Billy Collins & Seamus Heaney

Can you believe this: both poets on the same bill, in the same place only 45 min from my front door. Last night I went to see them; one a former US Poet Laureate, the other a Nobel Literature Prize winner, and both at the Marketplace Theatre in Armagh city. They're appearing there as part of the John Hewitt Summer School, which is now in its twenty-first year.

This year's theme is 'Let There be no Wall,' and this theme was amply demonstrated in bringing together two poets, from such variant backgrounds and placing them on a stage in a beautiful new theatre, on a hot muggy night in Northern Ireland.

Billy Collins was given a rousing introduction first and read from all through his work. His poems sparkle with wit and warmth, always getting a wry laugh from the audience. I couldn't believe that I was sitting there in such a comfortable seat, laughing and following the poems, in just the way that poet Stephen Dunne describes: "We seem to always know where we are in a Billy Collins poem, but not necessarily where he is going. I love to arrive with him at his arrivals. He doesn't hide things from us, as I think lesser poets do. He allows us to overhear, clearly, what he himself has discovered."

My favourite poem read by him last night is hard to pick, for there are oh so many to choose from. I loved his pairing of 'Dharma', about his dog Janine who can head out the front door without any possessions, and 'The Revenant,' written to counter anyone who thought he was being overly sentimental; using a dog's ghost to reprimand us human 'owners.'

Collins spoke about 'poems that don't have much purpose... that have escaped the burden of subject matter,' just before reading 'Hippos on Holiday.' And his explanation of how 'The Lanyard' came to be, with its juxtaposition of what the child makes, in some weird recompense for its mother's care and devotion was darkly comical. Especially the last phrase: 'wove out of boredom.' It made me think of all the things that have been made for me by my brood at summer camps and school art sessions.

Collins is also noted for his short, sharp shockers and to show this he read 'Divorce:' how couples start off as spoons in bed, and later when things go sour, turn into tines of forks, with 'the knives hired.' Ooh. He finished with his title poem from 'Questions about Angels,' about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Collins is able to mix up all the valuable elements of poetry and keep it very accessible. Be careful, you may be wooed as I was, if you ever hear him read live.

Seamus Heaney's introduction was just as rousing, and in Heaney's customary humble manner, he began by reading one of John Hewitt's poems, 'The King's Horses' as a tribute to the poet for whom the summer school is named. He continued with 'Making Strange,' the poem that juxtaposed a visiting poet, Louis Simpson with his father in Heaney's own country around Mossbawn and Anahorish and used language as the means of marrying two strands of existence.

Refering to Robert Frost's poem, 'Mending Walls,' Heaney tracked the theme of the Hewitt summer school, and read 'The Other Side,' which segued nicely into 'A Sofa in the 40s,' a poem about the Heaney children using the family sofa as a train. There is slight darkness to this image as the poem nods towards Europe's ignorance of the atrocities at Auschwitz.

My favourite part of Heaney's reading came when he read two of the Glanmore Sonnets, a sequence dedicated to his mother's memory, from 1984. He told us that he has read them so many times that he knows them by heart, which he amply demonstrated with 'Peeling Potatoes,' a poem with particular resonance for me, in my own poem, 'Roosters.' He recited the first sonnet, whilst looking for 'Folding Sheets.'

Heaney went neatly to his own history in 'Tates Avenue,' with its collection of rugs and blankets, and then read a tanka, 'Midnight Anvil,' in which a blacksmith, Barney Devlin, rings in the new millenium with twelve strikes of the anvil, heard by the blacksmith's nephew in Edmonton, Alberta on a cellphone!

And of course the ending of his session. Here he read Hewitt's 'Gloss on the Difficulties of Translation,' which led into Heaney's own sequence of blackbird poems based on the old Irish, 'Scribe in the Woods' and finished off with 'The Blackbird of Glanmore.'

Both poets were called on to encore for us: Collins did so with 'Building with it's Face Blown Off,' a risky poem, given the setting, but one which we enjoyed; and Heaney read 'St. Kevin and the Blackbird.' So spellbound were we that I heard a lot of people comment on how swift the evening moved past us all. It really was a magical evening, one I shall treasure for years, and I am privileged to say that I have sat in the same room as Seamus Heaney and Billy Collins and heard them read their poetry.

Before July leaves us

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Playing with Words

This is the taste that my next collection should leave in your mouth. I've been putting my dissertation together, and took the lot to Wordle for a bit of a play. 'Back' is the most prominent word. Interesting.

Feel free to 'embiggen' the picture, as Maht would say :)

I went to Rome

...and brought back a poem.

Only thing is, the poem didn't come for about four months.

I was sitting on the beach about two weeks ago (on one of the few sunny days we've had), cloud-watching and got On Not Seeing Inside the Sistine Chapel from the combination of the clouds and remembering our visit to Roma in late February, and how we hadn't come at the right time of day on the Saturday to gain access to see the famous chapel.

You can hear me read the poem at the Qarrtsiluni site, apparently their first Irish accent (cringe). It's my second poem there - anyone interested in the other one, The Angel's Missing Wings, can check this link.

A Resounding Success

The Dundalk Summer School finished today. After two days of hectic workshops, the participants and contributors all thought that the workshops were very stimulating.

All participants filled in an anonymous questionnaire afterwards, and I was almost moved to tears by the positivity shown by them. They all loved the variety: the radio writing workshop, the drama workshop, the writing for children workshop - heck they even loved the poetry workshop!

