I'll meet myself coming back...

Well, Edinburgh was only fantastic, even if it was the quickest in and out of a city I've done; excepting the trips to London, I guess.

In any case, I arrived on Sunday lunchtime, and did a quick swizz around the park in Prince's Gardens, which are just at the foot (or should I say root) of Edinburgh Castle. I thought while looking up at it, well, you'd not invade that place easy! Rob and his wean made the perfect tourist guides - and I can say categorically that having a scooter is probably the coolest way to get around downtown Edinburgh!

After getting my bearings and a bite to eat, it was off to the Great Grog to get stuck in. Firstly it's a lovely space, very relaxed with comfy chairs to lounge in, always conducive to reading and hearing readers. I kicked off and then Claire Askew read from her work: saving her best poem till last, and then Sally read sections from her long poem just published in a fine edition: The Bees. It's a great idea and the book has a lovely look to it, on creamy paper with gorgeous black and white prints inside. My ones love it already!

Alan Gillis read then, sumptuous sounds go into his work and you can see why Hawks and Doves got shortlisted for the Eliot prize this year. A pleasure to hear him, and indeed everyone, give voice to their work.

I was so tired yesterday I came straight home, made dinner and retired to bed - so, so tired - but it was worth it. And I seem to have come home with way more books than I left with... oh boy!

Lethargic Diseases

I am gripped by a massive dose of prevaricaritis. It's where you know you have loads of stuff to do, but can't quite get started.

I've even gone as far as making a list of the assignments that I need to have done, the order in which they should be done, and any bits of them that are begun (for encouragement).

But I can't seem to get started. I've decided to go climb a mountain tomorrow instead. A literal one, not metaphorical...

Oh boy. Roll on June 1st...

Another Escape Plot

I'm off to Edinburgh in Scotland on Sunday week to read poetry with, get this: Sally Evans, Alan Gillis and Claire Askew. All very fine poets in differing ways.

Rob MacKenzie, who organises and promotes the Great Grog readings, has a fine poem of Claire's already on display, she's a promising young poet. Alan Gillis's Hawks and Doves was nominated for the T.S. Eliot prize this year; and Sally Evans is the long-serving editor of Poetry Scotland as well as having several poetry collections extant.

Now, as we say here in Ireland, try and folly all that!

Hey - there's my buddies and me

Here's the collaborative project, Picture-Text that I've been beavering away at on Thursdays in college. The project links QUB's varied and amazing collections of materials in different departments and will fuse pictures and texts to create new artwork for a centenary exhibition.

It's all a bit up in the air at present, but we'll get there (no choice really, deadlines are lifelines...).

Lovely to see everyone's work emerging there. I'm looking forward to seeing the exhibition when it comes and the images that Sylvia uploads of us looking worried/frantic/inspired over the coming weeks ;)

How not to do NaPo

Oh dear: I've stalled on NaPo around about 17 poems in. Not because I've nothing to write about, but because I suddenly realised that I had a lot of work to do on the pieces that I need to submit for the end of this semester. No-one said it was going to be easy!

NaPo hasn't been a waste of time though: I've written 17 poems, which is 17 more than I had, and I can use about six or so for the major submission. They tie in nicely with the (hopefully)emerging theme of time and memory, so nothing wasted - ever.

I've three assigments on the go: one a set of ten poems about 19thc Victorian attitudes towards sex; a set of twenty as yet unrelated poems (but I'm working on that you can hear the thumping and banging from where you are, I bet) as well as 2000 words of commentary about process, development, themes etc. and finally a review/critique of a poetry collection or collection. That last one sounds simple enough, but I'm having difficulty in sourcing previous collections of the writer whose book I'd like to review for this assignment. I'd like to be able to give a very rounded review and that means researching the previous three... odds bodkins!

Nigel McLoughlin's Dissonances

I did a book swap with Nigel McLoughlin recently. It arrived (a week after mine made it to the UK) and I was really thrilled to open the pristine copy and read it through inside. His language has a really lovely taste on the tongue: it's definitely savoury, not sweet and there are some excellent poems contained within the covers.

Nigel's done an interview slot on National Pubic Radio, it's a quick five minute slot. In this interview he briefly discusses with the presenter Lynn Neary growing up during the troubles in Northern Ireland and then reads (in fact, I think possibly recites from memory) a great poem Seanduine about his son Euan.

Interestingly during the interview, Nigel talks about how he composes his poems - they are orally composed, which means he tries out his language aloud long before he commits it as a poem to the page. This explains why they read so fully in the voice in my mind as I read them. There's a lot to be said for the word out loud.

Reading Randall Jarrell

It never ceases to amaze me how little I know of and about poetry, but I love discovering new poems by poets that have been and gone, but left their mark.

It began a few weeks ago when I was reading Muldoon's latest book of essays, The End of the Poem. I came across Robert Lowell, who I'd heard mentioned in the same breath as Elizabeth Bishop in college but hadn't come across his work all that much before (yep, sheltered, dumb life). I read the extracts and got out my trusty Big Book of Poems, the Norton Anthology of Poems (4th ed), which I won't say makes comfortable bedtime reading, because it's a behemoth of a book to have open on your lap.

Anyhow, I've been sticking to 20thc poets, particularly looking at US poets, like Lowell, Bishop and came across Randall Jarell last night (as well as Charles Olsen but that's for another time). Again, I've heard his name mentioned before and wanted to look at his work. Born in 1914, he was old enough to serve during WWII, in the air corps and wrote some poems about this subject. I found the selection interesting because I've never read WWII poems before: it's usually Owens, Sasson, Graves and Brooks from WWI we reach for, when we think of war, or more correctly anti-war, poetry.

Anyhow, here's a link to 'The Death of the Ballturret Gunner' It's only five lines, give it a go.

And I think Jarrell has quite a mischievous twinkle in the photo on this page too. Some poets can be quite handsome, I think :)

A Picture tells a Thousand Words

I'm always promising pictures but not delivering, so here is one of me looking particularly pleased with myself.

The award I'm holding is the one I was given on Friday, for the third place in English, in the Feile Filiochta Poetry Competition: it's a lovely little bronze plaque. It was a fantastic evening sitting listening to poems being delivered in Irish, Scots Gaelic, Cymreg, Polish, German, Italian, French and English.

Apparently this is the last year of Feile Filiochta on its own: next year Poetry Ireland will have a role to play in this high-profile competition.

There's a lovely edition of all the winners' poems nestling on my shelf now.

Recent Readings

Last night I attended the first of the series being run by the Oscar Wilde Centre for Writing; the home of the MPhil course in Creative Writing at Trinity College, Dublin. They are hosting a whole series of events every Tuesday evening during April to celebrate ten years of their CW programme.

We were welcomed by Stephen Matterson and the writers were introduced by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin: being three; Derek Mahon, Mary Morrissey and George Szirtes. The very sizeable crowd that turned up had to be relocated to a larger lecture theatre as the event was oversubscribed - a very happy thing to happen at a reading event like this.

I went along with two other writer friends and we sat rapt through the evening: Derek Mahon read mostly from new work, with an environmental flavour, so we were getting very recent work indeed.

Mary Morrissey is a Writer Fellow at Trinity College - a novelist with Mother of Pearl and The Pretender behind her, she read from WIP; she is writing a 'counter-novel' to Sean O' Casey's "autobiography" from the point of view of O'Casey's older sister, Bella.

