Catherine Drea: Keep looking for sunshine

For most people it was just another Friday night out in Waterford. There was plenty going on; Jason Byrne was in the Theatre Royal, Macdara Ó Faoláin was playing in the Mary Strangman Large Room and poet Dean Browne and musician Phill Collins were guests at the SpeakEasy session in Phil Grimes Pub. We are spoiled for choice!

But for an enthusiastic group of poetry lovers who enjoy nothing more than sharing their favourite uplifting writings with each other, there was a niche event going on in The Book Centre too. 

You see, that Friday night was also one of the highlights of the Well Festival, an event called, “Sunshine; sharing writings to brighten our souls.” Inspired by a quote by Eeyore from AA Milne’s book Winnie the Pooh, who said, “It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine,” The Sunshine gathering has been quietly warming hearts since the beginning of this unique festival of arts and well-being.

It’s a simple idea. Each participant submits a piece of writing that they love and these are then curated by the Réalta team, who administer and manage the Waterford Healing Arts programmes in the hospital and in other healthcare settings. 

Their work links artists, writers, storytellers and musicians to patients in a variety of health care settings, for example bringing art and poetry to the Renal Dialysis Ward and storytelling to the Paediatric Ward in UHW. 

If you’ve ever been there as a patient or as a visitor you might have come across the artwork in the corridors or the artists themselves.

When I was in hospital during a particularly busy week there, I had to sleep on a corridor for five nights. So, in the evenings whenever I was up to it, I would wander around the hospital exploring some of the wonderful art collection.

The Sunshine event happens every year in the sunken well of the beautiful Book Centre. Surrounded by books and more books, set under the huge Ben Hennessy wall painting. It is always magical to look up and see all the levels of the original old cinema and ponder the history of this place, not least the memories of my own children sitting on the floor enjoying endless picture books.

The participants who have submitted their poems are invited to read their selected piece on the night, telling us what it is and why they love it. Every reader has a unique relationship to the poem they have chosen and part of the enjoyment is the diversity of what people choose and why.

Some readers come back year after year. There are, also, always new readers and then there is an audience of people who come along simply to enjoy the event.

There’s a little bit of magic going on, which is hard to describe, but at the heart of it there is the generosity of people sharing their precious, most loved poems, and for everyone else there is the wonderful gift of being there and receiving them.

I have been lucky to facilitate the event a few times and have had the privilege of sitting very close to each person as they talk about their poem and read it for us. The sunshine warmth that radiates from each of them is soaked up in bucket loads by yours truly.

Everyone of us has been in the wars from time to time and as I meet each person on the night of Sunshine, I am very aware of that fact. Listening to people as they share, I understand that there is a vulnerability to it and also a chance to laugh out loud!

Without fail, there are a couple of poems and poets that turn up regularly. One man last year stunned us all by reciting by heart WB Yeats' poem Easter 1916. Powerful!

There are often brilliant contributions from Spike Milligan or Pat Ingoldsby, wry and clever. There are nature poems, this year a rhythmic one about trees read by a woman who was accompanied by her young daughter.

There was a hilarious ditty about a man wearing nothing at all but a suit made entirely from a tattoo. There was a poignant poem by George Barker, read by a poet too. It described the poet’s Irish mother as, “Sitting as huge as Asia, seismic with laughter, Gin and chicken helpless in her Irish hand.” 

There were poems about transitions, burials, how joy chooses us, about light, the goddess Bríd/Bridget, grandmothers and the small things in life. One that turns up regularly is called Warning by Jenny Joseph. I more and more love and somewhat identify with the poet, growing older and wilder at least in her imagination…

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.” 

While the work of Réalta (Waterford Healing Arts) continues throughout the year, the Well Festival highlights for us all how the young and the young at heart can benefit from creating, connecting and sharing in all kinds of ways.

Congratulations to Réalta, the Waterford City & County Libraries and Garter Lane Arts Centre, who cooperate on the annual Well Festival and to the much-loved Book Centre, who support the Sunshine events every year.