It's agreed that it should become an annual fixture (so fingers crossed on that one), and the writers involved: Catherine Ann Cullen, Enda Coyle-Greene, Jaki McCarrick and me, all got huge pleasure out of being able to offer this variety to them - all credit to us.

One of the things that came up was that the participants would have liked longer workshops, and someone to come talk to them about prose - so that's an addition I would gladly like to make in the future!

Dundalk Summer Writing School

Tomorrow marks the first day ever of the Dundalk Summer Writing School. I mooted the idea with the Dundalk Arts Office back in late March, and they thought it would be a good idea, building on the support that the Creative Writing classes have built up since September last.

Featured writers include:

Catherine Ann Cullen’s award-winning children’s books, The Magical, Mystical, Marvellous Coat, and Thirsty Baby were published in the US by Little, Brown. Her debut poetry collection, A Bone in my Throat was published last year. Her workshop, ‘Writing for Children,’ will cover the elements of successful children’s fiction and young adult fiction.

Jaki McCarrick is a published writer whose plays include, The Mushroom Pickers, The Moth-Hour and The Stag of Doohamlet. Jaki’s ‘Drama Workshop’ will guide participants through setting, dialogue and narrative arc, and will encourage them to think dramatically about how a story can be developed as a piece for theatre.

Enda-Coyle Greene’s first collection, Snow Negatives, was the winner of the prestigious Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Prize for an unpublished manuscript in 2006. Enda’s prose and poetry can often be heard on RTE Radio 1’s, Sunday Miscellany, and Lyric FM’s, Quiet Quarter. Her workshop, ‘Writing for Radio,’ will consider subjects, guidelines and lengths of pieces for radio.

Barbara Smith’s debut poetry collection, Kairos, was published in 2007. She won an award at Feile Filíochta / Poetry Now 2008, and has completed an MA in Creative Writing at Queen’s University Belfast. Barbara’s ‘Lyrical Workshop’ will cover the lyric poem, from Kavanagh to Heaney inspiring participants to create their lyric vision of Dundalk.

There will also be two lunchtime readings on both days in Dundalk Library, Enda and Jaki on Wednesday, and Catherine Ann and I will read on the Thursday. The readings are free, the workshops are very reasonable at €60 all in. Next year, we'd love to add a third day of workshops, looking at prose.

Days of Rain, Peace & Reviews

The weather so far this summer has been even more crap than last year. So, how come I'm still standing with a smile on my face? Because I've been reduced to three kids this week, not the usual six. The elder ones are away on holidays with their respective dads and it's given me a real breather, not to mention reduced the food bills by a huge factor. As good as a holiday in fact.

In turn, this has allowed me to read and write up a couple of book reviews. I've taken on with writing for Verbal Arts Magazine in NI, a monthly mag that gets distributed free with the Belfast Telegraph, the Newsletter and the Derry Journal. The books they've sent me have been really entertaining, in differing ways,unexpected choices, but I can't say more until the reviews come out. One has led to an interview!

I've leaned into reviewing as it was the only module that I got a first in, up at QUB and is one of the few things I can do from home. I really enjoy putting into words exactly why I've enjoyed reading a book, as it encourages close reading of the text and forces me to really consider all angles: why the language is the way it is; why, if it's a poet, are they using that kind of form; why did the author choose this subject. Engaging stuff. I get far more inside a book when I do that, because it's an active form of reading, as opposed to a passive one, where you read, but don't engage as deeply. I'm not denigrating that sort of a read - it's actually one of my favorite things to retire to bed with something that I can skate through before sleep. But it's always enjoyable to come across really good writing.

Time for a Poem: Painting History

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reCOLLECTing 5

This is Sarah Gale, whose piece was titled, 'Thin Skin.' Her response was to the Histology She took photographs of body parts and got them printed onto canvas.

Sarah then made slits in the canvas and inserted images of cells underneath, mimicking 'the way a doctor might examine a gash on the body' (Sarah, 2008).


The next picture shows our tutor Sylvia commenting on Sarah's piece. On either side of Sarah's art, there are anatomical teaching objects gathered to juxtapose with and complement the art. Sorry about my big head being in the way again!

reCOLLECTING 4

Behind my great big head you can see two pictures on the wall. These were Paul Maddern's responses to the Queen's Special Collections, specifically the sound archive that Paul is creating for QUB, of poets reading their own work.

The piece is titled 'Squaring the Octet,' and brings together rhyme schemes and oscillograms into one space. Paul used software to record the sound of letters, created an oscillogram, or picture of that sound, and then digitally manipulated the images into one composite image: versions rendered in primary colours, on the right, as well as pastels, on the left. Who says you can't make art from sound?

reCOLLECTing 3

Today it's a wee video - this is still being worked on!

reCOLLECTing 2

Here is Emily DeDakis offering her words on her words. Let me explain; Emily's piece responded to the visual appeal of text, literally, as she decided to use her own prescription, minus thirteen, minus eight as the point to which she turned text into a visual comment.

On spare used glasses, Emily placed text that came from varying sources: such as engineer Charles MacDougall, composer Hamilton Harty, and poet Helen Waddell; all from various archives and sources from around QUB.

Emily also placed text on the shade of the accompanying lamp - a lovely nod to the bedside reading habits that most of us have.