George Szirtes read from Reel to Reel as well as more recent work and one or two of the poems I recalled from last year when he visited Trinity as part of the Poetry and Politics series in February. All three participants received very warm applause for their readings.

***

I've forgotten to record that the joint launch in Belfast with poetry colleague and friend, Enda Coyle Greene on the 7th of March went terrifically well. A large contingent of friends, colleagues and peers came along to No Alibis book shop in Belfast to hear us read from Kairos and Snow Negatives; we were honoured to have Sinead Morrissey say a few words on our behalf about poetry in general and our work in particular. The reponse was such afterwards that all the books we had brought to Belfast were cleared off the shelves. Dave of No Alibis was absolutely thrilled with the success of the evening, as were both Enda and I.

A week later, on the 14th of March, I had the pleasure of attending one of the Candle and Mirror series organised by Richard Irvine, in the Harty room at the QUB School of Music (a wonderfully resonant room for the spoken word). This time the line-up was American (Over Here): with Chris Agee who lives in Belfast and Alicia E. Stallings, who lives in Greece. Both poets read very well, but I was very taken with Stallings' work, which is snappy, clever and reveals great depth and shows how you can use form imaginatively. All the audience received a souvenir pamphlet of the poets' work to take away, which I really enjoyed reading later on. We were lucky to have had a workshop with Stallings the day before the reading; adding a new twist to the workshop series.

UK National Poetry Competition

And the winners have been announced and there's our tutor from last semester, Sinead Morrissey taking first prize - go Sinead!

NaPoWriMo

In the US it's National Poetry Month. Wikipedia explains the history quite well and Poets.org have lots of tips on how to get more poetry into your life, whether reading it yourself from the library or buying more poetry books or just generally getting out to readings etc and immersing yourself in poetry, in whatever way you feel inclined.

NaPoWriMo is part of this celebration too - where like the novel writing month of November, you can commit to writing a poem a day for the month of April. I have sworn blind I would do this every year for about four years now but always miss the first few days of it due to study.

Well, not this year: I'm having a go! Care to join me..?

A tale of Two Reviews

I forgot to post the link last week to a review I wrote for Eyewear about Meryl Pugh's pamphlet Relinquish and Patrick Williamson's Prussia Cove.

This week I find the poetry pundits have got their own back on me - only joking! There's a very considered review of Kairos as well as Fred Johnstone's latest poetry collection, The Oracle Room.

Did you know that Doghouse have very little stock left of Kairos... ?

The Clue is in the Date

Today, if all goes well, our household will have an honoured guest sitting at the dinner table, partaking of a vegetarian dish that I have cobbled together from good oul Delia's cookbook.

The honoured guest will be: none other than Shameless! What a great way to celebrate the wearing of the green ;)

Pictures to follow!

Some Good Poetry News

I got a really nice letter about three weeks ago from the organisers of the Féile Filíochta Poetry Competition in Dun Laoghaire, telling me that I had won third prize in the Adult English section for a wee scrap of a poem.

This competition is run every year: you can enter online, and it's free to do so - perhaps I might never have tried my wee poem only for that. I've been eagerly waiting ever since the letter came for the website to be updated before saying anything - not wanting to offend anyone.

Anyway, you can now look at the First, Second and Third prize winning poems and see what you think.

The prize awards ceremony is organised to coincide with the Poetry Now 08 festival, already becoming a big fixture along the lines of StAnza in Scotland.We are all going to Dun Laoghaire on the 4th of April to collect the cheque, read the poem and hear the other poems read. This is one occasion where the 'woman with six kids' brings them along for an airing, along with the hub!

Round and around Rome in 2 days

First, let me explain that map-reading is not one of the hub's special skills. It's normally allotted to me to undertake the task of navigation, which is usually conducted from the safety of a passenger seat with him driving. This usually prevents us from getting lost, but it does provoke some rather surreal scenes as I don't know my left from my right (yes, it was quite hard work passing my driving test), and indicate directions something like this: 'You need to turn that way. No, that way, not this way.' Accompanied by various 'pointed' hand signals.

With him not driving, he had to have something to do with his hands, like hold the map. He's a self-confessed ex-scout, so you'd think he'd have picked up something about map-reading, like how to hold it the right way round, but alas I think his badges were for fire-lighting and sewing, not map-reading.

Thus it was that we found ourselves being conducted the long way round, the wrong way round to the hotel on the first night, with him reading the map. Oh, he said after about an hour, this city is quite small. That came after our first foray from the hotel into the darkness on Friday night to find a) somewhere to eat, and b) the Trevi fountain. Ah yes, toss a coin in the Trevi and you'll always come back, but in our case we skipped waiting for another trip to Rome and came back to the Trevi a grand total of four times - always just tripping across it the way you do a stubborn doorstep

Similarily with the roman ruins at the Palatine and the Colosseo, as it has become ingrained in my mind. I'm not being ungrateful - it was fabulous to see it in Saturday morning's soft rain, Saturday evening's luminescence and again in Sunday morning's sunlit glow. Thank goodness the Vatican is closed on Sundays doing the other sort of business - Lord alone knows how many times we might have strayed that way too, only for it being a bit further away from us than every where else.

On the Sunday, we went to the Villa Borghese, which is this really massive park containing a fair few museums and galleries where Romans like to hang out when it's sunny. Not satisfied with trying to lose me a good few times, hub decided to hire one of these side-by-side bicycles, of which only one side is the controller, and kill me by refusing to break until the last minute; driving it off very high kerbs and making it go fast down hills... and finally getting it out on a main road and trying to get us run over. My nerves couldn't take any more and I refused to get back on after about an hour. He said it was the best fun he's ever had, the highlight of the weekend and worth every euro he paid - evil sod.

There will be pictures, just as soon as I get the camera to talk nicely to me.

In other news...

Did I mention that I was going to Rome?

My dearly beloved hub lost the thread of himself early last winter and booked a weekend away to the Eternal City, as a present for me on the occasion of me getting older than I already was.

It's taken no mean feat of organisation to arrange the finer details, which is what I had to do in order to be able to go anywhere. There will be children stashed in other people's under-stair cupboards; there will be children stashed in other people's dog kennels; there will be children hanging out of other people's lightbulbs - but not out of me!

Yes - a child-free two and a half days, in the company of the hub. Just you watch me move across Rome!

I've always wanted to visit Rome, since I read Middlemarch and then Portrait of a Lady. The female protagonists of both novels go to Rome and visit all the sights: one with her newly married dry, dusty old fart, the other is single but ends up seduced by another American exile (entirely the wrong man for her, but there you go).

In both cases the authors used their knowledge of the 'Grand Tour,' as visiting all the important European cities used to be called, to extend the emotional backdrop - using settings intertwined with the emotional state of the heroines.

Now, I'm not as dramatic as that, but I do like a good ruin - I shall be taking pictures but will be looking for the quirky ones, like the one in my guide book: he's headless, handless and ahem-less, with a set of testicles any bull would be proud of! Hmm. Wonder who he was meant to be, then...

Post Match Analysis

Well! What a magnificently relaxed afternoon Pipe and Slippers turned out to be: some rare talent and a good mix of music and spoken word as well.

After stuffing myself with the best humous, salad and pitta breads (and chocklit cake - yum) that London has to offer (thanks Debi - as always the best hostess I know!), and meeting a brave load of bloggers, we set off on foot to the Ivy House.

