Lecture-Performance
Glucksman Ireland House, New York University, 2025
The Colloquium for Unpopular Culture & Glucksman House present
CORK IS AN ANAGRAM OF ROCK
A performance lecture by Colm McAuliffe
Cork people possess greater talent and are more metropolitan in their ideas than the natives of any other parts of Ireland. So says an anonymous writer in an Irish Quarterly Review from 1852. Most sane Corkonians would agree. The true architecture of Cork isn't contained within the skyline of the city and county; it's there in the vivid, brilliant faces of the people gambolling and talking through its streets.
The Cork Carnivalesque: it leaps out of the political writings of Frank O'Connor and Sean O'Faoilian; the fiction of Kevin Barry; the republican activism of Muriel McSwiney; the music of Microdisney and Sultans of Ping; the fabrications and tall tales of Michéal Mac Liammóir and Danny La Rue. And so, this afternoon asks: is there such a thing as a humble Corkonian?