Again - photo courtesy of David Timlin.

reCOLLECTing - the Picture-Text exhibition

Here are a few snaps taken by David Timlin of the exhibition of pieces that we worked on this semester. It was a very exciting project, led by Sylvia Grace Borda, Sinead Morrissey and guest artist, J. Keith Duffy.

We had the opening on Thursday night and according to sources, the gallery reckon that there were between 350 and 450 people visiting the exhibition. Wow. That means a lot of drinks consumed; a lot of discussion with the artists in question; a lot of attention on an idea that was simple in premise but had so many different and interesting interpretations.

Yesterday we had a gallery/artist led talk, where artists were able to guide the public through the exhibits, explaining the rationale for their work and methodology.



This is Twy Miller, discussing her work. She did big prints that combined two images (old library and new library in process of construction) and a smaller set of pictures using a stereoscopic camera that could be used to take stereo pictures which she then mounted onto card that can be viewed with a special viewer (see below).

I'll do pictures in a separate post over the next few days :)

You hate that book - but why?

There's a veritable feast of critic's names featuring in this article in yesterday's Sunday Times. They were asked what their most hated book was and why. The answers are interesting in that they highlight the usual considerations: good or bad writing, style and length, and genuine entertainment; as well as more personal ones.

For example, Bryan Appleyard isn't that keen on Henry James' 'The Awkward Age,' saying that although the behemoth of critics, F.R. Leavis might have loved it, it didn't mean that he had to and besides, 'Leavis was mad.' Good on ya, Brian, I often thought that meself.

I remember reading 'The Portrait of a Lady,' or rather wading through all the accumulated clauses, sub-clauses and gluts of psychological description and wondering if I was ever going to get to the end of it. Mind you, there was a good reason for me having to wade through it: it was part of my 19thc literature course.

Funny thing was, by the end of the course and the book, I had learned to love it - the slowness, the deliberation and the really rounded characters (plus I sped-read past the boring bits). The 19thc is a foreign land to us here in the 21stc - they did things differently then and probably didn't have a remote control to flip between things when they got bored. They even did bored differently. They called it 'ennui.'

So, I'm sure there must be books that you detest - why don't you tell me what they are, and why!

A Good Book or Stating the Bleeding Obvious?

I was visiting my friend in Belfast yesterday and she's got a pretty battered copy of Art & Fear. It's one of those books that you pick up and read, quickly immersing yourself, where you find yourself nodding your head vehemently, agreeing with most of the points that it makes.

If you're at the point, either as an artist or writer, where you're wondering what the point of it all is: why you've taken all the right steps to learn your craft; why you've spent years practicing that craft; why some stuff is accepted by others and why some stuff is detested, then this could prove a book beneficial to you as a companion to read on those nights when you feel that your work is worthless, stupid and what is the point anyway.

Or, you could equally read this book on one of those rare days when you've had a good idea, and it has worked its way onto the page/clay/canvas/photographic paper and it's nearly, nearly there, but you feel that something is blocking its completion.

It is a book about ideas, and of ideas. Yet it is explained in such a down to earth manner that you forget that it is a book of abstract concepts, which confirms and argues past all those long-held suspicions about art, the making of art, critical evaluation and reputations, and art academia. Put a copy on your wish-list or treat yourself and get past the fears that hold you back in your art.

Wife in the North

Judith's 'Wife in the North' gets its own promo!

Even more Mairead

Sheesh. I'd just got going last week and then life and the furious writing of some poems got in the way. I'm now waiting for results from the MA... and I'd better get on with this hadn't I?

'Life is Too Easy,' is a poem that grabbed me, because of its theme of the repetition of life. It begins: 'Saturday comes round & you clean your house. What could be easier.' Right now, I'd disagree with the easiness of cleaning anything, but that's just me. Grrr.

Anyhow, back to Mairead: 'Everything you put out of place during the week you put back in place.' Yes, but if you have six kids, you not only have to put everything that you moved back, you have to find everything that has not only been moved but probably used to fuel some weird game that they were playing (in their head!). I digress!

Later, the repetitive tasks even get on Byrne's nerves; 'You haul stuff in & you haul stuff out. You go to work. You come home.' But this is where the turn comes,moving outwards from the situation: 'There is no earthquake in your city & your parents or your children don't disappear. You are not 14 & about to be married off to a cousin who will beat you.' How safe our lives are in comparison to others. We shouldn't forget that sometimes :/

I do like the resolution for 'Rose-Colored Spectacles.' It begins with the premise of checking in one's 'rose-colored spectacles to test the rougher selvedges of life.' Sometimes we have to deal with these aspects and we forget about the armour that we use to fend it off. In this case that leaving off of armour can leave us open: 'Reality can be the closest imaginable thing to delirium tremens.' Especially when that reality is a 'mean-faced white pimp' who pulls 'his car across the sidewalk in front' of people. Indeed, 'another name for rose-colored spectacles is car.' How much we forget sometimes how modernity and our beloved consumer goods do shelter us from what we don't want to deal with. Except Mairead says it much better than that!

More Mairead: Chiasmus and Circus

I know what you're thinking - this is a slow read. But I'm as usual juggling all the responsibilities that family, young and old, entail!

"Chiasmus," from Talk Poetry, is a unique take on the aftermath of a split. The word itself is very interesting. Wikipedia tells us that it is 'a figure of speech in which two clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a bigger point.'

