PERHAPS THE reading was so compelling, the international challenge so daunting - or perhaps it was because US writer Samantha Power has a natural aptitude for hypnotising an entire room.
Either way, an enthralled audience almost forgot to ask former foreign policy adviser to US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama "that question" at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature in Galway yesterday - as in, the background to her off the record remarks about Senator Hillary Clinton.
Almost. Hands were poised for the last round of applause, after her moving account of her biography of the former United Nations senior diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was killed in 2003 in Iraq. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and lawyer had also outlined her vision of the future for US foreign policy, when there came the recognisable tones from the back of the room of one Nell McCafferty.
"So tell us about Hillary being a monster then?" Ms McCafferty asked. As a slightly taken aback Ms Power began to explain about slipped tongues and saying things one regrets, there was another interruption. "Not Nell! Not Nell!" came the rousing audience response.
It was a good-humoured conclusion, and Ms Power had earlier anticipated some references to "Monstergate", as she called it. "I just lost my temper," she said. Mrs Clinton was a "pioneer" in her view, but "Obama is the president for now".
Speaking about Mr de Mello, who served for several decades with the UN in 14 conflict zones across the world, Ms Power described him as perhaps "the most important man people never knew" who had played key roles in crises such as Bosnia, Rwanda, East Timor and Kosovo, before being sent on his last and fatal mission to Iraq.
Such was the level of US unpreparedness for the bombing of Mr de Mello's UN offices in Baghdad in 2003 that those who tried to save him had only a curtain rail and a handbag to work with, she said.
Speaking of the current climate in the US, Ms Power said that a "crisis of confidence, born of a crisis of competence" had led to a level of disengagement, but she had great hope for a rising generation.
The support for Mr Obama also testified to a "yearning, a hunger" among young people for a better future.
Also at the Cúirt festival yesterday, NUI Galway professor Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh paid tribute to Aran island poet Mairtín Ó Direáin (1910-88) when a plaque in his memory was unveiled at Salthill promenade.
The bronze plaque is of Ó Direáin's poem, Fear Lasta Lampaí (the lamplighter), which was written in the 1960s. The poet, who was reared on Inis Mór, lived in Galway from 1928, before moving to Dublin to work with the Department of Education.
Among his many family members present for the unveiling was his only daughter, Niamh, grandchildren Gráinne, David, Brian and Enda, and great grandson Dean McCann.
The poet's niece Maire Aine and nephews Seán and Donal also attended.
