Paul Durcan, perhaps Ireland's best-selling contemporary poet, has family roots in Westport (through the MacBride family, begetters of Maud Gonne's husband, Major John MacBride, executed for his role in the 1916 Rising). Known for his arresting combination of surreal images mixed with unmistakably Irish idioms, Durcan regularly reads in the county. In 2015, he features at Scoil Acla in Achill, Ireland's oldest summer school.
Scoil Acla, first held in 1910, has been attracting audiences and students both domestic and international, drawn by the winning mix of traditional music and culture in a breathtaking Gaeltacht environment. Classes are all taught through English and the mood at the readings has both the warmth of a community event and, through the quality of poets such as Durcan and Macdara Woods, the highest of standards.
That same island held a special place in Louis MacNeice's (1907-1963) heart: he too holidayed on Mayo's largest island, inheriting a love of the coastline from his father: MacNeice's poems frequently refer to Connacht. Although the most cosmopolitan of the major Irish poets, his love of the West, kindled in childhood, features throughout his work. In one poem, "The Strand", he recalled his father's deep feelings for Achill Island, bringing to life a man who
So loved the Western sea and no tree's green
Fulfilled him like these contours of Slievemore
Menaun and Croaghaun and the bogs between.
Achill's most famous literary disciple is Heinrich Böll (1917–1985): for many Europeans he defined the values of rural Ireland, contrasted sharply with the rapidly industrialising continent of the post-war period. Significantly, the house he stayed in is now known as the Böll Cottage in Dugort and, since 1992, used as a self-catering residency for writers and artists. On May Bank Holiday weekends, a cultural weekend takes place with lectures, readings and creative writing seminars, featuring writers such as John F. Deane (poet and founder of Poetry Ireland) and novelist Mike McCormack, from Louisburgh.
A particularly significant contemporary poet, Michael Longley, has summered on the Atlantic coast beyond Louisburgh for several decades and reads around the county on occasion. By his own account, a full one-third of his poems are set in Mayo and he takes particular pleasure in the music of its placenames, as demonstrated in these lines recalling a neighbour lost to cancer:
I missed his funeral. Close to the stony roads
He lies in Killeen Churchyard over the hill.
This morning on the burial mound at Templedoomore
Encircled by a spring tide and taking in
Cloonaghmanagh and Claggan and Carrigskeewaun,
The townlands he’d wandered tending cows and sheep.
Poets continue to come in their droves to the Mayo coast, staying in Achill or Old Rectory Retreat in Knappagh, seeking perhaps a quiet space to write but happily surprised to find themselves in a natural wonderland that has been celebrated abroad far less than the beauty spots of West Cork or the Ring of Kerry.
The annual Westport Arts Festival has featured writers such as poet Sean Lysaght and the late Dermot Healy who have read from their work and also conducted writing workshops. Each November, The Rolling Sun Book Festival in Westport describes itself as “a quirky boutique festival that indulges bookworms and connoisseurs of music, song and poetry.” The RTE radio programme ‘Sunday Miscellany’ presents thoughtful radio essays interspersed with live music.