2007
2007 was good. In January I completed the first draft of a two act play. In February/March I re-drafted the play and worked on editing along with Maura, the director/actress who commissioned it. I also added some good chapters to my novel.
April I spent writing an assignment for my MA in creative writing, attacking the prescribed topic creatively rather than writing a dry report. I was pleased with the completed piece even though I spent a whole month working on 3000 words.
In May I learned to surf at the Wet and Wild Women's Weekend in Enniscrone. I also walked daily on Breecy mountain and saw springtime spread across the landscape.
June - September were spent writing and polishing a large segment of novel for MA thesis, 20000 words.
In October I went gardening and planted 500 daffodil bulbs so that when spring comes, the world will be slightly more lovely than it was last year. October was also the month in which my play, written in late 2006 and early 2007, was presented in conjunction with the Donegal Blue Stacks Festival. A wonderful production with superb acting and I was there on opening night when the audience rose to give it a standing ovation.
In November I wrote with Nanowrimo, developing my novel and receiving good feedback from my nanowrimo buddies. Hi nanowrimo buddies - how are your rewrites going? I also learned to blog in order to share some writing with my journalist daughter. Plans were laid for my play to go on tour in 2008 and the Louvain Institute invited the production to Louvain for 2 nights in May 2008 because the historical context of the play relates to seventeenth century Louvain.
In fact November was also the month when many threads of the year's activities came together. I was awarded my MA with distinction. The Irish Sport Council decided that a photo taken of a chubby 60-something surfer at that Wet and Wild Women's Weekend in May was just the thing to inspire women and or/60-somethings to be involved in sport so they made me their Calendar Girl for May 2008.
Now it is December. The year draws to a close. For the first time since 1970 I neglected to make Christmas cakes and puddings. Which proves that I'm only about 97 per cent perfect. Was I just too busy, graduating, flaunting myself in a masters gown while feasting on strawberries and cream? Or is this a symptom of an identity crisis. What exactly am I? A sporting icon? A calendar girl? A playwright? Or novelist? Or a gowned academic?
Actually, all of them, I think. And here is the list for 2008:
2008
1 Complete the novel in Jan/Feb so that I can relax and enjoy the Daffodils in March before
2 April when I will writing a new play with Script frenzy. Then in3 May, I'll dead head the daffodils, dead head my novel also in readiness for submitting to my agent.
4 June - September I will enjoy a holiday at home in the creek. Watch the tide ebb and flow. I will also research and write, in a desultory manner, the biography I have promised to write about Ireland's first lady jazz trumpeter, Sandra Mitchell. Sandra led an interesting and intriguing life. The paper ephemera of her life and her account of it are all being put at my disposal.
5 I will attend all of Ransom Productions scriptwriting workshops and monthly sessions. Also my local writers group. It is stimulating to mix with other writers. The ivory tower is destructive of creativity. I must avoid it at all costs.
6 Continue the usual daily 2 mile walk across the beach and back. Even during gales and high seas like today's. Go get those boots on. Now.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Dublin
Dublin. Yes, it's really there. For those dwellers in the west who suspect that Dublin is a mythical place existing only in the imaginations of weathermen and TV advertisers, let it be known that we have made the journey to the fabled city. We have shopped in Henry Street and roamed the glittering aisles of the Blanchardstown Centre. We have seen Christmas lights shining down on Grafton Street and heard mystical voices singing Handel's Messiah (3 hours of it, while seated in the south transept amid kettle drums, trumpet and horns) in Saint Patrick's Cathedral.
As we wait, we raise our eyes to the high vaulted gothic ceiling we see decaying flags of empire hanging there. Why do British flags hang in the Cathedral, Pedro wants to know. We tell him the long history of British regiments in Dublin, a history that is preserved here in this cathedral. "But you Irish fought a revolution to drive out the British, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"So why are there British flags here? In Spain we would burn them."
We explain that the soldiers were Irishmen, Irishmen fighting British wars. These flags are their history.
Like Handel, Pedro surmises. "I read in wikipedia, Handel is a German born British composer. How can a German be British?"
Indeed.
It is a fact of life, in these islands, that if an Irish person, or indeed a German or an American who happens to be loosely connected with Britain, succeeds at anything praiseworthy, the British will promptly claim that person as British. Karl Marx, who studied in the British Museum and is buried in London, narrowly escaped being claimed as British. If the communist experiment had succeeded he would certainly have been embraced as theirs.
In the case of Ireland, our writers are the most obvious example of this phenomenon. They are so often called British that we forget they're ours. Here is a brief, incomplete list of British writers born in Ireland: Farquhar (whose hilarious The Recruiting Sergeant we saw on Saturday night), Steele, Sterne, Goldsmith, Stoker, Shaw, Yeats, Becket (and Oscar Wilde who was theirs briefly but was returned to us the moment he disgraced himself).
Pedro, versed in the history of Ireland as well as Spain, refers to the Dublin born Duke of Wellington, commander of British forces at Waterloo, who objected to being called Irish. Being born in a stable doesn't make you a horse, the Duke said.
Perhaps not. Nevertheless, being born in a stable made a Son of Man into a Messiah.
It's a thought worthy of the season but before I have time to pursue it, the timpani player thunders two separate drumrolls on each of his kettle drums. Horns, trumpet, and strings go meandering among celestial harmonies and high above these rise the soaring voices of angels. Our seats in the south transept are very close to Heaven's gate.
As we wait, we raise our eyes to the high vaulted gothic ceiling we see decaying flags of empire hanging there. Why do British flags hang in the Cathedral, Pedro wants to know. We tell him the long history of British regiments in Dublin, a history that is preserved here in this cathedral. "But you Irish fought a revolution to drive out the British, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"So why are there British flags here? In Spain we would burn them."
We explain that the soldiers were Irishmen, Irishmen fighting British wars. These flags are their history.
Like Handel, Pedro surmises. "I read in wikipedia, Handel is a German born British composer. How can a German be British?"
Indeed.
It is a fact of life, in these islands, that if an Irish person, or indeed a German or an American who happens to be loosely connected with Britain, succeeds at anything praiseworthy, the British will promptly claim that person as British. Karl Marx, who studied in the British Museum and is buried in London, narrowly escaped being claimed as British. If the communist experiment had succeeded he would certainly have been embraced as theirs.
