Imelda May Exclusive: 'Honoured' to close the inaugural Molly Bloomsday in Derry

My motorbike was parked up. I moved my way inside and ordered a pint of Saigon beer as I positioned myself to watch Conor McGregor try to do the impossible and beat Floyd Mayweather in a boxing bout. 

As Demi Lovato finished her performance of The Star-Spangled Banner, a young Irish singer made her way to centre stage. 

Sitting proudly in this Vietnamese bar, I listened proudly as an Irish singer performed a beautiful rendition of Amhrán na bhFiann. 

The singer; Imelda May.

That night, the Dublin singer was announced to the world, but the lead-up to the performance was not smooth sailing.

With a smile on her face, she explained: “I don’t know how I held it together as I was getting up into the ring.

“My tour manager at the time fell asleep, and he had all the passes, and I had to take a cab on my own. I couldn’t get in, so I knocked on the door of this massive arena and explained that I was playing there that night. 

"Obviously, they said no, as the security presence was massive.

“It was high security, and I had to find some way of getting in. Anyway, I managed to get in; it was mad.

“But just as I was getting up on stage, someone just whispered in my ear that there was ‘one billion people watching, good luck’ and I thought, ‘F**k you’, my nerves were shot and my legs went to jelly, but I just focused and kept it simple.”

Fast forward nearly eight years, and Imelda May was closing the YES Festival, a celebration of Molly Bloom, the main female character of James Joyce’s Ulysses. 

And the 49-year-old was honoured to be involved in the inaugural Molly Bloomsday.

She said: “An incredible amount of people and talent has been on display for the whole festival, and I hope it happens every year.

“I do love that the women are strong in Ulysses.

“It did take a woman to publish it, Sylvia Beach, when it had been turned down and he was being brought to court in America and all the rest of it.

“He was afraid of thunder, dogs, and cracks in pavements. He would get upset, and sometimes he would cry as he thought things were bad omens. 

“And when she said she was with Shakespeare and Company, he went with her purely because of that, because he thought that was a good omen.”

But as the book went down poorly initially due to the negative press apart from the literary greats at the time that saw the ingenious within the work. 

It took the intelligence of Beach to promote the book. 

May said: “She had a really clever marketing ploy for Ulysses. They only printed two copies of it, and one was for him and the other was to be displayed in her book shop in a glass case, and she would only turn one page each day, like the Book of Kells, and that created this buzz.”

Joyce has had a profound impact on May. 

Particularly on how the 2010 RTE Radio 1 Album of the Year winner manages to view the world.

She said: “Now I’m not saying I’m James Joyce.

“I just love his way of looking at the world, and I can relate to a lot of it because I feel my brain float off ever since I was a child, like when I looked out the window at clouds and seeing different things from the shapes.

“Like when you read his stuff and he sees it, you go, ‘Oh my God! I’m not the only one.’ I love that he has a child-like way of looking at the world to an extent.”

Having read an extract from the thoughts of Molly in Ulysses on the Millennium Forum stage, May has a burning desire to read Finnegans Wake in the near future.

But as the Dubliner revelled returning to Derry, she spoke about the need for the Irish narrative to change. 

She said: “I love Derry; I come here a lot, and I usually go for a run on the walls.

“There has been a massive resurgence over the last few years.

“I love the audience here; they are wonderful. Some great people here.

“Why can’t people make it at home? Why do people feel they have to go abroad in order to make it?

“I think you also work harder when you go away, as you don’t want to come back empty-handed. I know that was the case for me when I moved to England.

“I went away, and I got homesick, and I wanted to come home. I got so homesick; in fact, I got shingles. I was so upset as I didn’t want to come home as I had a big farewell with a big party for me where everyone waved me off, and there is a certain amount of shame, so maybe it makes you work harder as you want to make something of yourself. 

“Once you move away, you get such a longing, a grá for home that you write about it and miss it. I suppose that you look at it through rose-tinted glasses.”

As McGregor failed to defy the odds and overcome Mayweather, I began my journey from Ho Chi Minh City to Mũi Né.

But eight years later, I returned to Derry.

And as I sat opposite the world-renowned singer Imelda May in the town I love so well, her words rang true for me, as they do for many Irish who return home after time away ‘to make something of themselves’.