Dursey cable car's big role in Beara Arts Festival

WHAT is possibly the world’s first sonic installation on a cable car will take place in Dursey this weekend.

On Sunday, Ireland’s only cable car will host ‘Compartments’ – a collaboration between Annette Skade and her son Cormac Mac an Fhalla – and it features three of her poems – The Boat Train, The High Line and Cello Lesson, set to Cormac’s electronic music.  

The recording will be installed on the Dursey Island cable car for a week, as part of Beara Arts Festival.

Annette Skade, from Manchester, has lived on the Beara Peninsula since 1989, initially at Garnish, less than a mile from the cable car, and more recently in Glengarriff. Annette has a degree in Ancient Greek and Philosophy from Liverpool University, and an MA in Poetry Studies from Dublin City University.

 In July 2013, she launched her debut collection of poetry, Thimblerig, at the West Cork Literary Festival. Annette’s son Cormac Mac an Fhalla grew up in Garnish, and studied music production at Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa in Cork and Pulse College in Dublin. 

He now works as an engineer at Windmill Lane in Dublin, and also writes and performs music.

Compartments is the pair’s first collaboration. 

‘Sound has always been important in my poetry,’ says Annette. ‘I read my poems aloud time and again, as part of the writing process and I always scan my writing. My remit to Cormac was deliberately vague. I wanted to find out what a tuned ear would make of the poems. I saw it as a collaboration in the true sense, one piece of creativity sparking another.

‘I was really impressed with the results, particularly with how the composer understood the changing moods in the poems,’ she adds. 

‘Poetry always travels beyond the page but I felt this music and sound breathed oxygen into the poems and let them run!’

Compartments is one of a series of ‘Sonic Boxes’ that will be installed at various locations around the Beara peninsula for the duration of Beara Arts Festival. 

The others will feature new compositions by local musicians David Harmax and Ian Geraghty.

Further information see annetteskade.com and bearaartsfestival.com