All Ireland Poetry Day...countdown

On LMFM tomorrow at 12.15pm talking about the events lined up for Louth county this year. I'll also be talking a little about myself, The Poetry Divas, and other diverse poetry related things.

You can listen on the web live at the time - if you're local, LMFM broadcast on 95.8FM.

Hey ho, the addy oh!

Now, where did I leave that feather boa... The Divas fly again tomorrow e'en in McGeough's Bar, Roden Place, Dundalk as part of the Open Mic night - woohoo!

All Ireland Poetry Day

I'm really excited this year by All Ireland Poetry Day, which this year falls on Thursday 7th October - the same day as in the UK, so ye'll be having it every which way this year.

I've been busy putting together the programme for Louth county, on behalf of the Louth Arts Services (and Poetry Ireland, too) since the mid-summer and it's a real cracker this year.

At Lunchtime, there are two readings in Louth - Drogheda Library host Marie McSweeney at 1.30pm, where Marie will be reading from her recent work. Marie has won many prizes for her short stories and poetry, including the Francis MacManus award. DkIT Library host a reading in the library's rooftop atrium garden, where people can come and listen to poets, past and present.

Later that evening in Drogheda, the Viaduct Bards host a poetry session in Drogheda Library from 6.30 - 7.30pm, whilst in Carlingford, Jaki McCarrick reads at 7.30pm in the Holy Trinity Heritage Centre. Jaki was a featured poet at the Poetry Ireland Introduction series last year, and her plays and short stories have been winning prizes galore lately.

Finally, and I'm really excited by this one, Meitheal, is a new open mic session launching in McGeough's Bar in Roden Place, Dundalk from 8pm onwards. Featured readers on the night are The Poetry Divas collective. Run what ya brung!

New Review

My review of An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, edited by Wes Davis, from Harvard University Press is now online at Eyewear!

Another Year On

Back to school time... and back to college for one as well! Trying to overcome the tiredness is proving a challenge, as I try to meter out the jobs that need to be done: the uniforms, the tracksuits, the contents of pencil cases, the trousers that need hemming, the books that need ticking off. This year, I won't moan about the price of all that stuff that has to be got - for me, it's worth spending on!

But I do it all with a slight of glee - there's no escaping that feeling that mammies up and down the country must be feeling: the feckers are going to be back at school and my house will be my own - to bathe in the peaceful silence (well as silent as a housing estate will get with all known children between the ages of 4 and 17 away being edumucated) of my CLEAN house.

What will I do with all that silence - hopefully a bit of what Nuala Ni is doing - some writing! Now, if I can only manage two hours, I'll be doing well :)

Poems in Southword

We interrupt this illness to bring you some poems in the latest, brand-spanking new Southword 18.

You will find me just underneath Matthew Sweeney - not figuratively (helas!) - with five poems that belong to a much longer sonnet sequence about George Mallory, the British mountaineer who died attempting Everest in 1924, with his co-climber, Andrew Irvine.

James Harpur retires as Poetry Editor at Southword, to be replaced by Leanne O'Sullivan, and Tania Hershman is taking up Fiction Editor-ship there too. All good stuff. Check out the other poems, stories and reviews, it's a meaty issue.

Waiting results from tests...

Back after this short break - I hope!

It's been quiet here for a good reason. Apart from three days in Donegal, during which the rain rained like a rainy thing (did-ya-know it's been the wettest July since, er, last year?), I've been trying to get over various chest-related things which have been leaving me drained and... er... well... still unwell.

Some of you might remember me moaning (Feb) about general unwellness long before the pneumonia (Apr) episode. If not, a quick recap: pain in abdomen, pain in chest, general fatigue etc. etc. hospital, home, bed, hospital, home, more bed, back to work ya-di-da-da.