In this poem's case, the point is partly how intertwined the lives of a couple can become, as 'When you marry & divorce your dreams get mixed up.' Seems a simple premise, taking the mick out of the female dream of cosying up the home, 'You wanted an overstuffed leather living room set,' and then conflating this with the male dream of going out and conquering the world: 'and next thing you know you're heading an expedition to the South Pole and making a pretty good fist of it.'

But the other point of the poem is that things go on after a break-up: life after a break-up pretty much like an expedition anyway? So, I like this poem for the feeling it leaves behind: its hopeful without being maudlin, upbeat rather than whinging; we try, we fail, we fail better, as Beckett once sort of said. Nothing is perfect.

"Circus," looks into the dualism or binary qualities of the body, again with that quirky humour that Byrne just can't suppress. It begins: 'There is so much emphasis on the individual we forget how much a person is actually a double.' We are doubled, though aren't we: we are a product of a process that took one set of genes from a female, and another from a male and combined them in the gene washing machine to make another person. Byrne goes on to show how complex our bodies are: '2 shoulders, 2 arms, 2 lungs, 2 kidneys, 2 testicles, 2 ovaries, 2 bums, each one divided in two... We are actually 2 people in one.'

The poem then extrapolates showing how our single/dual units seek a further pairing in couples: 'And what do we do? We pair up. We get married, shackled, whatever... We are already getting quite enough action being 2 people in one...' Oh the complexity of human beans!

Byrne then throws in a concrete example of procreation: 'Ben Franklin... the 15th child out of a total of 17 born to his mother... Mrs Franklin... a woman or, practically two women, who had 17 children proceed through her, i.e., 34 or 38, (keep up!) in addition to providing accommodation for the regular visits of Mr Franklin.' It's that slipping in there of Ben's father, Mr Franklin, and his 'visits' that make this poem so wryly humorous.

The poem ends by going to the cellular level: 'Is it any wonder we thought of mitosis and meiosis and all that. It's written all over us...' Indeed it is - our genetic code is a mighty wonder sometimes and putting it in such a straightforward (!) way makes it seem much more alive than a dusty textbook.

Mairead Byrne and Can You Die of Eating Pancakes

Great title, isn't it? Who'd have thought that the making of one's favourite pancake could turn into such an effusive poem. This one is really representative of Byrne's voice: it's got such verve and life infused into it; such a sense of fun that you can't help but go along with the premise.

The poem moves from musing to pancake and back again, but the switchback approach works here, and this poem really fills out its prose block. A wee taster:

I was frying this pancake with butter so you can imagine the effect on the apple & how delicious it all smelled. I had to go out of the house (it was cold) & come back in just to truly appreciate the aroma. Ever notice that the only time you really get to smell your house's smell is when you come in from outside?

Now doesn't that make you want to go make your own pancake - with a smile on your face as well. This is one of the points of Talk Poetry: some of it is just about grabbing the fun from our lives and nailing it on the page. Yum.

NaPoReMo and Talk Poetry

You can blame Rob MacKenzie for this one. Back in May he suggested buying and reading a book of contemporary poetry closely across the month and then posting thoughts and comments blogwise to get across a sense of the book.

There may be more than one book here, but I'll make a start on Talk Poetry by Mairead Byrne, available through Amazon and many other stockists. I was going to work on this for my MA, but found myself questioning my own poetics so much that I had to set it aside!?!

Byrne is an exiled Irish poet living in Providence, Rhode Island, US, since 1994, where she presently teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her poetry has evolved over that period of time and looks towards the poetry of the US. I'm thinking Alan Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, Walt Whitman (but that only scratches at the surface) as I read the book, which comprises prose poems that sizzle and dazzle off the pages at you. Talk Poetry is alphabetically organised, which takes chronology out of the frame. According to Byrne, italso makes it easier to find poems in readings: saving you pfaffing about with page markers.

The opening poem, "America" bounces along with the energy of a golden labrador. The voice sounds like someone talking - an American and conflating things that are in the US and things that aren't: pointing to a sense of ignorance, enthusiasm as well as that sense of imperial ownership (please excuse blogger's messing up the prose blocks):

We got all this space & democracy & everything & just the greatest music. Like Chuck Berry & Buddy Holly & Elvis & Bob Dylan & Bob Marley & Van Morrison & The Beatles & Vivaldi & everything.

The reason why I think of Frank O'Hara particularly is the WE LOVE YOU WALTER, that comes after the conflated namechecking of various poets and writers, again from both inside and outside the US. O'Hara's Lunch Poems include "Poem" about Lana Turner's collapse, and ends with the humorous line, 'oh Lana Turner we love you get up".

Byrne's "America" goes on to play with the understanding of imperialism too:

You're not going to catch me saying civilization began with the Mayflower! None of that shit -- I mean how did those people BUILD those things. THE PYRAMIDS. I mean people still don't understand the physics of it. They had to had rollers or something. No, King Tut is as American as as anyone in my book.

By the end of the poem, we understand this speaker as someone eavesdropped on. We're still not sure about the inclusivity of the speaker's viewpoint. Talk Poetry is a good descriptor for the tone of this poem, giving a skewed view like this at the start of the collection.

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Poor eldest ant-hill-mob inmate begins his career in state examinations today with the Junior Cert. Now we see whether the weeks of study will stand to him.

Something out of the Ordinary

On Friday, as part of my celebration of getting over the MA, I went along to the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast to the launch of the joint exhibition of Willie Doherty and Gerard Byrne's pieces that represented NI and Ireland jointly at the Venice Biennale 2007.