First out of the blocks was John T. Ahearn reading from his brand new publication, Pomes. John's work uses form to hang his poems on and he gave an interesting reading of his work, giving us a nice taste for the poems. I read next and was then followed by Rebecca Jade a singer-songwriter whose songs and voice reminded me a lot of Kristin Hersh (in her acoustic phase).

A natter with all the bloggers who bravely came out in support of us showed a strong turn-out: Meloney Lemon, Minx, Debi, Pundy, Lee L. Lowe as well as Emma Darwin of BWBD (her novel is The Mathematics of Love).

We then heard Ben Holden rendering 'Mynatour,' a long poem with deft humour giving a new slant on the metamorphosis theme, followed by 'Starlings' by Wes White.

A rare treat was Jack Blackburn in the best tradition of performance poetry. One of his pieces, a re-working of Macbeth had me and the audience riveted; his nimble wordplay and rhyming worked very well together and he got a huge round of applause for his slot.

Without doubt the organisers saved the very best until last: Ricardo Garcia's beautiful flamenco/classical style of playing guitar had a lot of women stirring longingly ;) in their seats (and perhaps not a few men) and his three pieces earned him a strong call for an encore when he was done. I'm listening to his CD as I'm typing and I hope that he will tour in Ireland in the not too distant future. What a huge talent!

I don't have any pictures, but Debi has already, so check them out! Now I must get some clothes/kids/hair washed in preparation for the exodus to Rome on Friday (sans kids of course).

Pipe and Slippers

Off travelling again today to London to take part in Pipe and Slippers. I am of course very excited and can't wait to hear John Ahearn reading from his brand new publication, Pomes.

I shall be playing my favourite game of 'spot the blogger' while there - it'll take me mind off the reading.

Wish me luck: I shall read those suggested poems you mentioned and will be thinking of you tomorrow when I read!

Shameless Lion Writing Circle

The plot of the longest piece of literary knitting I have yet seen, has been stirred, thickened and made very interesting by the latest contributor, Meloney Lemon.

There is now talk of how the whole thing will be finished off - and what will Shameless do then...?

***

In other news, I have a very exciting poetry development to relate - but I can't say anything about it yet!

How do you top a day like today?

I spent most of today workshopping poems with Michael Longley.

Let me just repeat that: I spent most of today workshopping poems with Michael Longley.

I swear if I never did another thing in my life, I could die quite happily right now! :)

This is the poem by which I first knew his work: Ceasefire. Published just days after the ceasefire in Northern Ireland was declared.

So, you think you like to...

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Literature Nerd Does sitting by a nice cozy fire, with a cup of hot tea/chocolate, and a book you can read for hours even when your eyes grow red and dry and you look sort of scary sitting there with your insomniac appearance? Then you fit this category perfectly! You love the power of the written word and it's eloquence; and you may like to read/write poetry or novels. You contribute to the smart people of today's society, however you can probably be overly-critical of works. It's okay. I understand.
Artistic Nerd
Musician
Social Nerd
Drama Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
Anime Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

I blame Bonnie for this! Seriously, it's just for fun :)

Pipe and Slippers

It seems timely just a week and half before the gig in South London to find out that Chief Biscuit has written a very handsome review of Kairos in a review blog that she keeps.

Kay McKenzie Cooke , as CB is better known, is no mean poet herself: her first collection 'feeding the dogs' (2002) won the Montana New Zealand Book Award's 'Best First Book,' in 2003. Her second collection, made for weather, has just come out recently and is an even stronger collection of work.

Kay's reading of the poems in Kairos is helping me to think of the poems I must select for reading on Sunday 24th February at Pipe and Slippers. The organisers have placed John Ahearn and myself at the head of the bill, kicking off proceedings, and allowing us each a good fifteen minutes for getting a good flavour of our publications across to the listeners, which means that I need to think about more poems to read, rather than the small selection I had already been contemplating.

You should click on the link above to discover who else will be there: for example, Barcelona-based Flamenco guitarist Ricardo Garcia will be stopping by, fresh from a slot at the Royal Albert Hall... and that's just one highlight!

Maybe now is a good time to ask you for your favourite poems from Kairos. You might not be able to be there, but I'll read them all the same, thinking of you as I read. Who knows, something might just come of it.

Oh what a glorious feeling...!

...Everything's going my way...

Well, a bit. Ish. For a while. Yes, I am in a terrific mood, but it's just sun-induced. Imagine. A whole sunny day with mine brood. In the purple transportation machine. On the side of a small bohereen. Beside the sea which was full tide-in. Which sported a pebbly beach with large, jagged rocks, nice bit of yellow lichen too. But the sea made lovely soothing shushing noises... when I sent the children to run off down the road a bit. Okay, a good bit.

An award from Belle. Well, two actually. Let's see if I can insert one of them here somewhere...

Nice, isn't it?

Now, how about Apprentice, Inner Minx, Debi, Shameless and hey, how about you post it on your blog! It's the weather - call me sun-mad!

The Joys of...

..writing! O, but spring has sprung here, even if it is cold and I am enjoying my return to college: full as this year's semester is going to be.

On Wednesdays, I attend a class on Life Writing, facilitated by the bould Ian Sansom. I have come across his writing in The Dublin Review (great round-up of the great and good in Irish (and beyond) writing) and The Yellow Nib (journal of the Queen's Seamus Heaney Centre). I believe he also writes for the Guardian (of a Saturday) and he organised a poetry appreciation class last semester, which alas I was unable to attend. You might get a flavour for his writing here, on his well-organised, informative and amusing website.

Yes, I'm gushing, aren't I? It's hard not to gush when you've attended one of Ian's classes: the sheer energy of his delivery; his enthusiasm for books and book recommendations; the simplicity with which he sets sparks blazing in you and the good sound advice he gives on the subject of writing alone, have been worth the fees for the MA alone (not to mention Sinead Morrissey, Medbh McGuckian, Daragh Carville - but enough name-dropping already!).

So, the subject is Life Writing, and the various forms thereof: biographical; essays - whatever you want to explore - it's all there. And the reading list alone is throwing up some wonderful books that I'd never come across: Jack Barzun's Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers is a lucid example. This book will serve either the beginner writer, or the writer who's ready for a brush-up. It's full of great examples of how not to write and contains exercises for helping you re-appraise how you use your words.

Last week's opening salvo was a twenty point 'Things Writers ought to Know:' otherwise billed as an undergraduate's course in Creative Writing Techniques. Now, I know that some might say that that is terribly reductive - but there is a sense in having it all there; simple and direct, I guess. That's just fifteen minutes from the class!

Anyway. I must go and do my homework while I still have some finger-stumps left to work with: An Essay of 1000 words on a subject from a list I made earlier of 'Things That I Would Like to Write About Before I Die.' When you look at it like that you really don't want to mess about in what's left of your writing career, do you?

Sweeney Todd

Ah yes, the oul dreamboat himself. We went to see Sweeney Todd on Saturday night. Well, I went to see it: hub yawned his way through it. I had got him there on the pretext of Helen Bonham Carter's jugulars, (or jongleurs?) but it didn't stop him from finding it all very tiresome: 'But darling, you know I don't like musicals!'

Well, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang it was not. I must confess that it's the first musical I've ever seen that combined song and gore in such a stomach turning way. I enjoyed it, in a peeping-through-me-fingers sort of way. I probably enjoyed it because Johnny Depp was in it. But Alan Rickman played his sneering judge quite well and Timothy Spall was quite the slinking stinker too. I have to admit that I laughed when Sacha Baron Cohen got his throat cut - but he did his small part quite well as the opposition barber with a side line in hair tonics.