In the case of Ireland, our writers are the most obvious example of this phenomenon. They are so often called British that we forget they're ours. Here is a brief, incomplete list of British writers born in Ireland: Farquhar (whose hilarious The Recruiting Sergeant we saw on Saturday night), Steele, Sterne, Goldsmith, Stoker, Shaw, Yeats, Becket (and Oscar Wilde who was theirs briefly but was returned to us the moment he disgraced himself).
Pedro, versed in the history of Ireland as well as Spain, refers to the Dublin born Duke of Wellington, commander of British forces at Waterloo, who objected to being called Irish. Being born in a stable doesn't make you a horse, the Duke said.
Perhaps not. Nevertheless, being born in a stable made a Son of Man into a Messiah.
It's a thought worthy of the season but before I have time to pursue it, the timpani player thunders two separate drumrolls on each of his kettle drums. Horns, trumpet, and strings go meandering among celestial harmonies and high above these rise the soaring voices of angels. Our seats in the south transept are very close to Heaven's gate.
The Green Van
Perhaps the driver of the green van will be so kind as to post a picture of it. On Sunday morning it sat between two BMWs which had edged up close to it during the night, obviously attracted by its cool, rugged good looks, its roof scarred by surf board straps and its paintwork faded by years of parking on sandy dunes and rocky shores. No tradesman's van this. Obviously the super cool van of a surfer girl from the wildest wild west of County sligo.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
North westerly today
Todays waves, driven by a gusty north westerly wind wind, not gale force yet, look as good as Saturday's, from where I'm standing.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Those 55 foot waves we were promised.
With regard to the 55 foot waves the weather forecasters promised last weekend, some Bundoran surfers rode what certainly look like big waves and a floating camera person took pictures that can be seen at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/7122844.stm
I took my picture, looking down. So is it all about camera angle? It was 10.30 am, the wind was just rising - see the wind on palms. The tide (neap) was half an hour short of full tide. The waves packed a lot of power and broke twice as high as the cliffs at Robert's Hole and Ellen Mor. There were 4 breaks rolling simultaneously at carrig easkey and there was a huge white wave breaking off Robert's Hole that I've never seen before. We were looking at deep troughs rather than high wave crests. Does that make sense?
I've seen bigger waves, not to mention bigger wind. The wind ripped a bit on Saturday night but didn't make the window glass oscillate so Beethoven's 9th remained unplayed. House rule. Have you girls ever heard the end of the 9th symphony? Or was there always a power cut?
Girls Day Out 2
Now where have I put the tickets? That is, the printed receipts of our bookings?
From the lofty height of my wisdom and experience I offer some information on our upcoming visit to Dublin, the capital city of the Republic of Ireland (the capital city of God and Mary and Bridget and Patrick and Colmcille and Brendan and Barron's own country.)
(You must make allowances for the fact that as a one time northerner I was taught, at an early, to turn my face towards Dublin 3 times a day, genuflect with due reverence and recite the litany of the saints in Irish. )
Handel's Messiah was first performed in Dublin in 13/04/1742 so we are being incredibly couth in attending the current production on 06/12/2008*, in Saint Patrick's Cathedral not far from where it was first performed in Fishamble Street, with Handel himself conducting and accompanying on the harpsicord. The choir totalled 12 people, including soloists so the sound wasn't quite as big as my Messiah CD when I turn the volume up to 23. (Note what the Dean of Saint Patrick's thought of the first production http://gfhandel.org/messiah.htm.)
And you are right, Fairy Poo, Christchurch and Saint Patrick's are close by but they're not quite in the same place.
Wikipedia suggests that the tradition of standing for the Hallelujah Chorus did not arise from George II's giving it a standing ovation but quite possibly because the king needed to flex his gouty leg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(Handel)
At least King George II didn't take a call on his mobile phone.
For Farquhar bio visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Farquhar. Then you won't have to read it all in the programme on Saturday night at the Abbey. Considering that he came from Derry, I could pass remarks at this point about Derryishness but refrain. After February, I may have reason to return to that subject. Or maybe not.
* If you wonder what is so couth about these dates, let me point out that 2008-1742=266. 13.04+06.12=19.16 19.16-266=16.50 which is the precise time that the last Donegal via Aghalane express bus leaves the Dublin Bus Aras. I'm sure Pedro will confirm my calculation as statistically and clinically correct.
From the lofty height of my wisdom and experience I offer some information on our upcoming visit to Dublin, the capital city of the Republic of Ireland (the capital city of God and Mary and Bridget and Patrick and Colmcille and Brendan and Barron's own country.)
(You must make allowances for the fact that as a one time northerner I was taught, at an early, to turn my face towards Dublin 3 times a day, genuflect with due reverence and recite the litany of the saints in Irish. )
Handel's Messiah was first performed in Dublin in 13/04/1742 so we are being incredibly couth in attending the current production on 06/12/2008*, in Saint Patrick's Cathedral not far from where it was first performed in Fishamble Street, with Handel himself conducting and accompanying on the harpsicord. The choir totalled 12 people, including soloists so the sound wasn't quite as big as my Messiah CD when I turn the volume up to 23. (Note what the Dean of Saint Patrick's thought of the first production http://gfhandel.org/messiah.htm.)
And you are right, Fairy Poo, Christchurch and Saint Patrick's are close by but they're not quite in the same place.
Wikipedia suggests that the tradition of standing for the Hallelujah Chorus did not arise from George II's giving it a standing ovation but quite possibly because the king needed to flex his gouty leg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(Handel)
At least King George II didn't take a call on his mobile phone.
For Farquhar bio visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Farquhar. Then you won't have to read it all in the programme on Saturday night at the Abbey. Considering that he came from Derry, I could pass remarks at this point about Derryishness but refrain. After February, I may have reason to return to that subject. Or maybe not.
* If you wonder what is so couth about these dates, let me point out that 2008-1742=266. 13.04+06.12=19.16 19.16-266=16.50 which is the precise time that the last Donegal via Aghalane express bus leaves the Dublin Bus Aras. I'm sure Pedro will confirm my calculation as statistically and clinically correct.
Girl’s day out. The host’s strategic preparation
Investigate all Dublin shops for the best bargains. Practice elbowing through the crowds and grunting rudely at fellow shoppers.
