From an old friend who in exile
Now for many years has toiled
Come to me news interesting,
In a letter travel soiled,
Of the scenes met in his wandering
And each alien custom too,
But his heart is still o’erflowing
With the ways his childhood knew.

Life within western city
Where the heart of pleasure reigns;
Life entwined with strange adventure
On Oregan’s boundless plains;
Years spent in unbroken silence
With all friends at home but, yet,
One haunt of his early boyhood
He does not to-day forget.

In a plaintive style he queries
If the woods are still the same;
Is the old horse chestnut blooming
On whose bark he carved his name?
Is the rock on Sunday evening
Still a cherished rendezvous
And the valley as attractive
As it used to be to view?

Does the gloomey old Ghost’s Parlour
Still hang out o’er Daloo’s wave,
Or has time left yet unaltered
Lovers’ seat and Meelin’s Cave?
Do the lads in summer twighlight
Gather to the Island Kiln
And is ‘Pata’ in the homeland
For to throw the big weight still?

Thus run on this exile’s questions,
Thus his memories have told
That his heart is still in Erin
While he works for foreign gold
And the lessons that were nutured
Here within his guileless breast
Cling to-day like ivy tendrils
Round him in the far-off West.

Ah, dear friend, works built by nature
Time but rarely overthrows
And your homeland’s golden beauty
Each day only fairer grows.
Those dear places in your visions
No despoiling hand has seen.
Let them rest within your fancy
Brighter now than they have been.

by James Curran

This poem was written by James Curran who lived on the margin of the Island Wood. He was one of a small group of local poets that contributed poems to the Cork Weekly Examiner, a publication, that began in 1896 and continued well into the 20th Century.

Newmarket, Cork Premier Intermediate Football Champions 2011 – the book, mapping Newmarket’s historic county title success last October will be launched on Saturday night, April 28th in Dan Hourigan’s Bar at 9pm.

The publication maps the fairytale journey of the Newmarket footballers to ultimate glory in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. The 120 page colour publication contains match reports, player profiles, intermediate championship records and stats and several photographs all savouring the memorable historic achievement. The book is priced at €15 and will be available from next weekend.

This is the work we’ll be attempting to get done on the day – we need a lot of bodies to get this done so please come out and give us a hand:

- planting all along the wall at the back of the church car park
- weeding of biodiversity garden outside the Protestant Graveyard.
- set-up of bird boxes in the Protestant Graveyard.
- planting pots (5/6) on the Charleville Road
- planting the big planters on pound Hill etc. (8)
- general clean-up of the town

We will provide as much equipment as possible – but for the gardening work if you can bring along any tools you feel would be useful.

We’re asking the whole town to come out and get involved in giving our town a Spring Clean. We have a few planting, painting, and general clean-up projects to tackle and we need lots of helpers. It’s just one day, a few hours to give the town a little love and care! Equipment will be provided – we’ll be giving further updates here over the coming weeks.

Please spread the word and give 2 a few hours of your Saturday to make a real difference to the town.

The Spring Clean initiative is being promoted by an Taisce who are also running a photography competition in conjunction with it if anyone is interested in this the details can be found at http://www.lovewhereyoulive.ie/

We are hoping to start a ‘Cúpla Focail Club’ in Newmarket but first want to get an idea if there would be any interest. The idea would be to meet in a pub once a month and just déan iarracht, make an effort to use whatever Irish atá agaibh. You may end up speaking mostly English but that’s fine. Duhallow has a strong history of the Irish language with apparently as much as 400 Irish words in use in our everyday english. If you have always wanted to improve/use do chuild Gailge then this would be an ideal way to start. The people organising it are in no way fluent but we just want to bain trial as, give it a try. The site below is a great resource, good links and a very good online course. If you are interested or would like to help us out send us an email/riomhphoist to contact@athtrasna.com

RTE Bród Club

The AGM for the community development association was held on Thursday the 16th of February in the James O’Keeffe institute. 13 people attended the meeting.

Brian Dugdale was elected as PRO and Lisa O’Donoghue replaced Sean Browne as treasurer. A number of different topics were discussed:

Tidy Towns – results were good this year. We came top of our category with 6 points up on the previous year. Town clean-up were run every Tuesday from 7pm to 8pm throughout the Summer. A regular group of volunteers turned out every week to pick up litter, sweep gravel off the paths and to assist with the preparation and maintenance of the biodiversity garden. There was a much lower turn out last year and it is felt that steps need to be taken to improve numbers. We could do really great work if we had better numbers to help out on the clean-up nights. Thanks to the volunteers who did come out each week and also to FÁS who did a huge amount of work in the town throughout the year. Thanks to the Secret Garden for their help and advice. Thanks also to Denis Roche.