One thing: if the evil judge Turpin was so evil, then how come his evil fades into insignificance once Sweeney Todd gets going? There's nowhere for your sympathies to lie except to expect Todd getting his comeuppance at the end of the film (and I'd best not spoil it here).

I think it's just degrees of evil - everyone in this damn story is so evil, bar the ward Joanna (originally Todd's daughter in his former life) and the young sailor who chases after her - but they're so damn 'goody' that they come across as sickly sweet - really - which makes you wish that something would happen along and corrupt them.

Yes, I get the whole desire-for-revenge-corrupts thing. But everyone has degrees of corruption in this telling - I tell you, I felt quite greasy leaving the cinema last Saturday and it wasn't that I needed a shower.

Spring has sprung

I don't care if it is cold in your part of the world. In the Smith/O'Reilly household there is a certain whiff in the air that has me reaching for the cleaning fluids and eyeing up me man a certain way (in fairness, he has the decency to look scared).

I've been getting ready, I tell myself, for La Fheile Bríd (fadas and Irish spelling ever my failing). This day is the 1st of February and already the evenings are lengthening out a little and my kids are behaving like baa lambs: extra bleating and sproinging around the place; they played outside on Saturday for the first time this year, making a nice muddly circle in the back garden where their cycle tracks went round and around.

I love spring. I love its renewal and promise. I love the green bulb buds spurting up from the ground and the small tight knit furls of browny-green on wet branches and bushes that look otherwise dead. I love the slightly deeper green that grass gets this time of year and the red glow of Salix Alba along the motorway cuttings with the sun behind it makin it glow.

And I love the idea of another year kicking off again. Yes, I love spring!

The Newest Installment...

...of the Shameless Lions Collective Short Story is up. Scrolling is the name of the game, as you have to go right down to see Apprentice's addition (18) in which she skilfully paints a breathing space for the kids, and for the reader.

You know, I can see this story has legs - how will it finish up? And when :)

Fair play to Shameless!

Shmoking!

Did I mention that Debi and Minx arranged a birthday surprise for me, back in December that included having to return to London in February?

I knew I liked the sound of it as soon as I saw the picture of the website - Pipe and Slippers. Now, doesn't that sound comfy? The whole idea is a very relaxed Sunday afternoon in Peckham at The Ivy House, on the 24th of February.

There is a story (I don't know how true!) that the Rolling Stones played there once, a long, long time ago.

So I get 10 minutes to wow the audience with poems from Kairos.

But the best news is that the Wordcarver is making a very special appearance on the same bill - live, all the way from the USA: J. T. Ahearn!

I may have to buy a new outfit for this!

Wigtown Poetry Competition

There are only four days to go to the closing date for the Wigtown Poetry Competition. It's billed as Scotland's National Poetry competition and I remember hearing about it first from an OU colleague who lives on a small island off the coast of Scotland... have to go and look that one up, there's lots of small islands off Scotland's coast!

Anyway, you can enter online, so you can beat the postal rush. What better way to gear into spring?

Barbara Smith reading at the White House

Fair play to Dominic putting this ensemble of images together and the song that accompanies it is brought to you by Limerick musicians (see credits).

Now, isn't that a great start to Monday?

Back To School

Yay! Kids are back since Monday, so some relative calm has descended on the house, allowing for some productivity... I'm up as far as six sonnets now... but have had to take a break - otherwise I was going to end up speaking and thinking in iambics forever! Arrgh! I will post one of them as soon as I've got my pruning shears out.

In the meantime, I'm off to Limerick today to read. I was there about this time last year for the launch of their journal Revival - that marked the start of all this travelling around Ireland for the sake of poetry - and I can't help marvelling at how far I've gone in a year.

I was just thinking the other day how much I managed to pack into 2007; the CW course, the finishing of the degree, getting onto the MA course, and not least travelling up and down to Kerry, working on edits for the book and getting Kairos 'out there.' I don't think I ever stopped to appreciate just how far I went!

This year looks equally exciting: more CW classes (it seems they like how we work); off to London in February to read at a literary festival; off to Rome to be a tourist (and do some sneaky research too); a Belfast dual reading/launch of Kairos with Enda Coyle-Greene and her collection Snow Negatives, in March and then there's all the material that I'll have from the MA.

Then there's the possibility of a trip to Cornwall and my best friend is coming home soon from her very long travels... all this from these marvellous blog connections.

It seems that those years of waiting around and kicking my heels (pointy ones at that) were just me getting ready... to take on the world! The future is pink.

2008 looks marvellous already, guys :)

Shh! Writer at Work!

I wish I could find one of those amusing red triangle road signs to accompany this post and to park outside the bedroom door - it's bedlam here as I try to work on one of the many projects I'm supposed to hand up in about three weeks.

There were some kids hanging out of light fittings (voluntarily, I add) a few moments ago - at least that's what it sounded like. And I also heard some crashing a while back. Good job I have some cover-all music going in the background, or I might hear more things I don't want to hear!

See, I had this idea about objects, a big mountain and, well, snow and cold and wind - a bit like it was outside earlier, only way colder - anyhow, I thought I'd throw in the extra handicap of writing all of these things into sonnets.

Oh yes. If you're going to do something, may as well make it real hard. Real hard. So why not set yourself a goal - say, ten sonnets? Five down, and five to go... by Sunday!

Oh - and make them rhyme as well - why not the whole kit and kiboodle, while you're at it... I know - I should really write them with handcuffed wrists behind my back whilst whistling Dixie... hasn't someone done that before...?

In Between Times

I'm always a bit ambivalent about the festive season, especially when you get to the post-match analysis: kids reasonably pleased with their haul; dinner - passable, even if it was raw first time out of the oven; rellies - suitably entertained, fed and re-dispatched to other rellies.

If I had my way, the whole thing would be a lot shorter - by about a week. The new year thing - well, what's another year, as Johnny Logan once sang... and I for one will be quite relieved when the kids are back at school and I can get back to writing once more!

Happy New Year to everyone popping in - ooh - and it's almost two years since I got going on blogger - more later!

The Avalanches - Since I Left You

Never mind all that Christmas stuff - this leaves a warm fuzzy feeling in your tummy!

The First Noel - Irish Style

Last night we sat all six of them down: there's the paper; there's the pen - make your final lists! So far, no bodger. Today Insane Husband is set the task of collecting all the presents outlined, so that Santa's sack will be nice and heavy for coming down the chimney on Christmas Eve.

Guess what the must-have toy seems to be in Ireland this year? The DS; well it's actually the Wee (my name), but I'm not going there after the boys have already totalled two PS2s in the space of two years - I reckon you could possibly put the two of them together and get half way through a game -that's if it wasn't scratched to bits.

Anyway, today goes something like this - text sent from IH at 13:40: no ds left, aggh! Received at 17:10, when I'm just about to get the train home from college in Belfast. So, I think, okay, I'm in a major city, I'm sure I'll get one here. Text back: no worries will sort out here.

Not so. Three big brand shops later, I get the message loud and clear - no DSs happening in this city tonight. Back to train-station with moments to spare. Cue some frantic texting to friends and relations to enquire about DS status in other towns in the north-east of southern Ireland (I know, it's confusing, how do you think we feel).

Most alternative possibilities involve queues, all at ungodly hours. God I love my children. I know what you're thinking: why didn't you get off yer bum and do this earlier. The answer has something to do with a thing that begins with m, ends with y, and doesn't grow on trees, despite what our kids think.

