neighbour came in to visit. Micheál had heard some inkling about it before that. There was the usual chat about things - bhfuil aon scŽal agat? - and he said that he had heard that the gas was coming in and they are building something up in Ballinaboy. I said to him, bhuel, dá mbeadh aon mhaith ann ní thiocfaidh sŽ anseo. That was my reaction. At the time I thought it would be done like Kinsale. So fine, I had no problem in the world with it.

MICHEÁL: The first notification in the place really was an announcement in the Parish Newsletter that we were all going to be rich. That was in April 2000, I think. It was sometime afterwards that the then parish priest and the bishop were taken by helicopter dressed up in the benediction robes with a television crew out on to the rig. This was a source of huge scandal for people. People thought straight away what are they up to? This is a reversion to an abuse of power by the clergy. People of my age had seen this before. I remember a case of a priest who was leaving a particular house one day after a row and he cleaned his boots on the doorstep as he went out. Cursing the house. He is still alive. We were not that far away from that kind of mumbo-jumbo.

I had got word from a friend of mine who had been contacted by someone in the Department of Marine who said that there is an Environmental Impact Statement about to be prepared and unless the local fishermen put in some sort of a case there will be no consideration of the inshore fisheries in the EIS. I took a note of that on the 12th of April. We heard then they had got a twenty-seven acre site up in Ballinaboy and that they were clearing it. Almost immediately they got two local JCBs in to do a bit of clearing and digging. Coillte had been doing a little bit of clear-felling on the site before that.

CAITLÍN: The first thing we knew of it really was when they started calling around. Then we heard that there was to be a meeting in Belmullet. Micheál wasn't at it. They had also come to the pubs a couple of times.

MICHEÁL: They started that in June 2000. They had a model of the terminal and they started carrying it around to the pubs and to the Coláiste. That was in September actually.

CAITLÍN: They had a couple of meetings with the Rossport people.

MICHEÁL: They held some meetings in pubs and started buying pints for people. Then they had "information meetings". But, they were very much out of place. They were highly dressed, smartly dressed, Louis Copeland-type people. They stuck out like a sore thumb. They were telling the people how lucky they were, that it was as if the saviour had returned. I didn't go to any of the meetings because I don't go to those type of meetings, for indoctrination.

CAITLÍN: There was a programme done then for Leárgas about it with the parish priest. Then they started sponsoring things like the golf club who got a bit of money for a classic. All the focus was on the terminal. There was no word of the pipeline at that stage.

MICHEÁL: They were pretending at the early stage that the pipeline was to go on the far side of the estuary, at Pollathomas. It was to go above the graveyard there and then on to Ballinaboy. It became clearer later what they really intended but not then. I remember that year I said to the kids at school that I had no interest in it at all. I was doing geography with them. I said to them that either this crowd don't know what they're doing or they know more than I know. It seemed that they were intending to sink this huge pipeline up the side of the hill which everyone knows will draw all the water into the drain and will take the side of the mountain down. This was Glengad hill that was later destroyed by bog-slides. But this is a huge company, this is a huge industry, this is a marvellously technologically advanced industry and maybe they know something I don't know, I said. But to me it was stupid. But that was the extent of my interest in it.

In those early stages there was confusion and a huge push for it coming from the Catholic Church. The Council for the West, which had been set up by the Western bishops, immediately organised an organisation called One Voice for Erris. They held meetings in the parish priest's house. It was attended by those with vested interests only and a couple of people who were very worried. In general, the people were very suspicious of it from the word go.

CAITLÍN: What worried me all the time was that there was nobody asking questions. There were no questions. "We were going to be rich. The schools will be full of kids". But there were no questions being asked about the project or the dangers or the chimneys. That worried me.

MICHEÁL: I had no idea at all of the implications of a thing like this. I had no interest in it in the wide earthly world. I thought it was a Kinsale-type development and that you obviously pay a price for any heavy industry and that there would be some health implications. But I wasn't really concerned. It wasn't something I could do anything about. I did see as a geographer that what they were doing was wrong, utterly stupid but maybe they knew more that I did. But personally I wasn't concerned.

how did uncertainty move into opposition?

MICHEÁL: For me it was later on in the autumn. Things had happened that I didn't know about. In early October there was a little piece in the paper about a press conference with Bertie Ahern and Frank Fahey. Enterprise Oil, Statoil, Marathon and Bord Gais were announcing a deal to build a pipeline from Ballinaboy to Galway. That surprised me because they hadn't applied for planning permission or anything at that stage. Yet the deal with Bord Gais was up and running. That surprised me but then I don't have any illusions about how the political system works. They haven't made much effort in Mayo up until now to hide the involvement of politics in business so it was easier to see. But it was the next year, in 2001, that the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors were whipped into a party frenzy to support the project. But, as I have said, in the early stages it was the Church which did the running.

