25 Writers & their Influences

This is going to have to be one of those posts that gets carried across a couple of days, because I'm hoping to have a good look into some of the early stuff that I liked, which means less than the usual cursory posting.

I don't remember very much of the things I read in primary school. I was a very early reader and I munched my way through the Ladybird books, reading about the adventures of Peter and Jane through a good few of them before I actually started school. But I don't know who the writer would have been for them, so this probably doesn't count.

Later on, my dad joined the Children's Book Club, London (1976?)on my behalf. I can still remember, what I am convinced is the first book of this series arriving. It was Ludo and the Star Horse by Mary Stewart and I remember having a very vague notion about star signs from reading my mum's womens' magazines, and finding this such a compelling story.

Ludo and the Star Horse told the tale of a peasant boy Ludo who tries to bring his family's faithful old workhorse Renti back home when the horse breaks out and wanders off one winter's night. Lost in snow, Ludo and Renti fall into a ravine and somehow find themselves at the entrance to a realm in which there are twelve houses corresponding to signs of the zodiac. In order to return home, they must catch up to the sun on its journey through each of the houses, and they meet the owner of each house along the way - some being more friendly than others! I am afraid I cried at the end of this. You can actually get it now, and I did to see what my kids thought of it.

I can remember reading Robinsheugh by Eileen Dunlop and being totally carried away by the plot. The protaganist is a young preteen, Elizabeth, who's sent to live with her studious aunt in Scotland. Her aunt is busy researching about the 18thc, and Elizabeth amuses herself through 'dreaming' herself back in time to the period (or does she really dream!) that her aunt is researching in the great house at Robinsheugh. She almost pays the ultimate price though... another book that affected me greatly.

Another book that I remember from that series (I think) was titled Bella. I can't find anything about it on the net but I do remember that the plot centred around a porcelain doll, Bella, that seemed to be haunted and inspired those who came across her to become obsessive about minding her, almost to the point of their own deaths. I'd love to find out who the writer was... I loved that book! Believe me I have trawled the internet in search of it!

Conshelf Ten, by Monica Hughes and Albatross Two, by Colin Thiele come from the very same series and I enjoyed Conshelf Ten, because it was my first ever taste of science fiction, and I liked it very much (more about that later). Albatross Two was the first time I'd ever read about lives outside of the northern hemisphere, and I enjoyed it for it's setting being in the Australian world and I suppose it also introduced me to the notion of protecting our planet from pollution. It planted the seed that I wanted to go down under, (Aus & NZ) which I hope some day I will do.

And then there was the Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The great thing about being a kid is that you have no notion of who T. S. Eliot is, or how important his poetry was. All I knew was that there was this great book that my mum had bought, with fabulous pictures and the words were very funny in places too. They sounded great when you read them aloud, which I often did.

No one read this book to me, not because I was deprived or anything, but because I loved reading for myself. I really didn't like to hear other people taking over the words, I wanted to say them and see what they sounded like myself. (Precocious or what? I want to slap that child, now!) How could you not like the sound of names like Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer? And as for Mister Mistoffelees, just roll that name around your mouth like a piece of clove rock - there, doesn't that take you back...?

Another five will pop up in a day or two, when I've gotten over this sudden onslaught of nostalgia! Oh dear, what have I started?

Wowed by the'Young Brits.'

I have just come home after what has been the most exciting reading I have been to. I was in London to attend the Oxfam extravaganza of launches: The Manhattan Review, a US journal. In this is a huge feature, introduced by Todd Swift, of seventeen up and coming poets from the British poetry scene. Of those seventeen, thirteen were able to give readings of their work - and bonus of bonuses, Penelope Shuttle was also in attendance.

MR is edited by Philip Fried, of New York, and not only did I go home with a copy of his journal, but I also brought back a copy of his latest slim volume from Salmon, Cohort, which is also very good indeed.

The readings from the poets were magnificent. Todd did a great job of giving each and every one of poets a great introduction: most were very buoyed by his warm words and I have to say that I think it was the best entertainment in poetry I've ever experienced.

First poet up was Sally Read, whose poem 'The Lullaby Hours' I thought was an exquisite rendering of the time and the way that a new baby takes up all of your life.

Luke Kennard, who was next read 'The Dusty Era,' a prose poem: I've previously seen his work in Mimesis, and thought it was really interesting. Apparently he is researching a PhD in prose poetry, so one passion is feeding another in his case.

The rather good looking Joe Dunthorne (I know one shouldn't say things like this, but hey!) read a very clever 'Sestina for my friends,' even though he was a little under the weather.

I was very, very taken with Zoe Brigley's poem, 'The Jewel-box,' which she told us was based on the famous Freud 'Dora' case.

Nathan Hamilton read 'Clearances,' which went down very well.

Another poem which struck a chord with me was Helen Mort's 'A Bear in the City of Bicycles.' A really clever poem which used a very funny reference from a letter by Byron.

The first half closed with Daljit Nagra reading 'The Gob-Smacking Taste of Mine Inheritance!' A pleasure to see and hear a poet whose first collection Look We Have Coming to Dover was such a big surprise in 2007.

After the mingling and jingling of coinage, the second half opened with Emily Berry reading her really thrilling poem, 'A Short Guide to Corseting.' I know of one Galway based poet who would really enjoy that poem, if indeed not all her work.

James Byrne read 'Apprentice Work,' a poem I.M. of Peter Redgrove, which worked out really well, since Penelope Shuttle was there.

I also loved Kathryn Simmonds reading 'Sunday Morning' another clever poem, with such a simple premise.

And Alex McRae's reading of her 'West of Ireland Fly-Fishing Champion 1952' used separate but related images to carry a chilling message quite simply.

Jack Underwood was quite the charmer, and read both poems from the anthology, 'Certain' about an onion (yes!) and 'And what do you do?'

The last of the young Brits was Isobel Dixon who read 'The Buried Butterfly' a wonderful elegy in imagery.

Lastly there was Penelope Shuttle closing this poetry extravaganza (I do not use that word lightly!!!), with a short reading of her work, which also features in The Manhattan Review.

Just one disappointment for me: unfortunately work pressures kept Ben Wilkinson away from this gig - he was the intial reason why I decided to go over to this gig, when he posted about the Young British Poets line up in The Manhattan Review and the subsequent reading. And also Jacob Polley, who I also wished I could have heard read. However, I'm not sorry I went, Ben: thanks for the heads up!

Like I said, it was a really great night... I couldn't help feeling that I was seeing history being made and it was nice to witness it. Fair play to Todd, Phil Fried, Oxfam and all that great poetry talent.

Short Season over the way

Regular readers of Raw Light, Jane Holland's blog, will know that she is running a short season of other poets and their work.

Today, I got a wee spot with 'On Not Seeing inside the Sistine Chapel.' Do pop over and read through some of the other offerings too - I'm in very, very good company there. *modest blush*

She's Off Gallivanting Again

I'm up to Dublin tomorrow for the International Women's Day reading in the Central Hotel, Exchequer St. I'll be airing a few poems of my own at it, (like maybe that villanelle about Bras), as well as looking forward to hearing Medbh McGuckian, my old tutor, reading from her work...and a good friend, Catherine Ann Cullen, reading hers too. There are many more of us reading on the night, and I'm raring at the bit with excitement.

On Thursday, I'm heading to London, to meet up with a few blogger friends, and Thursday evening I'm going to the Oxfam Reading @ Marylebone to check out these 'Young British Poets' that everyone's raving about.

It's the launch of The Manhattan Review and some of the British poets that have a big feature in it will be reading there:

Thursday, 5 March - 7 pm start time; ends at 10 pm
Oxfam Books and Music shop, 91 Marylebone High Street
London W1 (5 minutes from Baker Street tube station)

With special guests
Philip Fried, poet and editor, in from New York and Penelope Shuttle
And with short readings by 14 of "The Young British Poets"

Ooh, what a night it's going to be :)) Now I'd better get on, this hair of mine won't dye itself.

Another Prize!

I got home from doing the shopping, the usual trawl around the local supermarket to get all the stuff we ran out of during the month, like pasta and rice and lasagne sheets, to find a letter on the front door mat.

