A Rush of Pleasure!

Back from Kerry again - this time I didn't get to see very much of the scenic mountains or the sea - but hey, that's editing.

I've now got the framework for the collection set up, and there are a few surprises in it that I wasn't expecting. Noel got very excited by two long poems I had brought down, that I didn't include in the original MS that I sent. In fact, it was a very positive and affirming experience to have my work gone over in the minute detail that it was: pretty much like my own private workshop!

These poems are very different in timbre and style to the rest of the collection and are a creative interpretation of some mythological figures that I came across while researching. One of my favourite themes to play with is the figure of the Smithy - probably because of my surname - and I have always liked to link that to the idea of wordcraft, or wordsmithying.

Anyway, these figures belong to that sort of artisan background, and I have come to regard them, well, not quite as Muses, but as guardians of writing, in a way.

If that all sounds very mystical, I apologise. I am quite grounded, but with strong leanings towards a curious and stretching mind. Perhaps we should wait and see what readers think of Kairos, when it makes its debut.

Oh, and I finished reading that Harry Potter book too - a good read.

Help!

Okay, so I'm back from Kerry almost a week now, but I've got to return there tomorrow to edit Kairos. In the meantime, my house looks like a disaster zone - the kitchen that I thought would be a simple in-and-out job has turned into an epic saga, with tiling and wood and glass and paint everywhere. No washing done in almost a week, the kids definitely smell, and don't mention cookers... or fridges, or dishwashers.

These things are sent to try us, right?

I need another holiday to get over all this!

Catherine Ann Cullen's 'A Bone in my Throat' launch

Senator David Norris

Well, another busy night mingling with the great and good of the Irish poetry world. This launch was introduced by Noel King the editor of Doghouse Books.Noel then made way for Senator David Norris to talk about Catherine Ann's book. His compliments ranged from the actual book production, to the contents inside and made all of us hungry to hear Catherine Ann reading from her work.

Catherine Ann read a selection of varied poems from the collection, but one that really appealed to me was based on her meeting her future partner at the Chester Beatty library in Dublin, one of the city's wonderful archives. I give you her opening lines:

We have only just met
Downstairs at the Chester Beatty Library
We have not touched each other yet


Upstairs Durer's Adam and Eve are contemplating
Each other and the apple
The serpent is already waiting


This gives a great flavour of the motifs that recur in this collection. Cullen uses myths, legends and biblical beginnings as a jumping off point to explore how humanity cannot resist being tempted - as indeed Oscar Wilde once wittily put it, 'I can resist anything except tempation.

This post is a little rushed, due to all hell breaking loose here, but I intend revisiting Catherine Ann's book at a later stage. In the meantime, I am off to Kerry for a week tomorrow, so have a blog party here if you like - comfy beanbags and lots of food left in the fridge!

Doghouse Poets and Publisher, left to right: Hugh O'Donnell, Catherine Ann Cullen, Noel King, yours truly, and Anatoly Kudryavitsky.

I need your help...

...to help me get my publisher really keen on using the internet as a promotion tool, that crosses country, continental and oceanic boundaries.

I would like you to visit the newly set up website, Doghouse Books and fill in the message form and ask about 'Kairos,' when is it coming out and will it be available to buy over the internet. Most important of all - tell him where you live.

It sounds a bit bold, but what I'm hoping this will do is spur him into developing the site, so that people can see not just 'Kairos' but all the beautiful books that have been published by Doghouse: their gorgeous artwork covers, what's been written about them, and indeed samples of the contents. And, most importantly, people can buy the books.

Who knows what might happen...?

Oh, you gotta read this

Poetry and prose locked in the eternal battle.

Very funny and picked up from Books Inq.

Ner, ner, ner, ner, ner...

Look what LMN gave me?

Looking for a Good Read

I'm off on holidays with eight kids, two adults and a few hairy goats to Glenbeigh, Co. Kerry for a week on Saturday. Given the amounts of precipitation we're having (that's rain to weather forecasters), I think I may need to bring some books to read. I've ordered In Search of Adam, by Caroline Smails, because it seems like a good idea.

Now I need two more suggestions and quick. Prose preferably. Literary possibly. I'll need to order tomorrow night at the latest.

So, any suggestions? It's either that or I start work on that Ark I was thinking of building... where did I leave me glasses.

Your own Bayeux Tapestry

For fun, found at Polyolbion, Matt Merritt's blog.

Go on, you know you want to!

Kairos Cover

Here it is, by artist Anna O'Byrne and is titled Remember the Birds.

From the Same Stable

I'll be off again next week to attend a Doghouse launch in Dublin. This time it's Catherine Ann Cullen's debut collection, A Bone in my Throat, which will be held in the Rubicon Gallery at 10 St. Stephen's Green, on Thursday 12th July at 6.30pm and is being introduced by Senator David Norris.

Catherine Ann Cullen is quite a prolific writer, writing children's books as well as poetry. She is quite widely published, a sample of her work is here.