CAITLÍN: A landowner from Rossport, Monica Muller, rang here a few times. She was very worried about the terminal. Micheál then got interested and I got worried.

MICHEÁL: Gerard Muller asked us to go over to the house one night and we went over. Gerard was showing us some of the information. There was a suggestion at the time that Powers Rolls Royce would build a power station in Bellacorrick. I understand the world out there and it was obvious that this proposed 64KW power station for Bellacorrick was utterly ridiculous. No one does that in this day and age in an isolated area. Perhaps you'd do it in the middle of Galway city for local power. But it's completely at variance with the reality. I knew there was something very fishy going on.

So Gerard and Monica said to me "please go in and look at the Environmental Impact Statement". In order to satisfy them more than anything else I went to look for it. Now, you had one copy announced to be available in the council offices in Castlebar, and one in the Garda barracks in Ballina and one in the Garda barracks in Belmullet. The police were brought on stage very early as the guardians of the golden grail. I found this very off-putting. They didn't even have a copy in the barracks in Glenamoy. The copy is probably still moulding out in Ballina because obviously nobody ever had a look at it. In Belmullet they got the fright of their lives when we started invading the place later on. That was the only access to the EIS at that stage that we had.

There was a huge meeting called then organised by the Church and The Council for the West that same night. Leading it at this stage were leading figures in the Council for the West such as Sean Hannick and Dr Seamus Caulfield and the priests - the nuns are more aware normally. They had this big meeting called for the convent in Belmullet. All the priests in the area were supposed to be there. I had gone to Belmullet that day to have a look at the EIS with Bríd my daughter, and two neighbours, Treasa Ní Ghearraigh and Uinsionn MacGraith. It was then that I saw what was planned. There were two volumes in the EIS at that stage. We went and skimmed through things. There was one page I always remember where they gave the results of tests from a single well. They gave a list of the "little uglies" that were included in the gas. I was horrified. I had a general look at it fast and saw what they intended to do.

There was run-off from the terminal site proposed to go straight into Carrowmore Lake through perforated drains. You'd thought that "perforated" made them something! And also Sruhwaddoccon on this side would get its share of it. The guards handed it out to us in the hall, in the lobby of the barracks. After about half an hour a guard came out to us and said, "oh God, you're still here, I never thought you'd still be here, come in." He took us in to one of the interrogation rooms where we could sit down. We had a look then at some of the drawings they had. They had a drawing of where the outlet pipe from the terminal was to go where they intended to dump the water with all the uglies in. It was just a few kilometres from landfall - not from land, for of course the bay is a long, narrow bay.

There was of course no understanding at all that the bay has a tow inwards instead of out. These were spatial realities that struck me immediately. The chemical mix was horrifying. Treasa, Uinsionn and myself came home but Bríd stayed on in Belmullet and went into this huge meeting. There had been a number of these intimidatory-type meetings although I don't know why they were trying to be intimidatory then. There was no real opposition to it yet at all. Planning permission had just been applied for. Anyway, Bríd came home and she couldn't get over the stupidity of it. No one obviously knew what they were talking about. The unreality was so pervasive at that stage that one leading figure boasted that, "I am one of those who wine and dine on a regular basis with Enterprise Oil."

I could find my ears getting red with náire (shame) when I heard this. It was a matter of a boast that only the elite had an opportunity to wine and dine with the developers of this wonderful project. Coming from a bright man with experience of the world that showed the extent of the suspension of disbelief. They were codding themselves.

CAITLÍN: That comment was made in response to Sr. Majella McCarron. Sr. Majella had seen in the paper that there was going to be this meeting in Belmullet. She thought that she better go down and help the local priest because it was an oil company trying to come in to his parish. She had been working in Nigeria for many years and knew Ken Sara Wiwa. So she came down and the parish priest met her at the train and brought her in. It was only then she realised that these people wanted Enterprise Energy in! She spoke at the meeting and she said to them that those people will try everything to get in. She told him of her experience in Nigeria. She said that they'll wine and dine you. And that was the response from one of them!

MICHEÁL: And in public! Majella found that instead of the Church supporting the people as she had expected, as they had done in Nigeria, here you had the very opposite! The Church had been co-opted into the thing as advocates. She got a different lift back!

We got copies of the EIS then and went through it. I didn't know what to do because we had never objected to anything in our lives. I didn't know anything about the planning system, nothing at all, we were red raw. We didn't yet know about the Statutory Instruments that had been introduced by Bertie Ahern.

