A digital archive encapsulating the works of artists residing near the Border from 1921 to present day has been inaugurated, incorporating music from Big Tom and visually illustrating Orange Order lodges. The endeavour, coined as Ireland’s Border Culture, showcases a collection of 170 instances of literary, musical, and visual culture made possible because of a joint effort between Trinity College Dublin and the Seamus Heaney Centre from Queen’s University Belfast.
The government-funded Shared Island project has a wide-ranging archive including music like Back to Castleblayney by Big Tom & the Mainliners, No Train to Cavan by Lisa O’Neill, Spike Milligan’s humorous novel Puckoon and a united Ireland tea towel by Rita Duffy.
Eve Patten, English professor and director of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute, and one of the leads of the project, uttered “The border separating Ireland isn’t simply a political or constitutional divide, but a place of unique artistic production.”
The initiative hopes to record “the variety and wealth of references to the Border, thus facilitating a comprehension of the impact of the partition on a distinctive form of cultural productivity”. Included on the borderculture.net website are extracts from renowned poets such as Louis MacNeice, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon, Eiléan ni Chuilleanáin, and novelists like Pat McCabe, Jennifer Johnston, John McGahern and Michelle Gallon.
The music found in the archive isn’t limited to country and Irish favourite Big Tom and the Mainliners. It also incorporates compositions from Dundalk punk poet Jinx Lennon and the performances from the 1964 Clones Fleadh Cheoil.