Eamon Carr reads from Origami Crow in Limerick

Eamon Carr reads from Origami Crow on Balcony TV

Eamon Carr reads from Origami Crow this Wednesday

Part of my recent adventures includes attending the book launch for Eamon Carr's Origami Crow. Here's an upcoming reading:

White House Poetry Revival Wed 19th Nov 2008

Eamon Carr has been a significant figure in the Irish artistic and cultural scene for many years. In the late 1960s he co-founded Tara Telephone, the music and poetry group of the Dublin beat scene.Tara Telephone published everyone from Marc Bolan to Allan Ginsberg, Brian Patten, Seamus Heaney, Pearse Hutchinson, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Brendan Kennelly, Adrian Mitchell, Pete Brown in their magazines and broadsheets. The group also ran recitals. Among those who read with Tara Telephone, in addition to Eamon and Peter Fallon were Phil Lynott and Roger McGough. With Jim Fitzpatrick, the group also produced specially designed posters with artwork and poems combined. One of these posters with Eamon's poem 'A Tale of Love' was exhibited in the Tate Gallery, Liverpool, Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era Exhibition in 2005 which also toured in Germany and Austria.

For more on this poetry series, visit the Limerick.com site.

Eamon Carr and Richie Buckley on YouTube

Remembering the STARDUST - "Molly Malone"

Tara Telephone Update & Horslips Week Begins

Back in October, I described my interest inTara Telephone, a music and poetry performance group important to the history of Horslips.

Work on the Tara Telephone site has continued, with a page devoted specifically to this up and running on a MySpace Tara Telephone tribute page. Amazingly, it was the discovery of the literary community of MySpace that encouraged me to explore that channel as a way to research and connect with other people who are interested in contemporary poetry. The Charles Bukowski tribute page here demonstrates what MySpace can also do for literature.

And it works. I've 'met' BP Fallon and have been absolutely intoxicated by his wild site.

I truly hope to use this MySpace page and the supporting site to draw attention to the significance of Tara Telephone, which had an influence on both the contemporary rock scene and the modern poetry scene of Ireland. My own interest in this is the realization that it then becomes part of the international beat movement, which had epicenters in San Francisco, New York, London, and Liverpool -- to name the few.

This following week will be a big week for Horslips news, with performance in Dingle airing on Wed. 15th Feb., on Other Voices RTE Two at 11.30pm. Fans of Horslips will be able to take part in a web chat with Jim & Barry on Thursday 16th Feb. at 2pm. All times are Dublin timezone times. Closer to the chat, I'll try to have up the timezone conversion.

Tara Telephone concert ticket with Leo O'Kelly

Finally, a bit of ephemera in the form of a concert ticket:



According to those who know, we have

Skid Row - featuring Gary Moore
Blues House - featuring Ed Deane
Orphanage - featuring Philip Lynott
Leo O'Kelly - doing a solo gig, but see below for his bio in Tir na nOg
Jazz Therapy - featuring bass-player Brian Masterson who became an in-demand studio engineer with lots of major artists

And we have Tara Telephone, which makes this last-ever post of mine on a dial-up modem all the more appropriate. Cable guy came and went and wireless cable hardware and software is installed. What's needed now is a trip to the computer store to pick up a wireless card. Would have done this before, but the decision to go wireless was a bit spontaneous yesterday.

Sorry...back to Tara Telephone (it's the phone thing, see? And you wouldn't believe how much time it takes for files to load and..whoops! At it again.)

A very important part of my "Horslipping" in 2005 (I don't know what else you call it, but essentially: all the activities around this unshakeable infatuation with a rock band that I never saw perform live until last month...) was the discovery that Tara Telephone has made a significant contribution to Dublin's modern literary scene. And, via its later guise as Gallery Press, I had already 'discovered' that long before buying my first used Horslips CD.

More groovy stuff came to light on this last visit when I checked out the two Tara Telephone publications in the books & periodicals collection at the National Library. Read them both in the hour before closing, trying to memorize as much detail as possible. Seems like there's going to be a King Crimson album purchase in my future! And, with luck, an essay to contribute to the Hairless Heart Herald.

In the midst of all that was 2005, I had begun a section of the site dedicated to Tara Telephone. It's been highlighted now and then, and still has much more to be done (see above, re: dial-up modem and the frustration of it all!)

Expect big things from it now, but here's a link to it as it currently stands:

Tara Telephone (Main Photo)
Tara Telephone Introduction

Don't leave me hanging on the Tara Telephone

One of the projects that I've been slowly working on throughout the summer for Come Back Horslips, is a history and online exhibit of the poems and art of Tara Telephone.



Visit the main Tara Telephone page of my project so far and you'll read the basic history that usually appears on other sites. Scroll down a bit and read from Mark Cunningham's Hot Press article on Horslips, which shows how Tara Telephone brought together rock voices and literary traditions in a wild, experimental mix. And some traditional music thrown in for good measure.

I know this story. It's the Haight-Ashbury in the 60s, North Beach in the 50s, Greenwich Village in the 30s and 40s, Paris in the 20s...and right now in any number of crossroads of urban culture and young people ready to take it on.

Obviously I only learned about Tara Telephone through reading Horslips' histories but in April I made an exciting discovery of a connection between Tara Telephone and Gallery Press.

I'd been a fan of the Gallery Press catalog ever since I bought my first volumes of Ciaran Carson's poetry, and that predates my discovery of Horslips. Finding this link encouraged me to look for Tara Telephone publications and learn as much as possible about the group.

Much work has now been done. A bit more to do, but a couple of people have seen a preview and say it is looking good. I'm torn between making each page available as it is finished or waiting until the whole collection (as far as I have it) can go live. And at that point I'll also figure out how to situate it on the site.

But the Tara Telephone link of recently updated pages has moved off the top of my site screen and I want to give the links to the pages already live:

Tara Telephone
Tara Telephone Introduction
A Tale of Love, Poster Poem 2

Tara Telephone on www.comebackhorslips.com

Finally! I have been wanting to work on this section of the site for some time. As it is, I am taking it slowly and today's page is simply an introduction to the topic. But it is going to be fun! I've hopes of enlisting the input and support of one of the poets I've been visiting here on Blogspot.

Also, in honor of the Watch of Enniskillen, and their rockin' version of "Dearg Doom," I've actually started the lyric page on that. Not ready for live yet, but soon.