Bloomsday Marbella

Bloomsday – June 16th – is an annual celebration among Joyce fans throughout the world, from Fort Lauderdale to Melbourne. It is celebrated in at least sixty countries worldwide, but nowhere so imaginatively, of course, as in Dublin. The novel, Ulysses, by James Joyce recounts the hour-by-hour events of one day in Dublin – June 16, 1904 – as an ordinary Dubliner, Leopold Bloom, wends his way through the urban landscape, the odyssey of a modern-day Ulysses.

This year for the first time it will be celebrated in Marbella on Friday June 18th 2010 when the Irish Club Marbella is holding its inaugural “Bloomsday in Marbella” event.

They will gather together at El Bodegon Café on the Paseo Marítimo in Marbella at 13:00. There will be a designated area for the group where a glass of wine or two and good tapas (e.g. morcilla con arroz …) will be served.

Joycean painter, Roger Cummiskey, will do the first Bloomsday reading from the novel by James Joyce – Ulysses - that gives it’s name to the day from one of the main characters, Leopold Bloom.

A short documentary story entitled “A Stroll through Ulysses” written and narrated by Roger and made by the Irish film maker Noel Duffy will run in the background. The film visits all of the locations in the novel in 2004 – 100 years after the date on which the novel was set.

“We then set off on our merry way to the old town of Marbella. Maps will be distributed, with our route highlighted, taking us from the Paseo up through Avenida del Mar (where the Salvador Dali statues are) and in through the pedestrian streets of the old town to our 2nd destination a 500+ year old Andalusian establishment called Restaurante El Pozo Viejo (The Old Well) in the old town, owned by old-time bullfighter Jaime Cabrerizo. Once we are all ensconced with a glass in our lámh, a second reading from Ulysses will be given. After lunch we can look forward to hearing a Molly Bloom soliloquy being performed by Dee McMath” Roger describes and continue “there will also be on display a small selection of Joycean themed paintings that will be for sale”.

Simon Schönbeck

Founder of this very site and serial entrepreneur.

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