Charm the parking mafia in preparation for green van arrival. Break into cold sweat at €90 a day clamping fee warnings. Cross all fingers and toes for a week in hope that van is allowed in snobby parking area.
Scrub, hoover and polish flat until very shiny and sanitized. Hide all clutter and mess. Aim to ensure visitors think holidays at Sheena’s created terrible need for showcase style house.
Snigger to self at thought of tut tutting about crumbs.
Scrub Pedro until very shiny and sanitized; cook a Spanish Mammy dinner so that he is distracted from girly carry-on in the flat.
Bake a cake to reinforce desperate housewife image.
Get into Christmassy vibe with fairy lights and cinnamon candles.
Hang out best towels – the ones with lace edgings, crocheted by Pedro’s mammy.
Ponder whether to use lacy tablecloth from Prague but decide that tiny coffee table doesn’t deserve such luxury.
Spend long hours at mirror perfecting a disdaining look whilst sniffing: “Ooooh ya, but the cultural offerings in Budapest by far outshine Dublin’s little gatherings” in preparation for couth night time entertainment.
Write up long list of present possibilities. Lose list and start again with a whole new assortment of possibilities.
Send Pedro to the shops for wine. Hope that Zoe doesn’t notice it’s the same wine Pedro always gives Spike when he pretends to be couth and wine savvy.
Go back to shops following exciting discovery of a EuroSpar newly opened in Malahide. Visit several times for freebies: smoothie tasters, chicken wings, chocolate scones and bits of posh cheese. Wonder whether this beats mince pies in Donegal town.
Realise that soggy bottom girls might not be able to handle the couthness of Malahide, decide not to bring them to new EuroSpar in case they break into the bottles of port on show.
Monday, December 3, 2007
1988 Diary that turned up in the bottom drawer
I tried to scan this but it lost defenition by the time it reached the blog so have transcribed.
Diary
November 3th 1987
I went to bleek to day and helped mother with the shopping. Went to my grannys and found out that my cosin was there. She told me about a film that she had saw. later on we whent to mass. It seemed hoars ontil we got out and then we had to go to ballyshannon and drove around for awhile. I fels quith sick of home and very bored.
November 15th 1987
It was raining today. I wanted to go outside but I wasent aloud. later on my granny came down to see us. She brought us sweets and lemonade. We had a minute's silence at six o'clock. It was done all over Ireland. The silence was for the Enniskillen bomb. I think the IRA done it.
November 16th 1987
I went to school today. It was still raining. After school I went to danceing. I found out that although I was in the best group I did not know the dance. Then we had to do a jig. it wasent very bad but after danceing I felt very cold while waiting for mammy. My mother got a letter saying that she had not succeeded in her plays. I spent most of the night doing my homework and watching t.v.
November 17th 1987
Today I went up to twon(?) and I wasent soppose to. When I came home I was just in time for Defenders of the earth. it was great.
November 19th 1987
Today it was very rainy. I played a tin-whistle in school. We went to bleek and it started to rain. On our way back we had to pick up Zoe, John and Mary how is Zoe's freind. it stayed bad all night long. Awwwwwwwww. My bunk bed fell down lucky for me I wasent killed.
November 20th 1987
Today was friday. Spelling test. The dogs got my kniting and made two holes in it. Tomorrow I will get up at nine o'clock to watch Pajo's junkbox so I am going to bed early.
November 22nd 1987
Today I went to grannys. We stayed for a long time but I did not get bored because I was reading. Zoe fixed the bunk bed but I fell asleep so I did not see what happened.
January 1st Friday 1988
Today is new years day. I had great crack. I went up to my cousins and was aloud to stay till ten o'clock. shirley and I had great fun. We would go into her room and Chrisphere would come in and look for us in the dark. Then we shut the door and growled at him, will that made him run. Later on christphere didn't like his sweet and put it on the ground. I picked it up and ran after him saying it was slimer.
Later on Shirley and Jurd had a fight. Jurd kicked Shirley Because he said she was hurting slviay which was a lie. Slivay wanted shiley's bracelet and shiley said no. Then Shirley pinched Jurd then and he started crying. Hes a cry baby.
January 2nd 1988
Today I went to a party at two o'clock. It was a fancy dress party. I dressed up as an Arab. We had rice crispy buns, cake, biscuts, cake and I had two bouls of Ice-cream. We had a play, a disco and musical chairs.
January 3rd 1988
Today I was sick. I felt horable and had a pain in my tummy.
February 6th 1988
Today Tiny hurt another paw. I think its broken. I don't know how she will walk. Out from that I didn't do much, except help in the garden.
February 24th Wednesday 1988
Went to school today. Got twenty out of twenty and saw a play. It was great and had a mermaid init. I did not see Defenders of the earth because I was in grannys.
Ghoast Gost Ghost Busters
Diary
November 3th 1987
I went to bleek to day and helped mother with the shopping. Went to my grannys and found out that my cosin was there. She told me about a film that she had saw. later on we whent to mass. It seemed hoars ontil we got out and then we had to go to ballyshannon and drove around for awhile. I fels quith sick of home and very bored.
November 15th 1987
It was raining today. I wanted to go outside but I wasent aloud. later on my granny came down to see us. She brought us sweets and lemonade. We had a minute's silence at six o'clock. It was done all over Ireland. The silence was for the Enniskillen bomb. I think the IRA done it.
November 16th 1987
I went to school today. It was still raining. After school I went to danceing. I found out that although I was in the best group I did not know the dance. Then we had to do a jig. it wasent very bad but after danceing I felt very cold while waiting for mammy. My mother got a letter saying that she had not succeeded in her plays. I spent most of the night doing my homework and watching t.v.
November 17th 1987
Today I went up to twon(?) and I wasent soppose to. When I came home I was just in time for Defenders of the earth. it was great.
November 19th 1987
Today it was very rainy. I played a tin-whistle in school. We went to bleek and it started to rain. On our way back we had to pick up Zoe, John and Mary how is Zoe's freind. it stayed bad all night long. Awwwwwwwww. My bunk bed fell down lucky for me I wasent killed.
November 20th 1987
Today was friday. Spelling test. The dogs got my kniting and made two holes in it. Tomorrow I will get up at nine o'clock to watch Pajo's junkbox so I am going to bed early.