I returned recently to the doctor after diagnosed pleurisy seemed to be refusing to go away. Conversation went like something this:

Me: The pain is still there.
Doc: Well, your chest is clear.
But, the pain is still there - it's tender to touch under my tight armpit; exactly where I had the pneumonia. In fact I've had this pain there since before I had the pneumonia. Me and this pain know each other so well, we could be bosom buddies.
Is that so?
Yes.
Maybe it's not pleurisy.
Then what is it?
It might be costochondroitis.
Huh?
Could be caused by pneumonia. Here's a prescription for some heavy-duty painkillers and some prednisone. Go home and go to bed.

Again? Sheesh...

Gawn Fishin

Back when I get some well-needed chest rest!

Salt, Neruda and Ten more years

To help keep Salt Publishing's head above water there's the Just One (more)Book campaign, which is simple enough: browse and buy one book. Recessionary times have been incredibly tough on publishing: more so on poetry! There are some great books there, and if you've been promising yourself a book from Salt, now's the time.

But there's also a 'flashmob' gathering in London today - er, just now - at the Southbank Centre, at 3pm London time, to celebrate ten years of Salt Publishing with a mass public recital of Pablo Neruda's "Ode to Salt."

To get you in the mood:

Ode to Salt

This salt
in the salt cellar
I once saw in the salt mines.
I know
you won't
believe me
but
it sings
salt sings, the skin
of the salt mines
sings
with a mouth smothered
by the earth.

by Pablo Neruda

Much more here at this link

Younger Poetry Magazine

There's an online magazine, YM, available for the younger reader who's dipping their toe into poetry: Ben Wilkinson calls attention to it over on his blog, for a short article he has written on Louis MacNeice's last collection The Burning Perch, which if I didn't already know, I'd definitely be more curious about.

It reminds me of the book on my shelf by Ted Hughes: Poetry in the Making, a Handbook for Writing and Teaching. These were a series of lectures for younger people on poetry that were once broadcast by the BBC, collected into book form. I read these again and again for inspiration and angles: it's available second hand, on certain websites, but I think it really could bear being re-issued.

You - Nuala Ní Chonchúir

You was a complete delight to read and is the latest offering from Irish writer Nuala Ní Chonchúir. Nuala is an Irish short fiction writer and poet, born in Dublin in 1970. Her short fiction includes Nude (2009), To the World of Men, Welcome (2005) and The Wind Across the Grass (2004). She has won many literary prizes, including RTÉ Radio’s Francis MacManus Award and the Cecil Day-Lewis Award.

In 2009, her pamphlet, Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car was one of the four finalists in the prestigious UK Templar Poetry Pamphlet competition. To say that Nuala is a writer who is going places, in a literary sense, is something of a understatement: her short story collection, Nude (2009), is currently shortlisted for the 2010 Edge Hill Short Story Prize - results due this week - so fingers crossed for Nuala!

I'm delighted to have you on the blog again for some scones and morning tea - milk or lemon? - and the scones are, of course, freshly baked - there's some freshly potted strawberry jam too. Congratulations on the publication of your first novel, 'You'. It's a riveting read!

Oh milk for me, Barbara, and a brown scone, thanks; with dollops of jam, mmmm. Thanks for having me over to Dundalk.

I’m glad you were riveted to You; it’s amazingly nice when someone says they like something you’ve written.

Firstly, I'd like to ask you how you came to the decision to use the second person. In reading the book, I found that voice deeply compelling; it seems to speak to an inner child in me in a way, as well as getting across the girl's angle, so was this a deeply concious decision or one that you came to more quickly/intuitively?

I have an unnatural grá for the second person voice, really. When I start to write a story, it often emerges in the second person (it’s like my head thinks it’s the first person). I find it a very comfortable voice to work in and I’ve written several short stories in it. So doing the novel in the second person was a very instinctive thing for me. It’s not a conscious act at all – I just love it, as both writer and reader. I like its peculiarity, its distance and, paradoxically, its intimacy.

This sort of leads me into the next question: telling the story from the point of view of the child allows for a slower reveal than if we'd seen it from an omniscient narrator's point of view; we've got to work a little harder as readers to put together the pieces (which is appreciated from this reader's pov). How much thought do you put into how the reader will perceive the story?