A Bone in my Throat is one of four books being published by Doghouse this year. The other three include Anatoly Kudryavitsky who launches at the Gerard Manley Hopkins literary festival at Monasterevin on the 23rd of July with his book, Shadow of Time, his own poetry in English.

The third is Hugh O'Donnell, previously Roman Pines at Berkeley (Salmon, 1990). His launch will be in September, date to be confirmed.

And that leaves my own, Kairos, which has just had its cover picked last week - a beautiful image of a red coastal-scape with a peculiar yellow sun.

Dave Lordan's Book Launch, Dublin

Last night I went to Dublin to the Winding Stair Bookshop on Ormonde Quay. This is a gorgeous independent bookshop, which has a lot to recommend it and not least the intimate size just about accommodating the huge crowd of supporters that turned up to Dave Lordan's launch of The Boy in the Ring.

Lordan's book has been published by Salmon Press, Ireland and was previously selected as the Patrick Kavanagh prizewinner of 2005. Indeed Salmon Press are one of the big hitters in poetry publishing in Ireland, a fact that Dave humorously alluded to in his own few words last night. That last link will take you to three of Lordan's poems from the book. This prize is awarded yearly to poets who have not been published, and most prize winners go on to greater things afterwards.

The Boy in the Ring was introduced by Ronan Sheehan, an Irish novelist. In particular Sheehan spoke of how Lordan's work engages with the political as well as issues of society. He also gave some history behind the poem Attis and Cybele translated from Catullus, the Roman poet (1st century BCE) as part of a wider commission. Dave read this long poem out later on, and I can testify to it's raw power. Not many poets write about heroes that rip their own balls off... Reason alone perhaps, to get your hands on a copy?

I made firm new friends with Elena, Tina, Claire and Maria not all necessarily poetry supporters, but appreciative nonetheless. Proceedings retired to Toners of Baggot Street, with some music -acoustic and live - and an Open mic, which revealed some of the talent that Lordan has been encouraging in his role as a creative writing tutor.

A nod to Hazim here, an Iraqi actor/poet. His performance piece wrapped us all in existential twists and he is appearing again in Dublin on the 4th of July, at the Project Arts Centre. We finally topped the night off in BiaBar in Temple Bar. It was a truly great launch, a testament to the great warmth of Lordan and his cohorts. Hello to Rosa too!

Update: Dave has since left a link to the Attis and Cybele poem which can be found here. Brilliant!

This Falluting Thingy

I tried to spell 'fault' three times unsuccessfully - I took that as an omen and went with 'falluting' instead.

Mingle² - Online Dating

Apparently my blog mentions 'breast' x 4 and 'pain' x 1. That would be the post I did about Dina's book. The blog rater obviously doesn't do 'context.' :(



Thanx to Minx and Debi.

Midsummers Day

Today is Midsummer's day, St. John's Day, one of the old quarter days of the year. Quarter days were the days when debts were settled, rents paid, that sort of thing. Christmas Day is counted as one as well as Lady's Day, March 25th, and Michaelmas, September 29th.

There is a tradition around Dundalk, Co.Louth, Ireland of lighting bonfires at the end of June, which I'm guessing might well be related to Midsummer's day, when bonfires were lit then in Ireland.

Traditionally one paid homage to fire, water and plants. So the bonfire bit makes sense. The water bit, might well be all the feicin rain we've been having lately, also good for putting out any bonfires: and the plants, well, they are benefiting from the rain, only too well!

Finally Slayed those Monsters

Three weeks later, almost, I've killed all the bosses in Lara Croft's latest outing. It's a bit of a cheek really as it's just a souped up version of the very first Lara Croft Tomb Raider adventure. They called it Tomb Raider: Anniversary, and it did make for simpler playing, although the 'bullet moment' as it's been called was tricky to master - that's where times slows down, and Lara takes a pop at the big bad guy much more accurately than she normally can. I could do with a few of those in real life!

It was hard, it was obsessive, it nearly killed the art of conversation, but by Toutatis, it was worth it. My hand is sore, repetitive key strokes notwithstanding, but at least my head will no longer be tortured by dreams of how I should get past that tricky jump that I just can't make and have spent three days trying to jump!

Now I can't wait to go back and play it all again, this time from the comfort zone of knowing I can skip those horrid bosses if I want to...

Now you see it, now you don't

...pulled! Sorry! But thanks for the suggestions and comments.

Eight, ate, eight, late, mate

So, I haff been tagged -mwah hah hah hah hah!

Eight - nice number, divisible by two and four, oh and one. I 'ate eight (get on with it!) Alrighty!

First:
1. I have to post these rules before I give you the ficts.
2. Each participant posts eight random facts about themselves (I'm sure I've done this before).
3. Tagees should write a blogpost of eight random ficts/facts about themselves.
4. At the end of the post, eight more bloggers are tagged (named and shamed).
5. Go to their blog, leave a comment telling them they're tagged (cut and run).

