Exercise: Fictionalizing history

FinsburyParkCarrots

Please read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Potato_Famine_%281845-1849%29

Research as much as you like on the topic, and please write a piece of prose, poetry or drama set historically at the time of the famine. You could write from any perspective: A starving Irish countryman, woman or child on the land; an emigrant preparing to flee to America; or an English politician or statesman. This exercise is a test of how you take historical data and shape it imaginatively.

FinsburyParkCarrots

It's a challenging exercise, but does anyone want to give it a try?

olderman

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

It's a challenging exercise, but does anyone want to give it a try?

it is challenging, especially for an american in kansas.. if i am allowed to interject personal observations of poverty (i did not live in poverty, however, i did observe poverty) from my youth, i will do the research and compose a poem..

fins is one tough professor!!

FinsburyParkCarrots

olderman wrote:

it is challenging, especially for an american in kansas.. if i am allowed to interject personal observations of poverty (i did not live in poverty, however, i did observe poverty) from my youth, i will do the research and compose a poem..

fins is one tough professor!!

Well, you could write from the perspective of an Irish immigrant arrived in Kansas City during the famine!

Dreams of Red

..or you could imagine a german-shepherd born into an irish sustenance without adequate landscape or shelter, and suffered to live on the bread-scraps and mouse-catchings of the family-days; but of course that would be non-sensical and anti-historical, as SirEnglishRabbit, i mean FinsburyParkCarrots, has so readily requested.

on a side note, i had some RedBreast Irish Whiskey today in Toronto, and it was spicy-scrum-didily-umptious.. [in combo with the bloody-mary i had for breakfast on the boat-over and the Molson Red i had with lunch afterwards;)]

sorry, sometimes i just can't help myself.. AND I"M STILL HOPING NEIL COMES OUT TO PLAY THE TORONTO SHOW!!!!!!!


There is a town in north Ontario,
With dream comfort memory to spare,
And in my mind
I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
Leave us

Helpless, helpless, helpless
Baby can you hear me now?
The chains are locked
and tied across the door,
Baby, sing with me somehow.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
Leave us

Helpless, helpless, helpless.

LeaderOfMen

No potatoes to eat
I can't feed my family
no potatoes to grow
how did I even survive it, I dont know.
No potatoes to sell
gotta make a living doing something else
no potatoes for half a decade
think how much vodka that could have made.

olderman

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

Well, you could write from the perspective of an Irish immigrant arrived in Kansas City during the famine!

Tom Pendergast was the son of Irish immigrants and he ran Kansas City's political machine well into the 20th Century. His influence on the U.S.A. was subsequently felt when Harry Truman became President. Truman was a cog in the Pendergast political machine which controlled K.C. during his time. Starving Irish immigrants in KC due to the famine? I'll check it out.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Dreams of Red wrote:

SirEnglishRabbit,

I'm Irish. Funnily enough.

ISN

hehehehehehe......that's funny Fins.......

I'm Irish.....funnily enough.......

said with just the right amount of British sarcasm

(ps.....if I have time, I'll do this one.....no pormises)

velvet I site

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

I'm Irish. Funnily enough.

nice.
.....

FinsburyParkCarrots

Does anyone want to have a go at this, though?

ISN

Yes, Fins.....I do......I might take a gander when you've gone off......I have pretty much a free day 2moro......I think I might try it......although you know I'm not the Prose Queen.......

FinsburyParkCarrots

Last bump for now.

burtschips

nothing written but maybe an idea. I would concentrate on the repossesions/ tennant problems. A tenant a landlord and a twist. Could there be a play on the economic reasons for the spate of repos in the 90s......

ISN

I'm bumping this - I intended to do it last night, but I got side-tracked.....I spent the whole evening in the company of a charming man in the gaelic club, and downed countless guinnesses......and didn't get back til midnight, so I might have a crack at it tonight.....instead.....be patient Fins......:) what I'm going to do, is write something by one of the people in charge in the British government......completely stolen from the book I'm reading at the moment.....

LeaderOfMen

LeaderOfMen wrote:

No potatoes to eat
I can't feed my family
no potatoes to grow
how did I even survive it, I dont know.
No potatoes to sell
gotta make a living doing something else
no potatoes for half a decade
think how much vodka that could have made.

read that again today, makes me laugh

FinsburyParkCarrots

Vodka? Wrong country.

LeaderOfMen

I believe vodka can be made from potatoes. Can it not?

FinsburyParkCarrots

LeaderOfMen wrote:

I believe vodka can be made from potatoes. Can it not?

So can projectile missiles. :cool: In Ireland in 1845-50 I think you'll find whiskey in its variant forms was the drink being made from spuds. This exercise is about researching the historical info and turning it into art.

FinsburyParkCarrots

tchaliz wrote:

I was nothing. Born in a waste land, child from a lesser kind. That boat took me down south for 3 long weeks. Everyday the air got warmer, and the sun could burn and tan my skin a bit more. Every night I saw the sky above change, filled with new stars I had never seen, until none of those I knew was left. Covered in red dust and sweat we were packed in pick ups at arrival and driven to the parcels of land allocated by the governement. As many others i knew nothing about cultivating land...No landlords, no farms, no church, no school, no law, no nothing but us, here and now. The "promised" land looked very much like a no man's land. But it was not. And since we were children of a lesser god, I was not surprised to see our blood flow after some years. Our blood was cheap, we were colonizers. An ugly word by today's standarts...victims with blood stained hands.

- hem...sorry Fins, it's not about Ireland but aren't all emigrants from the same land?

It's beautiful. Thankyou.

burtschips

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

So can projectile missiles. :cool: In Ireland in 1845-50 I think you'll find whiskey in its variant forms was the drink being made from spuds. This exercise is about researching the historical info and turning it into art.

I thought poteen or pocheen was the potatoe drink, 100% proof rocket fuel. Ireland did distill the first whiskey though, bushmills, I think somewhere near giants causeway in antrim. I visited the distillery, was first used by warriors to give them courage. apparently.