November 22nd 1987
Today I went to grannys. We stayed for a long time but I did not get bored because I was reading. Zoe fixed the bunk bed but I fell asleep so I did not see what happened.
January 1st Friday 1988
Today is new years day. I had great crack. I went up to my cousins and was aloud to stay till ten o'clock. shirley and I had great fun. We would go into her room and Chrisphere would come in and look for us in the dark. Then we shut the door and growled at him, will that made him run. Later on christphere didn't like his sweet and put it on the ground. I picked it up and ran after him saying it was slimer.
Later on Shirley and Jurd had a fight. Jurd kicked Shirley Because he said she was hurting slviay which was a lie. Slivay wanted shiley's bracelet and shiley said no. Then Shirley pinched Jurd then and he started crying. Hes a cry baby.
January 2nd 1988
Today I went to a party at two o'clock. It was a fancy dress party. I dressed up as an Arab. We had rice crispy buns, cake, biscuts, cake and I had two bouls of Ice-cream. We had a play, a disco and musical chairs.
January 3rd 1988
Today I was sick. I felt horable and had a pain in my tummy.
February 6th 1988
Today Tiny hurt another paw. I think its broken. I don't know how she will walk. Out from that I didn't do much, except help in the garden.
February 24th Wednesday 1988
Went to school today. Got twenty out of twenty and saw a play. It was great and had a mermaid init. I did not see Defenders of the earth because I was in grannys.
Ghoast Gost Ghost Busters
Friday, November 30, 2007
Remembrance of Times Past - such as last summer
As we await tomorrow's gales, driving the biggest waves of the year,
I remind myself that Rossnowlagh can also be calm.
My hammock nook
I didn't forget the bird table.
The birds find their own food in summer
December is almost here
So. Tomorrow is the first day of December and the countdown to Christmas begins. Girls day out 2007 lasts from Thursday 6th till Monday 9th. We will maintain our traditional tourist status. Just because it's our own capital city doesn't mean we can't be tourists. So we will see Farquhar at the Abbey, hear Handel's Messiah and check out the National Gallery. And maybe Tara's castle, if we happen to trip over it when we're out and about in Malahide.
We have exceedingly couth precedents to uphold. So that Pedro can see that we're still too couth for our boots, we will discuss, at length, in his hearing, which of the following was best:
1 Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet in Budapest? (Covent Garden's R&J doesn't merit a mention)
2 Nabucco in Prague? Or The Magic Flute? Or The Marriage of Figaro?
3 The Goya room in Prado, Madrid? Or Picasso at the Reina Sophia?
4 The Armada anchor in the Friary Museum?
Do you know that rain never falls on the capital city of Ireland? That wet stuff that falls out of the sky is only oul' talk about rain.
However it does rain in Rossnowlagh and it hailstones and the wind blows, bitterly, especially if there's a Christmas swimin progress. See below.
Rossnowlagh Christmas Swim with storm and hailstones
How clever of Pedro to go home to Madrid for Christmas and miss the Christmas swim. The downside of that is that he also misses my delicious turkey giblet soup and he doesn't get to stack up hot ports.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
The mystery of the disappearing blog post
There I was, happily working away, checking online coverage of a certain golden insect and our own website. When – HORROR HORROR – just 4 Google results down the page, I spotted a cheeky analysis of the insect posted on sunrise sunset. Shocking carry on – it must have been the work of a Mistress of Arts.
The blog in question has now vanished into cyberspace... mwha ha ha ha!
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The soggy bottom cookbook
What about it? In November soggy bottom lands come into their own as drains fill up and lakes spill into fields. The soggy bottom cookbook suggests soggy vegetables the way Irishmen like to eat them, apple tarts that have leaked all over the oven and made a yummy sticky soggy pastry bottom in the dish, slimey spuds that consists entirely of soggy bottom, soggy spuds that have to be dried out in the pot till they develop lovely brown crispy skins just asking for butter.
George Clooney and the boys must be of Irish descent. How else would they know about soggy bottoms?
Mmm . . . George Clooney with hair. Nice
I'm writing about food because I'm 2 days into Scarsdale diet.
The Contention of the Bards
I knew there had to be a reason for my obsession with Lewey O’Clery. An infatuation with somebody who flourished 1607-1620 made no sense otherwise. Today, eureka, I have found it.
The Contention of the Bards, my next play, will not be a sequel to the DD, more a poaching of Lewey from one play to another. He will now go on to flourish in Ballymagroarty in 1616. That was the year that Hugh O’Neill, the last of the Ulster earls, died in Rome and a quisling poet in County Clare launched a revisionist attack on the ancient traditions of Gaelic culture and history. Lewey, naturally, leaped to defend the old order and the Contention of the Bards resulted.
Lots and lots of plot, not to mention character. I always knew them Clare people were as twisted as their Corkscrew Hill.
Go Lewey! Well, go eventually. First I must I complete Marchlands.
A serendipidous detail tells me I’m on the right track – I've just bought a 1919 translated, annotated edition of The Contention of the Bards at considerabloe expense from abebooks. The description of the book states that the previous owner was revisionist historian Ruth Dudley Edwards. Maybe, when it comes, I’ll stick my own library label over her name.
I could get on my soapbox now and top up to 300 words with my views on historical revisionism, but I desist. Pa has a pot of tea made and calls me to share it.
The Contention of the Bards, my next play, will not be a sequel to the DD, more a poaching of Lewey from one play to another. He will now go on to flourish in Ballymagroarty in 1616. That was the year that Hugh O’Neill, the last of the Ulster earls, died in Rome and a quisling poet in County Clare launched a revisionist attack on the ancient traditions of Gaelic culture and history. Lewey, naturally, leaped to defend the old order and the Contention of the Bards resulted.
Lots and lots of plot, not to mention character. I always knew them Clare people were as twisted as their Corkscrew Hill.
Go Lewey! Well, go eventually. First I must I complete Marchlands.
A serendipidous detail tells me I’m on the right track – I've just bought a 1919 translated, annotated edition of The Contention of the Bards at considerabloe expense from abebooks. The description of the book states that the previous owner was revisionist historian Ruth Dudley Edwards. Maybe, when it comes, I’ll stick my own library label over her name.
I could get on my soapbox now and top up to 300 words with my views on historical revisionism, but I desist. Pa has a pot of tea made and calls me to share it.
