Tom Lyden is a local poet who has had work published in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. He is very influenced by music and nature, and is currently organising The Basket House group, an arts collective which will stage weekly readings and events in Clifden during the summer.

Tom's writing will be featured on the Clifden & Connemara page from now on.

This is happening because they used to play at the Blues Festival. Now BasketHouse has put together all of this. Even as they rehearsed some numbers I could feel the excitement, we're transported, we're amazed. Music surely is the finest part of us.

With Mark Dignam there is a guitar and words that both scalds and heals. His vision painfully reminds us of an aurora that we've bungled. "There's all this talk about a workforce like it's a disposable product that's become obsolete on a production line that's cast away like last year's fashion. We've all become a natural waste product of a system that can't see people evolving as a race: we're evolving as a business. So we wave our flags at the tourists saying come see the little people. Then we stick our fingers up when the coaches pull away."

And Glen Hansard the gifted angel at our tables. We go many miles with him, go past crossroads of love and yearning, steeped in the high lonesome sound of the human condition. Songs that teach us that if we're not broken then we must help the broken.

And Mullarkey's floor pounds, Mullarkey's floor resounds. There are sixty dancers, there are a hundred voices. A rapport like a mantra stumbling up the steps to Church Street. We're connected to the magic, we're swamped by the sheer force of The Frames. And now The Frames vibe us through the Winter, help us to know is it loneliness or is it burning? And Glen he told us that there's "...a thousand falls before the footsteps of the wise."

Tom Lyden
(17/9)