Another Escape Plot

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

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

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

Hey - there's my buddies and me

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

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

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

How not to do NaPo

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

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

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

Nigel McLoughlin's Dissonances

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

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

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

Reading Randall Jarrell

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

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

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

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

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

A Picture tells a Thousand Words

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

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

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

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

Recent Readings

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

UK National Poetry Competition

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

NaPoWriMo

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

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

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

A tale of Two Reviews

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

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

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

The Clue is in the Date

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

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

Pictures to follow!

Some Good Poetry News

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

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

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

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

Round and around Rome in 2 days

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

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

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

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

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

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

In other news...

Did I mention that I was going to Rome?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post Match Analysis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pipe and Slippers

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

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

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

Shameless Lion Writing Circle

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

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

***

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

How do you top a day like today?

I spent most of today workshopping poems with Michael Longley.

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

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

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

So, you think you like to...

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

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

Pipe and Slippers

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

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

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

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

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