'We spoke about anything and everything': Cork's Cónal Creedon rubs shoulders with royalty

Listeners to RTÉ radio’s Sunday Miscellany on Mother’s Day the Sunday before last would have heard Cork writer Cónal Creedon’s dedication to his late mother Siobhán Blake, who grew up in Adrigole on the Beara Penninsula.

The dedicated song, Come West With Me To Beara, was also recently enjoyed by Prince Albert of Monaco, when Cónal had the opportunity to read his work for him during his five- week residency in Monaco at the Princess Grace Irish Library.

“My time in Monaco coincided with the St Patrick’s Day celebrations,” explains Cónal, “so I was included in the schedule of events hosted by the Princess Grace Irish Library, an eclectic mix of music, song, dance, spoken word and lectures.

“There were so many highlights during my stay in Monaco, it would be impossible to pick one, but performing for Prince Albert was a very special evening.”

The Corkman’s first meeting with him was for a formal photograph with The Irish Ambassador, Niall Burgess, and the Trustees of The Princess Grace Library, a place dedicated to the cherished memory of the Prince’s mother, the famous film star and Princess, Grace Kelly.

Cónal continues: “When we met in a more social setting, we spoke about anything and everything - Irish rugby, and generally about the nature of the Irish diaspora.

“We also spoke about the 1950s when the fledging Irish Free State was very seldom seen or represented on the world stage.

“The Irish at home often looked to the Irish diaspora, to people such as Prince Albert’s Irish mother Grace Kelly, and also to Maureen O’Hara and John Ford.

“I told him that my own grandfather went to America back at the turn of the last century and that he was one of the few to make the return journey home to Ireland.”

Another highlight of Cónal’s time in Monaco was his spoken word collaboration with traditional Irish band Dubh-Linn, along with Helen Lawlor on harp.

When he arrived in Monaco, Cónal went straight into a performance with the theme ‘A Sense of Place’, where he spoke about his home place in downtown Cork, and what he calls the ‘Spaghetti Bowl’ of streets where he grew up and still lives, and is also the title of his most recent book.

“The performance on the first night was a one-hour solo event,” he says. “I covered a lot of ground. I spoke about the Spaghetti Bowl - the history, story and poetry, it was a lot of fun.

“I made a lot of friends that night, and that set the tone for the subsequent five weeks.

“The population of Monaco is under 40,000 so it’s really a very small city, a fraction of the size of Cork. It’s in my nature to talk to relative strangers so I met a whole array of very interesting people.

“I lost my belief in an interventionist God of creation a long time ago - yet, sometimes when I’m away I will visit a local service. It’s where people congregate. It presents insight into a specific slice of local culture.

“On three consecutive Sundays, I went to three different services; St Paul’s Anglican Church, Monte Carlo, the Russian Orthodox Church and Sacré Coeur Catholic Church in Beaulieu sur Mer, where they sang an extract from the O’Riada Mass.

“It was interesting that after each service, the congregation were invited to regroup back to the crypts of the respective churches for a social get-together.”

Irish culture is very prevalent in Monaco, with the legacy of Princess Grace very evident right across the principality.

“The Princess Grace Irish Library is not an outpost of Irish culture, it is the epicentre of Irish culture,” says Cónal.

“There is a series of interconnecting rooms adorned with the full cannon of Irish literature, personal artefacts and photographs relating to Princess Grace and her connection to Ireland.

“It was such a privileged place to be. The location itself has a magical charm all of its own, perched on a clifftop in the shadow of the Royal Palace, set in a most evocative warren of ancient streets looking out onto the Cotê D’Azur.

“My hosts, Paula Farquharson and Geraldine Lance at the PGIL, offered a delicate balance of seclusion and inclusion - perfect for a creative environment.

“I was also blessed that Síle Jackson, attached to the Ireland Funds Monaco, who sponsored the residency, took me under her wing and invited me to tag along whenever she had to do errands beyond the border of the Principality, west along the French coast and east into Italy.”

Another heartwarming highlight for Cónal was presenting the ‘Cónal Creedon Poetry Excellence Award’ when 20 seventh grade students from The Institute François d’ Assise Nicolas Barré, aged around 12-13, came to the library and each one presented a poem about what they knew about Ireland.

“There were three judges so it was all carried out with due diligence, and it was really magical and humbling that they named the award in my honour,” says Cónal.

“It was so very special and gave me a heightened sense of national pride.

The magic of a PGIL residency is that it offers that elusive space to think, uninterrupted by the simple complexities of day-to-day life.

“I found myself transported to a new place, compelled to engage with new people, a new language, a new culture, and that in itself has the power to wake up whole sections of the brain that usually lie dormant due to the comfortable over familiarity of home,” says Cónal.

“The residency offered me the invaluable opportunity to step off the hurdy-gurdy-merry-go round of life, time to take stock, reset the clock, and write.

“During my stay, I wrote a short one-woman play, with a working title of It’s Not You, It’s Me which will be produced by Landmark Productions and performed during the Cork Midsummer Festival in June.”