When, a number of years ago, Cónal Creedon emerged from his home in Cork city and found a large group of people gathered outside the gate, he was concerned at first.
“They were all huddled around, I thought someone was after getting a weakness. And I looked in, and there was a fella reading one of my books. I said, ‘Oh, Jesus’, and I ran up the street.”
When his initial panic subsided, Creedon returned to the group, who turned out to be visiting students from America. “I realised that I had been rude and I should have made myself known. I told them the next time they came to Cork, to drop me a line beforehand. So now a group of them come to the house every year. We just make tea, and pile them all in. At the end of the day, what would you be doing? Some fellas go fishing, some fellas play golf, some fellas go drinking. It’s as good a way as any to spend the day.”
It’s an encounter that encapsulates Creedon — the essential introversion of the writer coupled with the sociability and unending curiosity about place and people that fuels his work. Not to mention the hospitality, kindness and his talent for making a lovely cup of tea (he says the secret is the thin lip on the china cup).
It has been a busy time for the author, who is off shortly to the Canadian city of Montreal where he will pick up the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts from the World Cultural Council and give a lecture at McGill University. Two of his plays, After Luke and The Cure, are being performed at Cork Arts Theatre this month, and his latest book, a collection of stories and essays entitled Spaghetti Bowl has just been published.
“It’s fairly wild at the moment. The award is sort of mind-blowing, I didn’t expect it. It feels odd to be getting an award for doing what you love doing,” he says.
The title of the book was inspired by the World Cultural Council’s award citation which acknowledged the diversity of Creedon’s creative practice, and his exploration of the ‘spaghetti bowl’ of streets where he and his family have lived and traded for generations. Covering subjects from local cornerboys to the Eurovision, it is a delightful and typically philosophical distillation of Creedon’s world view.
His work encompasses everything from documentaries to plays, but he is perhaps best known as a chronicler of the city where he was reared as the second youngest of 12 siblings. His upbringing in the family shop on Devonshire Street, where he still resides, has informed much of his work, and his parents’ influence is also keenly felt in Spaghetti Bowl.
“Parents don’t get the credit they deserve. As I’m getting older, I see that. Look at my mother, who, I’m sure she loved what she was doing, but she had 12 children, it can’t have been much fun. She shelved all her own plans and dreams. To be successful in what I am doing is just me following my own dream. But her success was enabling other people to achieve something, which is quite incredible.”
Creedon sees much of his work as akin to memoir but says he recoils from nostalgia. He forged his path as a writer in the 1980s, a challenging time for the entire country, and for Cork in particular.
“What interests me is where it’s going to next, and sometimes looking back puts a context on that. I stop short of saying ‘ah, those were the good old days’. I’d be well aware of how much we’ve come on as a culture. When I came on stream, that whole punk thing was going on, but there was no work, so I have no nostalgia for that. I remember the Echo used to have pages and pages of people looking for a job, like Yosser Hughes in Boys from the Blackstuff.
“But what I did find formative was that the younger generation, people like me, who weren’t the ones who had lost their jobs in Fords or Dunlops, weren’t beaten by it. It was our normality, and we saw it as a great opportunity to do our own thing. That’s where a lot of art comes from — because there was nothing else, you had to plough your own furrow.”
And that’s something Creedon has done with great success, plunging into his various creative endeavours with gusto, and setting up his own press, Irishtown, to publish his work. “I just want to write. But I realised years ago that unless I publish the stuff, or get it published, I won’t be able to keep doing this. So it perpetuates itself.”
As befits a man who so obviously cherishes human interaction, Creedon doesn’t use a mobile phone. He is, however, a dab hand at staying connected with his audience on social media. He has travelled the world, figuratively at least, with readers and friends posting pictures of his books on social media platforms from far-flung locations, all pinned on a map which a Twitter follower set up for him.
“That’s the maddest thing. I got one of Spaghetti Bowl from Australia yesterday, and it was brilliant, because it was only published the day before that. And then one in New York cropped up today. It is a huge privilege when people are so kind to you, it’s all very sweet.”
Such humility is par for the course with Creedon. “The truth is the stuff that I’m doing, it’s very personal. And if I just keep going and going, somebody might think it’s of value. The only success, really, is to be able to do what you want to do. If you can keep doing that, you’re really successful. And if you can do it without compromise, you’re really, really successful. I’m not exactly there. But I’m close enough.”
- Spaghetti Bowl, by Cónal Creedon, published by Irishtown Press is out now. After Luke is at Cork Arts Theatre from Oct 8-12; The Cure, at the same venue, runs from Oct 22-26. See corkartstheatre.com
Rita – A Memoir (Greenisland Press) This is the story of [veteran Republican] Rita O’Hare, who died last March, an amazing woman whose life’s journey became consumed by the world she was born into. I am also loving Thomas McCarthy’s Questioning Ireland (Gallery Books).
I’m listening to a very broad spectrum of music, everything from the post-punk of The Revolt and Big Boy Foolish to John Spillane’s new brilliant opera, FíorUisce: The Legend of The Lough.
Three stand-out recent gigs were Torcán, and also Lisa Lambe, at the Bere Island Arts Festival. Also Sunday morning in the Bere Island church, the magnificent Eva McMullan conducted the Crosshaven and Sherkin, Cape Clear and Bere Island combined community choirs. They raised the rafters, it was incredible.
I loved Civilisation Blooming / 文明開花, a collaborative exhibition By Deirdre Frost And Seiko Hayase at The Lavit Gallery. I also loved the closing exhibition at the Crawford Art Gallery, From Source To Sea, a fusion of visual art and text exploring the story of the River Lee, curated by Michael Waldron.