The letter was from the Tyrone Guthrie Centre to tell me that I was the recipient of the Annie Deeny Prize for 2008/09. What does this mean?

Well, in their own words: The Annie Deeny Memorial Prize was launched by distinguished poet Fleur Adcock in May 2004. Mrs Annie Deeny was a teacher and mother of six children who, although she wrote, never sought to have her work published. This perpetual prize is in her memory to encourage someone in a similar situation to write and to publish. It provides a two-week residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig.

Ironic, that I too have six children, isn't it? So, I'm now getting a total of four weeks away this year to write: on my ownsome...and no food to worry about... Just as well my husband is taking me out to dinner tonight: now we have more to celebrate!

Nick Laird & Dishwasher Sagas

As ever, I am a whole week behind: the kids have been off this week on mid-term breaks and the whole household has descended into the sort of chaos that only mothers know: washing to beat the band etc; constantly running out of food and trying to think of 'free' activities that involve exercise of some form. And then the dishwasher which was already getting very weepy, tired and emotional decided that since I'd got a few euros to spare it was time to sputter and blink it's death.

Cue a few interesting days of manual dish washing, in which the kids learned very quickly that 'hands that do dishes' should be anyone's but their own. The new DW was installed yesterday with the usual three hour saga, involving sawing, hacking and much swearing that accompanies any seemingly plain and simple job in our house...

In the midst of all this a friend sent me a link for Nick Laird's article in last week's Guardian.

Laird discusses the political poem, coming from the stance of hearing Elizabeth Alexander's inauguration poem and mentioning Robert Frost's inaugural poem back in 1961 (for JFK). There is a tightrope that has to be walked when you decide to write poetry about politics: "To watch words carefully is a small political act, a safeguard against doublespeak. In daily discourse it leads to questions about truth and power." Laird suggests that 'poetry and politics' is interchangeable with that other unhappy pairing of words, 'imagination and reality.' From reading Wallace Steven's lecture 'The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words,' he argues that Stevens thought that perhaps a 'coalition' between the two worlds was/is possible.

Now, I bet you never thought you'd see Nick Laird, poetry and politics and a dishwasher all in the same post. No, neither did I.

Reading: A Fanatic Heart

I got a short story collection in the post the other day. Well, I'd actually ordered it before Christmas, posted it to a friend's address up North and got up there to collect it the other day.

It's A Fanatic Heart, by Irish writer Edna O Brien. I'd had my interest piqued about her through reading Father and I, a memoir by Carlo Gebler, who I'd heard a lot about last year, from colleagues who were taking the Prose strand of the Creative Writing MA at Queen's. He's a no-nonsense style of writer and critic, from what I heard.

Anyway, I read Father and I - it was a chance find for a fiver in the book boxes that you find at the back of the Central Bank in Temple Bar, Dublin. Once I'd started reading it I couldn't put it down. In it, Gebler traces his troubled relationship with his father, from when he had to deal with his old man's impending illness, moving him into a home and before that: back through time to Gebler's early childhood in London.

I found the account compelling: including moments like how he recalled his mother perched, tapping away on the typewriter at what would become The Country Girls, her first novel, and how his parents separated because his own father found his writing stymied and couldn't cope with his wife's success in writing. But Gebler writes in a way that evokes your sympathies, not because he plays on heart strings, but because he just lets the reader's heart strings resonate. Good writing, simply told.

So that led me to discovering some of his mother's work. A Fanatic Heart is a selected collection spanning across Edna O'Brien's writing career: early to late short stories that draw on her upbringing in Ireland and her travels in the UK and US. Both writers share an ability to turn really good, fresh phrases.

Here's Carlo Gebler at the close of Father and I: "You can't change the past but, with understanding, you can sometimes draw the poison out of it." Boy does that resonate.

And here's Edna O'Brien from 'The Connor Girls' in A Fanatic Heart: "... at that moment I realized that by choosing his world I had said goodbye to my own and to those in it. By such choices we gradually become exiles, until at last we are quite alone." Equally resonant.

You can't say that these two writers don't know how to turn a pithy quote. Now, I must keep on reading - I keep getting ideas though :)

*** Late addendum: Edna O'Brien was appointed adjunct professor of creative writing for UCD's MA in Creative Writing in 2006.

Cavan Poetry Competition

Yesterday I drove to Cavan to receive my certificate for Highly Commended in the inaugural Caomhnu National Poetry Competition, for 'The Dairy Shed.' Some of you may remember seeing it in a very rough draft, many moons ago. I refined it to within an inch of its life during the MA programme last year, when it emerged into its final format, a sonnet.

Whilst there, I met Michael Farry, editor of Boyne Berries and another Highly Commended award-winner in the competition with his poem, 'Asking Directions.'

Michael has posted the results of both the short story comp & the poetry comp here, along with a photo of himself and the poetry adjudicator, Noel Monahan.

I enjoyed the prize-giving and the extremely welcome gourmet lunch afterwards, all organised by Cavan County Council. Special thanks to Arts Officer Caitriona O Reilly too for her great organisation.

You're nicked

Shamelessly nicked from Emerging Writer!

Make your own: bus photo

Valentine's Poem

In 2006, RTE's Poetry Programme, then compered by Pat Boran, put out a call for poems for Valentine's day. I was standing in the kitchen, making a meal for mise agus himse when I remembered that my mum used to say that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach. Not the sort of thing that makes sense to a small child, but how it resonates years later.

This is from Kairos and yes, I think I have hauled this out before...

The Garden of Earthly Delights

In the kitchen, Valentine,
it will begin with the green
curlicues of garlic shoots hid
in the cold shelf of the fridge.

The prying, bulging eyes of spuds
will wink in the clammy closeness
of their plastic bag. All being pulled
spring-tight tonight, through the tilting

built into their bolting seed husks.
And you too will respond with the flick
in your loins, the click in your head
as my hands riot in the radishes,

tease out the aubergine chunks,
toss together pillows of cherry tomatoes
and delight in these firm ruins
of last year's seedpods. There,

Valentine, is where you will begin.

Poetry in a Talent Show

Young DCU student Holly Ann Treanor will be on TV on Sunday night, in RTE's All Ireland Talent show. I don't watch a lot of TV at all, and it was a friend who put me on to this, but it's fascinating to see a poetry act being featured on television. Have a look at her audition clip and see what you think.

Reading Poetry

I am reading a poetry pamphlet from Oystercatcher Press at the moment, by Rufo Quintavalle and enjoying it thoroughly. So much so that I find myself wondering where else I can find poems by this guy. Make Nothing Happen is really good value at only £4.00 and gives an intriguing taste of his work.

There's something about the way Quintavalle puts his words that makes you stop, re-read and then a few days later when you read them again you wonder why you had to stop. No surprise for a British poet with an Italian name, who lives in Paris. It's making me think strongly about how you corrall language when you write and what purpose you can put that corralling to. Most people would call it form. But that's to make what I've noticed seem simple, and I don't think it is that simple. I'd better save my thoughts for a review that I'm writing, but for now here are some links to his work, from nth position - see what you think.
Much & Rocks
Figs

***

Project Verse

Are you a fan of Project Runway? Are you a poet without a first collection to your credit yet? Are you not freaked out by seeing these two things in one paragraph?

Then Project Verse could be just the challenge for you!

Hurry along and read up the rules and see whether you could be in with a chance of winning a contract for a published chapbook, a weeklong residency at Soul Mountain Retreat in Connecticut, an interview with Joe Milford of 'The Joe Milford Poetry Show', and a review of your chapbook in ouroboros review and Limp Wrist. It doesn't say where you have to be from... so, who knows? :)

Bridport - Already!

The Bridport Prize 2009

International Creative Writing Competition for Short Stories and Poems

The Bridport Prize 2009 website is now open for entries!

The Bridport Prize is the richest open writing competition in the English language -
with £5000 first prize for a short story (of up to 5000 words); and £5000 first
prize for a poem (of up to 42 lines).

