Welcome to this week's episode of In Fairness Inquire: Roscommon Artists, a special series of our podcast dedicated to interviewing astounding creative artists that are based here at home in Roscommon. In these interviews we will be talking to actors, theatre-makers, drama facilitators, comedians, writers, directors, poets, producers, a dancer and a weaver. We will discuss how they started in their profession, obstacles they have faced, how they have been impacted by the pandemic, the importance of creativity in their lives, their influences, how they stay motivated to keep creating and most importantly how you, the listener, can support their work. We are keen to make our audiences all around the world aware of the constant stream of Roscommon-based creative work. We also hope this series will encourage some of you to support local art, recognise its necessity and maybe even pursue some creative endeavours of your own. This series comes to you thanks to the generous support of Roscommon County Council who have kindly commissioned this series and endorsed us with the necessary equipment and software to record the interviews safely and remotely during the Summer of 2021.
Brigid Kavanagh was born in 1926, in Bunnamuca in Co Roscommon. She is a writer and poet whose first book was published in 2020. She started writing regularly in the early 1980s on a typewriter. Ironically, this was while she was recovering from breaking both wrists after an accident. She attended writers’ classes courtesy of Dundrum Adult Training & Education from 1984, and continued to write over the next decade. Brigid had attempted on multiple occasions to get published, but struggled without the representation of an agent. It was in the early 1990s that she submitted insightful recollections of her rural childhood to the Ireland’s Eye magazine. This was followed by contributions to Ireland’s Own and many of her stories have since been published in both magazines. These stories form the basis of her book, in My Mind’s Eye - Walking Amongst Ghosts, intermingled with biographical and historical accounts of people and events mainly connected to Roscommon. Brigid is a long-time member of the Roscommon Association in Dublin and had her first article published in the Roscommon Association Yearbook of 1993. She has made regular contributions to this and to its successor, Roscommon Life. As recently as 2018, one of her stories was included in New Roscommon Writings. Her family helped Brigid collect her work, published and unpublished, under the one roof, so to speak – in My Mind’s Eye - Walking Amongst Ghosts. 95 stories and poems, one for every year of her life so far.
In My Mind’s Eye - Walking Amongst Ghosts is available in Strokestown in Dawn til Dusk, Beirne’s and Spar, in Elphin is Glancy’s, in Newsround in Roscommon and Longford town, in Four Mile Community House Shop, in O’Connor’s in Tulsk, in Spar in Kiltoom, in Kelly’s Londis and Boyle Craft King House in Boyle and in O’Briens in Lanesborough. You can also pick it up in Galway in Charlie’s bookshop or in Alan Hanna’s in Rathmines. You can also keep up to date with the book on its Facebook page, In My Mind’s Eye - Walking Amongst Ghosts. You can find our podcast, In Fairness, on Acast, Spotify and Itunes. You can hear more from us and our interviewees on our Instagram, @infairnesspod, same on Twitter, and In Fairness Podcast on Facebook. Feel free to get in touch on any of these platforms with any questions or suggestions that you may have for us. Thank you again to Roscommon County Council for supporting us to create this series, and to our wonderful mentor Catherine Sheridan for keeping us in check and bringing us both together at the very beginning of our journey. You have been listening to In Fairness Inquire: Roscommon Artists, Research and questions by Molly Mew, Sound engineering, editing and producing by Misha Fitzgibbon, thank you so much for listening.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
