SENSORIUM
Sensorium, an exhibition by Richard Forrest, and curated by Anna Crudge was held at the SOMA Gallery, Lombard Street, Waterford City, until 10th of August.. A sensorium refers to the way the mind perceives the change in sensory environments. This can be noticed before entering the exhibit, just by looking at the poster advertising the show, the artist uses a hexagonal poster as opposed to your average rectangular poster. This alone catches your eye hanging on a street wall, in a shop window or on a door and it draws you in. The show itself you are welcomed by a short video made by the artist which straight away has you intrigued and your eyes fixed to the screen, which later in the exhibition is explained. The use of space by Richard and Anna was terrific, you walk past the first piece and out of the corner of your eye you take note of the colour of the ground and wall changing and from there on, you will be blown away from the genius of this exhibition, you could easily spend most of your day going through the gallery and still want to go back to look at pieces again, between touch, taste and sight this show really gets you thinking! Like we said, it wasn’t to be missed!
Mícheál O’Coinn is an American-born poet based in Tramore, County Waterford. Mícheál has been featured in various poetry anthologies and magazines including the Tate Moderns short-lived ‘Nyne Muses Magazine”. We caught up with Mícheál to ask about his latest book ‘Five Words’ and what he has planned here in Ireland....
When did you decide you wanted to be a writer, and tell us a little about your path so far…. I think it had to be somewhere right about 7 or 8 years old. In a little town in Delaware, out of nowhere just started jotting stuff down, it stuck with me ever since. It was a very slow and very progressive - path. I started off, as I said, about 7 or 8 years old, wrote ‘til about 9 years old, just little simple rhymes, I guess. It was looked down upon by the rest of the family, so I just put it aside for a little while. Picked up a few years later, and it’s been pretty much an on again off again endeavour for the greater part of the last 40 years… It’s taken me from, just a means of venting, getting something out, to helping others who made of realised they weren’t the only ones going through certain situations. Over the years, it’s progressed from simple rhyming poems, free verse - free for, to short story, my poetry led me to short fiction. My passion for writing, for wanting to do more with it, wanting to impact more people with it has taken me to advanced creative writing courses, which has spawned a whole new level of writing for me. Now I write everything from poetry, short stories, short fiction, short stage plays, short screen play.. There’s actually not much I don’t delve into at this point. The screen play and stage play are probably my two greatest endeavours to reach some sort of success… I’ve got a book of poetry out, so that for me was a success, being published in multiple anthologies from anywhere from London [TATE Modern’s short lived; Nyne Muses Magazine] to Ohio, United States, was a success, in my book. Something, it can’t be done by many people, many people just don’t choose to do it, so now I’m just hoping to get a short play up on to one of the local theatres, hopefully using some connections to get a short film made. Eventually, God willing, in the next 12-18 finish my novel, my first novel. There’s not a whole lot I don’t do, and there’s not a lot i don’t do seriously, so it’s been a very fruitful path.
How do you describe your works as a poet? When I first started off, like most people who write poetry, or thought about writing poetry, or thought about poetry, started off with a basic love theme, everybody’s relationship’s, happy moments, sad moments and all the in betweens. It was easy enough to jot that down but as I grew it became more of a release, a venting forum for me. So the poetry itself took on a whole new life of it’s own; started breathing into itself, everything from kind of political views, life events, things I’d like to see change, things I’ve had to deal with, working in the hospital and what you’d like to see better, things like that. It’s become more political I’d say over the years. It’s about where it’s at now, I like to write stuff to make a difference, impact, open peoples minds… Things like that.
