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.