You know, I never think about the reader per se. When I edit, I obviously aim for clarity for the reader’s sake but she is not in my head as I write. So how the story is perceived doesn’t come into my writing equation. I don’t workshop my fiction so usually the first inkling I get of whether something has worked or not is from an editor’s perspective. And I prefer it that way.

The child’s voice is a device, like any other literary device, and I like its limitations. There’s only so much a child will understand and as the writer you have to be aware of that. And tread carefully.

There's something about the fact that the girl's name is avoided, which reminded me of the narrator of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca (although your narrator is much more feisty!), who is never named, but takes other people's names (i.e her husband's name but not her own - Mrs de Winter). How important are names in your creation's worlds?

Names are huge for me and not openly naming the novel’s narrator was deliberate – she has nicknames instead e.g. Little Miss Prim. (I know her real name, though!)

I find naming one of the most joyous aspects of creating characters and often their entire personality will hinge on their name. I am like a blackbird, foraging for names all the time: in newspapers, in TV credits, in spam etc. My husband brought home a new cookbook the other night and the author’s name was so quirky and cute, I’ve stolen it for my list of character names. I like odd and memorable names. I love the way Dickens used names in his fiction, and Annie Proulx is a consummate namer.

Barbara, thanks a million for hosting me today and for the delicious home-baking; it’s been lovely chatting to you. Next week my virtual tour brings me to England to the home of short story writer and novelist Elizabeth Baines. I'd love if some of your readers would join me there.

It's been a real pleasure, Nuala. To readers out there who haven't managed to get/read You just yet, it is stocked in all good bookshops in Ireland, or can be ordered directly from New Island - postage is included if you live in Ireland!

Guess who's coming tomorrow?

Nuala Ni Chonchuir and her debut novel You will virtually drop by for a quick cup of tea and jammy scones tomorrow.

She's busy in West Cork this week, tutoring a creative fiction workshop, but she'll find time in her day tomorrow to answer some intriguing questions on voice.

Liffey Sound

I had a great time yakking my head off to Niamh - fair play to her and Liffey Sound for inviting me round to tea and allowing me to bring some poetry to air there.

The theme of the show was A Woman's View and it is now available to DL, thanks to the wonder of Niamh. Fastest hour I've ever had, even as we were keeping half eye on the England v Germany match.

Take a look on the side bar too, there are so many different writers to choose from to listen to, such as David Mohan, Nuala Ni Chonchuir, Maeve O'Sullivan and Kate Dempsey - even the bould Peter Goulding (who is busy writing World Cup poems - as you read!) to pick just a few. The shows last an hour long, but be warned, it's a quick hour!

Is that the time already?

In response to a previous commenter (yes, you Dick! :) )Body and Soul was fabulous - the weather and the craic there too. I met a good few musicians, and not a few poets either. We Divas rocked the kasbah of course, even managing to sell copies of Poetry Divas 2 (or Divas in Blue, as it may well become known), the new pamphlet released by the Divas Collective. We're planning an even bigger version for the Electric Picnic, but more of that later.

Tomorrow I'm on Sunday Scrapbook, Liffey Sound 96.4FM with Niamh Bagnell from 4pm to 5pm. It is possible to listen live on the web - I hope. If you get lost, try the ordinary website: Liffey Sound . I will be reading the, by now, infamous 'boob' poem on the programme, so there's an excuse to escape the droning vuvuzela on the footy for a wee while! Ahem.

I have so much teaching work on at the moment it's really not funny, but I am looking forward to July immensely - I have a nice, chunky review to write on Wes Davis' Anthology of Irish Poetry, which had an 'interesting' review in the Irish Times today. I must save my own myriad thoughts for the review, which will appear on Eyewear in July... but the IT review has already been garnering attention on FB today, and not just because of the feckin'size of it. God help the students it may be aimed at (take that one whatever way you want), is all I can say. It is massive. And has shamrocks all over it. Hmm.

The only worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Think Wilde might've said that. Right?