Now, I'm of the opinion that there are ten more days to go before the fat-red-man lands on the roof-tiles; so I'm trying to take a more relaxed approach to this pressie lark and not panic. Yet.

In the meantime, barfarama still reigns with two getting better from Winter Vomiting Bug (we have such straightforward names for things here), but two more complaining of tummy pains and fevers - dontcha just lurve being a parent!

Bloomin 'eck

For the first and probably the last time in my Open University career, I've managed to get a distinction in the Creative Writing course I finished back in September.

I am shocked. But ecstatic.

I have been offered an Honours degree in Literature, which I will have the greatest pleasure in accepting on Monday. After I go and celebrate! Yay me :)))))

The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist (Good Quality)

I've been haunted by this for weeks as a soundtrack. Have a look.

Cork - O' Bheal

For those who aren't from Irish shores, I'll try to translate 'O' Bheal'. Beal (h-aspirated there... God bless me Irish teacher) means 'mouth'. The 'O' bit makes me think of the shape of the mouth sometimes and means 'from'. So loosely speaking, it's 'from the mouth' or 'spoken word.'

O' Bheal is in existence since April of this year and has already confirmed its place as 'The' place to read when and if in Cork. It takes place on a Monday evening and has an easy format that lends itself well to both supporters and guest poets.

Firstly there's the challenge: five random words are gathered from the audience and then a long fifteen minutes are given so that everyone can compose a poem based on the given five words. Anyone who wants to reads out their poem and whoever gets the loudest applause/cheer/foot-stomps gets a free pint - always a useful carrot when you're a poor-mouth poet ;)

This week the words were: barn, useless, peril, fidget and posit. Have a go yourself - but I warn you, the 'barn' always seems to situate the poem, in, well, a barn!

The challenge is then followed by the guest reader, which in this case was yours truly, and here I must say what a pleasure it was to be allowed to include reading one of the longer mythology-based poems from Kairos alongside the shorter, more modern ones - it all did seem to go down well in Cork - and I enjoyed myself much more than I thought I would - think I might be getting used to it at last!

(I wonder is this the time to mention that if you're looking for a Christmas present for a poetry lover, you could do a lot worse than a specially inscribed copy of Kairos ? ... Ah well - no harm in trying!)

Finally there is the Open Mic session, where everyone gets to 'run what they brung.' There was great variety in the work presented for our delectation and a few things that stuck with me on the way back up the road in the car were: the set involving some wistful fiddle playing combined with what I guess you might call 'Irish rap'; a poem about recycling glass which turned out to be a lot more; a poem about a ballerina's feet, butterflies and chaos theory... a poem about hands, another about ears... another about Christmas in the 1920s...

I could go on, but there simply wouldn't be room here - lets just leave it with the fact that it was a great night, only slightly marred by the fact that I had to hop into the car and drive home, so that Insane Husband could scoot off to honour business commitments. My eyes hurt today!

Just a quick thank-you (yes, more thanks ;) ) to Paul Casey, organiser and MC of O' Bheal, a well-versed poet in his own right, who I think we will be hearing a lot more of in time to come...

*********
I have been challenged to seven random facts by Belle and twelve things I love about Christmas by Scarlett. So, I'd better get cracking on them, then hadn't I?!?

Gallivanting again

This week saw me fulfil some more reading obligations: briefly, a lunchtime reading in Chapters book shop of Parnell Street, in Dublin on Monday and then the Poetry Ireland reading in the Unitarian Church on Tuesday night alongside Catherine Ann Cullen, Hugh O'Donnell and Anatoly Kudryatsky.

It was a great pleasure to be reading at this venue; having watched and listened to many other poets of good standing from the (not uncomfortable) pews, it was a truly great feeling to get my turn in the pulpit. We were also very lucky to have two very accomplished Japanese musicians- a harpist and a violinist (sadly I forgot to take note of their names on paper) as well as an unusual music-scape in the form of Nepalese singing bowls, played by Anatoly.

The occasion was tinged with a little sadness as Poetry Ireland is losing its manager of two years, Deryn O'Brien to the Kingdom of Kerry; alas for PI, yay for Kerry. But I believe that she was given a very rousing send-off by the Dublin contingent and I know that she will do very well in the Kingdom.

I have another reading to do in Cork on Monday 10th Dec, at 8.30pm as part of the O'Bheal series of readings/open mic nights that happen down there on Monday evenings. I am looking forward to this one very much, as I've not had the chance to be at one of them before.

In the meantime, the CW Saturday class is just finished for the Christmas break - we are hoping to continue on again in the New Year (once I get my module assignments over and done with) and I am finishing up in Queen's on Friday until the new semester starts. They give you these generous holidays and then fill them with lots of hard work to do; I've three megadocious assignments due just before the end of January and frankly the thoughts of them frighten me half to death.

Results are due from the Open University on Friday 14th December. That's when I'll finally know the grade for my CW course of much earlier in the year and (fingers crossed) I will be asked to accept my degree in English Literature... Booking for the award ceremony opens on the following Monday. Can you imagine me, in Robes, Scroll et al... accompanied by the rabble of my family! What better way to do it than to bring them all along and get my youngest to (loudly) upstage the distinguished guest on the day ;)

Alive! Just about...

Well, as I expected I had a really, really good time over in south London, with my blogmates, Debi and Minx, and Riverwillow too (a thanks here to Belle for the card with the really BIG pants on them - I think she's trying to tell me something).

Friday saw me having a really gorgeous meal with Riverwillow, chomping my way through a plate full of assorted crustaceans and shellfish, talking writing non-stop for... well a couple of hours at any rate.

One thing though - I've discovered that having an espresso last thing at night isn't the cleverest of things to do.

And another thing: urban foxes sound like banshees (and tend to go on and on and on for hours...).

And that people, round where Riverwillow lives, like to go horse riding at 5 in the morning up the street.

Adds a whole new meaning to joy-riding.

*****

Saturday, I met up with Debi and Minx, and we walked and bussed the legs-of-ourselves. Starting with an 'eco-fair' where we had lunch on the hoof, we then perambulated onto the bus and into the West end to meet up with members of Bookarazzi, where we ogled each other's books, talked a good deal about writing, book deals and publishers and got to know each other better. There were about twelve (maths never was my strong suit) of us there; a really good turn out considering it was early December and the shopping end of things has so many people out trolling about.

Later on, the Minx and Debi had arranged to go to see John Bently, a performance poet, in the Canterbury Arms in Brixton. A bit of a double whammy for me - Brixton was where I lived first when I moved to London... way, way back in the distant past - and I was intrigued to find that I knew the pub we were in as well, having been there manys a time... in the way, way back times... (okay I'm not that old, but humour me, why don't you).

Anyway, we watched him do his stuff, complete with a wooden leg, a washboard, a saw and later on aided and abetted by the highest pair of silver heels I've ever seen in my entire life! And all without the aid of a safety net. But with a very, very good bunch of musicians. Bently has been described as being 'quite an exhibitionist.'

To say that I found the whole set interesting, would be putting it mildly - I'm sure Minx or Debi have covered this (ahem) much better than I possibly could (just checked and Minx has).

*****

I returned yesterday to the cleanest house in Ireland, restocked with food, and washing done... I am slightly worried as this is not the normal post-going away state of my home. A big thank-you to everyone whose sofa-beds I slept on this weekend and the hospitality of the Debi household is now become legend.