The Bridport is also known as a tremendous literary stepping stone - the first
step in the careers of writers such as: Kate Atkinson, Tobias Hill, Carol Ann Duffy
and Helen Dunmore.

Anyone can enter - so long as the work is previously unpublished. It costs £7 per
story or £6 per poem and the closing date is 30th June 2009.

Each year the prize is judged by well known writers - this year we are delighted to have

Ali Smith judging short stories and Jackie Kay judging poetry.

* I wonder how robust your short stories will have to be to get past Ali Smith - yikes!

The 2008 anthology of winning entries is available for just £12 or £15 overseas
(including postage and packing)

2006 & 2007 anthologies available for £7 or £10 overseas (limited amount)


Enter online or download an entry form www.bridportprize.org.uk

How Many Jobs...?

Rachel Fox posted about the many different things she's done in her life so far and it got me to thinking about all the different paths that I've persued over my years too. So here goes...

Tile painter: 1986. My first proper job. I worked in a studio over a tile shop with a graphic designer whose job it was to print patterns on tiles. My job was to paint in the tiny leaves and petals on the prints before the tiles were fired in a kiln. I remember the first week, dreaming every night about all the leaves I had to get just right.

Kitchen designer: 1988ish. After a draughting course, I worked in a kitchen showroom, taking the measurements that the salesmen brought in, designing a kitchen and then pricing it up, from the rough drawings that were brought back from clients. The difference between a dear kitchen and a cheap kitchen lies in the choice of doors.

Hotel room sales: 1989ish. I moved to London in 1989-90 and this was the first job I got, answering queries from travel agents booking hotel rooms for their customers... I can still remember how we answered the phones - 'Superbreak MiniHolidays....' in a sing-song sort of voice. No computers in those days, we worked off pages with small blocks that you marked off!

Press Reader: 1990 -94ish I moved on and got this unlikely job reading newspapers for a client index that was kept on a computer, so the first job I had that involved them. I really loved reading the papers in such depth, although it was knackering reading so much stuff every day. Nowadays it's done by computer. Longest job length too, I lasted until 1993/94 when my eldest son was born & I decided that Ireland might be a better option to rear him. I became very handy with a pair of scissors.

Press Reader #2: On returning to Ireland I managed to get the same job with a Dublin based employer. Not as well-paying as it had been in London, but that was the difference between the two countries at the time. I loved travelling to Dublin every day.

Litho Technician: 1995 I left the previous job to go to a well known micro-chip producer - great job, great pay, great prospects... but I was pregnant with child #2 and after maternity leave and returning to work, I got pregnant with child #3! Not much chance of me staying there :( I don't mind, the white suits we had to wear inside the room where the work was done were a real pain to put on, not to mention being hot all the time from the 22 degree temperature they kept it at (at least that's how I remember it).

Newsletter Editor: 1997 After child #3 I really wanted to go back to work, but knew that part-time was really the only option. So I worked in a local arts centre. Although the job description was Newsletter Editor, I had to muck in on reception for evening activities and it helped me to cement relationships with the writing/theatre/art community in my locale. I still have friends from that time that I cherish. I had really taken writing seriously for the first time too around this time, and a first pamphlet of poems got published too, thanks to a grant from that arts centre. Ah, God be with the days...

Receptionist/Bookkeeper: 2003-4ish. So, there were the twins, followed by the baby of the family, which meant a huge gap in proceedings. But in 2003 I got a position as a receptionist for a community organisation that worked with underpriviledged women. The supervisor recognised my potential and got me to train up as a bookkeeper. I discovered that numbers were a lot easier than I remembered and really flew at this job, until our family relocated to another town in 2005.

Civil Servant: 2006. I only lasted four months at this, as I was juggling six kids, studying for a degree coupled with a two hour commute to Dublin... I loved the job, but just couldn't keep everything going... so something had to give.

Telephone customer representative: late 2006. Part time hours in the evening meant that I could sort of juggle this one around, but it was more of a stop-gap to earn sponduligs to pay the fat red man at Christmas.

Administration Assistant: 2007... again only lasted four months at this job. I loved the work, but everything started to fall apart at home again, so I naturally caved again.

2009 - I have a couple of CW classes on the go, which might help pay for the children's books going back to school in September (if I don't need to plug any financial gaps before then), but not a lot else. I am looking for something, but I think most employers see my CV as being a bit patchy/higgledy piggledy these days... So that makes about eleven or twelve jobs, if you count the current position... no, these are not really the sort of thing that you write down when you're young and say, 'When I grow up, I want to be...'

BeatBearing - A novel new instrument

I caught this on the BBC NI News last night and was fascinated by the idea:



"A video of a new musical instrument created by a Queen’s University Belfast student has attracted over one million hits on the internet.

PhD student Peter Bennett (26) from Stevenage, England, made the video to demonstrate the BeatBearing - his electronic musical instrument that uses ball bearings to create different drum patterns.

The initial demonstration of the prototype has now been viewed more than one million times on internet video site YouTube.

The BeatBearing has been created as part of research into the use of ‘tangible interfaces’ for new musical instruments. The research is being led by Sile O’Modhrain within the renowned Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) at Queen’s.

The BeatBearing is an example of minimalist modern design created from chrome, transparent Perspex and computer graphics.

It acts as a rhythm sequencer - a red line sweeps across the grid, playing a sound whenever a ball bearing is encountered, “like an updated version of the old piano-roll”, according to Bennett.

Peter is currently studying for a PhD in the SARC at Queen’s and the BeatBearing is just one of many interesting projects in the department."

Report from QUB Press release; more info from Peter Bennett's website.

Isn't it amazing what you can do a PhD in these days?

Friday Crunch Time

Carson in the Guardian

Many thanks to Ms Baroque for this link to an interview with Ciaran Carson, at home as the photograph shows, beside a great lick of a fire.

I've enjoyed the interview immensely, as I had the honour and pleasure of working with him last spring in a series of classes on translation. In the interview he talks about growing up in Belfast as a member of an Irish speaking family in the 40s. He also mentions that lovely word 'capall;' Irish for horse, which he had us so in love with when we all tried our hand at a translation of a poem, 'Malairt,' (loosely rendered The Swap) by Séan Ó Ríordáin (think I might have posted that on PFFA during April...).

How we struggled with that one, trying it out in English: I always got the feeling there was something in the original that we weren't rendering, and Prof Carson did say that a lot of it had to do with the word 'capall' as well as the word 'bron,' (loosely given as sorrow). Because the words sound the way they do, they have a different association in your mind, a wider feeling of the horseness of horse, or the sorrowfulness of sorrow, but if you're used to thinking of it in Irish first, there must be a strangeness about the English word... anyway.

Not content with that, we also had a close look at Baudelaire's poem 'Correspondances' a poem that seemed to be so much more than it's component parts and that almost yielded a larger meaning to you before slipping away. I also heard Prof Carson describing how he tackled his translation of Dante's Inferno; to him it's about the rhythm as much as anything: he spoke of how Dante composed his poem whilst walking from place to place in Italy - but I digress a little.

I love what Carson says about words: 'Heft. They have heft...and they've got a life of their own.' This ties into an article by Hannah Brooks-Motl, I've been reading about reading poems, particularly the poems that emanate from the 'elliptical' school of poetry in the US (and now elsewhere). The article from The Dark Horse, Summer 2008 is the sort of thing that I like to read over and over again, thinking about other things that connect into the idea of how we read poems, and how the elliptical style of poetry, where poem that don't necessarily connect up in the mind of the reader have been considered difficult to interpret.

Words are tied to experience: all the words you've ever heard have complex connections made all the way back to your early childhood and beyond, possibly even in the womb. It is childhood that usually serves as a rich repository for the poems that I try to write now; poems and stories about potatoes, about cows and calves, but I also keep coming back to growing up along the north side of the bordern as an outsider, and trying to make sense of the occupation and strife of the 70s too.

I think that we all keep a huge hinterland of knowledge that we use when we read poems that aren't opaque, that don't yield meaning straight away. Putting things together in a manner that doesn't seem to make sense, forces the reader to use their own synaptic connections between their knowledge stores: it is in all of us to want to try and divine a pattern and smooth the bumps of our own interpretation and reading. That is what I think gives me pleasure when reading poetry. Well, that and a whole pile of other things like rhythm as well as all the poetic panoply of devices there are. Oh, and time.