Shh, Don't Tell Anyone

But the Poetry Divas are all set to ride again. . . there is a really special boutique festival this weekend at Ballinlough Castle, Co. Westmeath.

Those lovely people from Body & Soul at Electric Picnic have organised a discrete summer solstice celebration - and the weather forecast is set to be an absolute cracker! In case you don't know what I'm on about, Body & Soul at EP was the really chilled out area with small tents and teepees and lots of like-minded relaxed dudes 'n dudettes with great attitudes, lovely mugs of tea and the occasional freebird hairstyles.

But don't let on - right..? We wouldn't want too many people there...

Now, I am off to think about my outfit, nails and other sundry things that Divas must do - oh yes, and some poems too... think I'll bring me boob poem to this one for an outing... always goes down well... :)

Books beget more books

At least books always seem to do so in my case. There I am, on Friday, in Dublin's Chapter's bookshop on Parnell Street, as part of the audience, to help welcome Salmon Poetry's Prophesying the Past by Noel King into the world, and I just can't help myself: arriving early, picking and sifting from the poetry bookshelves.

What do I find? Michael Donaghy's Collected, as well as The Shape of the Dance. Oh joy! I spent all yesterday (Saturday) and today devouring them. God Donaghy was so good (!) - in prose as well as poetry - and I did like him before in poetry, but now I am totally besotted (!) and I have a much better understanding of all the varying schools of poetry (and what nonsense it all is) as well a good overview of why form is a good tool to have in the poetry kitbag. Lucky those who attended his classes in London back in the day. . .

I also found Material by Ros Barber on the bookshelves (alas the last copy), and have been dipping in and out of this extraordinary book. The title poem is practically faultless and there are so many gems in it that it will take some unpacking. Somehow I also came home with Peter Porter's Afterburner as well...

Back to Prophesying the Past, though. I confess to having more than a passing interest in this one: I've proofed it and read the poems many times, and Noel King is also editor of Doghouse who published me back in 2007. It was a real delight to hear the poems given voice and for us to finally see this long-awaited book delivered. Noel reads in the Poetry Cafe in London with Eileen Sheehan on Wednesday 16th June at 7.30pm.

The Magpie Has Landed...

... in Dundalk. It's a great pleasure today, to welcome Elizabeth Baines' Flying With Magpies tour to sunny Dundalk on the east coast of Ireland, with her new novel, Too Many Magpies.


I devoured this book in one sitting: I am a quick reader, but when a book grabs one's attention the way that Too Many Magpies does, I find it extremely hard to put it down.This book was amazing for its exploration of that disturbing sense of guilt that women experience as parents and the build-up of worry and tension in the novel just kept on ratchetting up. I thought TMM was very well written and I loved the opacity of the language; everything adding to that sense of heightened awareness. Anyhow, on we go with Elizabeth's visit.

Elizabeth Baines was born in South Wales and lives in Manchester. She is a prizewinning author of prose fiction and plays for radio and stage. Too Many Magpies was published by Salt in 2009. Previously Salt published her collection of short stories, (2007) which was pronounced ‘a stunning debut collection’ (The Short Review). In October 2010 Salt will reissue her first, acclaimed novel Balancing on the Edge of the WorldThe Birth Machine. She is also a performer and has been a teacher.

About the book: How do we safeguard our children in a changing and dangerous world? And what if the greatest danger is from ourselves? A young mother fearful for her children’s safety falls under the spell of a charismatic but sinister stranger. A novel about our hidden desires and the scientific and magical modes of thinking which have got us to where we are now.

• Elizabeth, you write your main characters very strongly, and the issues and themes that are raised are those that affect women in particular. I enjoyed particularly the voice, that to me was the main strength of the novel; the voice of this woman. How hard is it to articulate a character like the narrator in Too Many Magpies?

