FROM dairy farmers to mischievous 80-year-olds, Kildare writer and Craicly founder Jane Gormley has gathered the stories of ordinary Irish people in her new book, A Seat by the Fire.
Due out on October 26 through Cork-based publisher Mercier Press, the book brings together 22 stories from the people who have taken part in Craicly events over the past three years, alongside Gormley’s own writing.
As Gormley discovered while building Craicly, you don’t need to be a professional storyteller to be a very good one.
“I was really taken aback by some of the talent,” she said.
“You forget how good people are at telling stories, even when they are not used to it.”
For Gormley, there is something particularly Irish about that ability.
“There is a natural understanding in Ireland of how to tell a good story,” she said.
Jane Gormley (Photo by Craicly)Over three years, Gormley built Craicly into a series of gatherings where people could come and share their stories.
The people in the early days who took part were essential to everything that followed, and looking back now she thinks it was probably inevitable that the stories would eventually find their way into a book.
Writing was something Gormley had always loved, although she had never been published before.
With Craicly she heard the stories first-hand. She heard how audiences responded to them, and she heard the voices of the people telling them.
Mercier Press has described it as “part manifesto and part memoir”.
But choosing those stories was not so easy.
“In some ways it was really difficult; all the stories that were shared, they all had different qualities and different subjects, and they’re all brilliant,” Gormley said.
A Craicly event in the Cider Steam Shed (Photo by Craicly)Craicly events are never recorded to allow people to trust and be at ease.
For those who did agree to be included, most of them sent Gormley voice notes telling their stories, which she then transcribed.
“Oral storytelling and written storytelling are really different formats,” she said.
Gormley’s solution was to edit as little as possible.
In fact, she says, she “begged and pleaded” with the publishers not to polish the stories into something that sounded too perfect.
“I wanted them to read like oral stories.”
That meant keeping the phrases and mistakes, the things that make one person’s voice totally unique.
Jane Gormley with her husband Willie Mulhall (Photo by Craicly)And the stories themselves range widely.
One follows a young dairy farmer in Cork, a family man with young children, who is forced to sell his entire dairy herd as he struggles through a difficult period in his life.
Another is a lot funnier.
Dublin woman Maeve White tells the story of her father and her Uncle Tony, both in their late 80s, and the shenanigans they got up to after being sent off on a cruise.
It is this variety that gives A Seat by the Fire its character.
For anyone wanting to get into storytelling, Gormley’s advice is simple.
“Just write! It can be easier than you think or more achievable than you think.”
After years of writing and telling stories, she is ready for a little bit more craic.
A Seat by the Fire is out on October 26, and Gormley and Craicly will hold a launch evening at Bewley’s on Grafton Street in Dublin to celebrate, you can find out more: here
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