I always knew it too

Get a Cash Advance

Bits & Bobs

I have been in oxter-land! That's where you're so damn busy that you don't realise that the sh-loppy stuff is right up to your armpits and rising faster than you can say, 'Get me out of here, I'm a celebrity poet!'

Firstly, at another book launch last night in Belfast for an anthology of Canadian, Newfoundland and Irish poetry. The readings from the book were only inspirational and the lovely laid back setting of Bookfinder's Cafe, was completely ideal for creating the necessary ambiance for a weighty tome like this one.

The Echoing Years is produced by The Centre for Newfoundland & Labrador Studies of the School of Humanites, Waterford Institue of Technology. Edited by Stephanie McKenzie, Randall Maggs and John Ennis, the book is literally about 3 inches thick in the spine: and contains some of the great and good poetry that is contemporary now.

Placing poetry from both sides of the pond, from countries not as used to being highlighted, as shall we say the US or the UK, means that the spotlight is allowed to play a lot longer and brighter on this selection of poets. There are some real thrills and surprises in the book: such as Leonard Cohen, Michael Ondaatje and in the Irish section a wonderful translation of Barbara Korun by Theo Dorgan. I haven't even skimmed the surface with this volume - it is (and I am sorry to have to use this cliche) a veritable cornucopia; with the contents page running to 34 pages alone from a total of 1280... some mighty reading over the next few weeks! If you know someone who loves contemporary poetry, you could do a lot worse than stick this in their Christmas stocking(s).

Two: people are starting to send me virtual champagne (how did you know!) and I am awaiting my before-birthday present from my husband with the proverbial bated breath! This evening we are having a family party for me with the kids; tomorrow I set off to stomp around sarf Landin, wiv me gud OU mate (sorry, came over all cockney there!) and later on have a generally good time indulging myself at the Saturday blogmoot for Bookarazzi in London's West-End and hang with the Minx and the Debi one - you know they very conveniently decided to have the moot on my birthday ;)

I have officially decided to get on and enjoy this birthday for all I can - see you this time next year! ;)

****

Okay - maybe not - And my piece of knitting in the Grace story has made it into the Shameless Lion's Writing Circle; go on and have a deko (writer 15), you'll need to scroll down!

More Launches

I had the pleasure of being invited to a very glamourous poetry book launch last Thursday evening, in Damer Hall, Stephen's Green, Dublin. The book in question, Snow Negatives, is a collection by Enda Coyle-Greene, the well deserved winner of the Patrick Kavanagh prize in 2006. Check it out and put it in your (or someone else's) Christmas stocking - it's a fantastic read.

If you don't know already, this is quite a prestigious prize for poetry, awarded to a manuscript of an Irish native annually for 36 years, but you must not have published a book previously. Winners in the past have gone on to bigger and better things - think Paul Durcan, Peter Sirr, Pat Boran, Sinead Morrissey and Conor O'Callaghan to name check but a few. Funnily enough, the winner of the PK award has just been announced this weekend, making it the full year since Enda's book was selected.

The launch itself was absolutely packed to the rafters - I've never been at a poetry event so well attended in my life -which augurs well as a riposte to those that say that poetry is dying off! Pat Boran spoke a few words over the book and then Mary O'Donnell gave us a very sound and interesting introduction to the work itself. Enda then read from the book, garnering a spontaneous round of empathetic applause for her formal sequence, 'Words to Form my Mother.'

For myself, I had a very good evening catching up with 'poets all sizes,' finishing my evening in Doheny & Nesbitts of Baggott Street - my old stomping ground, from my days with News Extracts (back before child production became a business ;) ), talking about ballroom dancing -as you will do, on these occasions.

How do you do 40?

I'm about to celebrate one of those allegedly important birthdays. You know - the ones that end in 'oh'. I'm not sure if that's more an 'oh - did I make it his far,' or an 'oh, is that it?' or perhaps it's more an 'oh!' Which we're all entitled to, I guess.

I was on the phone to a good friend this evening and she asked me, 'Well, what are you doing for it?' I was going to mention the planned trip to London as being something a bit different to do for a birthday, but I thought I might surprise her with that one. She's not forgiven me for jetting off to Paris with Insane Husband for her birthday, back in June. That's my insane husband, not her's... I think she'd definitely not forgive me that one. Sorry this is beginning to sound like a plot for a pink novel...

An-y-way. Some suggestions for milking this 'oh' birthday might be useful. As long as they don't involve chocolate and smearing in the same sentence.

I go away for 5 minutes

...and come back to a sisterhood of the pointy heel as well as knights of besmirched countenance...

I scratch my head, momentarily and then remember that it is almost the depth of winter in the Northern hemisphere and I suppose that that may be one reason for these strange goings on.

But then, I tell myself firmly, is it really strange...? Sisters and knights have long had 'interesting' associations... just now I am thinking Keats very loudly... No 'tis not strange.

qarrtsiluni

...is the name of an online literary zine that has just finished it's latest period of issue. qarrtsiluni was edited by Katherine Abbott and Rob MacKenzie; editors from this side of the ocean and that. This transatlantic editorial collaboration made for an interesting mix of works; visual and written.

I managed to get a poem into this issue which is themed around 'making sense.' I've been getting updates delivered to my mailbox, something I don't normally do, but the sheer quality of language and visual art has been breathtaking, throughout - you should go take a look.

Their back issues are also interesting browsing too - check out their sidebar - and look out for the etymology of qarrtsiluni as well - it's a lovely word.

Mithering and Dithering

Our second assignment for the Research Methods module is due in about 2 and 1/2 weeks... and I am having a good old dither about it today. And yesterday.

I think it was the sheer scope of the task at hand. On the face of it, it looked simple: a 1000 word report evaluating the archival resources available in Northern Ireland - or near where you live - that's if you can winkle anything of 'literary worth' out of a provincial Local Authority Archive that specialises in water board records and minutes of meetings... you get the picture don't you?

A visit to Armagh is in the offing to look at the rather splendid sounding Armagh Public Library or Robinson Library, where they specialise in lots of interesting books, manuscripts and documents mostly before the 1800s. They have a first edition of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, with his own emendations there!

Meanwhile, back at the Kairos/poetry ranch, the two November readings have sort of snuck up on me. Galway and Over The Edge is next Thursday 1st November, in Galway City Library at 6.30pm. I am reading with two other poets, Megan Buckley and Jean Folan, both with tremendous literary credits to their names.

After a wee visit to some outlaws in Cahirciveen on Friday 2nd, it's back to Tralee, my adopted home for a good bit of the summer, for the big read on Saturday 3rd November, at Siamsa Tire. This time it's with the other Doghouse Pups from this year, Catherine Ann Cullen, Anatoly Kudryavitsky and Hugh O'Donnell. It's a nice way to meet up with Noel our editor again and the other three.

Shameless Lion Writing Circle

Well the developing story of Grace has stepped up a pace; side characters have been introduced and we are getting some back-story on what has led Grace to that initial taxi ride in New York.

The contributors are up to eight now and the logistics of people reading it and preparing their next installments are making it even more of a challenge. I am dreading being nominated for a contribution, there are so many threads to draw together... a bit like deciding when to start reducing stitches for the armholes when you're knitting the back of a jumper - this row or maybe two rows on...

I think they're going to need chapters at this rate of going!

A London Blogmeet... and a Launch!

