American-Irish Anarchist Séamas Cain in Dublin

[back2front]

IMRAM, a national literary festival in Ireland, in association with
the Dublin City Arts Centre and TíAitreo, will present "The Prairie
Gaeltacht" by Séamas Cain.  Performances will begin at 7:00 p.m. on
Monday and Tuesday, September 20 and 21, 2010 at CITY ARTS, 15
Bachelor’s Walk, Dublin 1, Ireland.

Describing the script for The Prairie Gaeltacht, Liam Carson, director
of the IMRAM Festival, said "poetic, beautiful, moving, simple,
evocative.  I'm really looking forward to experiencing the
performance."

And the Irish writer Gabriel Rosenstock described the script as "very moving."

http://www.cityarts.ie/events/2010/09/20/-the-prairie-gaeltacht-gaeltacht-na-bhfarthailte/


THE PRAIRIE GAELTACHT

"I remember herds of buffalo on the prairie, beautiful Indian ponies
... the coyotes howling at dusk."  So speaks one voice in Séamas
Cain’s dramatic evocation of what he calls The Prairie Gaeltacht.

Drawing on his own conversations with relatives, Séamas Cain’s
narrative probes deep into family, land and language.  Through their
plain but poetic voices, history is relived.  Here Irish settlers
learn from Indians "where strawberries grew and which birds were most
delicious to hunt."  Here is Thomas Burke, kinsman of Edmund, fleeing
to the Irish Colonies of Minnesota in 1878.  We are brought from the
time of the wagon trains to the day electricity arrived in the village
of Murdock in 1922.  Along the way we hear stories of the Molly
Maguires, the communitarian Connemaras and their vision of creating a
Gaelic socialist utopia on the prairies of western Minnesota; of
fiddlers and harmonica players at dances; of droughts, crop failures,
snowstorms, and swarms of locusts.

The Prairie Gaeltacht is an extraordinary bi-lingual journey into a
haunting past.  Actors from TíAitreo will re-create in Irish the words
and stories of Séamas Cain’s grandparents and their cousins and
friends, whilst Cain himself will narrate in English.

A unique insight into an almost forgotten history, The Prairie
Gaeltacht is a deeply personal odyssey from one of America’s most
radical and inventive of poets.

http://www.cityarts.ie/events/2010/09/20/-the-prairie-gaeltacht-gaeltacht-na-bhfarthailte/

_______________


Séamas Cain
http://www.saorsainn.net
http://alazanto.org/seamascain
http://seamascain-writernetwork.org

[syndicalist]

Ah yes. The same Semas Cain who made an effort to wreck the Workers Solidarity Alliance in 1999 and 2000.
Enjoy his show.

[cat]

Leading figure in the secretive Blackbird Syndicalists sect, who violated the WSA constitution to engage in bureaucratic expulsions when they were on the national committee. Maybe it's "anarchist" in the sense of individualist irresponsibility or "doing whatever you want." Not my kind of anarchism.

[David in Atlanta]

Is that the same Blackbird Syndicalists that called me when I was temporarily  on the outs with NY WSA  and offered to pay  my WSA dues so I could vote on a referendum they were initiating? I will give them credit, they healed the breach pdq.

[paul]

Apparently yer man called for a boycott of the Dublin Writers festival last year...

Dublin Writers Festival
http://www.dublinwritersfestival.com

Dear Administrators,

Once again the Dublin Writers Festival has excluded Irish-language
writers from any meaningful participation in the Festival events and
activities. This behaviour by the organizers is shameful, offensive,
and imperious. Indeed, I call for a boycott of the Dublin Writers
Festival. It is my intention to urge writers, artists, and other
citizens (in Ireland, Britain, the U.S. and other countries) to
withdraw any and all support from the Festival and its activities. I
urge an earthquake of a protest campaign until there is a constructive
remedy to this imperiousness!

For creative diversity in Ireland,

Séamas Cain

Impressive call from the Minnesota Gaeltacht. Can't say we noticed the earthquake on the ground in Dublin so much tho... The other titbit from his webtrail that caught my eye was this bit from a puff piece for an Edinburgh 2003 gig.

  Cain is a descendant of Prince Charles Edward
Stuart.  John Stuart, the bastard of the Bonnie Prince
by a daughter of The Stewart of Appin, was compelled
to leave Scotland with the 78th Highland Regiment in
"the French and Indian" War of 1763.  John Stuart
participated in the Siege of Montréal and other
dramatic events, finally becoming the first European
to settle in the Miramichi region of the province of
New Brunswick in Canada.  Cain's grandfather, born at
Old North Esk on the Miramichi, wrote poems in
Gàidhlig.

Bonney Prince Charlie, ey? A proper Charlie, methinks  Certainly would explain a lot...

[syndicalist]

I can't believe people actually fell for this guy. I hope the theater he's perfoming in is big enough to hold an ego the size of all of Ireland, plus some. If only I was there, boy, would the tomatos fly. There are just some folks who are bad news. Perhaps his acting is as bad as his politics are.

[back2front]

I'm not aware of any of this stuff - could someone please explain and provide some evidence of these claims, thanks?

[syndicalist]

It is all true.  That said, some of the stuff can be sent to you electronically, some is still in paper form. I am sure we can email you off list some of the stuff. I say off list as I'm unclear of protocol and so forth. Whatever we have to say is public and this is not an attempt to hide behind protocol.
So, information is available.

Also, anyone who wants to share their stories about the entryist activities and tactics of Mr. Cain and others are welcome to do so as far as I am personally concerned.

[paul]

I include the links for the stuff I quoted from the webtrail

- Edinburgh 2003 puff piece http://www.mail-archive.com/ambit@mediascot.org/msg01045.html

- Dublin writers festival boycott call http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com/2009/05/seamus-cain-controversy-in-dublin.html (You have to go down a bit, search on the page for that name)

In terms of the WSA - IWA - SAN/Seamus Cain history, I thought we had an account here on ABC somewhere, but since the site move our search doesn't seem up to it. But there is an account at http://libcom.org/forums/workers-solidarity-alliance/workers-solidarity-alliance-and-iwa

[syndicalist]

Paul, comrades, I rekon that libcom link covers much of the stuff. I suspect in some of the other links at the bottom of that discussion there's some other stuff.  The whole episode was such a waste of precious time & precious little resources.

[back2front]

Thanks to everyone who sent in materials from their perspective. I think all we can do is wait for Séamas Cain to reply.