Is writing something you can force? Or do you prefer to let it flow? One of my favourite moments about John Keates, it’s called Bright Morning Star, there’s a line in the movie where somebody asks him about poetry and he says ‘if it does not come as naturally as leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all’, and that’s about it, you can force yourself to sit down at a desk, but you can’t force the concept out, you can write down a few words hope something comes from it, but it really is an act of inspiration. It’s not academic… writing research papers and things like that, you can force yourself to sit down, open a book, bullshit your way through it… Poetry has a way of telling your own lies, if you force your way through it, it shows, not that the writing is any better or worse than it could have been, the way it’s written reflects your mood. So if you’re just trying to force something down, again, it reveals itself in some way shape
or form. Not that everybody will catch it, but those that you are looking to present the work to will notice it, so it’s definitely not a forced thing, it’s free flowing. Kind of like anybody who has ever done an outdoor activity like surfing or snowboarding, it’s a natural flow, it’s an ebb and flow kind of process. Tell me a little about your ‘Five Words… Five Words… It should have been; ‘Five Words: Moments in Time’, it was a collection of non-romantic pieces, for all sakes and purposes, reflecting other moments that have either occurred in my life or have affected my life or have impacted somebody else’s life. The book itself is encompassing from life events; from death, again, moments I’ve experienced in the hospital, disappoint you see in humanity at times, it was an expression of… Life… I originally wanted to use a clock as a metaphor on the cover at one point, but there’s no specific tell about it, it’s not ‘this is what happened today, this is what could happen tomorrow’, just spontaneous moments about everything… friendship, it’s pretty much everything but love. It covers like I said, death, sitting under the stars, things like that… In fact the title poem ‘Five Words’ is just that, it’s kind of a beatnik verse of how poetry comes to me, specifically at different times, sitting under the black canopy at night and just trying not to think about anything is when you end up thinking about stuff. I did most of my writing when I was in my late teens-early twenties; 2 o’ clock or 3 o’ clock in the morning sitting in the middle of a graveyard, it was quite it was peaceful. Inspiration was free flowing at the point, because you’re not thinking about a whole lot… Same thing with ‘Five Words’.
Sticking with the theme, describe yourself as an artist using five words…. … this one requires some thought… I’m over-achievingly ambitious to write! That’s a poem right there, is it? It might as well could be! So apart from your screen plays and stage productions what are your plans for the future? I’d like to set up workshops actually… Back when I was in the Detroit area, back in the States, I was looking to set up some kind of workshop for younger kids who may have the bug but no outlet, get them to come in… I know Red Kettle [Waterford Theatre Company] does a lot of things with the younger kids in their stage plays, so maybe get affiliated with something like that and just be able to spread the opportunity with others to get involved. My idea is to not make a million, but to make a million that I can help others with. I’m the type of person, if I can put food on the table and keep a roof over my head, I’m happy with that. If I can do that and be able to pull a thousand people along with me, fantastic! To be able to help others is the truest form of success, so that’s my future, that’s my goal, I want to bring people up to my level and get them to surpass me!
Over the past few months, Waterford has played host to many festivals, like Daytripper (above) featuring Alabama 3, JackL and the Coronas. Also the Avennue festival (right) saw many artists flock to the city in July/August,. Great to see a buzz in the city
Oztralia Like a Dope! Here yee are lads.. I didn’t really know what to write about so I thought id just give ye a bit of everything! I suppose the best place to start would be the art I’ve seen here! It’s all over the place, like everywhere you look. Sculptures, statutes, fountains and odd architecture... All the boring stuff... But if you’re in to that stuff why not! And I always found it funny from a country with such huge water concerns that they put as many fountains as they possibly could in 1 city! There is a free art gallery in the city with classic arty stuff! They have a Monet exhibition in there at the moment. An interesting fact about Claude Monet... His name was used in reference in the title of the hit song “rent monet”. Again I don’t really have any interest in that at all.. They all look the same to me and my uneducated eyes! The graffiti is incredible through-out the city and its suburbs. Shops offer their walls to artist for them to design and decorate. Nite clubs are often hidden at the end of some alley, with absolutely no advertisement or signage to point to them... You just kind of stumble into them along alleys covered in clever and detailed graffiti! Often you’d be walking down a street and the smell of spray paint would hit ya and sure enough you could find a fresh batch of art on wall! There are a few abandoned buildings scattered around the place where anything goes.. 1 room could just be a mess of “Skeeter Waz Ere 2k7” tags and nobs all over the place (which has a certain charm to it) and the next room would be amazing, bright, detailed work. There is tons of street art and music especially on the weekend, like caricatures, portraits, the worst set of break dancers I have ever witnessed, along with the fattest body popper with them! Some fella spray painting stencils onto vinyl records and charging $15 for them! Or some elderly Asian man swing kicks aver people’s heads on the street! And if you get bored of looking at classy art galleries, graffiti, street magicians or fountains you can just follow one of the many meth-head zombies around for a while for some free light hearted entertainment! Ye can edit that any way ya like! If ye want something different lemme kno n ill trow something together for yee! Need anything else let me know! 8===D- - - (. )( .) - Tatonka Milbot
