Good Day Cork was created by Joanna Dukkipati in 2018 with a mission to amplify Cork’s unrepresented voices. The first event they held was Many Tongues of Cork in March 2019.
Many Tongues is a multilingual prose and poetry gathering that recognises Cork’s intercultural identity. And the aim of the event is to help people understand different cultures by using the sounds of the languages spoken by her people.
Joanna Dukkipati also organises regular salon events, podcasts and arts festivals focusing on the arts and diverse voices, and publishes a zine, also called Good Day Cork once a month.
Keep up to date with all their publications and events here. Thanks to the Arts Council for their continued support for this podcast series.
Listen to previous episode’s from Cork based poets: Olha Matso // and Neo Gilson //
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Bairbre Flood: Hi and welcome to Wander with me, Bairbre Flood, with thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for their funding support. And this week I’m talking to Joanna Dukkipati, the founder of Good Day Cork. Good Day Cork was created in 2018 with a mission to amplify Cork’s unrepresented voices. The first event they held was Many Tongues of Cork in March 2019.
Many Tongues is a multilingual prose and poetry gathering that recognises Cork’s intercultural identity. And the aim of the event is to help people understand different cultures by using the sounds of the languages spoken by her people. The latest one was in July 2023 at the Firkin Crane, with eight poets from many different countries performing.
Joanna also organises regular salon events focusing on the arts and diverse voices, and publishes a zine, also called Good Day Cork, once a month. This is Joanna Dukkipati.
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[00:01:11] Joanna Dukkipati: What anchored me was knowing that it’s so important that we have something to hold, and in those pages we can feel uplifted because of reading about someone who lives down the road. And just knowing about them would uplift us. Knowing that they would have overcome a personal challenge or a community challenge along with other people.
And a silver lining – I wanted us all to have access to silver linings that was local to us. Yeah. So that’s what it was about. That’s how the print magazine began.
[00:01:54] Bairbre Flood: Was it important to have refugee and migrant voices?
[00:01:58] Joanna Dukkipati: You know, that’s such a good question. When I started the magazine, I wasn’t even thinking about these things.
I’ll be very honest. And it was only when I was selling the first or the second issue in the market, they, the person looking through it pointed out how white it was. And I was like, okay, maybe this is the space where I am going to not only bring stories that uplift us, but also bring, bring them from spaces, unheard, underrepresented spaces.
And it, it was in the second cycle, the gear shifted, and I haven’t stopped looking back since. What has always been the North Star is how is this space, Amplifying voices of people we don’t hear about and what is the best way I can hold their voices without editing it, without censoring it, at the same time trying to uncover what can we learn from this and in that lies a positivity.
People do want to know what it is like to be someone seeking asylum in Ireland. What it feels like to be a black or a brown person. What it is like to be trans. What it is like to be an elderly woman. You know, we, all of these, or an elderly man. All of these are, you know, pockets of communities that people do want to know.
[00:03:35] Bairbre Flood: Yeah, yeah. And I was at the Mother Tongues. so I don’t know if you just want to explain to people what the Mother Tongues idea was?
[00:03:45] Joanna Dukkipati: Yeah. So it’s, it’s Many Tongues of Cork and in Dublin, there’s the Mother Tongues Festival.
[00:03:52] Bairbre Flood: Oh, sorry. Yeah, I’ll have to edit that out! [laughter]
[00:03:53] Joanna Dukkipati: It’s okay. No, no, it’s okay because Good Day Cork has interviewed Francesca of the Mother Tongue’s festival. And it’s great that in two different parts of the small island, there are groups of people who are so passionate about mother tongues and acknowledging the cultural landscape of this country.
We feel we’re held in this space, but we’re, this is also a place where I can hold other people.
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I have a soft spot for Lavie. Lavie Olupuma, and I hope Lavie, I’ve said, said your name right. And I know it’s not your full name either. Lavie is is a very young poet. Lavie has multiracial heritage, including Traveler heritage. You know, she’s read in the Dail and she talks a lot about her identity and it’s really lovely to see a young person stand in a room and and be so excited.
And as soon as they speak you’re just, you can’t, but. Stop and think about what, what am I, what am I, how am I contributing into this world as a full grown adult woman? What am I doing? Is, am I doing anything good? I mean, look at this young person, full of dreams and full of hope and full of insight that calls on us to do better.