Doherty's 'Ghost Story,' was an eerie video-sound fusion(voiced by Stephen Rea), very contemplative and thought-provoking. I loved it, despite the competing voices of people shmoozing outside the installation. The images used country and urban scenes and made you feel slightly dizzy.

Byrne's '‘*ZAN-*T185', also a video/sound piece, was filmed in New York and was harder to appreciate with the noises outside: a second viewing would be needed for me to appreciate it properly.

If you happened to be in Belfast you could do a lot worse - I enjoyed them very much!

Almost Done

Well the words are writ, the printer has prunt, and the binder has bound together all the work I'm submitting for the end of term, and indeed the end of this MA year.

It felt at one stage that I was never going to be finished writing, editing, re-writing, editing, re-re-writing ... and those were just the poems, never mind the other assignments.

At the end of this year, I've produced 70 + poems, and done a lot of thinking about what direction I'm going to go, metaphorically, across the summer.

That's because I've still another 30 poems to find for the final dissertation. I have ideas, but I think I'm going to enforce a 'dry spell' on myself for at least the start of June. I couldn't write another thing if you offered me the most divine inspiration.

And the other thing I need to start thinking about is whether this is the end of the study road. PhD or get a real job... oh life!

Gowning Up

Here's what I was up to yesterday. Now that I look at it, I probably should have got himself to take a picture from the back... the top one is me plus 5/6 of the ant-hill mob.

I had the mother and father of a headache when I got back. But the canapes were nice...

The Gardner's Spring Assault

gone, gone, gone!

I'll meet myself coming back...

Well, Edinburgh was only fantastic, even if it was the quickest in and out of a city I've done; excepting the trips to London, I guess.

In any case, I arrived on Sunday lunchtime, and did a quick swizz around the park in Prince's Gardens, which are just at the foot (or should I say root) of Edinburgh Castle. I thought while looking up at it, well, you'd not invade that place easy! Rob and his wean made the perfect tourist guides - and I can say categorically that having a scooter is probably the coolest way to get around downtown Edinburgh!

After getting my bearings and a bite to eat, it was off to the Great Grog to get stuck in. Firstly it's a lovely space, very relaxed with comfy chairs to lounge in, always conducive to reading and hearing readers. I kicked off and then Claire Askew read from her work: saving her best poem till last, and then Sally read sections from her long poem just published in a fine edition: The Bees. It's a great idea and the book has a lovely look to it, on creamy paper with gorgeous black and white prints inside. My ones love it already!

Alan Gillis read then, sumptuous sounds go into his work and you can see why Hawks and Doves got shortlisted for the Eliot prize this year. A pleasure to hear him, and indeed everyone, give voice to their work.

I was so tired yesterday I came straight home, made dinner and retired to bed - so, so tired - but it was worth it. And I seem to have come home with way more books than I left with... oh boy!

Lethargic Diseases

I am gripped by a massive dose of prevaricaritis. It's where you know you have loads of stuff to do, but can't quite get started.

I've even gone as far as making a list of the assignments that I need to have done, the order in which they should be done, and any bits of them that are begun (for encouragement).

But I can't seem to get started. I've decided to go climb a mountain tomorrow instead. A literal one, not metaphorical...

Oh boy. Roll on June 1st...

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.

Oh what a glorious feeling...!

...Everything's going my way...

Well, a bit. Ish. For a while. Yes, I am in a terrific mood, but it's just sun-induced. Imagine. A whole sunny day with mine brood. In the purple transportation machine. On the side of a small bohereen. Beside the sea which was full tide-in. Which sported a pebbly beach with large, jagged rocks, nice bit of yellow lichen too. But the sea made lovely soothing shushing noises... when I sent the children to run off down the road a bit. Okay, a good bit.

An award from Belle. Well, two actually. Let's see if I can insert one of them here somewhere...

Nice, isn't it?

Now, how about Apprentice, Inner Minx, Debi, Shameless and hey, how about you post it on your blog! It's the weather - call me sun-mad!

The Joys of...

..writing! O, but spring has sprung here, even if it is cold and I am enjoying my return to college: full as this year's semester is going to be.

On Wednesdays, I attend a class on Life Writing, facilitated by the bould Ian Sansom. I have come across his writing in The Dublin Review (great round-up of the great and good in Irish (and beyond) writing) and The Yellow Nib (journal of the Queen's Seamus Heaney Centre). I believe he also writes for the Guardian (of a Saturday) and he organised a poetry appreciation class last semester, which alas I was unable to attend. You might get a flavour for his writing here, on his well-organised, informative and amusing website.

Yes, I'm gushing, aren't I? It's hard not to gush when you've attended one of Ian's classes: the sheer energy of his delivery; his enthusiasm for books and book recommendations; the simplicity with which he sets sparks blazing in you and the good sound advice he gives on the subject of writing alone, have been worth the fees for the MA alone (not to mention Sinead Morrissey, Medbh McGuckian, Daragh Carville - but enough name-dropping already!).

So, the subject is Life Writing, and the various forms thereof: biographical; essays - whatever you want to explore - it's all there. And the reading list alone is throwing up some wonderful books that I'd never come across: Jack Barzun's Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers is a lucid example. This book will serve either the beginner writer, or the writer who's ready for a brush-up. It's full of great examples of how not to write and contains exercises for helping you re-appraise how you use your words.

