Episode 4 I Lár an Aonaigh

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The poems in Death Of A Naturalist and a number of other poems

are a kind of, you might call,

an archaeology of the imagination, you know, digging up the past.

I point the snout of the car towards Derry

The windscreen framing the Sperrins framing

The high and low lands between us.

Mid-Term Break.

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close

At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home

In the porch I met my father crying -

He had always taken funerals...

Being a poet in the North, it's impossible to ignore

Seamus Heaney, the great man, and his work.

It's just this sheer technical application of his writing.

Sometimes I just have to stop myself and really admire

how a certain thing is structured or a particular rhyme-scheme.

But obviously it ties me to this country that I love as well

and the countryside.

I live in Belfast now and I live right in the city, and

I really miss the country and when I read Heaney I can just escape.

It's sheer escapism for me.

Cut from the green hedge a forked hazel stick

That he held...

'Each generation of poets and poetry lovers,

'they'll discover Death Of A Naturalist.'

And its power has not diminished over the years at all.

People still celebrate it. That's why we're here today

to recognise that, but I think it's still relevant

and it's great that it holds up so much.

-You're very welcome.

-Thanks for having me.

Well, tell me about this identity, Jealous of the Birds.

How did you come up with that?

I started out kind of unintentionally,

just me at home recording music and songs,

then I released an EP on Bandcamp and it got some attention up North.

And then from there I started gigging and stuff like that.

And even though you've only been at this for a very,

very short period of time, you have a very definitive style already,

layered vocals of very varying arrangements.

How long has it taken you to come up with this approach?

I think it comes mostly from

just being a really attentive music listener.

I love music a lot, so I think when I went into writing songs,

I kind of brought the styles and genres

and things that I like in music, and brought it into my own stuff.

You mentioned Bandcamp there.

Hot on the heels of your EP release came the album.

How big a step or how big a jump was that for you?

It felt like a huge step just because...in terms of production.

The EP was all self-recorded at home.

And the album, Parma Violets, was done at Big Space Studios in Newry

with Declan Legge.

So just in terms of being able to have

so much more at your disposal, to record was great, yeah.

That can be a good and a bad thing at times, though?

Yeah, sometimes you get paralysed with the choice you have, but for me

it was really freeing, just being able to get the sounds you wanted.

Well, Naomi, you're very much at the beginning of your career.

So the big bad future is out there. What do you think it holds for you?

Hopefully I'll be going on a short UK and Irish tour

and writing more music, just writing and recording.

So, yeah, it's exciting.

-And performing lots as well, I presume?

-Performing.

Yeah, there's some gigs up.

Big gig coming up right now, very soon as well.

Thanks so much for being with us this evening.

# Rock me, Mama, like a wagon wheel

# Rock me, Mama, any way you feel

# Hey... #

We got the project up and running

with 40 people with learning disabilities at the time.

Doing loads of different creative arts,

life skills programmes, and really trying to get young people

involved in the creative arts with learning disabilities.

-What sort of classes, then, take place here?

-They would learn how to sing.

Like what's going on behind us here. And then they'd go and perform.

There would be life skills classes that go on,

so they do a programme that involves learning to travel independently,

working as part of a team, having healthy relationships.

Really, we're just enriching and enhancing their lives

through the use of the creative arts.

People think that Tuned In's all about music and drama

and dance and all that, it's not really.

It's about giving young people with learning disabilities

a better chance in life to better themselves.

# My only sunshine

# You make me happy... #

What we're doing today at the old folks' home at Foyleville,

we perform to the old folks there

and the intergenerational work there is beautiful.

You know, you get to see the students working with older people

and talking to older people and involving them in that.

# My only sunshine

# You make me happy

# When skies are grey... #

# Please don't take my sunshine away. #

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# She said I'm blue as a robin's egg

# I've done nothing to make me proud

# I rehearse conversations in

# The shower when I am home alone

# No-one has ever bought me flowers

# Or smoked a joint on my Persian rug

# Go to Mexico

# And lie under a mango tree

# And watch a line of crows

# Grace the Southern breeze but

# You won't know where they go

# Everything just scatters out like

# Acorns in the snow

# Or dust clouds in a drought

# She said I care too much these days

# About my place in this ball of yarn

# There's not a lot that I can boast

# I water plants and make French toast

# And muse like some old misanthrope

# Afraid to sow all my wild oats

# Read Walt Whitman poems

# Drink a bottle of champagne

# And sing some Leonard Cohen

# I love it when you speak so plain

# The way you often do

# When I am crying after midnight

# Just between us two

# It makes me smile to know you're all right. #

SHE HUMS

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