Meanwhile, there was the launch of a project that had been funded by Mayo County Council and An Taisce on sustainable tourism in the coastal regions. I had given some slight help to the researcher who had put the report together. It was being launched in early December in Castlebar. We were invited to the launch so I went up. Normally I wouldn't go to things like that. I said to the researcher do you realise what is being put in the middle of your report area? She said what is it? I told her and asked her if you had known that would your report have been different? She said indeed it would. I said can you give me an opportunity of talking tonight in the lion's den so to speak. So she called on me at one point and I took the opportunity to say to the councillors and officials and journalists there that this was a huge project and that it needed to be looked at very, very seriously. They were not aware that there was an issue around this at all. One thing that was very interesting on that night was that a person from the planner's office whom I didn't know said to me would you please put in an objection of some sort.

Now this was early December 2000. She said we in the planning section have no idea that there is any issue about this. We had no idea that this had to be considered or taken seriously. If you put in an objection fast, she said, at least we'll be forced to look at it. That was the extent of awareness within the planning section of Mayo county council.

That same day Padraig Hughes had resigned as County Secretary and the great and good had been partying. Hughes let it be known that he didn't expect anything for Mayo from the project. He is now on Shell's payroll.

CAITLÍN: Meanwhile there were the meetings taking place in Rossport.

MICHEÁL: I wasn't involved in those. However, what was happening was being related to me and I was enjoying the accounts! They were talking about the pipeline and the pipeline was going left and right and everywhere!

CAITLÍN: We did not go to any of the meetings because we would not want to interfere with anything the Rossport people wanted to do with their land.

MICHEÁL: Land was a different issue. There was no doubt that for me the real issue was health. My main concern was the emissions from the Terminal. The pipeline for me wasn't an issue at that stage. By then I had become aware of what was coming in but the full implications hadn't actually struck me. I had to try and take on board then all the different aspects of the project. The pipeline was very much on the long finger. They applied for planning permission for the terminal and this made the terminal the focus.

Looking at it even now, my concerns really started with that page in the EIS. There were all of these nasties plus nitrogen oxide plus sulphurs of various sorts with implications for people's health. Suddenly we discovered a huge amount of stuff. For example, we discovered that you couldn't object to the terminal on the basis of health because that only came for consideration when the terminal was up and the EPA were asked for a licence. I didn't even have any suspicion of the lack of seriousness of the EPA at that stage, their lack of independence, their lack of a feel for their authority and responsibility. The mercury was one thing that got me at the start. There were no scrubbers in the chimneys to scrub the mercury out. I knew the implications of mercury for expectant mothers and unborn babies. I was very aware of that. This was to be burned off into the air where much of it would come down on the local population. For me there was no issue at that stage but the health. So, I started studying it with the help of the Internet and what information I had. Suddenly, the enormity of what they were doing to the population struck me.

For the Rossport people at that stage it was the pipeline that they were most worried about. Others like Brid McGarry were very concerned from the start about the health effects from the terminal. The Ballinaboy and LŽana M-r residents, the nearest to the pipeline, strongly opposed the terminal. I couldn't see that we had any hope of winning anything or stopping anything. The matter of stopping it never entered my mind. All that entered my mind at that stage was that we were dealing with the most powerful entities in the world and they were obviously doing a cobbled job.

Where did your confidence come to oppose the project? Why did you not accept the assurances of the various experts and regulatory bodies?

CAITLÍN: Because we didn't trust them - even less now.

MICHEÁL: For me, a very important part of that process was when an English company had been hired by Enterprise Oil to do a report on the circulation of wastewater when it was dumped out in the bay, using a standard model for this called Proteus. The company had made it clear in the report that they had not got enough information to do it. They made it clear that all the information they were using had been supplied by Enterprise Oil. It was obvious for example that the company didn't know that there was a tow in instead of a tow out. It was obvious that they didn't like what they were doing. They were paid for it and I made it clear in the submission that I made that I respected the approach of the company because they were obviously professionals who were aware of their reputations. And at the same time the County Council and everybody else were prepared to push ahead. There was obviously no trust in the council. Then, Enterprise had to withdraw their first planning application. They put in the second application in April 2001 and they used some of the work that this consultant company had done but did not use other aspects of it.

CAITLÍN: I had no reason to have any meas (respect) on the council. They usually treat people in this area with disdain, with no respect. This goes back a long way. I remember a time when people were afraid to have three hens in their garden or they'd lose the dole! If there was a dog barking around the place the inspector would believe there were animals being kept. There was a history of dreading officials who came in from outside.