Above all though, what really helps me is when I hear a poet talk about their work, and read it; or indeed as Prof Carson often did in class, sing and play his flute for us, as he must have done in the Guardian interview. It allows you a rich layering when you hear how someone has lived, what their interests were and how they are always trying to hear things in a new way, using the language of now, overlaid by the language of the past. As Carson says: 'language, when explored with humility, is always deeper and more accurate than what the author thought he had in mind.' Carson may have never left Belfast other than for visiting other places, but in his mind he has roamed the wide world over.

Poems celebrating Obama's Election

The inauguration ceremony for the 44th President of the USA takes place on Tuesday, 20th January 2009.

It's a very tough time for someone whose campaign was so full of hope and promise to be taking office, in terms of both domestic and foreign policy.

So, it's perhaps a good time to re-savour the elation of his election, captured in these poems featured on the Over The Edge blog. Well worth a read, as the contributors list is as follows: Gary King, Eva Bourke, Susan Millar DuMars, Dave Lordan, Aidan Hynes, Maureen-Eilish Purcell, Gemma Marren, Michael Conneely, Desmond Swords, Marie Cadden, Susan Lindsay, Kevin Carmody, Deirdre Kearney, Gary Beck, Eileen Byrne, Rosanna Guneratne, Steve Ely, Lucie Kantorova, Kevin Higgins & Trisha McKeon.

Elizabeth Baines: Author and Roman Bonus Victus

We are so delighted to welcome Elizabeth Baines today, author of Balancing on the Edge of the World, a scintillating debut collection of short stories. In honour of this being the first stage of a virtual tour of blogs, I decided to experiment with Roman cookery and have a feast. The menu is… erm, different: but the fish sauce is par excellence (if I do say so myself). I might add that any Latin mistakes are all mine! Welcome Elizabeth, please do pull up a couch and recline away there! Have a heartwarming cup of wine.

Thank you, Barbara! May I say how great it is to be virtually here in Ireland, and most especially to be invited to a Roman feast! Let's just hope I'm not too distracted by my appetite and also manage keep a clear head…

Gustatio: milk fed snails fried in oil, boiled fungi served with pepper and fish sauce…

Milk-fed snails! Madame (or should I say Domina?), you are spoiling us!

You just wouldn't believe how difficult it is to get snails to drink milk...

Anne Enright describes her writing process as 'writing sentences.' I believe what she means is that the writing comes first, the editing and worrying about how/what you're saying come second. How would you describe your writing process: do you have to fight hard from the coalescing of an idea to the final cut?

Hm (hang on while I get my drinking cup and find my best lounging position): Yes, I'd say there's a stage in writing a piece of fiction, usually an initial stage, when it can seem to 'come' without your having to think about it in any very conscious way. It's as if you're 'hearing' the sentences and seeing the images on a screen which somehow miraculously has been presented to you. It just 'happens' to you, as it were. (And when you're 'blocked' it's as if you know there's something there, but you've not yet been shown it and can't yet 'hear' it!) I guess this is why people talk about 'inspiration' and also why people ask writers where they 'get their ideas from', as if the ideas are just out there waiting to be picked up or tuned into. In fact, of course, it's coming from you, but at this stage in a largely subconscious way. It's what I call the 'dreaming' stage of writing, and yes, I do consider it the important and real one, because this, I find, is when I get the rhythms – and in some ways rhythm is the most important thing in prose, in creating a 'voice' – and also the associations and connections which I'd be less likely to come up with were I thinking more logically. So this, I would say, is what always characterizes my first draft. Often when I go back after that less conscious stage, and look at what I've written, I am amazed by meanings I wasn't aware of earlier. Of course, the editing stage can also show up the fact that you haven't made sense, but I do also think you need to allow for the fact that you don't always see straight away, on the logical, editorial level, the things which your subconscious has spied (so always be prepared to put back things you've cut, is my advice)

Usually I will begin a story with an image, or sometimes a phrase, which intrigues me, and a vague situation. I will know that the image/phrase and the situation are connected in some deep thematic way, although not necessarily how – that's the point of writing: to find out how. In 'Daniel Smith Disappears off the Face of the Earth', for instance, I had the idea of a teenage boy walking home alone at night and the image of the cold planet hurtling through the universe; in 'The Way to Behave', I had the scenario of a wronged and vengeful wife and also the image of the elder tree with all its witchy associations (and was therefore dismayed when the image of the tree was dropped in the abridgement for a BBC broadcast of the story – though of course I completely understood the restrictions which broadcast must impose). With these stories, and nearly all of the others in the book, this was enough to trigger me haring off into the 'dream'. I say 'haring off' but then I very often have a couple of false starts – sometimes a few – because the first line or so always has to feel absolutely right for me to carry on without hesitation (although of course, even when I've thought it was absolutely right at this stage, I may go back and change it afterwards).

The more conscious editing stage is, as you imply, more like work. I'd say the level of struggle – ie, how well-formed the story is after the first draft – depends very much on the story, or more accurately on your prior relationship with the material of the story, the amount of time you have already mulled it over and consciously given it a meaning. Most of the stories in Balancing didn't give me much of a struggle, and had only two drafts. I hasten to say it's not always like that, and I should also say that the process isn't quite as simple as I've made it sound. Even when I'm writing a first draft and going with the 'dreaming', that editing faculty is still coming into play to some extent: really, it's as if there are two of me, and the 'dreaming' one is leading the way, but the 'editing' one is there hovering at her shoulder and reining her in to some extent as she goes along (and then pushes her out of the way and takes over for the proper editing phase). (You see, I don't need Roman wine to make me sound bonkers!)

Mensae Primae: Baked dormice, stuffed with pork and pine nuts; roast hare, stuffed with chicken livers and boiled brains…

Barbara, yum!

The dormice are quite a delicacy. But it's very hard to get them to wake up...

Stories like 'A Glossary of Bread,' and 'Leaf Memory,' show that you are willing to experiment with the traditional methods of storytelling: one uses dictionary & etymological definitions; another uses early childhood memories. How useful do you find the process of renewing the short story in this manner?

Erm… sorry, just swallowing. Now the wine is making you flatter me, Barbara: I must say I don't see myself as doing anything so grand as renewing the short story! All I'm doing, I have to say, is telling things the way I see them. And I simply couldn't tell them the way I see them if didn't use the modes I do.

'A Glossary of Bread' is the story of a girI coping with an itinerant childhood and a mysterious but strict and bad-tempered father. The story takes the structure of a dictionary and is built around definitions, drawn from different editions of dictionaries, of the different kinds of bread she encounters as they move around the country. To me this structure is indispensable, essential, and indeed came to me right at the start – it is the story – because it carries in a very concrete way the meaning, ie the idea that situations and indeed meanings which can seem rigid, laid down in stone, are in fact questionable and subject to change. 'Leaf Memory' consists of the splicing of two narratives, the protagonist's first-person memory of being pushed in a pram by her grandmother interwoven with the starker (and italicized) authorized family version of her grandmother's life. As far as I was concerned, this was the only way to tell this story: it was both the way that 'came to me' and it was the way that, when I thought about it editorially, best conveyed the impact of the difference between two dynamic but clashing realities or versions of the truth. In fact, this story – and much of my work generally – is about the fact that the ways in which we tell stories, the modes we use to tell them, can very much affect their meanings.

And of course not all of the stories in the book stretch the conventional short story form. I'm more than happy to use conventional forms if they suit the purpose. 'The Shooting Script', for instance: as the story of a conman and the plot twists he engineers to keep ahead of those he's conning, it fell naturally for me into a traditional satirical and linear-narrative mode. I must say I rarely use the omniscient mode, which generally seems to me to carry outdated authorial certainties about the characters, but I found it was just right for 'Compass and Torch', for watching from an objective vantage point the emotional struggle between a camping father and son who hardly know each other and are failing to acknowledge their own emotions, who have less grip on their situation than any casual observer, and less instinctual understanding than the wild ponies watching them prepare to camp.

