Sunday, July 09, 2006

Getting Paid!

Cheery news this weekend: I received a contributors copy of the latest issue of Southword, the Munster Literature Centre's biannual journal. They wrote to me in April, accepting a poem for publication.

The really nice surprise was the cheque for €15.00. My very first payment for writing poetry. I have received monies for reading it, but never for writing it!

The journal is a nice A5ish format, with poetry, short stories and essays by contemporary Irish writers. I see Laurence O' Dwyer's name more and more lately - he read with me last year in Dublin at Poetry Ireland's Introductions series, and was already generating interest then, because he had won the Hennessy/Sunday Independent prize for his work. He is quite prolific and turns up in nth.position.com quite regularly, as a travel writer, essayist as well as poet.

It's difficult to get hold of this journal so heres a sneak look:

¡Jesus!
was crucified
in my back garden.
I know! I’ve seen the
tall wooden cross withered
by sun, rain and age – and
the lines they stuck in
to feed him juice
when he was dying.

I forgive ‘em,
he cried,
for all their sins
I’ve died. I took it on
myself, to do this in memory
of you all.

No-one ever heard that
conversation.
But the pylon remains.
Steel or wood – there it is
without complaint.

12 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for popping in and now I see that you have linked to me, double thank you!!
Great blog, love the poem!

Clifford Duffy said...

fifteen pounds for a poem, chapeau!

" No-one ever heard that
conversation.
But the pylon remains.
Steel or wood – there it is
without complaint. "

and those ending lines...how they ring into one, into one's bones. Come visit us Takingthebrim.blogspot.com
we've just added yer blog to our links...

Kay Cooke said...

COngratulations! And what a fantastic poem - I can just see that power pole!

Unknown said...

Cheers Minx!

Merci Clifford

and many thanks CB!

I was very chuffed indeed :¬D I never get tired of being sporadically successful: it makes up for the humongous chest of drawers stuffed with rejection slips ;¬)

Hedgie said...

Congratulations. Real, actual, foldable, spendable money -- wow!

apprentice said...

That's wonderful. I hope you treat yourself with the £15 and don't put it towards there leckie bill or something equally boring but necessary.

I like the poem, glad they did too.

Unknown said...

Thanks Hedgie and Apprentice, I'm thinking of framing the cheque, with a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency type of perspex.

You just never know!

Of course there's always the temptation of a really nice pen...

Rob said...

Hey, well done! It's nice to get paid as so few outlets on this side of the Atlantic do. Good poem too.

David Todd said...

Did you keep the cheque and frame it?

Unknown said...

Cheers Rob!

And yes I did Cyberscribe *big evil grin*

Seoman said...

Getting paid to write poetry, fantastic! Well done.

Unknown said...

Thanks Seoman :¬)