Trader’s Association – We had a number of meetings last year. We ran a poster campaign for people to shop local. There was a shopping week over Easter and an article in the Corkman. The Christmas fair was very successful (specifically Brian and Jane). The venue looked great and almost 30 businesses participated. We hope to build on this success in 2012.

Christmas lights – New lights were purchased this year. We received a lot of donations from different groups. Thanks to the GAA, Darts League and traders for their donations. Thanks to Fás and Willie O’Keeffe for all the work putting up the lights.

The Newmarket Town Enhancements Grant – Members of the committee met with Helen O’Sullivan of IRD in August to discuss the possibility of applying for a Leader grant for some enhancements for the town. This grant was approved in October for the following work:

Upgrade of Playground – replace some of existing equipment, freshen remaining equipment and repair/replace tiles.

Repair of paths within the park and creation of a path circling around the pitch

Replacement of wiring between the pitch and the playground

Sign Posts (identification signs). Signs at the cross in particular will be replaced and the Irish translation for Church Street will be corrected (to sráid an teampaill).

New Mural for the playground wall

Christmas Lights Purchase and Putting up Christmas Lights

This work will be ongoing over the next 12 months.

We will need to fund raise aggressively to help to pay for this work so local support will be much appreciated.

The Website – we hope to provide more functionality and content in the website this year. We would like to appeal to people to send any photos or clippings related to Newmarket so that we can share with the community on line. We will also be creating a section for articles on the site so if you would like to submit anything for inclusion in this section please email to contact@athtrasna.com.

We’ll be holding our AGM on Thursday the 16th of Feb in the James O’Keeffe institute at 8:30pm. We’ll be giving a round up of all activities from last year and an update on what is planned for the year ahead. The main work we hope to achieve this year is some work on the town park, the Tidy Towns competition, fund raising, Paddy’s day parade and other events. We will also be looking for people to fill some posts.

The more people who get involved the more we can achieve. If you just want to come along and hear what’s planned for the year ahead or if you have any ideas as to what work we could do around the town then please attend.

We want to make a real effort with the Tidy Towns this year so we hope to put together a number of landscaping projects around the town. We’ve increased our score each year for the last two years so we’d like to make it three in a row! We’d love to get a good turn out for our Tidy Up nights – which run from April to September. It’s just an hour a week – to pick up rubbish and do a bit of gardening around the place. It’s a great opportunity to get out in the fresh air and get some exercise!!

If you have any questions or want some more information just grab one of our committee members or email us at contact@athtrasna.com.

Results are in for the Tidy Towns competition for 2011. Newmarket were in Category C in North Cork and came first:

Newmarket 265
Kanturk 228
Rathcormac 219

An increase of 6 points on last year! We have a long way to beat Kilarney who won the competition with 310 points :)

Thank you to everyone who made that extra effort to make the town look great this year. And a special thank you to the volunteers who came out every week to help pick up rubbish, pick weeds and other odd jobs!

We are going to make a bigger effort next year so watch this space!

A sponsored Hike to raise money for the Newmarket Community Development association will be held on Sunday, the 21st of August. Money raised will be used to fund maintenance of the Town Park, the pitch and putt course, the camp site, the Christmas lights, paddys day parade, landscaping and other projects to help make our town a great place to live!!!

We’ll be meeting at Torc Waterfall at 10:30AM – bring a picnic! This will be a great family day out!!!

Sponsorship cards are available from Ollie and Éilis.

Further details to follow.

The Festival in Newmarket has marked the arrival of summer for many generations in this lively North Cork town. It is one of the last, traditional week long, festivals that were once common throughout Cork. The festival has gone through many incarnations and has had countless local people involved in it’s organisation throughout the years and the community that runs the festival now owes them all a heavy debt.

This year’s festival runs from the 1st to the 10th of July. The committee has been busy for the last month both planning events and co-ordinating events being organised by other organisations and groups from Newmarket, such as Newmarket Town Development, the ladies football club, Newmarket Town F.C. and the G.A.A.

Many of the old favourites will be featured in this year’s program; the Puc Fáda, the hotly contested Festival Table Quiz, the Darts tournament, the Town Walkabout Quiz, the Car Treasure Hunt and the Festival Irish Music Night.

The Festival will also be featuring some of the new favourites (with a fresh twist) from last year; the family fun day, Ladies Night, The Bike Run and an impressive closing night Fireworks display.

There will be plenty of new additions to this year’s program including a massive balloon release on the opening night, string quartet performing near the Island wood and a puppet show by Pignut Productions from Galway. Also Turbetts Funfair have some breathtaking new amusements for this year’s carnival.

All events can be found on the Events section of this site. For more information checkout the festival Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/Newmarket.Summer.Festival