The Latest Stinging Fly has ...

... loads of poems, dark stories and some reviews too.

Liz Gallagher's The Wrong Miracle gets a good look-see by Grace Wells - her 'linguistic dexterity' and the 'sheer verve of her style' is mentioned; this comes alongside five other worthy first collections.

Highlights for me: 'Road Trip,' well-written non-fiction (although it had me completely absorbed in the way that fiction usually does) by Robert Hopkins; an interview with Deirdre Madden and two fine poems that sat well together - 'A Little Knowledge' by Val Nolan and 'Grapefruit' by Alan Garvey.

But hey, don't take my word for it: go get your own copy of the Stinging Fly, why don't you.

And the cover - so, so sumptuous - and red! I like.

Falling Back

Autumn Herself

She leaves notes on the brambles:
glistening blackberry globes for stewed
desserts and jam, or damsons ready
for eager childrens' hands to scrump.

She flirts with a passer-by in the quickened
blaze she leaves on a ten year old beech,
fire licks going quickly over to bronzed yellow.
They cling until the first hard storm
spins their dry crunches into a limp mess
down the muddy street drains.

She's the crush of burnt sienna velvet
in a dress fondled in a department store.
She's low angled sunshine across a field
of beige barley-stubble. Her scent
is the must of late saucer mushrooms;
her jewellery scarlet berries hiding
in the dark, green prickles of paired Holly trees.

A Gallery of Poets

Last night, like I hadn't enough to be doing, I headed to Dublin's Waterstones to a Gallery launch of five poets' latest poetry collections. The poets didn't disppoint. I ended up going home with an armful of books, and really enjoyed hearing them sound their poems out. I met the lovely Hugh O'Donnell hob-nobbing with Denis O'Driscoll and chatted to quite a few poetry g-literati (hi Teresa!).

In order of appearance: Tom French, with The Fire Step (his first collection, Touching the Bones won the Forward Prize in 2001); Vona Groarke with the very accomplished Spindrift (I've seen quite a few of her poems from the collection in various journals and papers over the last while); Kerry Hardie, with Only This Room; Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, with The Sun-Fish (a PBS recommendation this quarter); and Peter Sirr, with The Thing Is.

I like all of them very much and am having a good read of them all, being suitably impressed by their writing, skill and techique. Peter Sirr's remarks about the complexities and wrestling with the minutiae of editing, and how it is always taxing raised a few chuckles in the room, as did editor, Peter Fallon's ripostulary remarks about how we all submit to the editor - hmm.

On a more serious note, Peter Fallon referred to the dangerous currents of uncertainty in the arts world and how none of us know how these will play out, especially now that the Celtic Tiger has well and truly scampered off over the horizon - eastwards. Tough times are coming. Small comfort I know, but in the end, it was still a good turn-out last night, all things considered.

Work on Horizon and more...

I received word the other day that Horizon Review 3 has gone live this week. Yet another feast of poetry, short stories, reviews, criticism and so much more. I'm really lucky to have 3 poems on there, as well as a separate collaborative piece I wrote with poet Tony Williams during the summer. That's towards the bottom of the side-links. It's quite different to what I normally do, but I really enjoyed doing it with Tony (hmm, perhaps I should rephrase that... ;) ).

If you haven't done already, you should take a look at this fast-growing e-journal. Edited by Jane Holland, it also has Nuala Ni Chonchuir as fiction editor and George Ttouli as reviews editor. HR just grows on you!

In other news, I have work in the latest edition of Mimesis, which just arrived on Monday. There's me in the same journal as Paul Muldoon... and Rob MacKenzie, not to mention a lot of other names I recognise. Imagine!

And I've a brace of work forthcoming in the new edition of The Yellow Nib, the journal of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Writing at Queen's University Belfast. They're sonnets about Mallory. I won't say any more until it comes out, but I am very excited by it :)

Teaching and Writing - do they mix?

I've been super-duper busy since the beginning of September - the observant among you can't have failed to notice the dearth of posts here. Why? Well, I got hours teaching for Navan VEC, as well as getting my own Saturday Creative Writing classes back up and running again (in a lovely new venue, DKIT).

So something had to give; the writing. And there's the rub. If I don't write, I don't have material to work on or send out. If I don't write, I don't develop all the ideas I have percolating away. If I don't write, I start to feel a little bit nuts.

I have just been coming back to the idea of writing this last few days - that must mean that I'm getting used to the teaching - thank goodness. And I still have one unused week from my residential bursary coming up: on the mid-term break. I should feel a little guilty about going off to write for a week at Annaghmakerrig and abandoning my husband to the six mini-monsters (okay, kids), but the truth is, I don't have time to feel guilty about it.

In that magical place I'll have the space to think, walk, eat, write and fool around with words, but more importantly I'll have the space to get three mini-projects nailed that have been rocketing around my brain for the last three weeks. The best thing about having to drive to Navan from Dundalk is the head space it allows for me to think. No time wasted, eh?

I can't bloody wait!

All Ireland Poetry Day in Louth

So how did it go in Louth on Thursday, 1st of October 2009, All Ireland National Poetry Day? It went very, very well indeed, thanks for asking :)

First off, our radio interview on Harry Lee's Dundalk Daily turned out to be one small part in a huge poetry-packed programme. I was lucky enough to arrive just as Pat McKenna of the youth theatre programme was finishing reading a poem, and Damien Kelly gave a recital of beautiful classical guitar music. He was followed by Nessa O'Mahony who read a poem from her latest verse novel, In Sight of Home, published by Salmon Poetry, who had been workshopping in Dundalk Library with children from Realt naMara National School - and that's all I got to see of an action packed programme that celebrated poetry local and national, rhymed and unrhymed!

