A Trip to Cork along the Flow Vélo:

Ireland is on everyone’s lips in the Cognac area this year. Hardly a conversation passes without a ‘Lisa McInerney‘, a ‘John Banville’ or a ‘Paddy Donnelly’ slipping out.

At least, this is the case among the team of people associated with Cognac’s European Literature festival (LEC : Littératures Européennes Cognac).

Held in November, the free festival features literature and art from a different European country each year – and 2024 is the turn of Ireland.

If you’re in France from 12-14 November, come to Cognac to meet a host of Irish writers via conferences, round tables, readings, discussions, book signings, art exhibitions and many other events that will help you understand Ireland better.

In September, I’ll be dedicating a blog post to the festival so that you have plenty of time to read the selected works and decide which authors you’d like to meet.

Meanwhile, the LEC has developed partnerships with other local festivals, libraries and cultural centres, bringing Ireland to us via a variety of events throughout the year.

Back in March, the LEC held a fascinating musical reading of Claire Keegan’s ‘So Late in the Day’ (what a brilliant work that book is).

And last weekend the LEC partnered with the festival Prise de Paroles (Speaking Out) held at Mitterand’s childhood home in Jarnac, where we met the talented Lisa McInerney, award-winning author of the Cork-based The Glorious Heresies trilogy.

Don’t worry: she’ll be coming to the festival in November too.

But what has the Flow Vélo got to do with any of this?, I hear you muse.

I’m lucky enough to live within freewheeling distance of the Cognac section of the Flow Vélo cycleway. And Jarnac is only 14 km from Cognac via this river-hugging part of the itinerary. So, unaware of the amber storm alerts, I set off early on Saturday morning, snug in my waterproof jacket, and sped along the newly resurfaced track* towards François Mitterand’s family home.

I was to spend the day helping sell books for Le Texte Libre – Cognac’s associative independent bookshop – and the idea of bookending a day at the cashtill with a little sport seemed a good one.

Mitterand’s birthplace is a wonderful venue for the summer festival, since the interviews and presentations take place on a lawn. The stage is set up under a huge lime tree that shelters the VIPs and part of the audience from the hot sun.

I took an hour off bookselling and sat down to enjoy interviewing Lisa McInerney. Gérard is a regular at the LEC festival: a Parisian journalist and the French translator of Joseph O’Connor, Salmon Rushdie and Paul Auster, among others, his interviews are always engaging and of top quality.

However, I did have chastise him when we all had lunch together afterwards.

As for Lisa, I was struck by the gentle demeanour of this woman, whose work – characterised by beautiful prose, a spattering of Irish terms and a wealth of rich, original imagery – is so masculine and violent.

It was a real pleasure to listen to Lisa’s soft, Irish accent as she answered Gérard’s difficult questions about Ireland and literature. Asked how she would define the Irish identity, Lisa explained how Ireland is always changing, due to its harsh history, and thus the question about what it means to be Irish constantly changes too. She mentioned the strong support the state gives Irish writers, promoting a plethora of literary magazines and small publishers. Lisa herself is editor of The Stinging Fly, a lit mag that showcases new writing both from Ireland and worldwide.

Gérard moved onto the theme of folklore in Irish literature, giving a spellbinding retelling of the legend about Oisin and Niamh and drawing parallels between Ryan in The Glorious Heresies and Oisin. Lisa said that as the Irish grow up with mythology, it seeps into their work. In her case, it’s not an intentional element.

She spoke about the place of Irish humour in the face of the country’s grim history, and how her stories, which feature drugs and prostitution, need light to balance the dark. ‘Irish history is ridiculous: if you don’t laugh, you’d cry,’ she said. She returned to this theme later, when she explained the importance of piano playing to her character Ryan, saying that his musical creation balances the destruction he’s involved in.

… Which brings me to why I had to tell off Mr Meudal.

I’ve only read the first book in the trilogy, you see. And of course Gérard had to explain the story to those in the audience who aren’t familiar with Lisa’s work. So I was obliged to plug my ears with my fingers for a good five minutes, tempted to sing ‘la, la, la’ to drown out the microphone. But that would have annoyed my neighbours even more than spoilers.

Go on. Say it. It was my fault for not reading all three books before the interview…

As Lisa’s interview – valiantly translated by David, a volunteer English teacher from a Niort high school – drew to a close with a reading, so did the good weather.

The lime tree sheltered everyone for a while. But by 3pm the storm arrived and, as I cycled home through puddles and drizzle, I realised that if the weather doesn’t improve drastically, my three-week cycling trip along La Vélidéale this summer may well be the most difficult yet.

More about that in August…

Meanwhile, have a happy – and hopefully dry – summer.

* In a previous blog post, I warned you that the Flow Vélo track was seriously damaged by floods and cars: it’s now (almost) as good as new!