Mensae secundae: dates with almonds and honey; yoghurt flavoured with pepper and fish sauce (must use it up somehow!)…

What a perfectly unusual and inspired combination, Barbara…

Erm, yes... err, thanks! ( I knew two gallons of fish sauce was far too much.)

How do you know when a story is 'finished': how long might you typically work on one?

As I've said, most of the stories in Balancing gelled very quickly and were written in a week at the most, some of them in just a couple of days or so. But as I've also said, it's not always like that, and 'A Glossary of Bread' caused me a deal more trouble. As I say, what I had this time was the structure (including the idea of bread), which I knew was all-important, and the notion of a family setup, but only the vaguest, and so little sense of how the two fitted together that I couldn't even make a start. Each attempt I made to write the story failed. I must have had two or three tries over a period of two years, and each time I put it away, thinking maybe it was a dud, until it pressed on my consciousness again. Looking back, though, I'm not sure if, for this particular story, it was to do with my relationship to the material or simply a matter of focus and concentration. I do have other, abandoned stories from that particular period, which was a time of quite mad busy-ness; I was doing a lot of teaching, I was editing, producing and marketing a print short-story magazine, metropolitan, and it was the start of my most prolific period as a radio playwright – I kept getting radio commissions, and how do you turn that down, especially when your kids need new trainers? It's interesting perhaps that the story finally gelled when at last I had the chance to give up other things and concentrate on prose once more. So I guess for me it's a case of needing lots of time and few distractions, because the main essential ingredient for the process of bringing a story to fruition, I'd say, is focus. I do really envy people who manage to do other things (and earn decent livings!) while somehow focusing on their writing and doing it successfully.

I do now have more time to focus, yet, interestingly, some of the stories in the new series I'm writing are requiring far more drafts than previous ones, and sometimes I'll return to a story after setting it aside for weeks. I'm finding the process even more of an exploration than ever before, and it truly is a question of my relationship to the material.

And that moment when I know a story is 'finished'? Well, on the deep level it's definitely the moment that I suddenly spy the final connection which brings the story together, lights up all the rest. With some of the stories in Balancing it could be as early as when I was haring towards the end of the first draft, in which case the editing stage felt more like mere titivating, putting a coat on the thing and brushing it down. However, I can sometimes get to the end and know that I haven't really found it – not the real ending – even when the whole thing is already brushed down and looking spotless. What I do then is put the story aside and wait for the real ending to come to me, sideways, which it usually does over the next day or so.

And talking of finishing: really, Barbara, I couldn't manage another thing – not even another date! Thank you so much for having me; what a generous host you have been, and what a great time I've had on this feast of a blog!

Not as much as I've enjoyed your thoughtful answers: it's always a great pleasure to get a sneak peek behind the writer's practice and it is clear you've thought deeply about your own methods – it gives great hope to those who aspire. Elizabeth, the pleasure was truly all mine!

The next stage of Elizabeth's tour takes place at Me and My Big Mouth Scott Pack's blog on the 21^st of January 2009. Each week Elizabeth will visit all through the blogosphere on her Cyclone Tour until the 18^th of March.

Poetry Ireland News

Poetry Ireland have their latest roundup of events, news and competition titbits. There's a bit about the judging panel for the Strokestown Poetry Competition (John F Deane, Joe Woods, Penelope Shuttle and Máire Ní Annracháin); closing date 22nd January.

If you click here you can download it yourself (it's a pretty quick download), and have a browse through it. Do have a look at the winning poem from the Ledwidge competition, 'Scooter'; it was written by Catherine Ann Cullen; a fellow Doghouse poet, whose collection 'A Bone in my Throat,' was launched in the same year as my own: 2007. Hugh O'Donnell is another Doghouse poet (from the same year), whose article on Poetry Aloud, the national children's poetry reading competition is a lovely inspiration.

It seems we are often out of the Doghouse these days ;) (okay enough puns for today!).

Today I Shall Be Mostly...

...stuffing dormice. Virtual ones of course!

Elizabeth Baines is visiting with me tomorrow. I thought, since it was the first leg of her Virtual Cyclone tour with Balancing On The Edge Of The World, I really ought to mark the ocasion with something special.

So we will be 'enjoying' a Roman style feast.

Before she gets here, I want to briefly talk about her debut collection of short stories. Right from the off, with the opening story, 'Condensed Metaphysics,' I was hooked. How can you set a story in a pizza parlour, with several people in various stages of drunkenness and still make it a story about humanity, and all our vices and virtues - but one that doesn't preach at you?

You can if you're Elizabeth Baines. This is the way she works: she makes the ordinary (the things, the attitudes, the way that people think) that you or I would pass right on by seem quite extraordinary. She does this by simply showing how characters really are, without apology.

If you read and re-read her work (yes, it really does bear re-reading), there are so many layers to it that each time there is a new freshness to each of her stories. 'Balancing On The Edge Of The World' really is a fulsome collection of short stories, each story fully realised and full of new ways to appreciate our human traits.

I'd better stop myself now... I mustn't let the fish sauce (an important element of tomorrow's meal) spoil!

Mick Imlah

Just as the TS Eliot poetry prize is to be announced, Mick Imlah, author of one of the short-listed books, The Lost Leader, has passed away. The Guardian carry the story.

I have mentioned before how hard it was to get Imlah's book, last year, but how much it was worth the wait: a little like himself making the reading public wait so long for his follow up to his first collection, Birthmarks.

When you look at the actual collection titles, you do wonder. Very sad news indeed.

The Intimacy of Radio

I did another interview on local radio recently with Harry Lee of Dundalk FM. Before you scoff at the idea of local radio, think of this: through internet technology, this community station (and many, many others) are available to a much wider audience than they are through the wavelength restrictions imposed by their license conditions.

Anyhoo, through the generous help of the wonderful qarrtsiluni, I've been able to get hosting for a recording that I made on Wednesday. To hear the interview/reading click on that link just there. I hope you enjoy the discussion of poetry, life in general and the Irish economic downturn!

Iota - New Year, New Ways

Iota magazine changed hands across the summer and is about to be relaunched with a bumper issue 83/84. Overall editor is Nigel McLoughlin, (his fourth collection is Dissonances which I mentioned here before).

Iota are also launching a major poetry competition with Tim Turnbull as judge

The details are as follows:

Closing date is 30th November 2009

1st Prize £2000
2nd Prize £1000
3rd Prize £500
+ ten supplementary prizes.

Now, doesn't that sound pretty cool? Go and visit Iota's new website, and for goodness sake take out a subscription: I reckon it'll be well worth it!

A Week 'Til Landfall, folks!

Forgive me for the hurricane/cyclone allusions, but it's a week today until the devastatingly talented Elizabeth Baines (I am allowed use 'ly' words on this occasion) glides towards land over Dundalk bay, or more precisely the land of Cuchulainn & the Tain legends (seriously, he did come from these parts). She has agreed to talk about writing and specifically one or two of her killer short stories in Balancing On The Edge Of The World.

Elizabeth and I will be having a Roman styled dinner, where we quaff words as well as wine and our apparel may well be derived from the most luxurious peplos you can imagine, although I may just go for a roomy chiton to hide all that post-Christmas gluttony. Mustn't forget my stola either!

We'll be hearing directly from a writer whose work has been described as "Almost ethereal in its strangeness [with] great energy at its heart." Brendan O'Keefe, Literary Review. Woo ha!

Oh bugger

Some poems come easier than others. Usually they come after about three or four aborted attempts, when you've stopped thinking about what it is that you were trying to put into a poem. That doesn't make them any less hard-earned though. I seem to remember Richard Hugo talking about this in his book, The Triggering Town. That book is a collection of essays on poetry and is well worth getting. I remember buying Strunk & White at the same time... gosh, four years ago now, oh dearie me, how much poetry water has flowed past the bridge now, eh?

Well, tomorrow I'm on Dundalk FM again , Wednesday 7th January, talking about the Bursary I won and maybe reading a few poems, at 10:45 To listen via the internet, click on this link, and then click on the second 'Click Here' in the second paragraph.