I, and three members of Dundalk Writing Group then read from our work, and then I had to scoot and get ready for the lunchtime reading being held at Dundalk Institute of Technology, with Susan Connolly. Our reading ended up being over-subscribed. We had just started, with about eight or ten people sitting in the room, when the door opened and about twenty more people, students and lecturers crowded into the room. We were stunned by the turn-out and delighted, naturally. I am of course, very grateful to head-librarians Concepta and Lorna who gave us a big build-up via posters and the DKIT website, and of course hosted us there.

The evening reading in Carlingford featured Catherine Ann Cullen, who read work from A Bone in My Throat, as well as new work that has been featured on Sunday Miscellany, RTE radio's early morning programme that features writing and poetry. Her work was received very well by the local audience, which included members from the Dundalk Writing Group - way to support NPD, guys! Carlingford Heritage Centre is located at the Holy Trinity Church, and is run by a very enthusiastic and friendly committee - the venue really suited the poetry reading very well indeed.

Drogheda's Poetry Slam, held in Boyne Books, Narrow West Street, Drogheda turned out to be a huge success: over 60 people turned up; 22 people took part in the slam; and the grand winner was Noel Sweeney from Dublin, with Paul Timoney from Dundalk a close runner up. Fair play to the organisers, Roger Hudson and Mark Kearns for a successful first Slam.

Now, about next year ...

Nude Makes Landfall in Dundalk

Got your attention, haven't I?

Today, I am delighted to welcome Nuala Ní Chonchúir and her wonderful new collection of short stories, 'Nude' from Salt Publishing to my humble blog. I have to say, I've read them very quickly, because I was pulled into them very easily. Always a good sign, when you can't tear yourself away from a book.

Born in Dublin in 1970, Nuala Ní Chonchúir lives in County Galway. Her third short fiction collection Nude was published by Salt in September 2009. She is one of four winners of the 2009 Templar Poetry Pamphlet and Collection competition. Her pamphlet Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car will be published in November. Nuala's website is: www.nualanichonchuir.com

Pull up a comfy armchair there Nuala, here's a very large mug of strong writer's tea and some homemade scones & blackberry jam (freshly picked from the Cooley Peninsula on Sunday!). Tuck in!

Hi Barbara and big thanks for having me here at your blog. I know and admire your own work, so I’m honoured to be here.

Thank you Nuala, now down to questions: firstly, how and where do characters come from, for you? Do you find characters re-visiting you or is it the other way around, do you like to tease out other nuances of them in related stories?

Gosh, that’s hard to answer because, in a sense, there’s no one way that characters ‘arrive’ to me. Sometimes I have a sense of someone or a relationship between two people and I want to write about them. Take Magda and Jackson in the story ‘Jackson & Jerusalem’. She’s an older woman artist and he’s a teenager who models for her; I liked the idea of that dynamic – a friendship across generations/sexes. I based the physical descriptions on my own son when he was a bit younger. Magda isn’t based on anyone but she’s very real to me. She’s also featured in the story ‘Madonna Irlanda’ as a younger woman; if I like a character, it’s irresistible to write more about them.

Other times characters arrive like a voice in my ear – I hear their voices and I work from there.

How do you delineate so well between older and younger characters, such as Jackson and Magda in 'Jackson and Jerusalem'? Do you find it hard to switch between the headspace needed to make each character live and breathe in the rounded manner that they do?

I’m glad you think I do it well...I was one of those children who preferred the company of adults; I loved listening to their conversation. I had my poor neighbours plagued as a child, always in their houses talking to them. I find younger people harder to relate to but having kids myself has given me some understanding of what makes them tick. All of that knowledge gets ploughed into fiction, I guess – into my characters.

My stories are generally from one POV so there isn’t really a problem switching headspace. I’m not sure that I find it problematic anyway. It’s fun to get inside the heads of people who are nothing like you; I enjoy that escape thoroughly.

Have you ever experienced great difficulty with a story - say for example, getting the ending right, or losing your way through the story? I ask this, because I find your stories are so absorbingly complete and well-imagined, that I can't imagine difficulties!

Yes, lots of difficulties! I don’t plot so I never have a clue what’s going to happen next. I used to almost fear endings but I’m more relaxed about them now.

And I suppose only the stories that work get into the book. I start, and then abandon, lots of stories – some just don’t lift off the page. I’ve written plenty of what Richard Ford calls ‘minor aesthetic nullities’. I’m rarely happy with anything. There are a handful of stories in Nude that I really love – the rest I just like, in whole or in part. But it doesn’t matter what I think – it’s impossible to be objective about your own work – I just hope that readers enjoy them.

Are you compelled to write or can you save ideas for work, for later on when you get the chance? Which method works better for you?

Writing is a compulsion for some people and I’m one of them; I’m always in writing mode. Henry James said, ‘Be one of those people on whom nothing is lost’. I think I am one of them – I seem to notice a lot and, as I notice things, I’m writing a narrative in my head. I presume all writers are the same.

Lately though, with my new baby and with promoting Nude, I’m too tired and busy to write anything more than the bones of a few poems. I want to be writing above all else, but the headspace is just not there. So, instead, I take notes!

Thanks so much for having me here, Barbara, and for your great questions. Next week my virtual tour takes me to Petina Gappah’s blog in Geneva, via Zimbabwe, which is where Petina is from. Do join us!

Thank you for coming by, Nuala, it's been a pleasure and I hope that Nude garners the attention it deserves.