The Prompt - RTÉ Radio 1's new showcase for fresh Irish writing
The first episode of The Prompt presented by Zoë Comyns airs on Sundays at 7.30pm on RTÉ Radio 1, beginning Sunday, May 25th .
Eight of Ireland's best writers set writing prompts and the public were invited to submit up to 750 words of poetry or prose.
The Prompt received 900 submissions sparked by the prompts set by Mike McCormack, Edel Coffey, Belinda McKeon, Sinéad Moriarty, Dave Rudden, Wedny Erskine, Lucy Caldwell and Caoilinn Hughes.
"The response to the series has been phenomenal," says Zoë Comyns. "Across eight episodes, you'll hear three standout pieces selected by our guest writer for each prompt—fresh, original voices responding to the challenge in striking ways."
In the first episode, '...the patron saint of…' was chosen as the prompt acclaimed writer Mike McCormack.
The shorllist for this prompt featured eight talented writers:
Amanda Bell – One for Sorrow
John Paul Davies – Patron Saint of the Homeless
Ben Donnellan – Matron Saint of Hopeless Cases
Ella Gaynor – Patron Saint of Good Excuses
Brendan Kileen – The Patron Saint
Jackie Lynam – Patron Saint of Being
Colm McAuliffe – I Hear You Call My Name
Tom O'Brien – Pictures or It Didn't Happen
Three pieces were selected blind from the shortlist read by Mike McCormack. They are by writers Colm McAuliffe, John Paul Davies and Brendan Kileen.
Colm McAuliffe's story I Hear You Call My Name opens with the lines "It must have been around the spring of 1989 when my mother became fond of Fr Ryan. I can see now why she was drawn to him: as well as being charismatic, he possessed a great listening face and was one of those people you opened up to without realising."
Colm says of his piece that it 'was an attempt to capture an innocence through childhood, parentage, and nationhood. I find myself reflecting on my own youth in the late 1980s and early 1990s and my obsessions with popular culture and how every magazine I read, or song I heard, felt like a tantalising entry point into another world which was just slightly out of reach.'
I Hear You Call My Name revolves around the song Like a Prayer by Madonna: "I was almost seven and entering my Madonna phase," he says. "The three of us bonded over Like A Prayer, which was topping the charts at the time. While my mother had indicated a certain indignation over the lyrical content, Fr Ryan assured her that it was all above board and Madonna's faith was, indeed, quite sincere. I let on that I, too, had initially struggled with the song, but after some intense reflection, was happy to confirm the priest's hypothesis."
Colm says that "the 'Patron Saint' prompt made me realise that some of those patron saints who facilitate those key moments can come from such blatantly obvious places that we can so easily miss them, especially once we reach a state of maturity."
Mike McCormack says of this story that he never expected a piece as 'jubilant and joyous as this… it's funny and full of existential weight'.
John Paul Davies' poem Patron Saint of the Homeless is an elegy to a man the writer remembers from his youth.
"Tencoats was a legendary character from my childhood, and though not exactly a 'Patron Saint,' I hoped this figure could symbolise homelessness in some way. I was also thinking about 'the places we get to call home' – either intentionally or otherwise – and how uncertain having a place to live can suddenly become, regardless of a person's circumstances."
Tencoats was said to live in the air raid shelter
above the man-made waterfall on Spital Dam.
In permanent dusk, the tramp's den
a squat stone survivor from our school books.
Listless on an idle end-of-summer day,
we left the village to look for him.
Mike McCormack calls this work 'sure and certain in deploying images' and 'echoes with the previous piece and the places we get to call home.' Mike says he is at a time in his life where he himself is meditating on the notion of home - 'is it a place, is it a time, is it other people?' - and this poem chimes with that.
The final piece in the programme is by Brendan Kileen, exploring grief after the death of a boy from the point of view of another young boy.
" After dinner Seanie's mother bursts into the kitchen and grabs Aine in a hug like we learnt at swimming – a hug to save a drowning person except I couldn't tell who was saving and who was drowning."
Writer Brendan Kileen says 'This story is a fictionalised version of actual events. "My childhood friend, Barry died when I was a boy, having become ill a couple of years before. Barry was cared for at home by his own family, with huge love and affection and compassion and passion, especially by his parents, his mam, being an experienced nurse. Barry lay in a bed in the family living room throughout his illness. His eventual death was a huge event in the lives of his family, my family and the entire community in North Dublin. I remember feeling devastated by his death. I also recall observing how helpless the adults around me were in the face of their own grief and I began to understand that they did not have any more understanding than I had. This is probably the centre point of the story: me understanding their inability to understand what was happening."
In the story to be broadcast on The Prompt a local publican looks after the young boy character, showing him kindness by minding him in his house.
I never said much to Paddy Flynn but now he's standing above me in the rain.
'C'mon,' he says holding out his hand. Paddy manages a pub in town. He's a countryman. He takes me across the road to his house where his wife Kate is waiting. I sit on the sofa.
A statue on the mantlepiece of an old man looks at me through painted eyes. He has wounds in both his hands.
Paddy brings a coke in a real glass coke bottle and a huge, pub packet of Tayto crisps. He has a packet too.
'Now,' Paddy says, 'we're going to drink coke and eat all the crisps we can.'
I look at the statue looking at me.
'Who's your man?' I ask.
'Who, him?' Paddy askes nodding at him.
'Him,' I say.
'He's the patron saint of misery,' Paddy's says looking right at me.
Kate moves one folder arm to her neck and rubs it.
'What's misery?' I ask.
'Never mind pet, it's for grown-ups,' Kate says.
Mike McCormack says the piece explores 'an incoherent grief' and is a 'beautifully balanced piece in three scenes' ending in a ' prayer, a comfort, a confusion'.
The three selected pieces will be broadcast on Sunday, May 25th at 7.30pm on RTÉ Radio 1.
Meet The Writers
Colm McAuliffe is a writer from Co. Cork. He's written about popular—and unpopular—culture for The Guardian, Sight & Sound, frieze, and many others. He's currently working on his first novel.
John Paul Davies is a former winner of the Penguin Ireland Story Award. He's been placed in the TU Dublin Story Prize and Waterford Poetry Prize, and published in Southword, Banshee, Crannóg, Manchester Review, Channel, Grain, and Sonder.
Brendan Killeen is an Irish writer and editor living in Copenhagen. He won the 2022 RTÉ Francis MacManus Short Story Prize, and has been published in The Stinging Fly.
Mike McCormack lectures in Creative Writing and is the author of four novels - Crowe's Requiem (1998), Notes from a Coma (2005), Solar Bones (2016) and This Plague of Souls (2023) and two collections of short stories - Getting It in the Head (1996) and Forensic Songs (2012). He is the Director of the MA (Writing) at University of Galway.
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