Cork city's unique society and culture are the result of centuries of isolation and proud self-sufficiency, writes Thomas McCarthy
For all the fuss that's been made of it in recent years, the city of Cork is almost wholly unknown. At this moment, on the day the city celebrates its designation as European Capital of Culture, I would dare anyone to say they know it well: the hundreds of memoirs, lanes, groves and lakes; those editions of Bolster's, Southword and Innti; the shopping centres, astonishing church interiors, artists' and printers' studios, hidden bird sanctuaries, the hills of Montenotte and Sunday's Well, breathtaking vistas such as those from Shandon Steeple or from Audley Place on Patrick's Hill or from the car-park in the Hollyhill Shopping Centre.
Then there's the city within a city: UCC, with its elegant campus, its gleaming Glucksman Gallery, Romanesque Honan Chapel, and its powerful engineering and bio-science faculties. As I walked to that university the other day I passed "Singer's Corner", at whose traffic lights the poet Seán Ó Ríordáin spotted the child who inspired one of his greatest poems, Na Súile Donna. I made our way towards the Mardyke, a grove of trees planted by Dutch merchants of the early 18th century and recalled so beautifully by David Marcus in his recent writing.
Always a teeming city, it's impossible to walk the streets of Cork and not encounter a house, a street corner, a shop window or person that ignites a memory of some song, poem or painting. For me, every square, street, lane and quayside of Cork is haunted with fiction, music or art. Whether it's Patrick Galvin's father with his unused boat waiting for good weather, Seán Ó Faoláin's younger self watching the military parades on Wellington Road, Daniel Corkery's suburban lough, Seán O'Tuama's Fair Hill, Daniel Maclise's Blarney, Robert Gibbings's Carrigrohane Road or Father Prout's The Bells of Shandon, Cork still radiates a sense of being that is phenomenal, magical, artistic.
As a Co Waterford man living in this energetic and gifted place for more than 30 years, I've been astonished by Cork's hermetic wealth, the density of its self-reference and the casualness with which it casts off its achievements locally. Capital of the south, star of a thousand sporting finals, refuge of artists and poets, city of fine cheeses and fine beer, Cork has thrived independently, almost like a city Republic, since the 13th century. Indeed, its capacity to survive alone through trade and intermarriage has almost been its undoing. There has always been a sense locally that Cork doesn't feature enough in national debates, that it doesn't connect enough with Dublin. This has always been the situation - it became so acute in the 18th century that Cork appointed an ambassador to Dublin so its voice could be heard. Now Cork 2005 presents us with another red letter year, a moment in history when it stands up and speaks to the nation and to Europe.
The other day as I stood with a group of Dutch journalists at the door of the Imperial Hotel, I pointed across the road to what is, in effect, the remnant of a red-brick Dutch merchant terrace on South Mall. Glimpses of older days, remnants and echoes, are to be found in every part of Cork city.
A great deal of its past is hidden behind archways and down lanes but one can still see evidence of the prosperity of the early 19th century that led to the founding of many cultural and educational organisations, such as the Royal Cork Institution (1803) and the Cork Society of Arts (1815). This was an era of great monumental works, of the sculptors Hogan and Foley after the arrival from Rome of the influential Canova Casts. A School of Art and Design was established in 1849, while the Cork School of Music was founded 29 years later. But the energy of Cork always emanates from individuals: from James Barry, for example, who was born in Spring Lane, Blackpool. Barry has the rare distinction of being the only artist expelled from the Royal Academy. Perhaps 2005 is the year he might be readmitted.
In 1806, the wonderful portrait painter Daniel Maclise was born on the Mardyke. Maclise's life and career was truly extraordinary: he enjoyed the friendship of the Prince Regent and Charles Dickens, and he fed the English mind with Arthurian images through his brilliant illustrations of Tennyson's poems.
If you walk along Grand Parade you'll come to one of the great treasure houses of the city, the municipal library. Go upstairs to the local studies room and see in the preserved and catalogued collections that Cork has also been a great city of writing and publishing. Writers such as Francis Sylvester Mahony, aka "Father Prout", Frank O'Connor, Ó Ríordáin, Mary Leland, Liam Ó Muirthile and Louis De Paor immediately spring to my mind. Then there's Daniel Corkery, born in 1878, who wrote the novel The Threshold of Quiet in 1917 as well as the influential Hidden Ireland in 1927. Books by writers such as Ó Faoláin and Frank O'Connor, who consolidated the reputation of the Irish short story after Joyce, are here too.
Arguably the most important Irish-language poet of the last two centuries was Ó Ríordáin, who spent his entire ailing life in and around Cork. The literary creativity of the place is rich, ongoing and ambitious. In 2005 some of that ambition will find a European voice through the translation work of poets such as Theo Dorgan, Greg Delanty and Roz Cowman.
The vibrant street-life of Cork, its festivals and meetings, its promenades and sporting fixtures, tells another story - one that is contemporary and lively. The city is very much a living place with visual artists such as Maud Cotter and Hugh Lorigan or singer-songwriters such as Jimmy MacCarthy, Sinead Lohan, John Spillane and Jimmy Crowley, not to mention the unquenchably energetic Tim Riordan and his Natural Gas. In the programme for Cork 2005 one can see local theatre companies such as Corca Dorca, Meridien, Graffiti and Boomerang continuing a tradition going back to the Smock Alley Company of 1703.
Yet the present moment belongs also to the thousands of students who pour into Washington Street and MacCurtain Street every Thursday (for Thursday nights are "student nights"). From lively cultural spaces such as Triskel, Cork Printmakers and the National Sculpture Factory, one can see that this city is a very young place. The other day I heard a tourist phoning his partner at their hotel: "Honey, I'm staying in town. There seems to be a festival going on." But there was no festival. What the man had encountered was Cork energy, pure and simple; not a festival but an ordinary, busy Saturday on Winthrop Street.
Thomas McCarthy is a Waterford-born poet who works for Cork 2005. His Merchant Prince will be published by Anvil Press Poetry in April