MICHEÁL: The submission we had made to the council was picked up and given front page in The Western People, ironically under the by-line of Christy Loftus, who has now, in his own written words, "taken the shilling." It got a huge heading using "waffle" and "contempt" quoted from our submission! It was in one of these silly seasons that newspapers have after Christmas when people have nothing else to do. That was the first objection that became a matter of public record. It attracted a lot of attention at the time. I said that some of the things that Enterprise Oil were proposing was straight out of the teddy bear's picnic such as spreading peat a metre or two metres high among the trees. It was science fiction stuff.

There were no face to face talks with enterprise at any point?

CAITLÍN: They never wanted to meet those who weren't in favour.

MICHEÁL: Around that time we circulated every TD and all the councillors in Mayo with our concerns. We did a huge job.

There was a meeting in Glenamoy between the first submission by Enterprise and the second one in April 2001. That was the last effort by the bishop and The Council for the West to present The One Voice for Erris as a realistic body. That was the last time the bishop came out in public. He left it to his acolytes after that.

CAITLÍN: That meeting in Glenamoy was well rigged up beforehand. Micheál wasn't going to go at all and a few here asked him to please come to the meeting. So he went.

MICHEÁL: I have seen the way the politicians always work ever since I've come here. They work in a very simple way by working people up and getting them so excited that they have to go to the pub immediately afterwards and drink. Next morning they've a hangover and that's the end of it. The politicians meanwhile have gone away laughing at us. I've seen again and again the way they sideline people by working them up. What the people have forgotten is that democracy can only function when you hold the elected representatives to account. It cannot work otherwise.

There were a number of interesting things about the meeting in Glenamoy. A local councillor was there who also happens to be a Statoil agent. He went on that night about all that he was doing for the Ballinaboy people and how marvellous it was. One of them said, "but we didn't ask you." Even at that stage there was absolutely no trust in the politicians at all. Then, a person asked him whether he had read the EIS? "O I've read the important bits," he replied. That became a great saying around here - don't worry about it, he has read the important bits! Indeed, another supporter of the project replied to the same question in a television interview that the EIS wasn't written for the likes of him! He's a second-level school principal - he was probably right!

But at that meeting in Glenamoy, the bishop and the parish priest were on the stage as One Voice for Erris. There was also a representative from the Irish Offshore Operators Association there. He was the advisor on natural resources for The Council for the West based in Donegal and a supplier to Enterprise Oil. As the night went on there was stronger and stronger support for us. The supporters of the project who had gone up thinking that this was going to be another fascist victory disappeared into the background. As the meeting went on, and more fishermen and farmers were coming in, the more it became obvious that it wasn't wanted. The hall was packed. The bishop saw eventually that things were going wrong, that they weren't going in the way he had expected. He said "now, we'll appoint a committee tonight that will represent the concerns of the people here and that will prepare questions to ask of Enterprise Oil". That was the extent of what the bishops and the establishment were going to demand of Enterprise Oil - that they would answer questions! It was so lacking in any real context. So I stood up immediately and I said that, without prejudice to any decision this meeting might come to, people like me and the Ballinaboy people and the Leenamore people would carry on doing exactly what they had been doing until now, that is fighting their own battle against the project but keeping communication with each other. That was the first time this new approach - new for an area like this - to campaigning was made public. The bishop almost immediately stood up and walked out.

–   by Mark Garavan, Willie and Mary Corduff, Micheál and Caitlín Ó Seighin, Philip and Maureen McGrath, Brendan Philbin, Vincent and Maureen McGrath



http://www.corribsos.com
Rossport 5 Flyer


Small World Media is an independent publisher. Specialising in culture and community, SWM is Irish-centered, based in Cork, Dublin and Wicklow, with offices in England, Mexico, Slovenia and the USA.

Set up by media professionals and book trade specialists, SWM aims to publish four books in its first year 2007 and eight in 2008.

SWM will also publish the quarterly journal ISLAND, which will be the company flagship with its emphasis on Irish culture and community, on quality words, pictures and design, and a programme to encourage new writers of literature - poetry, prose and essay.

This will take SWM's total titles in its first two years of operation to 20. SWM will engage in extensive marketing, promotional and publicity campaigns for each of its titles, work with other agencies and groups to host readings and discussions, and generally raise awareness of Irish writers and their work.

Part of ISLAND's function will be poetry and prose readings, initially every month and eventually every week in venues all over the country.

SMALL WORLD MEDIA
Knocknaquirk
Magheramore
County Wicklow
Trade enquiries to
087 955 1504 (Ireland)
07816 146 567 (Britain)






| Back | Feature Archive Index | Ending Industrialism |

BLUE is looking for short fiction, extracts of novels, poetry, lyrics, polemics, opinions, eyewitness accounts, reportage, features, information and arts in any form relating to eco cultural- social- spiritual issues, events and activites (creative and political). Send to Newsdesk.