Search Results for 'Walter Macken'

Tomorrow five weeks, on July 15, at around ten past one, when you’re about to take the first bite of your lunchtime sandwich, with the radio on, we might might rue the fact we didn’t do more, that we didn’t try harder. Because at that moment, at that time, it will be too late to make a difference. At that time, the winner of the European Capital of Culture title for 2020 will have been announced. And in two centres, there will be crying, beating of breasts and gnashing of teeth. And in one city, there will be gnashing of breasts and beating of teeth.

In the second half of the 19th century, the overcrowded condition of the graveyards of Galway was an issue which faced the Town Commissioners. At a meeting in mid-April 1873, one person mentioned that in the previous 30 years, almost two and a half thousand burials had taken place in the little cemetery in The Claddagh, largely as a result of the Famine and its aftermath.

"Stop fiddling about with red tape" is the message of one local councillor to City Hall, who is demanding the local authority "press ahead immediately" with installing CCTV cameras to "combat crime" in estates on the east side of Galway.

As we come to the end of the Walter Macken centenary, we thought it appropriate to reprint the only known piece of poetry that he wrote. It was first printed in 1963 in Criterion, a UCG magazine that was edited by Kevin Brophy at the time. It is homage, ómós if you like, to an old fisherman and reflects Macken’s love of fishing, of the Corrib, and of his understanding of people. The photograph of himself and his wife Peggy was taken in the garden of their home Gort na Gainiv near Oughterard c1960.

On Friday November 29 1940, a tiny new bookshop opened its doors for the first time on High Street in Galway city. Little could its proprietors, Des and Maureen Kenny, have then envisaged that this modest business start-up – embarked upon when Ireland was in the early stages of World War II rationing - would go on to be one of Ireland’s foremost bookshops and art galleries and, over its six decades, a valued friend to many of the country’s most eminent writers and artists.

Walter Macken’s first published English language play Mungo’s Mansion was about people in the tenements of Buttermilk Lane about to be rehoused away out in the country, in the wilds of Shantalla. This was causing great distress to the ‘townies’ who would have to move less than a mile as the crow flies.

An Cheathrú Rua

Working out of Library Headquarters in Island House, Galway county librarian Peter Rabbitt oversees a service that comprises 29 libraries across the city, county, and islands, one which has a membership of some 40,000 regular users. The City Library in Hynes Building alone issues some 90,000 books each year, while the total for the county is some 600,000.

A special series of talks to celebrate the official opening of the Walter Macken commemorative display will take place in Oughterard Courthouse next week.