Go n-éirí an bóthar leat: Poet Martin Dyar anticipates an unconventional tour for his anthology Vital Signs: Poems of Illness and Healing, as the Festival in a Van project in association with Poetry Ireland take a live version of Dyar's work on tour to 7 counties, and hosting 21 gigs, this August. Martin introduces the tour below.
In my role as the curator of an upcoming national poetry and music tour with the Festival in a Van company (FIAV), I have noticed something quirky in the way the FIAV team speak about the vehicle that is at the centre of their work.
It doesn’t have a nickname. But when they say 'the van’, a long vowel is used, and you hear familiarity and affection, together with an unmistakable note of pride at the thought that so much has been achieved with a relatively simple concept.
Founded during the worst pandemic days, and in the hope of restoring livelihoods while parachuting solace and entertainment into restricted environments, FIAV are renowned for having staged hundreds of professional pop-up concerts across the country.
Their reputation could lead you to assume they have a fleet. Most likely, before too long, they will, but so far it is a single bright and intrepid van that has been turning up so faithfully, and mostly in the carparks of care homes, supported living villages, psychiatric services, and direct provision centres.
Beginning next week (from Aug 14), we’ll be road-testing an anthology called Vital Signs: Poems of Illness and Healing, which I have edited. We’ll visit seven counties before the end of August. The van with the giant disco ball logo on its side will disgorge its contents for an hour at a time in twenty-one places; seven poets and twelve musicians will participate, among them the harpist Allanah Thornburgh, and the 2023 Pigott Poetry Prize winner Tom French.
Previous FIAV experience has me primed. I am looking forward to seeing the unassuming duo of seasoned technicians, Benny & Vincent, the men with all the knowledge and all the mileage, working their magic. There’s the need to achieve a spontaneous rapport with staff and volunteers on arrival, before carefully and quickly choosing the best place to park the van and create the performance space. However dream-like it might be, with its bunting and lights, the stage never looks out of place. The backdrop and the wings that are painted with sylvan scenes will be, wherever possible, continuous with any nearby trees and foliage. Benny and Vincent have a way with that particular illusion.
We'll be a convoy, and we’ll share our journey. The journey will be in our voices.
There’ll be a need to ensure that the PA system reaches a potentially dispersed audience: clusters of people in doorways, others in day rooms, perhaps with closed windows, some viewing the show alone from upper floors or balconies. Word will have gone around, and locals too will gather. At some point someone will dance alone between the stage and the crowd proper, and soon, everyone who can will join them. However off the grid we feel, we will have been anticipated. Similarly, whatever we believe we represent, there will be some for whom the whole thing is a clear throwback to livelier, better days, a kind of vindication. It will not be a surprise if a real party is starting as we’re heading out the gate.
The tour will be a collaboration in a very full sense, and I am confident that more than half the battle will be complete each day when, as MC, I begin to introduce the performers. I am a blow-in to the world of the van, but because a number of the guest poets will be having their first taste of FIAV, I will have tried to calm their nerves.
‘The thing about the van,’ I have found myself saying, squeezing and leveraging that little vowel - the thing about the van is that everyone is attracted to it. It has taken on an irrepressible life of its own. We’ll be a convoy, and we’ll share our journey. The journey will be in our voices. And you needn’t get bogged down in thinking you have a therapeutic role. It doesn’t work that way. You see, the van is the quality of the words on the page, and the act of recitation, and the lift of the music. The van is the people watching and listening, and the way time stops for an hour.
Martin Dyar’s next collection of poems, The Meek, is forthcoming from Wake Forest University Press. He is currently Artist in Residence at the Jackie Clarke Collection. The Festival in a Van Vital Signs tour will begin in Co. Louth on August 14th - find out more here.
