Isn’t Hamza doing so well, he is an example of superb manhood and, apart from losing so much weight, he is getting his message across in the most dignified way; he’s dyslexic and he has said that mastering dancing and the complex steps is made easier because of his condition, a condition where the person has problems with the underlying skills required for writing, reading and spelling. He learns the numbers on Strictly Come Dancing with his partner Jowita by using visuals and voice notes and boy is he succeeding. Now compare that to the blaflum from
Matt Hancock ex Health Secretary who is going into the jungle to alert people to his own dyslexia but it’s unlikely to make the same impact. I haven’t watched Get Me Out of Here and it’s very unlikely I’ll change the habit of a lifetime.
Another Modest Man Of The People
31st October in 1959 was a Saturday, Halloween night and a very special day. Ulster Television went on air that afternoon and, as they say, the rest is history. I worked there from day one and what an education it was to a teenager who had been asked to leave school as she was taking up space! We met the great and the good and home grown talent was exceptional. Sadly through the years the names have appeared in obituaries rather than on screen, most recently Al Logan, a man I admired not only for his velvety smooth singing voice but for his attitude towards life, he had a great smile and a word for everyone and he was always welcomed into the studio. He had a successful career in America as well as Ireland but he was modest and let his voice do the talking and his many records will ensure that voice will be around for a long time. Until a couple of weeks ago he’d been in hospital, he’d had heart problems, but wanted to be in his own home where he was happy to be surrounded by family and friends. His son Matin was with him the night he died. His dad was comfortable in his chair watching football and they said goodnight with Martin saying ‘We’ll talk in the morning.” Sadly the morning never came. Al was 87 and many of those were golden years in the entertainment business where he was loved and respected. As someone said he could sing the phone book but for me Our Lady of Knock will always bring Al Logan to mind, he sang it with such grace. With sympathies to his four children and nine grandchildren.
Finding Sanctuary
I was sent a book of poems recently and it gave me an idea.
Sanctuary is a collection of verse compiled by Belfast woman Angela Graham, who divides her time between here and her home in Wales. She invited five fellow poets to contribute with each bringing their individual meaning of sanctuary which gives rise to a book of very diverse work which cannot be read and dismissed at one sitting, rereading affords more depth, often disturbing.
“In designing the collection I wanted it to embody the hosting aspect of sanctuary so I looked for two poets in Wales and two in Northern Ireland, who have expertise in some aspect of sanctuary. In Northern Ireland I found Csilla Toldy, a film maker and writer who fled Communist Hungary for life in the ‘free’ West and Viviana Fiorentino, an economic migrant from Italy, a novelist, poet and academic who campaigns on behalf of prisoners of conscience and migrants. In Wales I found Phil Cope, an expert on the holy places of the British Isles and Magyar, an Iranian now living in Wales. And my mentor Glen Wilson from Portadown.”
Living In Fear
One of Angela’s contributions is A Teenage Catholic Safety Expert, Protestant East Belfast tells off the house in the ‘… first full summer 1971/ but already Death has visited’. She describes the interior, the vulnerability of the design, picture windows, the downstairs, the upstairs and the stairs themselves with the flimsy newel post, a symbol of safety ‘Nothing can reach you here/but the shouts of children playing in the street,/so calibrate each call and cry/and hope that none goes past/the reckoning point/and if they stone the house/know this is the one safe spot.
Angela is a distinguished television producer in Wales a short story writer and a poet who left Northern Ireland in 1981. “I had allowed myself to think of Wales, and the UK, only as the goal of sanctuary-seekers, as ‘receiving’ nations who provide refuge. I have come to understand that we are all seekers of sanctuary. The world looks different from that perspective. Sanctuary is a human need.”
The Many Meanings of Sanctuary
We are used to physical sanctuaries, acceptance of someone needing protection for some reason but there is also the emotional need and the spiritual joy of finding a place of safety, a scared place within someone else’s life and being someone who will accept you for who you are. The poems reflect all these, from East Belfast to Ukraine and from Kabul back to Antrim. Angela writes in the first verse of her poem Home:
As I spoke, I realised that he was listening,
that he had opened up some room inside himself
and there was the hallway beckoning me
towards a door, giving onto a sunlit living space
that I could enter, my burden in my arms,
and when I’d placed it on his table
we would, together, loosen its bonds,
consider it… quietly.
Having read how Angela’s book came about, I decided to invite six friends to write me a poem for Christmas. They seemed glad to be challenged although not absolutely sure if they could actually come up with the goods. Angela’s friends certainly did and their thoughts make for most thought provoking reading.
Sanctuary is published by Seren £9.99 www.serenbooks.com
What would we do without entertainment? Last Thursday, Friday and last night, a new play opened as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival. Jane Coyle’s work After Melissa premiered at the Brian Friel Theatre at Queen’s University Belfast. It is inspired by The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, set in the exotic Egyptian city of Alexandria and presents the same sequence of events through several perspectives. It’s tangle of human relationships is narrated by Donegal man, Eamon Quiery, the shadowy figure of a penniless Irish writer. With him is a silent orphaned child, the daughter of a nightclub dancer named Melissa, his former lover. A multi-cultural cast includes Belfast-based actor Ruairi Conaghan, Caitriona Hinds, Sanja Nović, Fadl Mustapha and Emily Bagnall.
Now it goes On tour: Seamus Heaney HomePlace, Bellaghy (10 November), Market Place Theatre, Armagh (11 November), Down Arts Centre, Downpatrick (12 November), Cushendall Golf Club (13 November) www.powerstonefilms.com
