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!

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.