I would give you the link directly but blogger is playing silly buggers. I will try and record it later on, if I can... I might pop in a poem tomorrow when I'm not feeling so critical.

Sixty Years since The Second Sex

It is sixty years since Simone de Beauvoir's book, The Second Sex, was originally published. This book became seminal in feminism, because of the attempt to define woman as she is rather than as the Other, or counterpart, to men. It's combination of existentialism and feminism, as well as discussion of sexuality contributed to the growth of feminism and the (still continuing) search for equality in society.

It's original 'rushed' translation by Howard Parshley meant that the message did not survive completely intact. Apparently Parshley had a limited understanding of French and existentialist philosophy; his expertise was in sexual reproduction; not really a good basis for rendering something so complex as Beauvoir's book.

The Second Sex came about from Beauvoir's attempt to write about herself. After writing that she was a woman, Beauvoir realised that she needed to define 'woman.' The rest, as that awful cliche says, is history (herstory, ourstory?).

I remember reading from my mother's copy a long time ago, on the cusp of womanhood. I don't remember much though I like to think I absorbed some of it by osmosis... (obviously not enough, if I had six children - ah!). I'm very intrigued by whispers of the new translation coming from Cape (Random House), but I can't determine how soon this new translation will be forthcoming, if indeed it has been published. If you have good French, apparently reading it in the original is the most illuminating method of discovering The Second Sex. In the meantime, Happy Anniversary year, Simone & The Second Sex.

Random 2008 Book List

I went upstairs this morning to look for a book that I need to complete something, and found myself absorbed by looking through some other books that I acquired across last year (yes, I can now call it last year). So I wrote them down:

Me & The Dead, Katy Evans Bush; accomplished debut collection from Salt.

More About the Song, Rachel Fox; another debut, from a very interesting writer.

New Room Windows, Greagoir O Duill; first English collection from a charming and erudite Irish writer, Doghouse Books.

Down the Sunlit Hall, Eileen Sheehan; breathtaking second collection, Doghouse Books.

Time Gentlemen, Please, Kevin Higgins; second collection from well-known Galwegian poet, Salmon.

Big Pink Umbrella, Susan Millar DuMars; another accomplished first collection, Salmon.

Torching the Brown River, Lorna Shaughnessy; and another... Salmon.

The Glass Swarm, Peter Bennet, Flambard Press Poetry; think this was a Poetry Book Society Choice - must renew that oul subscription.

The Company of Horses, Peter Fallon; the editor of Gallery Press himself, some cracking poems in this.

Dissonances, Nigel McLouglin; a fabulous fourth collection from Bluechrome, some real magic in this.

Thornfield: Poems by the Thornfield Poets; think I mentioned this elsewhere, but it's a good reader for what's contemporary in poetry (by Irish Women) right now - Salmon.

The Bees, Sally Evans; a Diehard publication, this is a virtuoso collection of cantos written in terza rima - not something everyone tries and my children really enjoyed the beautiful illustrations that accompany the text.

The Enthusiast Field Guide to Poetry; this book is very entertaining, well worth the read; from Quercus.

Europa, Moniza Alvi; another Poetry Book Society choice; grim and disturbing reading, but still a worthy choice.

Smoke & Skin, Aoife Casby & Celeste Auge; a dual chapbook featuring two Galway based poets, showcasing their work, Lapwing.

Tornadoes for the Weathergirl, Celeste Auge; a pamphlet of poetry from Invincible Poetry Pamphlet Press.

Paris Stories, Mavis Gallant; recommended by WRW, I'm still reading this, slowly and with savour.

William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man, Duncan Wu; I'll be making my mind up about this soon, OUP.

Hungry For Home: Leaving the Blaskets, Cole Moreton; I'll be honest, this is a gorgeous book - I reviewed it for Verbal Magazine, August issue; even got an interview with Cole!

Slipping Letters Beneath the Sea, Joseph Horgan; another Doghouse poet who won the Patrick Kavanagh in 2005 with the ms that makes up the most of this book about the immi/emigration from/to Ireland. Chilling and startling, and very, very relevant now, given that our 'Celtic Tiger has turned into a Deflated Baboon' (The Guardian, today).

The Canals of Memory, Aine Moynhan; another worthy Doghouse poet whose bilinguality peppers this collection.

The Collected Poems of Geoffrey Holloway; from Arrowhead Press, I am still working through this brilliant resource.

Brace: A New Generation in Short Fiction; from Comma Press, this is a good reader and has some lovely imagistic resonances in the way that the stories reverberate off each other. A notable introduction by the editor, Jim Hinks and a story by a writer who lives locally, Jaki Mc Carrick.

On Form, Angela Leighton; for the early chapter on form itself, a spectacular book and a resource I'll use over and over again, from OUP.

Sister Morphine, Catherine Eisner; another unusual fiction book from risk-takers Salt.

Veronica Forrest-Thomson & Language Poetry, Alison Mark; this should be treated as a companion book to:

The Collected Poems of Veronica Forrest-Thomson; both interesting books, one sheds light on the other's poetry and VFT is overlooked, but hopefully going to get plenty of attention in the future.

Thow in the Vowels, Rita Ann Higgins; since Rita Ann chose a poem of mine to be placed in the Feile Filiochta Competition, I thought it only fair that I purchase and read one of her books - very enjoyable poetry that will have a second relevance in these straitened times.

Letters of Ted Hughes, edited by Christopher Reid; I loved this book from Faber, another valuable resource, I reckon.

The Lost Leader, Mick Imlah; I had terrible trouble trying to get hold of this - it took me three trips to Dublin to finally get hold of this tome from Faber.

Selected Poems of Michael Longley; had to get hold of this when I'd been working with him last year.

Selected Poetry of John Hewitt, ed. Longley & Frank Ormsby; one I'd had on the wishlist for ages, this Blackstaff number was enjoyable for reading the poet of whom Heaney has referred to as the 'Daddy of us all,' with reference to NI poets.

Tattoo: Tatu, Nuala Ni Chonchuir; another worthy solo debut collection from Arlen Press. Nuala is known for her short stories, but her poetry is equally worth reading.

Walk the Blue Fields, Claire Keegan; I've been singing the praises of these short stories to all my classes - justifiably so: they are so, so good, from Faber.

Buzz, Templar Poetry anthology; the pick of the crop of 08's competition entries, a good read of what's up and coming in poetry.

Consorting With Angels, Deryn Rees Jones; despite the title, this is a valuable resource, examining women's poetry from the more recent side of the 20th century, from Bloodaxe.

I can see that it's mostly poetry; no surprises there. Now I'm looking forward to getting my hands on some more poetry this year: especially looking forward to seeing what comes from the Salt stable, amongst many publishers that I'm watching - and the poets; well interesting times ahead for us, I think. Now, back to trying to find that book I was looking for!

Take Five

Middle son has been taking piano lessons for two years now. He's lately taken up playing jazz, where it's all about improv. It's done wonders for his eleven year old hands and brain.

This is the song that got him loaded on jazz:

The Turn

I'm taking a leaf out of Mr Sunny Dunny's book and facing Janus' stone visage forward: I have lots of things I think I'll be doing:

Looking forward to the set up in early January of a new writing group: members drawn from here and there in Ireland.

Also looking forward to using a bursary that Dundalk Town Council awarded me: two whole weeks at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annamakerrig, Newbliss, Co. Monaghan. New bliss all right!

What else: getting my finger out and making substantial submissions to the usual suspects: The Stinging Fly, Crannog, The SHOp... & also some UK journals. I need to build up publication credits for 2010 publication...

Writing up and organising the new series of classes for Dundalk and Newry: quite a few of them are getting publishing credits, so I must be doing something right, but I still need to keep their fires stoked and imaginations running.

Applying for more teaching positions - there's always the OU - might get the old foot in the door there.