Plans are afoot for a blogmeet for Bookarazzi members in central London. I thought I would go too, since it's nice to have faces to put to names and really talk books with everyone there... and then I thought about tucking copies of Kairos in my suitcase and erm, well, launching it there... and then I remembered that I'm 40 on the weekend in question...

It's the 1st of December, and I can't think of a better way to celebrate it... how about you?

Pundy the Publishing Pundit!

Damn blogger won't let me post a picture, but Pundy has something to show for all the months of hibernation: A Half Life of One.

Fiddle dee dee!

I've so much to catch up on, this post will be in danger of sounding a little breathless... so here goes!

Firstly, the Shameless lions writing project has moved on apace - when I last checked in it was up to five writers already: Shameless, CB, Scarlett, Minx & Vanilla, with the next nominated writer being Verilion.

Grace the protagonist seems to be getting around a lot, and secondary characters are being developed. The initial potential of 'Grace' has widened out a great deal, and each writer has brought their own unique flavour and style to the proceedings.

*****
Another thing I forgot to blog is that skint writer's Blagsite has gone live, with lots of interesting articles about writing, by writers and you should really check it out, if you've not already done so. I did a wee piece myself, on - well, it had to be poetry, really, didn't it? I've read all the other articles and can't wait to see how this one grows - fair play skint!

*****

In case you were wondering, the Saturday Creative Writing class that I'm facilitating is going from strength to strength. Today was Week 3, (having had to do two readings last weekend) and we were critting the final pieces produced from the group - I was utterly astounded by the variety of writing and talent in the group! Each mini-story showed great potential and with some gentle suggestions made by the group could be made even better. We are hoping to produce some kind of publication next year, so these stories could be the seedbed from which we can grow a small anthology in the form of a chapbook.

Next week we move on to poetry and (rubs hands) that's where the fun will really start! I have some great ideas for workshops lined up and hope the group enjoys them as much as I have putting them together.

*****

The MA is starting to feel settled for me, although I still have to pinch myself that I am going up to Belfast to Queen's every week for classes - the campus has some terrific old buildings, and in the quad there are some beautiful trees with a blaze of red leaves - sadly the day I that I see this, did I have my camera there to capture this..? Did I heck! Anyway, I think I have enough on my plate producing one new poem a week for twelve weeks for the workshop - which includes some mighty fine writers... keeping up is going to be challenging; but as August's Guardian Workshop as reinvented by Rob showed, I think I thrive on challenges ;)

*****

Kairos is selling at a very steady pace. My publisher is absolutely delighted with the ongoing interest, as I was very much an untried and unknown quantity for his publishing outfit... and, it looks like there may be a Belfast launch in the offing, as well as perhaps a venture forth to the UK - more about this later on!

*****

So there you have it - life after the madhouse is live!

Tagged for a book meme!

1. Total number of books owned - Erm, I really can't count them all - they're in every room of the house and the attic. Even the smallest room. Even the car. Even the garden shed. I have the inherited family 'book sickness.'

2. Last book bought - Hugh O'Donnell's Planting a Mouth; bought and signed at his wonderful launch in Dublin: really complete and beautiful poetry too.

3. Last book read - The Man With Night Sweats, Thom Gunn; The Truth of Poetry, Michael Hamburger (still reading this one); The Children of Hurin, Ed. Christopher Tolkien; Northern Lights, Philip Pullman (I read about four or five at a time and often re-read books that I've read before for comfort too). Okay, that might be cheating!

4. Five books which mean a lot to you.

Stranger Music by Leonard Cohen - a selected poetry and songs.

Gilgamesh, English version by Stephen Mitchell - a very contemporary, yet mythological account of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The Song of Taliesin by John Matthews - oops does my interest in myths show.

The White Goddess by Robert Graves - without this I'd never have had all those poetic arguments in my head.

And John Toland's Christianity not Mysterious, a very precious book indeed for all the philosphical treatises that came from it and indeed for its rarity.

Taggees: Belle, Colin Will, and Cyberscribe - everyone else seems to have done it already!

Totally Awesome, Dude!

Yes, dahlinks, it's awards time again! Just look at what Belle has awarded me!

I will have a think about who I will pass this on to, as there are so many worthy blogs out there that I love...

The Shameless Lion Writers are at it again!

Shameless' Lions and Lionesses have a new writing project up: it's based on a photograph of someone hailing a taxi in New York and looks very good so far with two writers having contributed.

It works through each subsequent writer nominating the next. So far, Shameless began it, CB continued it, and Scarlett is next. Go read it on the above link - it's great - Grace the protagonist is quite mysterious...

I can't wait for my turn - I have a feeling this story will grow in unexpected ways!

Ambitions Fulfilled

Yesterday I fulfilled part of a lifetime's ambition - to be enrolled in a course in Queen's University Belfast! I began my MA programme with the university with the first class of Research Methods - we will be exploring how to construct Bibliographies and conduct research using Libraries, Databases and Archives.

Sounds dry as dust, doesn't it? But in these places are the most unlikely resources, and they're just as useful for someone doing Creative Writing as they are for someone researching for Medieval English - you just won't know until you start looking, what subjects will interest you and what inspiration could be waiting inside a book, or letter, or record of someones life.

We learned about the Library of Congress cataloguing system and how each writer has their own number assigned to them as well as certain letters. All reference books begin with Z, for example and literary books belonging to the UK and Ireland are PR. We've got our first assignment too due in three weeks, finding a bibliographic list of books on 1 of 24 possible subjects.

I was slightly bemused, as being so used to studying on my own with the OU with the odd tutorial or day school has made me realise how pampered the ordinary student in brick uni is, with lectures, hand-outs and the novelty of having other students to physically talk to! I think I will enjoy this year very much! Even the mornings with the cold and darkness that will come soon won't bother me now :)

The Golden Compass

I'm like a little child! If, unlike me, you do read papers and actually keep up with current affairs and movies etc, you probably know about The Golden Compass, forthcoming just in time for Christmas. It's a movie of the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, which I just found out about today.

Go and find your daemon on the website!

Mine is Arion, the Tiger. Apparently, I'm modest, responsible, competitive and sociable, which is why my daemon is a Tiger... I always did have a think about cats :)))

What's yours?

Kairos Launched!

The good ship Kairos was launched into orbit with great acclaim and applause on Wednesday, 19th September, 2007!

Well, okay, maybe not 'great' acclaim... but the speeches were very nice, the wine was too and a good many copies of the book were snapped up and signed by yours truly. That's Daire (8) there, holding one of the books!

All the children attended and they were immaculately behaved; if we ignore the investigating of the main theatre, the clomping up and down the main staircase and the hiding behind the side curtains of the small theatre space where the reading and speeches took place. Not during the reading, though, in fairness!

Noel Lennon gave the launch speech, doing a very nice job of introducing me and my work to Dundalkers, Droghedians and Dubliners alike, not forgetting the contingent from Kerry too.

So that's it! The book is launched and is available for sale here: Doghouse Books. You should state if you want your copy signed, but be prepared to wait a week or so for delivery - the publisher is busy honouring poetry commitments in France!

Also, anyone who wants a taster of the poetry is welcome to listen to the interview of Tuesday morning here.

Next week, I'm reading at Chapters bookstore, Parnell Street, Dublin 1, Friday 28th September @ 1pm, with Seven Towers author, Oran Ryan; presenting awards at the Amergin Festival of Writing in Drogheda that evening; and reading on Saturday, 29th @1pm with Doghouse stablemate, Catherine Ann Cullen at the same festival, in the Droichead Theatre, Stockwell Street, Drogheda.