Last week's opening salvo was a twenty point 'Things Writers ought to Know:' otherwise billed as an undergraduate's course in Creative Writing Techniques. Now, I know that some might say that that is terribly reductive - but there is a sense in having it all there; simple and direct, I guess. That's just fifteen minutes from the class!

Anyway. I must go and do my homework while I still have some finger-stumps left to work with: An Essay of 1000 words on a subject from a list I made earlier of 'Things That I Would Like to Write About Before I Die.' When you look at it like that you really don't want to mess about in what's left of your writing career, do you?

Sweeney Todd

Ah yes, the oul dreamboat himself. We went to see Sweeney Todd on Saturday night. Well, I went to see it: hub yawned his way through it. I had got him there on the pretext of Helen Bonham Carter's jugulars, (or jongleurs?) but it didn't stop him from finding it all very tiresome: 'But darling, you know I don't like musicals!'

Well, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang it was not. I must confess that it's the first musical I've ever seen that combined song and gore in such a stomach turning way. I enjoyed it, in a peeping-through-me-fingers sort of way. I probably enjoyed it because Johnny Depp was in it. But Alan Rickman played his sneering judge quite well and Timothy Spall was quite the slinking stinker too. I have to admit that I laughed when Sacha Baron Cohen got his throat cut - but he did his small part quite well as the opposition barber with a side line in hair tonics.

One thing: if the evil judge Turpin was so evil, then how come his evil fades into insignificance once Sweeney Todd gets going? There's nowhere for your sympathies to lie except to expect Todd getting his comeuppance at the end of the film (and I'd best not spoil it here).

I think it's just degrees of evil - everyone in this damn story is so evil, bar the ward Joanna (originally Todd's daughter in his former life) and the young sailor who chases after her - but they're so damn 'goody' that they come across as sickly sweet - really - which makes you wish that something would happen along and corrupt them.

Yes, I get the whole desire-for-revenge-corrupts thing. But everyone has degrees of corruption in this telling - I tell you, I felt quite greasy leaving the cinema last Saturday and it wasn't that I needed a shower.

Spring has sprung

I don't care if it is cold in your part of the world. In the Smith/O'Reilly household there is a certain whiff in the air that has me reaching for the cleaning fluids and eyeing up me man a certain way (in fairness, he has the decency to look scared).

I've been getting ready, I tell myself, for La Fheile Bríd (fadas and Irish spelling ever my failing). This day is the 1st of February and already the evenings are lengthening out a little and my kids are behaving like baa lambs: extra bleating and sproinging around the place; they played outside on Saturday for the first time this year, making a nice muddly circle in the back garden where their cycle tracks went round and around.

I love spring. I love its renewal and promise. I love the green bulb buds spurting up from the ground and the small tight knit furls of browny-green on wet branches and bushes that look otherwise dead. I love the slightly deeper green that grass gets this time of year and the red glow of Salix Alba along the motorway cuttings with the sun behind it makin it glow.

And I love the idea of another year kicking off again. Yes, I love spring!

The Newest Installment...

...of the Shameless Lions Collective Short Story is up. Scrolling is the name of the game, as you have to go right down to see Apprentice's addition (18) in which she skilfully paints a breathing space for the kids, and for the reader.

You know, I can see this story has legs - how will it finish up? And when :)

Fair play to Shameless!

Shmoking!

Did I mention that Debi and Minx arranged a birthday surprise for me, back in December that included having to return to London in February?

I knew I liked the sound of it as soon as I saw the picture of the website - Pipe and Slippers. Now, doesn't that sound comfy? The whole idea is a very relaxed Sunday afternoon in Peckham at The Ivy House, on the 24th of February.

There is a story (I don't know how true!) that the Rolling Stones played there once, a long, long time ago.

So I get 10 minutes to wow the audience with poems from Kairos.

But the best news is that the Wordcarver is making a very special appearance on the same bill - live, all the way from the USA: J. T. Ahearn!

I may have to buy a new outfit for this!

Wigtown Poetry Competition

There are only four days to go to the closing date for the Wigtown Poetry Competition. It's billed as Scotland's National Poetry competition and I remember hearing about it first from an OU colleague who lives on a small island off the coast of Scotland... have to go and look that one up, there's lots of small islands off Scotland's coast!

Anyway, you can enter online, so you can beat the postal rush. What better way to gear into spring?

Barbara Smith reading at the White House

Fair play to Dominic putting this ensemble of images together and the song that accompanies it is brought to you by Limerick musicians (see credits).

Now, isn't that a great start to Monday?

Back To School

Yay! Kids are back since Monday, so some relative calm has descended on the house, allowing for some productivity... I'm up as far as six sonnets now... but have had to take a break - otherwise I was going to end up speaking and thinking in iambics forever! Arrgh! I will post one of them as soon as I've got my pruning shears out.

In the meantime, I'm off to Limerick today to read. I was there about this time last year for the launch of their journal Revival - that marked the start of all this travelling around Ireland for the sake of poetry - and I can't help marvelling at how far I've gone in a year.

I was just thinking the other day how much I managed to pack into 2007; the CW course, the finishing of the degree, getting onto the MA course, and not least travelling up and down to Kerry, working on edits for the book and getting Kairos 'out there.' I don't think I ever stopped to appreciate just how far I went!

This year looks equally exciting: more CW classes (it seems they like how we work); off to London in February to read at a literary festival; off to Rome to be a tourist (and do some sneaky research too); a Belfast dual reading/launch of Kairos with Enda Coyle-Greene and her collection Snow Negatives, in March and then there's all the material that I'll have from the MA.