Sam from We Don’t Surf Magazine caught up with Kieran Bolger of BPM Junction to see what him and his crew are getting up to… We also went to check out their night with SUBSTANCE at the Mojo Lounge. Who are BPMJunction? BPM Junction is an electronic music record store that empowers electronic musicians to sell their music independently of record labels and distributors. Electronic musicians on our site will receive up to one hundred percent per track sold, where as at the moment they’re receiving about twenty-five percent, many of them advise they get nothing at all, so we really want to be able to support people with this site. We’re still in the development stages at the moment, we’re working long hours trying to build awareness of the site and we’re working with our developers obviously to get some code done…. How did BPM Junction come into fruition? We are electronic music producers ourselves, we noticed how hard it was to sell music, there are lots of sites where you can promote yourself, but it’s very hard to sell your music without getting signed to a record label first, then hiring a distributor and getting it onto a record store. Even if you do that it’s very hard to get payed, you have no sales reports or anything, so we noticed the struggle ourselves, so we started to look into it, after doing some research we found out that we weren’t the only people with these struggles, so we decided a lot of other people were in the same boat and we decided to move forward and see could we do something to help support people do it independently… You have an event this weekend, looking forward to it? Yeah, absolutely.. We’re really looking forward to the weekend, we’re in a room in the MOJO Lounge this Saturday, 6th of July, it’s free in as part of a Substance event. We have myself, Alan Harris and Karsten Cullen DJ’ing from half ten to two o’ clock.. We’ll be giving away some cool stickers on the night and hope to tell people a bit more about what we’re doing, what we’re all about, on the night… All around it will be great music on the night,
some great electronic music, downstairs there will be a bit of reggae, so it should be good fun… When are you hoping to be live? We hope to have a beta for testing by November this year, so the first phase of testing we’re actually looking for beta testers, we have some spaces left, it’s filling up pretty quick. If anyone would like to get involved in testing the site and have their say on the result and how it’s all going to look in the end, they can apply if they go to our Facebook page which is http://www.facebook.com/bpmjunction and just click the ‘apply for beta’ link in our apps section. We should be publicly live then by January 2014 so keep an eye out for that… Where can people find out more? Anyone looking for more information can look at bpmjunction. com where you’ll find links to all our social sites, videos that we made, our onsite blog as well so anything you want to find out you can find out there.. Or obviously like I said you can got to Facebook.com/bpmjunction as well.. And you’ve got a crowd funding campaign? Yeah, absolutely, our crowd funding campaign is really important to us at the moment, we’re aiming to raise about seven thousand euro to continue development of the BPMjunction. com website. In order to keep going we’ve gotten some funding from the enterprise board which has been amazing, they’ve been a great support to us, they’ve provided mentors as well, so that’s been really good, but we do need help now from the public, and from people that are into the scene so we can really get developing. So if you’d like to help us at all, or even check out what we’re at you can go to our funding site, where we set up some cool perks for anyone that wants to support us, we’re giving away some cool t-shirts, slip matts and an E.P. that was written and mastered by the BPM Junction team; myself, Mark Brennan and Adam Bolger. All our packages are available as well and they’ve been discounted for anybody that wants to help out and support us, it means a lot at this stage, you can visit http://www.igg.ne/at/bpmjunction and donate as little as one euro or anything you like at all, so you can spread the word, any help is appreciated
Cloud Skateboards “the coolest skateboards in Waterford” Since the closure of Pure on John’s street in Waterford City, you’ll find it hard to get a skateboard locally, this is where Cloud Skateboards steps in, a new, locally owned skate company set up by a group of lads in Waterford City. Cleverly marketed and producing quality decks with some amazing graphics. Be sure to check out these lads when you’re purchasing your next deck. (Our mam’s will give out to us for showing the word CUNT in this mag, my mam gave out to me for using ‘fuck’ in issue one).
Woman and her dog at the Avenue Festival
Snap from Spraoi Festival, Waterford.