And on Monday I'm registering for the Creative Writing course in Queen's University Belfast - so if it goes a bit quiet here for a few days - don't worry! I'll be back :) Now, I'd better go and get something together for class tomorrow... the handouts won't write themselves!

John G's Challenge - finally!

Ten words: see what you think!

At a poetry reading, I fell into a daydream:
a tall man read a poem about a ferret.
The ferret had a baritone voice, sang
lemon scented songs, undercut by tarmac
stuck to its paws. Around the walls
of its home were deep green shamrocks
grooving gently on a kite string:
And a piece of driftwood countered
his walls preserved with beeswax;
an ultimatum in spinning song.

He never said it had to make sense...?

Radio, Radio...

I've been asked to go on local radio tomorrow morning - the station is Dundalk FM and if you check on the webpage, they have a listen online facility.

I'm not sure whether they've got the capacity for downloadable podcasts, so if you happen to be near a computer tomorrow morning tune in at about 10:45 to Dundalk Daily with Harry Lee. It is repeated later on in the evening at 10pm, so I might have worked out how to record it myself at that stage... Just click on the red fly past banner near the top of the Dundalk FM page to listen.

I'll be talking a little about myself, as well as reading a few poems from the book (whilst trying not to cringe).

This evening, I'm off to Dublin to support another Doghouse pup: Hugh O'Donnell, whose book I have had the pleasure of reading from cover to cover before it was even published - we proof read each other's work the day before they both went to print. Hugh's work is widely published in Ireland, and he's had the privilege to have been published in Poetry Ireland Review many times (the Irish equivalent of Poetry Review or thereabouts), indicating the standard of his work.

Indeed Hugh's book Planting a Mouth will be launched by it's now retiring editor, Peter Sirr. I wouldn't recommend reading someone's collection in one sitting normally, but Hugh's book is a very good read :)

Update: a friend and colleague has been able to catch the interview, so, as soon as I receive it I will post for the delectation of you all :)

Creative Writing Classes

Today, I began facilitating the first of a series of eight Creative Writing classes. I must admit that I felt like I fell into the whole thing by accident. I didn't allow myself to believe that they were going to happen, because I thought that no-one would come. Imagine my pleasure and surprise to read about them in the local paper (once again) and then be told yesterday that the classes were actually over-subscribed by participants!

So today we set off down the writing road, beginning at the beginning - with basic CW techniques of clustering and freewriting, to free up the mind and imagination and then ending with homework of creating a character and then 'taking them for a walk.' Next week we'll get stuck into critiquing techniques and how to improve writing through criticism.

It's fantastic to be at the other end of a period of learning, where I'm now translating all the learning into facilitating other people's writing development. There were times when I was in the midst of the Literature degree, when I wondered what the hell I was doing it for.

How I smiled inwardly today as a class participant advocated for a plot first, character second, type of approach. Rather than get tied in knots, I cited Henry James as an example of an author with a character in search of a novel: The Portrait of a Lady, as opposed to an author with a novel plot in search of characters: Wilkie Collins and The Woman in White. It brought back many memories of the same conversation on the OU conferences and I must say that it is nice to know now, what all that study and endless essay writing was for. Ginnie Woolf - eat your heart out :)

OOOH! AAAH!

That's about all you'll get out of me today. Three advance copies of Kairos arrived this morning. I have to confess that I don't seem to be able to take it in just yet. It looks way better than I imagined it would: lovely cover, poems just so inside.

After waiting for the four weeks it took to print and bind, I cannot believe that it has come around so fast. Tomorrow week, I'll be in a state of high anxiety running around getting stuff done for the launch in Dundalk. Requests to read at various events have started to trickle in, so I guess that I'll just have to get used to this funny feeling in my tummy. It reminds me of the high tensile state I was in just prior to getting married.

Meanwhile, I'll just while away this evening listening to Matthew Sweeney's deep tones, as he reads from his work tonight in the Unitarian Church, St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2 @ 6.30pm. I'm making a point of talking to him afterwards too ;)

He reads in Limerick on Wednesday and Galway on Friday - not that I'm thinking of going - that might be a little like stalking and I don't think my hub would be too impressed :)))

A Found Poem

...pulled.

Go Barbara!

I have my own wooden spoon today mixing in an imaginary wooden bowl. Imagine my surprise to log onto blogger and find a little message nestling in amongst the other ones, hinting that it might be a good idea to look at the Guardian Poetry Workshop pages, for August's challenge set by Matthew Sweeney.

Imagine also logging into the OU message boards this morning to find messages of congratulations about the same! I had to go and look... and was absolutely delira and excira to find my poem picked to feature in the workshop results. There were a lot of very accomplished poems in the final mix; I noted another OU student had her poem picked too, which is a great testament to the Creative Writing courses that the OU have created. I originally posted the poem on this blog as part of a challenge to write a poem a day using the ten line prompts that Sweeney had put up. Funnily enough, the poem that everyone responded best to, was the one that was chosen.

Reading through the feedback given on the poems, I saw that Sweeney really went for poems that made dramatic use of the lines, that used realism and unique language and steered away from abstraction - something I usually find hard to do in writing, because we just can't help commenting on what we write, even though we try to do it subtly. It's a knock on effect of the way that people think - everything is cause and effect with humans. His point was, I think, that the scene or image presented should invite its own comment or judgement from the reader; leaving the door open for as wide an interpretation as possible, I guess.

So this is another thing I am taking with me from all the writing this year: let the images/sensory perceptions do the talking for you and always use as many of the senses as you can - hmm, shades of that submission call that Rob posted the other day about Making Sense. And speaking of Rob, if it weren't for the initial challenge that he made to other poets about getting off our bums and writing on as many of the prompts as we could, the poem would never have been written in the first place. So thanks Rob :)

Poor Pavarotti

This has always been one of my favourites:

Pressure - pushing down on me...

Ooh, this back-to-school lark never fails to whack me out!

I have deliberately not added up any amounts of money in outgoings to the schools this week as I don't really want to scare myself that badly. That might sound like denial - but hey, it's what got me through six labours, and I'm still here! I'm hoping that by the end of the week, requests for money for 'arts, crafts and photocopying,' swimming lessons, hurling, music lessons, new instruments and various other 'extra-curricular activities' will have faded gently into the thick bottom of a nice glass. Parenthood, don'tcha just love it? Not.

This is the time of the year when newspapers trot out the usual figures about how much a parent will spend on a child's schooling during their school life - and when I am at my most sceptical about those figures. Hub & me reckoned that if the Irish Times really had their figures right this Saturday, we would need three squillion million second mortgages just to get us to the end of number six's primary education. I really do wonder sometimes what normal parents are buying for their kids? And then I wonder where the papers get their information from and who compiles these figures?

On the launch-of-the-book front, progress is being made, slowly but surely. I got a nice surprise in the local paper last week, well shock really, to see an article about the forthcoming book being launched on the 19th of September - the date wasn't the shock, mind you, it was just seeing it there! I received my own copy of the press release the following day. Postal system playing up again, I guess.

Noel tells me that the books are due back at the printers from the binders this Friday. Trouble is that he's away for a well earned break doing what he does best - storytelling, and I won't be able to physically see/feel/smell/ the book until he comes back and posts me a copy... I really can't wait to see it!!!

Favourite Sweets

Yes, chocolate is queen in my kingdom, but these are the best - trouble is that there's never enough in the packet.

Strictly for fun - you should have a laugh at this ad for them.