Attn aracnophobics
Posted just for Pedro. I know, it's not a spider but an 8 foot scorpion should worry even someone as aracnophiliac as John Lally. You childer can use the link below for scary bedtime reading: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/nov/21/dinosaurs.fossils
I know. I know. I should be writing, not reading the guardian.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Etain
ETAIN
Midir was overcome with desire when he first set eyes on me. That’s how they tell it in the mythologies. Was I bathing naked in a forest pool or was it a mountain stream or the shallows of some rushy lake? The detail doesn't signify. Detail is in the vision of the teller and there are many tellers of tales. Thus, you may suppose that it was the curve of my neck that inflamed Midir’s passion or the slenderness of my arm or perhaps the snowy whiteness of my breasts that were either in bud or full and round, depending on your taste in such matters. What the mythologies are agreed upon is that Midir could simply have ravished me there and then, as fairy princes are apt to do when roused to passion. However, because Midir was proud, according to one version of the tale, or honourable, according to another or who knows, maybe because he sincerely desired to win my love, he desisted. The sources are in agreement on this point. Midir was no rapist. Although his magic powers could have overcome me and all belonging to me, he did the decent thing. He went to my father and asked for my hand in marriage.
My father was not at all pleased at his request. Even though Midir was son of the all-powerful Dagda, High King of Ireland and my father was one petty king among many petty kings of Ulster, he had no wish to have him for a son-in-law. Marriage alliances consist of give and take but neither Midir nor his father, the Dagda were likely ever to need anything my father had to give so he would never be able to ask for favours in return. He could gain a lot more by marrying me to some king or princeling as petty as himself, some lesser ruler of lands bordering our own. That would reinforce old alliances or forge new ones. But my father had nothing to gain from marrying me to Midir.
He tried to discourage my noble suitor. You know, the usual thing you hear of in old tales. He set him some assorted impossible tasks that he must accomplish before he would be worthy of me. Midir's first task was be to drain the bogs of Ulster, transforming them into fields of corn watered by broad rivers teeming with trout and salmon and flowing all the way to the sea. His second task was to level the impenetrable forests that covered much of my father’s territory and replace them with fertile plains filled with herds of grazing cattle. His third and final task was to build a stone castle sixty roods in height and three hundred in length and breadth. The castle was to be furnished with gold and velvet and previous ivories. Each task, naturally, was to be accomplished in a single night. How otherwise would such tasks be impossible?
It didn't occur to my father that Midir would go straight to the Dagda and ask him for the powerful magic he needed to win me. Which is, of course, what Midir did.
“What about Fuamnach?” the Dagda asked.
“What about her?”
The Dagda saw at once that his son was consumed by his passion for me. He was not a man to stand in the way of love. "Don't tell Fumnach I helped you," he said to his son as he granted his request.
So it was that on the morning of the fourth day, Midir came to my father to tell him that where his bogs once were there were now cornfields drained by twelve rivers filled with trout and salmon and flowing north and east and west into the sea. He told him that where his impenetrable forests had stood was now a lush grassy plains where extensive herds of cattle were already grazing and finally, that a splendid stone castle filled with silks and ebony and gold awaited his entrance.
My father can’t have been entirely displeased. There's a lot to be said for owning fertile acres and well drained bogs. On the day of my marriage he ordered my marriage portion, my own weight in gold, to be heaped up beside me on the floor of his splendid new castle hall. There I sat on a silken rug, waiting for Midir to come and claim me.
Oddly, the old mythologies that relate so variously how Midir caught his first glimpse of me have nothing at all to say about my first glimpse of Midir. What can I say? That his face was beautiful as the sunrise? That his shape was tall and noble? Ah yes. He was beautiful and tall and the light of godhood shone about him. Midir was nothing if not godlike. But what made me love him was not his handsome face nor the breadth of his shoulders. No. What I loved best about Midir was the way he spurned the heap of gold at my side. He had come for me, not my father’s gold. He took my hand and raised me up till we were face to face. Then he pressed his lips against mine and I knew I desired no man but Midir.
We lay that night in a bed of bracken and heather on the steep side of Wehalt. For nine days we wandered in the mountain, feasting on bilberries and small trout that I caught for Midir in the tumbling streams. There was much love talk between us yet with all his talk, Midir never thought to mention that he already had a wife. Not that it mattered. Even if he had told me about Fuamnach, it was too late now. I could never stop loving him.
Midir was overcome with desire when he first set eyes on me. That’s how they tell it in the mythologies. Was I bathing naked in a forest pool or was it a mountain stream or the shallows of some rushy lake? The detail doesn't signify. Detail is in the vision of the teller and there are many tellers of tales. Thus, you may suppose that it was the curve of my neck that inflamed Midir’s passion or the slenderness of my arm or perhaps the snowy whiteness of my breasts that were either in bud or full and round, depending on your taste in such matters. What the mythologies are agreed upon is that Midir could simply have ravished me there and then, as fairy princes are apt to do when roused to passion. However, because Midir was proud, according to one version of the tale, or honourable, according to another or who knows, maybe because he sincerely desired to win my love, he desisted. The sources are in agreement on this point. Midir was no rapist. Although his magic powers could have overcome me and all belonging to me, he did the decent thing. He went to my father and asked for my hand in marriage.
My father was not at all pleased at his request. Even though Midir was son of the all-powerful Dagda, High King of Ireland and my father was one petty king among many petty kings of Ulster, he had no wish to have him for a son-in-law. Marriage alliances consist of give and take but neither Midir nor his father, the Dagda were likely ever to need anything my father had to give so he would never be able to ask for favours in return. He could gain a lot more by marrying me to some king or princeling as petty as himself, some lesser ruler of lands bordering our own. That would reinforce old alliances or forge new ones. But my father had nothing to gain from marrying me to Midir.
He tried to discourage my noble suitor. You know, the usual thing you hear of in old tales. He set him some assorted impossible tasks that he must accomplish before he would be worthy of me. Midir's first task was be to drain the bogs of Ulster, transforming them into fields of corn watered by broad rivers teeming with trout and salmon and flowing all the way to the sea. His second task was to level the impenetrable forests that covered much of my father’s territory and replace them with fertile plains filled with herds of grazing cattle. His third and final task was to build a stone castle sixty roods in height and three hundred in length and breadth. The castle was to be furnished with gold and velvet and previous ivories. Each task, naturally, was to be accomplished in a single night. How otherwise would such tasks be impossible?