Then there's the possibility of a trip to Cornwall and my best friend is coming home soon from her very long travels... all this from these marvellous blog connections.

It seems that those years of waiting around and kicking my heels (pointy ones at that) were just me getting ready... to take on the world! The future is pink.

2008 looks marvellous already, guys :)

Shh! Writer at Work!

I wish I could find one of those amusing red triangle road signs to accompany this post and to park outside the bedroom door - it's bedlam here as I try to work on one of the many projects I'm supposed to hand up in about three weeks.

There were some kids hanging out of light fittings (voluntarily, I add) a few moments ago - at least that's what it sounded like. And I also heard some crashing a while back. Good job I have some cover-all music going in the background, or I might hear more things I don't want to hear!

See, I had this idea about objects, a big mountain and, well, snow and cold and wind - a bit like it was outside earlier, only way colder - anyhow, I thought I'd throw in the extra handicap of writing all of these things into sonnets.

Oh yes. If you're going to do something, may as well make it real hard. Real hard. So why not set yourself a goal - say, ten sonnets? Five down, and five to go... by Sunday!

Oh - and make them rhyme as well - why not the whole kit and kiboodle, while you're at it... I know - I should really write them with handcuffed wrists behind my back whilst whistling Dixie... hasn't someone done that before...?

In Between Times

I'm always a bit ambivalent about the festive season, especially when you get to the post-match analysis: kids reasonably pleased with their haul; dinner - passable, even if it was raw first time out of the oven; rellies - suitably entertained, fed and re-dispatched to other rellies.

If I had my way, the whole thing would be a lot shorter - by about a week. The new year thing - well, what's another year, as Johnny Logan once sang... and I for one will be quite relieved when the kids are back at school and I can get back to writing once more!

Happy New Year to everyone popping in - ooh - and it's almost two years since I got going on blogger - more later!

The Avalanches - Since I Left You

Never mind all that Christmas stuff - this leaves a warm fuzzy feeling in your tummy!

The First Noel - Irish Style

Last night we sat all six of them down: there's the paper; there's the pen - make your final lists! So far, no bodger. Today Insane Husband is set the task of collecting all the presents outlined, so that Santa's sack will be nice and heavy for coming down the chimney on Christmas Eve.

Guess what the must-have toy seems to be in Ireland this year? The DS; well it's actually the Wee (my name), but I'm not going there after the boys have already totalled two PS2s in the space of two years - I reckon you could possibly put the two of them together and get half way through a game -that's if it wasn't scratched to bits.

Anyway, today goes something like this - text sent from IH at 13:40: no ds left, aggh! Received at 17:10, when I'm just about to get the train home from college in Belfast. So, I think, okay, I'm in a major city, I'm sure I'll get one here. Text back: no worries will sort out here.

Not so. Three big brand shops later, I get the message loud and clear - no DSs happening in this city tonight. Back to train-station with moments to spare. Cue some frantic texting to friends and relations to enquire about DS status in other towns in the north-east of southern Ireland (I know, it's confusing, how do you think we feel).

Most alternative possibilities involve queues, all at ungodly hours. God I love my children. I know what you're thinking: why didn't you get off yer bum and do this earlier. The answer has something to do with a thing that begins with m, ends with y, and doesn't grow on trees, despite what our kids think.

Now, I'm of the opinion that there are ten more days to go before the fat-red-man lands on the roof-tiles; so I'm trying to take a more relaxed approach to this pressie lark and not panic. Yet.

In the meantime, barfarama still reigns with two getting better from Winter Vomiting Bug (we have such straightforward names for things here), but two more complaining of tummy pains and fevers - dontcha just lurve being a parent!

Bloomin 'eck

For the first and probably the last time in my Open University career, I've managed to get a distinction in the Creative Writing course I finished back in September.

I am shocked. But ecstatic.

I have been offered an Honours degree in Literature, which I will have the greatest pleasure in accepting on Monday. After I go and celebrate! Yay me :)))))

The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist (Good Quality)

I've been haunted by this for weeks as a soundtrack. Have a look.

Cork - O' Bheal

For those who aren't from Irish shores, I'll try to translate 'O' Bheal'. Beal (h-aspirated there... God bless me Irish teacher) means 'mouth'. The 'O' bit makes me think of the shape of the mouth sometimes and means 'from'. So loosely speaking, it's 'from the mouth' or 'spoken word.'

O' Bheal is in existence since April of this year and has already confirmed its place as 'The' place to read when and if in Cork. It takes place on a Monday evening and has an easy format that lends itself well to both supporters and guest poets.

Firstly there's the challenge: five random words are gathered from the audience and then a long fifteen minutes are given so that everyone can compose a poem based on the given five words. Anyone who wants to reads out their poem and whoever gets the loudest applause/cheer/foot-stomps gets a free pint - always a useful carrot when you're a poor-mouth poet ;)

This week the words were: barn, useless, peril, fidget and posit. Have a go yourself - but I warn you, the 'barn' always seems to situate the poem, in, well, a barn!

The challenge is then followed by the guest reader, which in this case was yours truly, and here I must say what a pleasure it was to be allowed to include reading one of the longer mythology-based poems from Kairos alongside the shorter, more modern ones - it all did seem to go down well in Cork - and I enjoyed myself much more than I thought I would - think I might be getting used to it at last!

