The Family of THINGS with Helen Shaw Athena Media

The Family of Things S2 E9 : Lauren Arrington 

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Professor Lauren Arrington is a Florida native who has made Ireland her home, and the focus of her research and writing. In this episode of The Family of Things she shares with Helen Shaw how Ireland, and its writers, drew her in, and how when she first came to study at Trinity College Dublin she thought Dublin was a big metropolis because her roots were in rural and small town Southern America.

Today she is Professor English Literature at Maynooth University and her new work 'The Poets of Rapallo' on the shadow of fascism on the lives and work of writers, including WB Yeats, is just out. In this revealing conversation Lauren shares how she gave birth to her second child, just about the day she moved to Dublin at the beginning of lockdown in 2020, and how lockdown affected her and her young family.  In her latest work 'The Poets of Rapallo' we discover how Mussolini's Italy, drew an elite group of Anglophone writers including the American poet Ezra Pound and the Irish poet and statesman WB Yeats, to the small town of Rapallo in the 1920s and 1930s. Pound and Yeats become friends and kinsmen through their wives George and Dorothy who are cousins, and while Pound becomes a committed devotee of Italy's fascist regime Lauren's research shows the deep impact and influence of it on Yeats. It's a fascinating read with revealing new insights.



You can find out more about Lauren here: www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/lauren-arrington  

And more about the book 'The Poets of Rapallo' is available here: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/irish-studies/research/research-projects/rapallo-research/

and you can buy it here : https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-poets-of-rapallo-9780198846543?facet_narrowbybinding_facet=Hardcover&facet_narrowbypubdate_facet=Next%203%20months&lang=en&cc=us

The Family of Things is an Athena Media independent podcast production. The producer and host is Helen Shaw. The digital editor is John Howard and the theme music is by Michael Gallen.



Lauren's episode marks the end of Season 2 of The Family of Things - thanks for listening! 

The Family of Things S2 E8: Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan
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The Dublin based Indian poet and arts manager, Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan is Helen Shaw's guest in this episode of The Family of Things. Chandrika was born in Delhi and as a child lived in the Presidential Palace with her grandparents since her grandfather was K.R. Narayanan, the first Indian President to be elected from the Dalit community. Chandrika's mother is an Indian diplomat and, as a young girl Chandrika moved with her to Sweden, and later to Turkey where she finished school. University brought her to the UK and after completing a BA and MA in Art History she began working in art auction house Christies but her plans to stay and take a Masters ended when the UK changes its immigration regulations and she was forced, quite quickly, to find to new home. She came to Dublin in 2012, took a Masters in Arts Management & Cultural Policy at UCD, and since then, as she says herself, she has found both a home and her tribe here, particularly in the queer, creative community.


Her work has been published in Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets from Dedalus Press, The Ireland Chair of Poetry Hold Open the Door anthology by UCD Press, the Green Carnations: 25 Young LGBTQ+ Poets from Ireland anthology by Book Hub Publishing, Banshee, Honest Ulsterman, Impossible Archetype, and Poetry Ireland Review. She has been featured on The Moth and Mortified podcasts, with work aired on NPR and Irish radio. She regularly performs at literary and cabaret events in Ireland. Chandrika was selected for the Irish Writers Centre XBorders programmes in 2018 and 2020. Chandrika is editor of Poetry Ireland’s Trumpet issue 9, and book reviewer for Children’s Books Ireland’s Inis magazine.

In this conversation she shares some turning points and her ode to Dublin 'You City You Boyfriend', as well as two short poems inspired by her mother, Chitra.

You can find out more about Chandrika and her work here: chandrika.ie

The Family of Things S2 E7 Paddy Woodworth
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Helen Shaw's guest in this episode is journalist, author and environmentalist Paddy Woodworth. Paddy is the author of 'Our Once and Future Planet' (2018), an exploration of how we restore our environment. In this conversation he shares how he became a nature lover when he was a young boy and his parents would de-camp from Bray to a nissan hut in Co Wicklow for the long summer months enjoying the outdoors. Helen and Paddy crossed paths in the mid 1980s when they were both journalists in the Irish Times and Paddy was well known as an expert on the Basque conflict. His earlier work 'Dirty War, Clean Hands' (2001) charted how the Spanish State confronted ETA and is seen as a seminal study on post-Franco Spain.
Paddy grew up in Bray in the 1950s, his family were Protestant, middle-class, and his early school days were seeped in what he describes as a 'little Britain' ethos. He reacted against it, and became more attracted to left-wing politics and republicanism, in an era of student politics and protests. In the 1970s he joined Official Sinn Fein and he talks about his disenchantment with it by the 1980s and how the only political agenda he now stands with is the environmental one, but he sees that movement as intrinsically tied to social justice.

You can find out more about Paddy's work here www.paddywoodworth.com

www.thefamilyofthings.com #TheFamilyofThings 

Helen Shaw's guest in this episode of The Family of Things is Steafán Hanvey an Irish singer-songwriter and poet, from Downpatrick, who has long found his home in Finland. Steafán's father is the well known Northern Irish photographer Bobbie Hanvey, and his poetry-photography book 'Reconstructions' (2018) presents his poems as conversations with his father's iconic photographs of 'The Troubles'. Today Steafán, as the pandemic paused his music career, has started a new professional life as a photographer, following once again in his father's footsteps, although his photos are often beautiful portraits and landscapes from Finland. In this episode Steafán shares how lockdown, and the pandemic year, crossed with one of the worst in his life, one of heartache and heartbreak.