And I think that’s remarkable. These young people, they are the role models, not just to their peers, but also to us. To have, you know, how do we sustain our energy? To do the work that we do, especially in the space of media broadcasting. I think Lavie is just a ball of energy and always very, and also so grateful.
Just like, are you even from this earth?
[00:05:56] Bairbre Flood: She’s great. I heard her recite some poems. They’re excellent. I think like in Ireland, we don’t recognize racism against Travelers as, as actual racism. We, we seem to put it in a different category.
[00:06:10] Joanna Dukkipati: Yes. Yes. It’s awful, it is awful, and I’m just so baffled at how, you know, generations of Travellers have been treated and how that impacts the Travellers of today, and, and I always wonder if you know, because I’ve only lived in Ireland now for 12 years, well I’ve lived on the island for 14, I’ve lived 12 in the south and 2 in the north, and it does break my heart, the, you know, what’s been going on, what still goes on.
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[00:07:02] Bairbre Flood: How important do you think poetry and art is in changing society, in changing politics, in changing our world?
[00:07:12] Joanna Dukkipati: I think without art there’s no release because we’re all, you know, what do they say? We’re social beings. I think we need to upgrade that and say, whether we like it or not, we’re political beings.
And art is our, is a tool for releasing whatever, whatever, whatever, you know, whatever it brings. If we’re political beings, that comes with a lot of responsibility, outrage, kindness. Hope, despair, all of the, you know, the, the duality. However, we’re also social beings. So we’re very nuanced people.
We don’t lie between black and white. There’s a whole spectrum of colors, which means there’s a whole spectrum of possibilities. And poetry and art and writing and visual and conversation, dialogue. It’s all a space to explore what is happening and to acknowledge and if it’s done right. We will find solutions to go forward as a collective.
Our politics might be diametrically opposite to the person. Mine might be completely opposite to the person I’m sitting next to. But what art does is it bridges the gap. Poetry bridges the gap. Good poetry bridges the gap. And at the same time, there is. space for, for the, for the poetry that’s not about politics, the poetry that’s about leisure and pleasure and love and brotherhood and sisterhood and joy and nature.
You know, there’s space for that poetry as well. And we need, we need it all. We need it all to leave an imprint. Onto this world, and we need it because words, and I say this again all the time, words are all we have, and we’ve got to use the words we have in all the different languages as beautifully as possible, and that, that should be everyone’s pursuit, that really should be.
Yeah. That should be the only thing we need.
[00:09:42] Bairbre Flood: And I think as well, like, like you’re saying, like politics is important and identity and all that, but I think it’s important that refugee and migrant writers in Ireland have the space to explore all types of experiences.
[00:09:56] Joanna Dukkipati: Yeah, absolutely. That, you know, I don’t know why people do it, that if I’m the only brown person, I’m suddenly expected to speak on behalf of all brown people. [laughter]
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We’re soon going to start brainstorming on it and then have a small team of people. And it’s about talking about nature. And again, the podcast will be a space for people from different cultural backgrounds to come and talk about experiences in nature. I think what zines like these do, what a podcast does, about nature featuring migrant voices, if you want to say it that way, or, you know, voices of people who are in minorities is it’s, it’s archiving the city, but from different voices as well, you know, I really want to contribute towards archiving att least the city that I’ve made home for the last 12 years.
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[00:11:09] Bairbre Flood: A huge thanks to Joanna Dukkipatti for talking to me. You can find out more about Good Day Cork on their website, gooddaycork. com, and subscribe to their magazine on there.
They’ve also got a lot of events in Cork throughout the year, and the best place to keep up with them is on their Insta page at gooddaycork.
Next episode will be a very special one coming from Athens, Greece, with poets who are part of my creative writing workshop there. A massive thanks again to the Arts Council of Ireland, not only for funding this podcast, but funding these workshops. Another part of this podcast is commissioning and creating new works of writing, and I’m delighted that Raphael Olympio of the Cork Migrant Centre is also facilitating another workshop this year.
We had a great time in the last one, and that episode from season three had some beautiful spoken word pieces and interviews with the young people he mentors. You can listen back to it if you haven’t heard it already.
Thank you all for listening, and see you all next episode. From me, Bairbre Flood, bye for now.
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