(I wonder is this the time to mention that if you're looking for a Christmas present for a poetry lover, you could do a lot worse than a specially inscribed copy of Kairos ? ... Ah well - no harm in trying!)

Finally there is the Open Mic session, where everyone gets to 'run what they brung.' There was great variety in the work presented for our delectation and a few things that stuck with me on the way back up the road in the car were: the set involving some wistful fiddle playing combined with what I guess you might call 'Irish rap'; a poem about recycling glass which turned out to be a lot more; a poem about a ballerina's feet, butterflies and chaos theory... a poem about hands, another about ears... another about Christmas in the 1920s...

I could go on, but there simply wouldn't be room here - lets just leave it with the fact that it was a great night, only slightly marred by the fact that I had to hop into the car and drive home, so that Insane Husband could scoot off to honour business commitments. My eyes hurt today!

Just a quick thank-you (yes, more thanks ;) ) to Paul Casey, organiser and MC of O' Bheal, a well-versed poet in his own right, who I think we will be hearing a lot more of in time to come...

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I have been challenged to seven random facts by Belle and twelve things I love about Christmas by Scarlett. So, I'd better get cracking on them, then hadn't I?!?

Gallivanting again

This week saw me fulfil some more reading obligations: briefly, a lunchtime reading in Chapters book shop of Parnell Street, in Dublin on Monday and then the Poetry Ireland reading in the Unitarian Church on Tuesday night alongside Catherine Ann Cullen, Hugh O'Donnell and Anatoly Kudryatsky.

It was a great pleasure to be reading at this venue; having watched and listened to many other poets of good standing from the (not uncomfortable) pews, it was a truly great feeling to get my turn in the pulpit. We were also very lucky to have two very accomplished Japanese musicians- a harpist and a violinist (sadly I forgot to take note of their names on paper) as well as an unusual music-scape in the form of Nepalese singing bowls, played by Anatoly.

The occasion was tinged with a little sadness as Poetry Ireland is losing its manager of two years, Deryn O'Brien to the Kingdom of Kerry; alas for PI, yay for Kerry. But I believe that she was given a very rousing send-off by the Dublin contingent and I know that she will do very well in the Kingdom.

I have another reading to do in Cork on Monday 10th Dec, at 8.30pm as part of the O'Bheal series of readings/open mic nights that happen down there on Monday evenings. I am looking forward to this one very much, as I've not had the chance to be at one of them before.

In the meantime, the CW Saturday class is just finished for the Christmas break - we are hoping to continue on again in the New Year (once I get my module assignments over and done with) and I am finishing up in Queen's on Friday until the new semester starts. They give you these generous holidays and then fill them with lots of hard work to do; I've three megadocious assignments due just before the end of January and frankly the thoughts of them frighten me half to death.

Results are due from the Open University on Friday 14th December. That's when I'll finally know the grade for my CW course of much earlier in the year and (fingers crossed) I will be asked to accept my degree in English Literature... Booking for the award ceremony opens on the following Monday. Can you imagine me, in Robes, Scroll et al... accompanied by the rabble of my family! What better way to do it than to bring them all along and get my youngest to (loudly) upstage the distinguished guest on the day ;)

Alive! Just about...

Well, as I expected I had a really, really good time over in south London, with my blogmates, Debi and Minx, and Riverwillow too (a thanks here to Belle for the card with the really BIG pants on them - I think she's trying to tell me something).

Friday saw me having a really gorgeous meal with Riverwillow, chomping my way through a plate full of assorted crustaceans and shellfish, talking writing non-stop for... well a couple of hours at any rate.

One thing though - I've discovered that having an espresso last thing at night isn't the cleverest of things to do.

And another thing: urban foxes sound like banshees (and tend to go on and on and on for hours...).

And that people, round where Riverwillow lives, like to go horse riding at 5 in the morning up the street.

Adds a whole new meaning to joy-riding.

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Saturday, I met up with Debi and Minx, and we walked and bussed the legs-of-ourselves. Starting with an 'eco-fair' where we had lunch on the hoof, we then perambulated onto the bus and into the West end to meet up with members of Bookarazzi, where we ogled each other's books, talked a good deal about writing, book deals and publishers and got to know each other better. There were about twelve (maths never was my strong suit) of us there; a really good turn out considering it was early December and the shopping end of things has so many people out trolling about.

Later on, the Minx and Debi had arranged to go to see John Bently, a performance poet, in the Canterbury Arms in Brixton. A bit of a double whammy for me - Brixton was where I lived first when I moved to London... way, way back in the distant past - and I was intrigued to find that I knew the pub we were in as well, having been there manys a time... in the way, way back times... (okay I'm not that old, but humour me, why don't you).

Anyway, we watched him do his stuff, complete with a wooden leg, a washboard, a saw and later on aided and abetted by the highest pair of silver heels I've ever seen in my entire life! And all without the aid of a safety net. But with a very, very good bunch of musicians. Bently has been described as being 'quite an exhibitionist.'

To say that I found the whole set interesting, would be putting it mildly - I'm sure Minx or Debi have covered this (ahem) much better than I possibly could (just checked and Minx has).

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I returned yesterday to the cleanest house in Ireland, restocked with food, and washing done... I am slightly worried as this is not the normal post-going away state of my home. A big thank-you to everyone whose sofa-beds I slept on this weekend and the hospitality of the Debi household is now become legend.