Well, to me voice is all-important - to my mind, it's HOW a novel or story is told that is its real essence, and which carries its real meaning. I really can't begin writing until I hear the narrative voice. Sometimes that happens quickly and sometimes it doesn't, I find: you can have the theme and the story and even the characters, but you still can't hear the voice in which the story will be told - whether it's the voice of one of the characters, or of a separate narrator etc, and how precisely that voice sounds. I don't really find that I can do much actively to make this happen: basically I find it's a question of waiting to hear it, and if it doesn't come quickly, you just need to let the novel/story grow in your head. In fact, the voice of Too Many Magpies came to me very quickly right from the start (along with the first sentence that just dropped into my head): that of the main character, a woman trapped in a crisis and fearful for her children. Once the voice comes, I find, you're away, and it feels more like listening than thinking or working anything out. So all in all I found the voice of this particular novel very easy to achieve and as a result I wrote it very quickly. As I say, though, it's not always like that!

• Although the woman is having an affair, I still found I had good sympathy with her. Again this is a real strength of the character’s complexity – how much thought do you give to the development of a character: their flaws, their foibles, their strengths?

Again, once I heard this woman's voice, I had her whole person, so I didn't put a lot of conscious thought into developing a profile of her. I know some writers draw up character profiles with backstories etc but I think I'd find that process distracting and defocussing from the bit of a character's story I'm writing and indeed distancing from characters themselves. As with acting (which I also do sometimes) I need to inhabit the story and the characters rather than stand back from them in the way that I think (though I may be wrong) 'profiling' or 'developing' them would require. You know the actor's saying that if you get the right shoes on you know exactly how your character will behave? Well, that's how I feel about voice: once I've got the right voice I feel I know as much as I need to about the character(s) for the story I'm telling, and with a first-person voice like this one I'm right inside the character's head. I know that in reality it's the converse of this last that's true: the characters are actually inside my head, they are constructs of my imagination, and merely aspects of the story I've made up! But for me it's more a question of daydreaming them than thinking them out. And once you're in that state of 'being inside a character's head' (and as long as there's no overall authorial irony, which there isn't in this novel) you're no longer judging him or her, and so the reader, one hopes, is less likely to judge him/her and more likely to identify. I suppose I must say that I did identify with this particular character in some of the more objective, non-writerly ways - which must have helped! - as naturally I drew on some of my own experience of having children, and, more specifically, the thing that happens to her elder child also happened to mine.

• I found a magical realism element to the novel: sometimes I felt that the setting was real, sometimes I felt that there was a slippage between a created reality and a second created universe (that may be because I was ill whilst reading, admittedly). This added a real sense of urgency to the novel's progress; I wondered how this atmosphere came about?

I'd say this comes from the narrator's psychology and situation. Her problem is precisely how to view the world and how to work out which is the reality, the empirical world of facts her husband works in, or a world of charms and spells and luck and intuition represented by her lover. And she is indeed slipping from one to the other world as she turns emotionally from one to the other of the two men. And there's another level she slips towards, away from them both: the uncertainty which neither world view properly acknowledges.

Thank you Elizabeth for such an interesting insight into this intriguing novel. For those who want to follow this interview up, you can read about Too Many Magpies on the Salt website; you can watch Elizabeth talking about her novel; and you can hear Elizabeth's podcasts too.

Next week, the Flying With Magpies tour lands at Vanessa Gebbie's Blog, and the last date of the tour is at Eco Libris. All thanks to Elizabeth and the Salt publishing crew.

A Poem, A Plaque

A few weeks ago, Dundalk Town Council's Arts Office invited me to come over and launch the poem they commissioned me to write, celebrating 15 years of the Arts Office existing in Dundalk, at their annual music bursary awards. They had the poem cast in bronze, which is wonderful although a tad daunting, because it's permanent - so I just hope I got it right.

The poem grew from a recording I was invited to be part of back in August 2009. Dundalk Arts Office was leaving its then premises and moving back into the Town Hall, in the Basement Gallery. Many prominent figures in Dundalk's arts life were asked to come and talk to Harry Lee, of Dundalk FM about how the arts had developed over the past fifteen years.