And I have a hankering to go to StAnza, been wanting to go this few years, and I see Ben Wilkinson is reading at it - there's an opportunity to see an up and coming talent before he becomes famous. ;)

When I cast my eye back over this preliminary list, I don't feel quite so disorganised, or as disgruntled as I have been lately. I tend to feel over the holiday period that I've lost momentum and that there are things I should be doing, other than feeding, cleaning and washing clothes. But that's what happens when holidays are here. There's simply no time to luxuriate in what I could be doing. Contentment lies in what is to come.

A Cyclone Cometh...

Readers, we have the honour of having the first stop of Elizabeth Baines whirling tour, Around the Edges of the World, with her book of short stories, Balancing on the Edge of the World.

The tour begins on January 14th, 2009: right here!

Virtual tours have been a feature of Salt Publishing since early September, and this new resource of promoting books and bringing authors to prominence is an imaginative way of using t'internet to get the message out there: books are still very much alive and kicking! It's also a fantastic way of linking up bloggers: whether literary or not.

If you haven't already checked out Elizabeth's great blog, you can do so here. Balancing on the Edge of the World is available from Salt Books. More about the tour very soon!

An Irish Wake

My best friend's dad died on the shortest day of the year, unexpectedly after a short illness. He was aged 73, and it came as a shock to his wife, three daughters and son.

I visited yesterday to offer my condolences and to give a hand, as he is being waked at home. It's amazing to see the kindness of neighbours, friends and relations as they arrive with sandwiches, tins of biscuits, tea bags, crockery or even entire meals. All the visiting women take turns and muck in at the kitchen sink: filling up the urn with water; wetting and drawing tea; washing tea-cups and keeping the smooth wheels of domesticity running as the family come to terms with their loss.

I think there's something very special about a home wake for the recently departed: they are still very much part of the family, being remembered and celebrated and its an important part of the grieving process. It is a hard time of year to lose a family member as it will always be part of future Christmasses to mark their passing. I am thinking now, especially of anyone out there who is in the same boat, or who has an anniversary this time of year.

May the road rise up to meet you,
may the wind be at your back,
may the sunshine be warm on your face
and the rain fall soft on your land.
And until we meet again,
may God hold you in the hollow of his hand.

Traditional Irish blessing

The Shortest Day

No prizes for guessing what this day is, solstice, turnaround day. Now we look forward to the stretch in the evenings; glimmering slowly as they do, until around the end of January those stretches become more noticable.

Not that it's sunny today here in grey old Ireland: there's a woolly blanket of soft cloud pulled over us to keep us warm. A few glimmers of sunlight there at 2pm, but the cloud took over again. Still. I wouldn't say there was any bright light bouncing off the back wall at Newgrange, for the few lucky enough to fit in there and watch dawnrise.

I prefer to think of today as the day to look back at June 21st and try to remember what the weather was like, as well as the temperatures. And maybe even picture the flowers out in the garden in my minds eye. Won't be long, now...

And for some cheery moments, pop over to Minx and see her pics

Oh, Hallelujah

There's a whole of talking going on about Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen's much covered song. Books Inq mentions Dorian Lynskey's article in the Guardian, online today, where a lot of different artist's versions are given the once over and yet, for me there is only one version: the master's voice. Even the Times has covered the phenonmenon in a leading article.

I caught five mins of the BBC's Breakfast show this morning (yes, I am having a strange day) where the topic of discussion was the 'battle' for a Christmas #1 between Jeff Buckley's stripped down guitar and vocals version and the X Factor winner Alexandra's power ballad version. The BBC website has also produced this, er, helpful guide to the lyrics: Smashed Hits by Alan Connor. You can even take a quiz to see how well you think you know the song.

I've often wondered about the power of Cohen's song to resonate so strongly. I think it's down to the fact that Cohen uses an ancient story to stand, perhaps as allegory (but so much more than that) for feelings that cannot be wholly expressed, or satisfactorily expressed by our modern lexicon of mythology as well as language. It reminds me of how well Michael Longley's poem Ceasefire worked too: taking the story of the retrieval of Hector's body, Priam's grief and the appeasement of Achilles, and telling the story in a new quiet way; but the modern context in which it is written (N. Ireland, 1998) gives it a whole new slant.

Longley spoke about how he snatched 'from the narrative flow [of Homeric Greek myth], moments of lyric intensity in which to echo my own concerns, both personal and political.' The particular moment in 'Ceasefire' worked because it spoke both to the moment, behind the moment and beyond the moment. And that's what I think happens with Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah,' and why it is that so many artists cover it. Dress it up, dress it down, take it all round town, the words and the music line are still the same: it's a spun thrill that speaks to the emotional moment that we all carry inside us - humanity and, dare I say it, love.

Wot I did - Part Two

It's getting increasingly more diffcult to steal time away from my kitchen lately to report on doings outside of the familial home: I've gone a bit mad making chutneys, jellies and cakes... and I've not even started on the suet-free mince pies. I'm telling you, feeding six kids and eight adults takes the best out of you, never mind adding in the festive glut-fest on top of things. That Nigella one has a lot to answer for...


Anyway, another photo. This time I'm gowned up for the graduation from Queen's University, last Friday. I've got on the hood for the MA, which is a fetching little maroon and blue number over the black gown. At some point during the ceremony (probably when the procession arrived in) I thought how weird it is at this point in our lives that we all dress up like extras applying for the role of court jester at some olde worlde castle. I should probably write a poem about that...

Back to the stove-face. And will someone please save me from the over-excited hobgoblins who seem to have invaded my children's bodies...?

More later in the week about the Seven Tower's Anthology launch on Sunday gone... It's called Census.

Wot I did -Part One

A very busy week indeed, beginning with the launch/talk of the Picture Text module artist's books on Tuesday evening.


The photo of yours truly, in an 'oul paisley number holding aforementioned handmade copy of her artist's book. This comes via SGB, our intrepid tutor/photographer/inspiree. I think I am talking about how William Blake was one of the most notorious combiners of art and text, in his illustrated texts.

More about the rest of my doings over the next few days... and here also a wee teaser about Elizabeth Baines/Fiction Bitch's visit to this blog in the early January!!! I can't wait - I have lots of questions that I want to pitch Elizabeth's way: not least, how she makes her short stories look so effortless... tum te tum te tum.

Pork Recall... No Hams for Christmas?

This just in: Ireland recalls pork over dioxin contamination

Just weeks before the big ham-fest that is an Irish Christmas. According to Reuters: "Laboratory results of animal feed and pork fat samples obtained on Saturday confirmed the presence of dioxins, it said, with toxins at 80-200 times the safe limits."

Apparently the culprit is a batch of feedstuff that has used by many pig farmers. We've heard a lot about milk contamination lately in other parts of the world, but we're unused to hearing about this sort of contamination closer to home. The thought of sub-standard sausages, bacon and black and white puddings tears quite a hole in the Irish psyche, when you consider the universally loved traditional Irish cooked breakfast (complete with brown bread).

However, the IFA have tried to reassure consumers that "the recall was a precautionary measure" and that most pork products are still safe. In fact, IFA President Padraig Walshe added, "There will be perfectly safe pig meat on sale to consumers I expect from the middle of the week." Tell that to the people who put pork off the menus for Christmas, and probably for a good while longer after that.

Which probably means that the consumer will have to pay much more for their Christmas ham than usual. Makes you re-consider those vegetarian options a lot more closely, I think...

Source: Reuters

Caomhnú Literary Festival & Competition

Caomhnú Literary Festival Poetry/Short Story Competition

Competition Rules:
Entry Form must accompany each entry.
Each poem/short story submitted costs €3.
Cheques payable to Cavan County Council.
Entries to be forwarded to: Cavan County Council Arts Office, Farnham Centre, Farnham St, Cavan, Co Cavan. The closing date for entries is January 16th, 2009.
1st Prize €200
2nd Prize €100
3rd Prize €70
For any further details please contact Cavan County Council’s Arts Office on 00353 (0)49 437 8548
Poetry Adjudicator: Noel Monahan
Short Story Adjudicator: Shane Connaughton

Picture Text Update

Some pics from my 'real' and virtual desktop: what I can do when I have three clear hours and more materials you can shake a stick at. It's a handmade artist's book (well, it will be when it's finished), designed and made by me, for a launch in Belfast Exposed next Tuesday 9th @6pm. Not anyway near as sophisticated as some of the others' work, but I know how to work within my limits!

