[spectre] St. Patrick's Day event

[Séamas Cain]

_____________________________________


A CELEBRATION OF WORD AND MUSIC, for

St. Patrick's Day,
Saturday, March 17th, 2012
10:30 a.m.

CLOQUET PUBLIC LIBRARY,
320 Fourteenth Street,
Cloquet, Minnesota,
U.S.A., 55720 - 2051

St. Patrick's Day will be celebrated with a literary reading and
traditional Irish music at the Cloquet Public Library at 10:30 a.m.,
Saturday, March 17th.  American-Irish author and Cloquet native Séamas
Cain will read from his recently published poetry-novel “The Dangerous
Islands.”  The reading will be accompanied by music performed on the
Celtic harp and penny whistle by Mary Hagen and Linda Crumpton.

All proceeds from the sale of “The Dangerous Islands” at this event
will go to support the Programming Department at the Cloquet Public
Library.

Séamas Cain is a poet, playwright, conceptual artist, performance
artist, and theater director, who has written about Ireland for many
years.  Born in Cloquet, he has been active in Irish artistic and
political circles since his first involvements in Northern Ireland in
the 1960s.  The Northern Ireland conflict, known as “The Troubles,”
was an early focus of his essays, pamphlets, and manifestos.  In an
essay written in Northern Ireland in 1968, Cain expressed his
understanding of the struggle of the Irish Civil Rights Movement as a
hope to create a non-violent and humanist movement against the tyranny
of the British Establishment while deploring the “mindless violence”
of the paramilitaries.

Ireland's struggles form the backdrop of his most recent work, “The
Dangerous Islands.”  “The Dangerous Islands” is an unconventional
novel that combines aspects of various genres, including poetry and
play script, in conveying the experience of a young Irish-American man
from 1965 to 1998.

Francis M. Carroll, author of “The Fires of Autumn : The Cloquet-Moose
Lake Disaster of 1918” and “Crossroads in Time : A History of Carlton
County, Minnesota,” has written that Cain's novel “invites the reader
into a kaleidoscope of colors, sounds and images.  The experience is
both intensely personal and cosmic.  Séamas Cain's work comes out of
the world of ancient Celtic sagas, out of the séances of William
Butler Yeats, out of T.S. Eliot's desert wastelands, and especially
out of James Joyce's play with language.  He takes the reader to
mysterious islands, as well as dangerous islands.”

Mr. Cain has been the recipient of grants from the IMRAM Festival in
Ireland, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the McKnight Foundation, and
the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, among other organizations.  He
describes his novel as “a non-Classic coming-of-age tale.  It is a
story of self-education and self-development, with convictions and
disillusionment.  But it resists all pigeonholing, for it is also a
novel of ideas ranging across literature, philosophy and politics.”

“The Dangerous Islands” has been published in Ireland by The Red
Jasper Press, an independent publishing house under the curatorship of
Dr. Kit Fryatt, lecturer in English at the Mater Dei Institute of
Education, a part of Dublin City University.  Dr. Fryatt organizes
activities of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies, in which Mr. Cain
has contributed.  The book's preface has been written by
American-Irish poet Sheila E. Murphy.

Mary Hagen has been a local harper for many years.  Linda Crumpton is
a member of a Celtic music group that performs regularly at Carmody's
Irish Pub in Duluth, Minnesota.  Both musicians are Cloquet residents.

Copies of “The Dangerous Islands” are available through Berkeley Books
of Paris, France; Housmans Bookshop in London, England; Boekie Woekie
of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; The Loft Bookshop and Gregory Carr
Books in Dublin; Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the UMD
Bookstores in Duluth.  For more information about availability, scroll
down the page at ...

http://www.freewebs.com/seamascain

_____________________________________


For additional information, contact

Mark King ...

E-Mail : markking at arrowhead.lib.mn.us

Phone : 218.879.1531

CLOQUET PUBLIC LIBRARY,
320 Fourteenth Street,
Cloquet, Minnesota,
U.S.A., 55720 - 2051

_____________________________________