It didn't occur to my father that Midir would go straight to the Dagda and ask him for the powerful magic he needed to win me. Which is, of course, what Midir did.
“What about Fuamnach?” the Dagda asked.
“What about her?”
The Dagda saw at once that his son was consumed by his passion for me. He was not a man to stand in the way of love. "Don't tell Fumnach I helped you," he said to his son as he granted his request.
So it was that on the morning of the fourth day, Midir came to my father to tell him that where his bogs once were there were now cornfields drained by twelve rivers filled with trout and salmon and flowing north and east and west into the sea. He told him that where his impenetrable forests had stood was now a lush grassy plains where extensive herds of cattle were already grazing and finally, that a splendid stone castle filled with silks and ebony and gold awaited his entrance.
My father can’t have been entirely displeased. There's a lot to be said for owning fertile acres and well drained bogs. On the day of my marriage he ordered my marriage portion, my own weight in gold, to be heaped up beside me on the floor of his splendid new castle hall. There I sat on a silken rug, waiting for Midir to come and claim me.
Oddly, the old mythologies that relate so variously how Midir caught his first glimpse of me have nothing at all to say about my first glimpse of Midir. What can I say? That his face was beautiful as the sunrise? That his shape was tall and noble? Ah yes. He was beautiful and tall and the light of godhood shone about him. Midir was nothing if not godlike. But what made me love him was not his handsome face nor the breadth of his shoulders. No. What I loved best about Midir was the way he spurned the heap of gold at my side. He had come for me, not my father’s gold. He took my hand and raised me up till we were face to face. Then he pressed his lips against mine and I knew I desired no man but Midir.
We lay that night in a bed of bracken and heather on the steep side of Wehalt. For nine days we wandered in the mountain, feasting on bilberries and small trout that I caught for Midir in the tumbling streams. There was much love talk between us yet with all his talk, Midir never thought to mention that he already had a wife. Not that it mattered. Even if he had told me about Fuamnach, it was too late now. I could never stop loving him.
The Dark Daughter going to Louvain?
This post celebrates the news that The Dark Daughter is likely to tour all the way to Louvain in May, via the Playhouse in Derry and An Grianan in Letterkenny. It is also a celebration of Eavan's wonderful production, Maura, Joanne, Christian, Sean and Conor's superb performances and Zoe and crew's backstage work. How amazing to take the play from where one half of it happened in 1608 to where the other half happened.
Lewey: History is principally about men, not women.
Nuala: Then History lies.
Ineen Dubh: I wound him round my finger like a piece of string and knotted him there.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Whitetrash Cookbook
This is a glorious concept. Check it out at http://whitetrashcookbook.com/
It was mentioned in the author extract of one of my nanowimo buddies who lives in Vermont. We must put our heads together and figure out what equivalent term we have in Ireland. We won't have any problem collecting the recipes. You've been raised on slimey spud pie etc etc.
And what about that picture at whitetrashcookbook.com. Isn't that kitchen a bit familiar looking. And what about the cook?
The scanger cookbook? Too Dub. The bogger cookbook? Too rural. There must be a compromise. Now, as we go into recession, there'll be such an enormous demand for tacky cheap recipes that pose as something posh that we'll have a bestseller on our hands.
I haven't counted these words. That's only oul' talk about 300 words.
There's another title. "That's only oul' talk about healthy eating."
Sybil
It was mentioned in the author extract of one of my nanowimo buddies who lives in Vermont. We must put our heads together and figure out what equivalent term we have in Ireland. We won't have any problem collecting the recipes. You've been raised on slimey spud pie etc etc.
And what about that picture at whitetrashcookbook.com. Isn't that kitchen a bit familiar looking. And what about the cook?
The scanger cookbook? Too Dub. The bogger cookbook? Too rural. There must be a compromise. Now, as we go into recession, there'll be such an enormous demand for tacky cheap recipes that pose as something posh that we'll have a bestseller on our hands.
I haven't counted these words. That's only oul' talk about 300 words.
There's another title. "That's only oul' talk about healthy eating."
Sybil
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Three hundred uncluttered words
OooooOoooooh Sybil. So many blogs in so few days. Almost as if you had been writing them for the past year. With three mugs of coffee gurgling inside me, I’m ready to play catch up.
Cluttered thoughts…
A wild woman once told me: “Do not accumulate possessions. Clutter, mortgages, cars- these things hold you captive.”
And I obeyed for ten years.
I squeezed all my precious stuff into a rucksack. With every journey and new home, hard-working possessions were coldly discarded. A surfboard sold for ten dollars to a chocolate coloured boy on a Costa Rican beach. Bursting clothes bags left on the street in Madrid found a new home with sharp-eyed Spaniards. I shared my zeal for freedom with a travel mate in Panama City and we exchanged our camping mats and heavy sleeping bags for multi-coloured hammocks.
However, on every journey, memories settled into a few possessions and the nostalgia insisted on travelling with me. Adventurous volcanic stones, dancing Belgian beer glasses, a broken hearted paper plane, proud, battered Spanish novels- I wrapped up these memories and tucked them away safely in Rossnowlagh.
Recently, something changed. My once reliable rucksack snuck out for orgies with Argos and Ikea. The shamed bag burst its seams and spawned clutter of all sorts. Poundshop clutter, borrowed clutter, family heirloom clutter. Blow-up beds mingled with Waterford crystal. Nan’s Donegal tweed cosied up to Pennys’ knickers. Another move was predicted and the rucksack proved to be woefully inadequate. A van and two flights dragged the clutter mountain to Ireland.
Now, I look around at the precious possessions demanding attention, dusting and love. I decide to give up a little bit of freedom and settle down to another mug of coffee with memories rising freely from the clutter, instead of packed away gathering dust.
Cluttered thoughts…
A wild woman once told me: “Do not accumulate possessions. Clutter, mortgages, cars- these things hold you captive.”
And I obeyed for ten years.
I squeezed all my precious stuff into a rucksack. With every journey and new home, hard-working possessions were coldly discarded. A surfboard sold for ten dollars to a chocolate coloured boy on a Costa Rican beach. Bursting clothes bags left on the street in Madrid found a new home with sharp-eyed Spaniards. I shared my zeal for freedom with a travel mate in Panama City and we exchanged our camping mats and heavy sleeping bags for multi-coloured hammocks.