Another day, Another Rachel

I've been watching Rachel Allen's 'Bake!' and I've received her glorious cookbook as a birthday present (I'm easy to please these days!). Since when I've been busy baking her delicious oatmeal and vanilla cookies for the kids. Pure simplicity they are too. Now I'm thinking about lemon curd, and how to get my hands on a good recipe...

Rising to Rachel's Challenge

It's been a terribly long time since I had a poem up here and as Rachel rightly points out I rarely talk that much about what I'm doing writing-wise, which probably leads a lot of people to think that I don't write much.

Au contraire! But I am horribly self-critical of my own work, so I like to try and get things into the best shape possible... which ain't easy in present mega-biz conditions: finishing off CW classes for this term; assembling Santy lists; booking me graduation at QUB for me masters; trying desperately to finish B&W photography work for artist's book of image/text to be launched on 9th December at Belfast Exposed... and there are other things I have to do too, like get a job (He's told me - no more slacking!?!)

Anyhoo, here's a poem. It's not great, but there ya are :)


removed for editing

What to Do?

Nothing as wearing as nothing concrete to focus on. Yes, there's Christmas... but all I feel for that is a world-weary 'neugh.' If I didn't have six young 'uns to satisfy, I'd quite happily head off to an island somewhere, preferably uninhabited.* Possibly it's because I'm almost 'another year closer to death.'**

Some new plans are needed... but what?

* And definitely not with Tom Hanks!
** Pink Floyd have an awful lot to answer for sometimes.

The Marvellous Bill Bailey

Times article on 11th November, on why Bill Bailey doesn't Mock the Weak... and what he's doing next year to raise the profile of dear old Alfred Russel Wallace, who will be ignored whilst Darwin is celebrated... even though Wallace reached the same conclusions as Darwin at more or less the same time!

Comedy is a funny art.

Dundalk Writers Enjoy Workshop

Today was a fantastic day with the writing workshop that I organised for my Wednesday and Saturday classes with the short story writer and poet Nuala Ni Chonchuir.

Some pics:














As you can see from all the smiling faces, everyone seems to have enjoyed Nuala's input. We covered the 'theory' aspect of short stories in the morning, and then in the afternoon, Nuala gave everyone useful feedback on the work that had been submitted. The standard of work in short stories and poetry was very high indeed, which is very encouraging and affirming for everyone involved.

As ever, huge thanks to Dundalk Arts Office for their fantastic support, without which these workshops simply wouldn't have been possible.

Guess Who's Coming to Town

It's been a hectic few weeks. We've got Nuala Ni Chonchuir coming to Dundalk tomorrow to work with the two writing groups that I teach CW to.

We're very much looking forward to her visit and words of encouragement and advice. It's going to be a full on day, with lots to mull over afterwards.

On other fronts, I'm knee deep in a project at QUB, an artist's book that each of us has to make, incorporating text and image. I've spent the last three Thursdays in the dark room at Belfast Exposed, making photograms, and developing B&W pictures from negatives. I'm using a poem about taking photographs with an old fold-out camera.

Our tutor managed to source a camera shop in Scotland which was selling off old camera stock. She brought me home a rather marvelous 'Soho Cadet,' made from bakelite, about mid 1930s or so. I've taken pictures with it, developed the film and am dying to see the photographs - alas no time yesterday.

Still waiting for the result from the MA... at this stage I'm pretty nervous. They should be out soon...

Judging Stories

On what elements this particular judge was looking for in a short story.

It includes the silly formatting mistakes that people make that eliminate them before the story's even read; and how important the authorial voice is in a story.

Brian Hodge describes 'voice' as "the fusion of 1001 little aesthetic and stylistic choices." Yes, voice is that hard to quantify: it's similar in poetry too.

Storytellers Unplugged is one worth keeping an eye on, if you're into short stories, and the competition end of things especially.

The Times they are a changing...

So, what's next?

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."

Obama's Acceptance Speech at Chicago's Grant Park.

Musing on the Muse

I've been having a thought (see comment in box below previous post) about the muse. Mine's definitely a male figure, but poets in the past of the male variety have had a predilection towards the female Muse. I'm thinking Robert Graves writer of The White Goddess (and much else besides) and his muse was, for a while, Laura Riding.

The concept of the muse for the poet (or writer) is certainly nothing novel. Coming from Greek myths and legends, the muses number nine and you'll find plenty of references to them in names being used for all sorts of things.

My dictionary of etymology relates muse to muzzle: the image of a dog scenting the air when in doubt as to the scent. And there's the thing. Sometimes you're thinking about something (or nothing at all) and an idea pops into your head. You decide it will make a good poem, but you don't know the outcome. Finding the outcome is why you write the poem/short story/novel. It's how we all work.

That dictionary also relates muse to mosiac work; originally from the Latin and Gk, mosaic work literally belonged to the muses... so does museum; lit, a temple to the muses. How we piece our work together slowly and painstakingly.

So, if my muse is male and unkempt, a bit hairy and um... very male... what's your's like? Or could you be arsed to have one. They're terribly hard to keep going...

On Form

Just bought a copy of On Form today. It's by Angela Leighton and I am wholly absorbed by it.

How I wish I'd had this book when I was studying the 20th C Texts and Debates course! It really brings together the development of thought about how form is one of those words/concepts/vitally important things that has continued to develop and morph from Kant's time, through Pater and the 'art for art's sake' debates, through aestheticism, utilitarianism through the bankruptcy of aesthetics into the thirties, equally through modernism, postmodernism... ack - I sound like I'm ranting now and that's only Chapter One! So lucid and easy to read... why had I not this book last year when I turned to form, seriously?

More later, when I've read and digested the book and written all the poems which are crowding around me like little vampirelets begging for life force.

Ah, my muse is back! Thank the muse.

Taking up the Review Cudgels

Emerging Writer has picked up on a New York Times article that highlights the seven most overused words that reviewers employ when writing reviews. I've seen a similar vein taken up on Poets On Fire forums recently too.

The problem, I guess, might lie with the time that you have between reading the book/journal/zine etc. and having to write and then deliver the finished article to whichever editor is taking it.

It's a topic fraught with its own rules and regulations and areas of writing negotiation that the reviewer must come through. Last year (at QUB), we had Ian Sansom (he of the Guardian reviews) come talk to us. Not so much about how to write a review, more how not to write a review. Some of it makes perfect sense.

There's no substitute for knowing what you're talking about. If it's the poet's third collection, you should, in all honesty, be familiar with their work. If not, go get familiar with the work. Perhaps this is what leads to reviews that employ such overused words as the ones listed in the NYT review of reviewing; the time constraint of having to make your deadlines as you whizz through the tenth book in that bursting jiffy bagful that you've agreed to review.

If you're going to diss a writer's work, at least make it humorous. Ian used Randall Jarrell's prolific output as a good example. But the thing about Jarrell's reviews is that they were good; in fact some would argue that they were far better than his poetry output. Which makes me wonder whether reviewing is such an art, in and of itself, that it impinges on the other work of the writer - whether they are involved in poetry or prose.

I am reminded of Rob MacKenzie's recent post, where he asked what people are looking for in reviews. I know that this pertains to poetry reviews in particular; prose reviews are more telling what the book is about and whether it is well written or not; poetry reviews have to look at the techniques involved and whether they contribute to the sense of the collection. Form informing content, and all that, which makes poetry reviewing far more specialised than the general all purpose reviews.

Reviewing is an art: I think that a reviewer should be aiming to convey their passion and knowledge about the book they have read to the reader. It's an act of persuasion as well as conveyance; a gentle balancing act of accessibility and refined language. It is, after all, only an opinion. But it should be the very best opinion for the reader to trust your words.

Having said all that, there's one book that I would really recommend for the would be reviewer: How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, by Pierre Bayard. Read it and smile with amusement at how much we know about books that we've never opened... I am thinking of Joyce now, for some reason...