Randomly generated ficts:

1. My parents had a row with the person I was to be named after, shortly after I was born, and changed my name so that I was named for Santa Barbara in California. I haven't forgiven them. Latterly.
2. I used to tell people I had a dead twin when I was about six or seven. I don't.
3. I once wrote a play about St. Augustine in primary school. I can't remember who he is now or why I thought a play about him was a good idea.
4. My mother had a pattern for a blouse that I once made about ten different versions of, across four years. Amazingly they always fitted.
5. I played the Irish harp for about three years as a teenager and got placed in Irish Feis' twice. Not conducive to looking cool as a teenager though, lugging a great big lump of wood with strings around.
6. I get really horrible stage fright before reading poetry, but try to harness the adrenaline as best I can. Bit masochistic, I think.
7. I have a really high threshold for pain (giving birth to six kids is a bit of a giveaway, really).
8. I have a really high threshold for holding hot things as a result of working with tiles and kilns a lot when I was younger. I do still have fingerprints, though.

There - phew, that waren't too bad!

Now -tagees, hmmm.
Apprentice
Debi Alper
John G's Publog
Meloney Lemon
Cybez
Maht Moontopples
Chief Biscuit
skint writer

Get your podcasts ready!

Send your poetry clips to Poetry Live and get another web phenomenon going.

I do like that word lately!

Update on Take Off Your Party Dress

Debi Alper has received the book safely, so expect her piece soon.

Also there is another strand to this blog-phenomenon (not knowing what else to call it) now, as Jeff McDonald at ArcheoTexture has flagged up. He is passing it on to another West Texas blogger Janie, at Sounding Forth.

So that's how it's beginning to grow! Lowebrow and Minx - thanks! And not least to Dina Rabinovitch and the fundraising for Mount Vernon, to which she devotes proceeds of the book.

You've Got Mail

I've never been so glad and yet so sad to receive post as I was today. I'm torturing myself with trying to write formal poetry for the creative writing course, which means a preoccupation with counting syllables, noting stresses and getting very stressed indeed.

Take Off Your Party Dress arrived today, sent from Minx, which came from Lowebrow. It has come from the UK to Ireland and will be going back there once I've finished this piece, as Debi Alper has already asked to be the next blogger to write about it. The idea is to raise blogging awareness and funding for the book's subject matter: breast cancer. The author Dina Rabinovitch is a journalist, whose speciality is children's authors.

The book is a collation and expansion of Dina's columns about her experiences of treatment: from her diagnosis, her chemotherapy, mastectomy, radiation therapy and follow on chemo. In that vein the book uses the present tense, which would have suited the original journalistic immediacy of the columns, but in this gathering helps establish reader empathy (yep I shed a few too), almost as though we experience with Dina her fight against The Enemy Within.

In my own case, I found myself feeling for Dina's predicament of organising her treatment around her 'blended' family - I too have a blended (largish) family, with kids going off here and there to visit with dads. Dreaded school runs, organising meals, holidays - just generally being there, whilst having some sort of thing/money/writing to call mine own...

And so I found myself drawn hugely to Dina's secure sense of familial relationships underpinning her journey through the various stages of physical treatment and psychological changes. In particular her smallest son Elon's breast feeding is a major consideration, when considering the first stages of diagnosis. Her dilemma of choosing between herself and her child demonstrates in microcosm the beginning of many decisions that change her and her family life. Dina's story rings true with me, because it is a story of Everywoman. Some day, some of us will face the same trials. A real heart-breaking moment of identification comes when she examines, post op, the area where her breast used to be, and feels the moment of milk-summoning still within her body.

Rabinovitch comes across as a real fighter: getting on with life because she must. Coping with the changes of mastectomy, by looking for clothes that work with it, rather than hiding it, because this is how she is - not a person who tells untruths to her children about her condition, but someone who wears it as it is, even when caught in the bathroom!

We read how long it takes her to master her own fears and what her coping mechanisms are. But underpinning all is Dina's sense of faith in her own family, what they are and what futures they have too. There are answers too, to the small questions - the gloriously mundane ones like, what will I do while enduring chemo injections, or what moisturiser should I use to speed the scar healing process?

I won't lie and tell you that Take Off Your Party Dress offers miracles. What it does offer is an honesty so often unheard, and imbued with the wonderful quirkiness of a writer whose deft writing skill is admirable. I would urge you, if you have had your interest piqued to go out and buy a copy. Not enough is spoken about this disease and how it is treated and Rabinovitch marshalls this story with a huge deal of grace and dignity under immense pressure.

Indeed this blogging support that has began with Lowebrow and Minx for Take Off Your Party Dress will hopefully highlight how Dina's courage in writing her story of breast cancer can indeed become, paraphrasing her, a 'necklace of women across the world.' I really do wish Dina better, as we used to say to each other in school.

Makes stressing about stresses quite small, really.

Reality pukes!

Back from a wonderful weekend Paris-trotting and reality kicks in with a vengeance. Boy junior (8) spent weekend puking etc. and left a trail of laundry behind him as big as you like.

Thing is, this bug is one of these slow burners, and it has been working its way through the family, one by one, by one, like ninepins - or sixpins, in my case.

Ah sure it could be worse, as they say in these parts. I do motherhood so well :/