Press Release. Save Tara Campaign, 24/08/2008,
22:00hrs.
Poets and Musicians perform at Tara
On Sunday 24 August 2008 Save Tara campaigners presented an international gathering of poets and musicians at Tara to honour and celebrate the place and our heritage. It was organised by Susan McKeown and Paul Muldoon.
Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon, Pulitzer prize-winner, read their poetry and were joined by Grammy award-winner Susan McKeown who was accompanied by Aidan Brennan. Steve Cooney sang his song "The Money Mad Mile" and Laoise Kelly played, among other tunes, Planxty Wilkinson written by O'Carolan for the Wilkinsons who still live in the area.
The event took place in the churchyard under a blue sky and a shining sun as 250 people listened to Ireland's most celebrated poets read for Tara and speak about the importance of place and heritage. Seamus Heaney reminded the crowd of the importance of speaking aloud and enunciation - if a thing is not said it will not be remembered. He read his poem on bogs containing the archaeological remains of the past and also one of the Sweeny poems celebrating the landscape.
Susan McKeown spoke of Cú Chulainn's combat with Ferdia and his washing in the rivers of Ireland and sang her own song about those rivers, including the Boyne. Paul Muldoon also read his poetry and spoke to people of the importance of place as her read a poem about the Moy and his own home place. The performers were introduced by Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin.
Seamus Heaney said in 2007: "for the past two millennia those generations regarded Tara as a place invested with sacred as opposed to secular value. Protest against the loss of this value remains an imperative". In an interview with Diarmaid Fleming for a BBC documentary in 2008 he said the motorway: "literally desecrates an area - I mean the word means to 'desacralise' and, for centuries, the Tara landscape and the Tara sites have been regarded as part of the sacred ground". He referred to the 1916 Proclamation having summoned the Irish people "in the name of the dead generations" and said: "If ever there was a place that deserved to be preserved in the name of the dead generations from pre-historic times . . . it was Tara".
Paul Muldoon wrote a poem "Tara of the Kings" in 2006; it was put to music and played, for the first time, by his band Rackett in Navan in August 2007. He wrote in the New York Times in 2007: "the routing of a busy road slap bang through the Tara-Skryne Valley represents an act of vandalism with not only national, but international, ramifications". He also joined Susan McKeown in a musical, harpers protest outside the Irish consulate in New York in September 2007 when harpers in Ireland played outside the Dáil.
ENDS
For verification:
Dr. Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin
Tel: 087-9249510
Susan McKeown
Tel: 087-934-5045
E-Mail: info@savetara.com
Web site: http://www.savetara.com
Related Articles:
Photos [of today's event] to be found here
Heritage Week Website.
Tara of the Kings - Paul Muldoon.
Erin Go Faster.
Today with PK - Heaney's comments on Tara.
Tar over Tara - Harpers at the Dáil.
Susan McKeown and Paul Muldoon in New York.