Anam Beo facilitated this project with Offaly artists Jackie Lynch & Rosalind Fanning, collaborating on socially engaged engagements with and for people in the Birr community, using iPad Pros to record poetry recitals and local heritage. Working together with Offaly County Council’s Creative Ireland programme for communities to present aspects of Offaly’s heritage in an inclusive way. To see the recorded recitals please go to the Anam Beo Facebook page, under MORE click on Videos which are also on Instagram and YouTube. Portrait by J.B. Yeats, 1899
https://www.youtube.com/@anambeoartscollective6681/videos
‘A Town Reads Mitchell’ ( poems from The Living Chalice) is a celebratory experience derived from the Famous and Notables of Birr Trail created previously by local artists Jackie Lynch and Rosalind Fanning as a tourism initiative for the town. Susan Langstaff Mitchell (1866-1926) is one of these twenty seven notables, a renowned literary person, poet, mystic, playwright, friend of the Yeats’ and more. Susan Langstaff Mitchell (1866-1926) is one of the Famous and Notable figures on the Birr Trail. She is a renowned literary person, poet, mystic, playwright, and friend of the Yeats’. This project was supported by Offaly County Council’s Creative Ireland Programme & Anam Beo.
Thank you to the readers of the poems, who have given their time to be recorded reciting Susan’s poems. We greatly appreciate all who have been involved in the project legacy, townspeople of Birr and the Local Authority who have facilitated, and have given kind permission to showcase the poetry trail.
1. Exile.
Read by Pauline Lynch on the 25.07.2022
2. Immortality.
Read by Gerry Dolan on the 15.07.2022
3. Incompleteness
Read by Mary O’Gorman on the 11.08.2022
4.Ireland.
Read by Val Johnson on the 04.08.2022
5. The Taper and the Mistletoe.
Read by Jack Feehan on the 12.07.2022
6. Homeless
Read by Robert Alexander on the 10.08.2022
7. The Daughters of Erin.
Read by Ann Ritchie on the 20.07.2022
9. Love’s Mendicant.
Read by Patti Nee on the 25.07.2022
10. Amergin.
Read by Finbarr Spain on the 18.07.2022
The poetry panels mapped in the surrounding urban area and Mill Island Park are a legacy to the social engagements during A Town Reads Mitchell where local townspeople were recorded as they experienced Mitchell’s poems from her 1913 book of poetry ‘The Living Chalice’.
Artists Jackie Lynch and Rosalind Fanning presented their creative engagements community project with recitals, artwork and summer sunshine in Birr Library.
One added surprise was guest speaker Mary O’Donoghue reflecting on and the portrait of Susan by Countess Markiewicz and her poems used by Cuala Press Cards. The Cuala Press was an Irish private press set up in 1908 by Elizabeth Yeats with support from her brother William Butler Yeats that played an important role in the Celtic Revival of the early 20th century.
https://birrfantrail.ie/2021/05/10/susan-langstaff-mitchell-1866-1926/