Where it's Chat
The five things you must see at Mindfield (apart from the Hot Press Chatroom!)
The Hot Press Newsdesk, 02 Sep 2010
Howard Marks & Peter Hook
Howard Marks rose through Oxford University and the British Secret Service to become what the Daily Mirror described as “one of the most sophisticated drugs barons of all time.” His 1996 autobiography Mr. Nice was an international bestseller, and has just been made into a major movie starring Rhys Ifans.
Peter Hook – legendary bassist with two of the most influential bands in British pop music history, Joy Division and New Order – has always been out there on his own somehow, as an artist, an icon and as the architect of his own oblivion. Having recently reinvented himself as a respected DJ, author and raconteur, Hooky will be ‘fessing up, pouring forth and telling all to Howard on the Leviathan Stage, including the tragi-comic tale of the Manchester nightclub, The Haçienda, and the two seminal groups that paid for it.
Louis De Paor & Ronan Browne
Flame-haired academic and poet Louis de Paor – the Robert Plant of the Irish poetry scene – first came to national prominence touring with fellow Corkonian John Spillane under the name Gaelic Hit Factory. His most recent bilingual collection Agus Rud Eile/And Another Thing was published by Cló Iar-Chonnachta earlier this year. The dark but hopeful poems concerned a man on the brink of middle-age, and an accompanying CD featured De Paor reading them to haunting musical accompaniment by piper Ronan Browne, a former member of The Afro Celt Sound System. You won’t need to be an Irish speaker to enjoy their chilled-out performance in An Pobail Gaeilge (hosted by Kila’s Rossa O Snodaigh).
Julian Gough
The former Toasted Heretic frontman turned novelist and award-winning short story writer caused something of a literary upset earlier this year when he launched a scathing attack on Ireland’s writers from his Berlin bunker, describing them as “a pompous, provincial literary community” which has “become a priestly caste, scribbling by candlelight, cut off from the electric current of the culture.” Writing on his blog, Gough didn’t just attack the new generation of Irish authors. “The older, more sophisticated Irish writers that want to be Nabokov give me the yellow squirts and a scaldy hole,” he sneered. “If there is a movement in Ireland, it is backwards.” Expect fisticuffs with the likes of Dermot Bolger and Roddy Doyle when Gough participates in what promises to be an incendiary literary debate on the Arts Council Literary Stage.
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