However, on every journey, memories settled into a few possessions and the nostalgia insisted on travelling with me. Adventurous volcanic stones, dancing Belgian beer glasses, a broken hearted paper plane, proud, battered Spanish novels- I wrapped up these memories and tucked them away safely in Rossnowlagh.
Recently, something changed. My once reliable rucksack snuck out for orgies with Argos and Ikea. The shamed bag burst its seams and spawned clutter of all sorts. Poundshop clutter, borrowed clutter, family heirloom clutter. Blow-up beds mingled with Waterford crystal. Nan’s Donegal tweed cosied up to Pennys’ knickers. Another move was predicted and the rucksack proved to be woefully inadequate. A van and two flights dragged the clutter mountain to Ireland.
Now, I look around at the precious possessions demanding attention, dusting and love. I decide to give up a little bit of freedom and settle down to another mug of coffee with memories rising freely from the clutter, instead of packed away gathering dust.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
The Dark Daughter rides on a Tumbril?
What a lot of posting I've done today but you don't have to read them
Don't worry fairypoo, you don't have to read my Practice of Writing blogs. Just take note that they're there and if you want to write a poem check Katie Donovan because I lost my notebook before completing my Tess Gallagher piece and haven't the least idea what she said on the subject, if she spoke of it at all.
They're a more substantial body of writing than I realised, if you include the assignment piece of sillitoe and fainlight. Now back to Fuamnach who has to preceed Edward Dundas and establish the fantasy/supernatural credentials of Marchlands. I suppose you could say Edward's supernatural experience is fantasy too but I'm not going so far as to say so.
They're a more substantial body of writing than I realised, if you include the assignment piece of sillitoe and fainlight. Now back to Fuamnach who has to preceed Edward Dundas and establish the fantasy/supernatural credentials of Marchlands. I suppose you could say Edward's supernatural experience is fantasy too but I'm not going so far as to say so.
Tess Gallagher
Tess Gallagher at the Heaney Centre, QUB.
The room is overcrowded. All kinds have crowded into what should be our MA class only, drawn by the famous name. My territory, my habitual chair, is already usurped by a stranger. I find a seat in a sunny spot by a window in the furthest corner of the room.
The Diva enters. With liturgical reverence, Maebh McGuckian, feminist Belfast poet, removes Tess Gallagher's acid burnt velvet scarf (there's a name for the material but it eludes me) and drapes it on a chair. The visitor emanates assurance. In her genius? Who can tell? An odd presence, I noted at last night's readings, similar to the presence of a mother prioress among nuns and girl boarders in a convent boarding school. There is security and comfortive in her authoritative presence.
Tess Gallagher tells us she has travelled insubstantially, without children, who might have taken up the energy and solitude she needed for her work. What foresight! How ordered. No incidents of passion resulting in consequences. However, it's not totally true. She admits that life is a snowball, collecting obligations. And so she has cared for siblings, her mother, her recovering alcoholic husband, Raymond Carver. "Walk past the drink. Walk out of there. Get in your care. Drive home. I'll be waiting in the driveway," she said when he phoned from a bar to dramatise his closeness to an alcoholic drink that was poured and ready for him to drink.
Tess appears to possess saintly forebearance. I would tell such a self dramatizing soul to piss off. And hang the alcoholic relapse. I so loathe addictive personalities. My mirrors.
I have a different view of the lovely ceiling. From this position I cannot avoid seeing four fluorescent lights cased in shatter proof perspex. They are ugly and filled with dust. When I sat directly under them I didn't see them.
Tess built her house with the help of her first husband who was a Vietnam veteran with issues, lots of anger to work out, demanding her energy which she wasn't willing to give. Therefore, divorce.
Looks as if Tess got the house. Save, save, save, she advises. Americans have an average of $4000 credit card debt. Less than €3000? Is that all? What's a credit card for if not to test your creditworthiness? Tess begins to sound like my mother's generation who considered debt immoral. No matter, when divorce or first family claims arise, Tess keeps the house and the car and the royalties. Raymond Carver's first family cost Tess a lot in legal fees as they try to claim some inheritance. Tess refers to themas 'vampires'. I squirm with disapproval. Of Tess, not RC's first family.
Tess has issues with the literary canon, from which she has been excluded by Nobel Prize winner Helen Vender/Linda Graham/Grey???? by not including her in her major anthology. Shades of Yeats who excluded Monk Gibbon from the Oxford Book of Irish Poetry. Did Heaney include him in his? I haven't checked and won't. Who cares?
She has been rescuing sheep down the road, in County Sligo where she is a guest of Josie, so far as I can ascertain. I wonder if she will wind up owning his house and fields and turbary on distant hills and his ewes and lambs. And his royalties from the book they are writing jointly from his oral telling of tales.
Maeve keeps interrupting with insider remarks and references, creating an esxclusive zone from which the rest of us are excluded. Who is Bob whose son drowned? Again, who in this room cares? Can't they do small talk another time? I care about the tatooed woman whose body was taken out of the Erne at Belleek this morning. She is near enough to matter to me.
The room is overcrowded. All kinds have crowded into what should be our MA class only, drawn by the famous name. My territory, my habitual chair, is already usurped by a stranger. I find a seat in a sunny spot by a window in the furthest corner of the room.
The Diva enters. With liturgical reverence, Maebh McGuckian, feminist Belfast poet, removes Tess Gallagher's acid burnt velvet scarf (there's a name for the material but it eludes me) and drapes it on a chair. The visitor emanates assurance. In her genius? Who can tell? An odd presence, I noted at last night's readings, similar to the presence of a mother prioress among nuns and girl boarders in a convent boarding school. There is security and comfortive in her authoritative presence.
Tess Gallagher tells us she has travelled insubstantially, without children, who might have taken up the energy and solitude she needed for her work. What foresight! How ordered. No incidents of passion resulting in consequences. However, it's not totally true. She admits that life is a snowball, collecting obligations. And so she has cared for siblings, her mother, her recovering alcoholic husband, Raymond Carver. "Walk past the drink. Walk out of there. Get in your care. Drive home. I'll be waiting in the driveway," she said when he phoned from a bar to dramatise his closeness to an alcoholic drink that was poured and ready for him to drink.