There were musicians, artists, writers and people involved in drama who spoke of the importance of the arts office and how it enabled people to become more involved in the artistic development of different areas in Dundalk. I enjoyed being a part of that programme, as well as listening to all the figures talking about their experiences. Whether politicians or people on the ground, each person's perspective was interesting and I tried to encapsulate that into the poem.

I know it has especial resonance for those in Dundalk, but perhaps it may not make sense to those outside the town - but that's okay. That's the thing about a commission - you can't please (fool) all the people, all of the time.

Feel free to click on the picture - you should be able to read the poem :)

Being Silent is Good for you

Photo credit: The Sunday Tribune - the name of the photographer isn't given, alas.

On Saturday I took part in 'Chris Doris: 10 Poets Observe in Silence,' in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. There was a piece about it in the Sunday Tribune yesterday and a photo of us all in the round. This is the most challenging, and yet most rewarding, piece of art I have contributed to in a long time.

What we were asked to do was simply to remain in the present, be silent and observe across the day, for just under six hours. We took breaks every hour and had a lunch break. And so the hours passed, with each of us trying to remain in the now, not wander off in our own thoughts, but let the day pass. And it did pass, serenely, quietly - the Hugh Lane has the sort of acoustics you get in a church or cathedral, which I thought lent a sort of 'holy' quality to the day.

You can call me barmy, if you wish, but I got a lot from it. Maybe you had to be there :)

Drivin' in a straight line...

Picture thanks to Ireland Genealogy Projects and Roots Web Ancestry

... in a poem is not as easy as it looks on TFE's 'oul bus. I think it might be one of them 'oul-fashioned wans dat dey used ta droive in da 70s & 80s (okay, meybe da 60s) in Dublin - see above.

I gave you all this line: 'I got down on my knees and smelled the brand new linoleum,' from a story by Edna O'Brien (another class act) in her short story collection The Pagan Place.

What you did with it was another matter entirely. Well fair play to you all, you got into it. I'm very impressed with the response - you all engaged with the line and took it your own varied and many ways - and the round up begins here:

Niamh has her Ear To The Ground

Rachel Fox is Flat Down

Emerging Writer is on the bus too

NanU's The Ineffable Scent of Linoleum

JoAnne's in The Kitchen

Don't Feed the Pixies has a quirky take in Out of Gas

TFE's has a Pilgrims Progress sort of moment amongst others

Peter Goulding's pulled out all the rhyming stops for ium

Bill gets technical Close to the Ground

DanaBug dishes the dirt on Willow ware and linoleum

Jeanne Iris is a Mom Interrupted

Poetikat uses her olfactory muscles

Enchanted Oak has a strongly coloured lino: The Red Floor

Pure Fiction breaks Virgin Territory

Padhraig lays it on us in Trackstopper

Colin looks at the roots of it all in Flax

and Watercats with a right kitchen sink drama,

Jessica Maybury talks straight about what you find on the lino

and Linoleum's Fresh Dreams from Chiccoreal

Swiss is better late than never with the process and scents of a Lino cut


I hope that's everyone now! As for the driver well...

The Mechanics of Movement

I got down on my knees and smelled the new linoleum,
adopted the cat stance, then threaded the needle
hand under each arm, slowly in turn, shoulder to floor.
Back to the cat stance, spine arched up and back to rest
and folded my legs with my bum in the bow crook
of my calves. All the while breathin, deeper and deeper.

Drivin' The Poetry Bus

Next Monday, the 17th of May, I get to grip the wheel of TFE's poetry bus for the day. So I thought I'd better leave what I'm thinking of, out for ye to think of.

"I got down on my knees and smelled the new linoleum..."

Start with that line and see where you go with a poem - this line should give you somewhere to go using longer lines, and that's what I'm interested in seeing you develop, nice long lines: think Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Sinead Morrissey... the Bible

Simples. (I can't make that sucky/squeaky sound those meerkats make...)

You know the drill - leave a comment below if you're contributing and I'll come and look and post your link in my post next Monday - ding, ding, ding!