Bloomsday
As with last year I was thinking of listening to a slab of the greatest novel of the twentieth century to celebrate the day in question, since my copy of Ulysses remains on the shelves in KL and, therefore, not exactly readable. But somehow I felt this was a bit of a stale way to pay tribute and that I needed to think of something fresh. For her Poem of the Week feature Carol Rumens selected a poem of considerable relevance in Mary O'Donnell's touching and true My Mother says No on Bloomsday but I read this on Monday and it's not actually Joyce is it?
So I felt at something of a loose end until I chanced upon the perfection in every possible way of a setting of Pomes Penyeach by some ultra-talented Irish musicians. Apart from the fact I loved the performance, it served as a reminder of the intensely emotional lyricism that underlies Joyce's art. I found myself reading the poems - which I thought I knew well - with a new intensity and appreciation of how strange and radical they are despite their surface conventionality.
In fact, I'm going to listen to them all over again, if you really want to know.
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