Music you hear in this episode includes:

Rigmaroll (Finnish band & Steafán Hanvey)

Hands of a Farmer & Vanha häämarssi

Bobbie Hanvey & Houl Yer Whisht 'The Muttonburn Stream' & 'All Around the Loney'

Steafán Hanvey ' Deep Blue Sea'

Steafán Hanvey 'Secrets and Lies'

Steafán Hanvey & Tarja Merivirta"Masters of War' (Bob Dylan) with 

Janne Lappalainen: Nylon string guitar, banjo, electric guitar, bass, strings and drums programming.



Steafán also shares an extract from his poem 'Late Developer' from 'Reconstructions' his photo poetry book

You can find out more about his work, music, book, and poetry steafanhanvey.com

And check out his photography here : https://www.steafanhanveyphotography.com/

Steafán Hanvey YouTube : www.youtube.com/channel/UCiOpZJkO_iL0pYykVY7JixQ

The Family of Things : S2 E 5 Gerardine Meaney www.thefamilyofthings.com #TheFamilyofThings

Today's guest in The Family of Things with Helen Shaw is writer, feminist, digital humanities leader and researcher, Professor Gerardine Meaney of University College Dublin. Helen and Gerardine were both students in UCD studying English and History in the early 80s but while Helen moved on to journalism, Gerardine, a self-confessed book addict, stayed in research and began hunting for the loss voices of women writers, written out or censored in Ireland. Her quest to give voice to the women who were always there but erased led to her work in books like 'Reading the Irish Woman' (2013) and her seminal study 'Gender, Ireland and Cultural Change' (2010).

Gerardine embraced digital technologies as a means of opening access to learning and has been a pioneer in digital humanities using tools like audio podcasting to share knowledge. In this wide ranging conversation Gerardine, who is now Professor of Cultural Theory in the School of English, Drama and Film at UCD, explores what made her focus her attention on women, and how her new research work, around Victorian cultural values and migrant stereotypes, resonates with issues, like Brexit, today. She also talks about her own experience of surviving breast cancer, and how it has, in some ways, made her think bigger, and with more focus, around her work, and her life.

You can find out more about her work here people.ucd.ie/gerardine.meaney You can visit and explore Joyce's Dublin, the pioneering digital humanities project that Gerardine and Helen collaborated on in 2009 on www.joycesdublin.ie

The Family of Things is an independent podcast production by Athena Media. The presenter and producer is Helen Shaw. The digital editor is John Howard and the theme music is by Michael Gallen - 'The Old Haunt' - an instrumental version of a song released by Michael's band Ana Gog.

The Family of Things: S2 E4 Jack Lukeman www.thefamilyofthings.com #TheFamilyofThings

Today's guest with host Helen Shaw is modern troubadour Jack Lukeman, singer, songwriter and one time leader of the 90s band Jack L and the Black Romantics. Jack shares his journey from growing up in Athy, his apprenticeship as a motor mechanic ,to ending up discovering his stage self as a busker in Amsterdam and becoming part of the very lively and bohemian nightlife culture of Dublin in the early 1990s. During the past year, in the lockdowns, he's adapted well to the virtual world and performs regular Saturday night online gigs, drawing fans from across the world. It prompted him to release a Lockdown sessions album 'Streamed' and release a duet he's created with recording of his Dad, Sean Loughman snr singing.

Jack shares with Helen his love of music and singing, 'it's a vocation, it's my life', he says and talks of how he has used the lockdown time, when his international tours with Jools Holland and gigs with Sting, have been postponed, by embracing a new project and shaping a dream-like film around the diaries and story of his grandfather. We hear Jack's music from the early days in the mid 90s with the Black Romantics in the Da Club in Dublin to his stage performances and lockdown sessions. An uplifting sound-led story of a man who has made and shaped his own path in life.

In this episode you hear songs including: That's Life - (Dean Kay/Kelly Gordon) Sean Loughman Snr and Jack Lukeman Young At Heart - (Johnny Richards/Carolyn Leigh) Sean Loughman Snr Jackie -(Jacques Brel) Jack L and The Black Romantics Live at the Da Club 1995 Jackie - ( Jacques Brel) Jack L and The Black Romantics (Wax album version) The King of Soho - Jack Lukeman Ode to Ed Wood - Jack Lukeman Rooftop Lullaby - Jack Lukeman Moon River -( Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer) Jack Lukeman Baltimore - (Randy Newman) Jack Lukeman Ol' Man River - (Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein) Jack Lukeman Golden Brown - ( The Stranglers) Jack Lukeman Tuberara Well - ( folk song) Jack Lukeman Forever Young - ( Bob Dylan) Jack Lukeman Find out more about Jack and his music and gigs www.jacklukeman.com

Episode Transcript: https://www.happyscribe.com/transcriptions/7d5a5ae61b404228911454fbb0a9e262/edit_v2

The Family of Things is an independent podcast from Athena Media, the host is Helen Shaw, the digital editor is John Howard and the theme music is by Michael Gallen - from Ana Gog 'The Old Haunt'. If you like what we do please do support us - via our patreon www.patreon.com/tfot @ AthenaMediaLtd 2021 * no use without permission

Season 2 is being recorded remotely.