O’Driscoll to share songs, poems with Irish flavor

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core. – W.B. Yeats

ORONO – Irish singer and Celtic storyteller Treasa O’Driscoll hears the music, stories and poetry of her ancestors in the same place Irish poet William Butler Yeats found his. That is why she titled her memoir “In the Deep Heart’s Core: An Irishwoman’s Soul Journey.”

Just as Yeats sought inspiration in mythology and ancient tales, O’Driscoll found illumination in her own past when she spent a year in County Clare, Ireland, where her ancestors are from.

O’Driscoll will perform Friday at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Bangor and conduct poetry workshops in Bangor Saturday and in Greenville Sunday. The widow of Robert O’Driscoll, who founded the Celtic studies department at the University of Toronto, Treasa O’Driscoll has performed around the world.

“I bring together a synthesis of Irish traditions in my performances,” she said in a phone interview from her home outside Toronto. “I love to memorize and recite poetry in a way that goes back to bardic tradition in Ireland. I feel as if my work is a continuation of that tradition.”

There is a spiritual side to O’Driscoll’s work as well. In an interview last summer, shortly after her book was published, she summed up her philosophy toward life.

“I believe it is individual presence [and] divine presence in everyone that makes poetry out of the pilgrimage of life,” said O’Driscoll. “And, that to be able to say this moment, the grace of this one rapturous moment, is the place of the pilgrimage to which I am a pilgrim at any moment in life.”

In her workshops, O’Driscoll helps participants hear the poetry that is part of their own journeys. The Irish woman said that she’ll take her cue for how to handle the workshops from the audience’s reaction to her performance on Friday. The workshop will include a reading, discussion and meditation.

“Workshops are a great way people meet,” said O’Driscoll. “Usually we see each other’s behavior, but do not see or share each other’s experiences. The workshops give us the opportunity to see what kind of spirit is living within each person and how unique every person’s voice is, as well as seeing how we form community together.”

O’Driscoll has never performed in Maine before, yet sees her visit as part of the pilgrimage that is her life now.

“I believe we are here to witness and assist creation, to celebrate the beauty and the power we find around us and to praise the people who are here with us,” she said.

“As I go along, I realize that nothing is new under the sun. You find yourself doing something and then you realize it’s been done for generations. People have set out, gone from place to place, sung their songs, said their poems, made connection and worked with people.”

Treasa O’Driscoll will perform at 8 p.m. Friday at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 120 Parks St., Bangor. The afternoon workshops will be held at private homes in Bangor and Greenville. For more information, call 695-3278.