Tess appears to possess saintly forebearance. I would tell such a self dramatizing soul to piss off. And hang the alcoholic relapse. I so loathe addictive personalities. My mirrors.
I have a different view of the lovely ceiling. From this position I cannot avoid seeing four fluorescent lights cased in shatter proof perspex. They are ugly and filled with dust. When I sat directly under them I didn't see them.
Tess built her house with the help of her first husband who was a Vietnam veteran with issues, lots of anger to work out, demanding her energy which she wasn't willing to give. Therefore, divorce.
Looks as if Tess got the house. Save, save, save, she advises. Americans have an average of $4000 credit card debt. Less than €3000? Is that all? What's a credit card for if not to test your creditworthiness? Tess begins to sound like my mother's generation who considered debt immoral. No matter, when divorce or first family claims arise, Tess keeps the house and the car and the royalties. Raymond Carver's first family cost Tess a lot in legal fees as they try to claim some inheritance. Tess refers to themas 'vampires'. I squirm with disapproval. Of Tess, not RC's first family.
Tess has issues with the literary canon, from which she has been excluded by Nobel Prize winner Helen Vender/Linda Graham/Grey???? by not including her in her major anthology. Shades of Yeats who excluded Monk Gibbon from the Oxford Book of Irish Poetry. Did Heaney include him in his? I haven't checked and won't. Who cares?
She has been rescuing sheep down the road, in County Sligo where she is a guest of Josie, so far as I can ascertain. I wonder if she will wind up owning his house and fields and turbary on distant hills and his ewes and lambs. And his royalties from the book they are writing jointly from his oral telling of tales.
Maeve keeps interrupting with insider remarks and references, creating an esxclusive zone from which the rest of us are excluded. Who is Bob whose son drowned? Again, who in this room cares? Can't they do small talk another time? I care about the tatooed woman whose body was taken out of the Erne at Belleek this morning. She is near enough to matter to me.
Alan Sillitoe and Ruth Fainlight
Alan Sillitoe and Ruth Fainlight
Reader, please take note of informed comment by Himan in Morrocco who offers correction of inaccuracies in my piece. Sybil
Reader, please take note of informed comment by Himan in Morrocco who offers correction of inaccuracies in my piece. Sybil
Also, thanks to Kenneth Lisenbee for correction of Paul Bowles link and for his account of Bowles and his associates at http://www.paulbowles.org/chronologytwo.html
Chronicles and Chronologies
Real life is always something less than its chronology because between the real life and its chronology is an abyss of failed visions and dreams. “We each have only one single life which is our real life, starting at the cradle and ending at the grave . . . the farther a man follows the rainbow, the harder it is for him to get back to the life which he left starving like an old dog,” Alva Perry says in Plain Pleasures, a story by Jane Bowles, writer and friend of Ruth Fainlight.
Jane Bowles is one of those who went before; writers, artists and musicians of the 1950s counter culture, who prepared the way for the 1960s vision of a transformational shift in human consciousness, a vision that would usher in an new era of peace and freedom and understanding.
In 1950 Jane and Paul Bowles are in Tangier. It is a Mecca for the Beat avant-garde. They come to write or paint or perfect their hashish habit. Some carry the vision back home to trigger the cultural shift that will rock the world, rock even dreary London, an unlikely venue for a summer of love.
According to the Paul Bowles chronology at http://www.paulbowles.org/chronologytwo.html, William S Burroughs, a novelist with an opium habit, came to Tangier in 1954. Chronologies interest me. The more remote they are from my experience, the more I like to place my own chronology alongside and wonder at the impossibility of any kind of convergence. I note that Fermanagh, in 1954, has been aroused to a state of religious fervour by Pius XII’s denomination of that year as a Marian Year. My father, a bus operator, realises there is money to be made out of religion. He buys two extra buses second hand, a Leyland Comet and a Dodge, to meet the demand for bus pilgrimages to the Knock shrine, at fifteen shillings a head, excursion fare.
Meanwhile, in Tangier, William S Burroughs’s friend Jack Kerouac comes to visit Jane and Paul Bowles. Alan Ginsberg comes and Tennessee Williams and Gregory Corso. In 1960 Fainlight and Sillitoe visit and again in 1961. Sillitoe has had his first success, the bestselling Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Before their return to England, Fainlight hires a Moroccan nanny whom she plans to share with her friend and confidante, Sylvia Plath. Having a nanny to care for their children will allow the poet mothers to enjoy long walks and talks in the English countryside. Fainlight has learned, since the birth of her son, that for a woman to write she needs not only a room of her own but hours of her own, free of the demands of family.
News of Plath’s suicide reaches Tangier before Fainlight and Sillitoe sail for England but Ruth Fainlight mentions none of these things when she visits Queen’s University Belfast, a guest, with her husband, of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. Fainlight does not serve her life on a platter to be prodded and tasted and picked over. She has come to read her work and to speak about it. That is all.
She and Sillitoe are alike elderly and slight of figure. Sillitoe sports a waistcoat of mottled leather, a material known during the late sixties and early seventies as antique leather, a more valid appellation now than when the waistcoat was new. Fainlight wears a two-piece that may be a recent revival of sixties Quant black on white but might equally be a well-preserved original. Her manner is reserved. She sits quietly during the introductions and lets her husband begin.
I am pleased at the sixties references in their dress. Fainlight published her first poems during the post-war decades of literary counterculture. Her early work contributed to the subversive ferment in women’s writing that resulted in the feminist resurgence of the late twentieth century. Sillitoe I consider a sixties rebel, even though critics locate him in the Angry Young Man counterculture of the previous decade. I remember the glee with which my generation experienced our 1960s awakening. The film of Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning shocked and delighted. Here was overt presentation, in the public space of a cinema, of unmentionable themes. Albert Finney’s Arthur Seaton shattered the boring certainties that our elders mistook for truths. I subsequently read the book and was irked at Seaton’s insistence that love is a snare and that freedom means freedom to be drunk and use women for pleasure without commitment. Don't let the bastards grind you down, was meaningless unless it applied to both halves of the human race.
On Friday morning Fainlight and Sillitoe join The Practice of Writing 210ENG793 to share their knowledge and experience. Again, Sillitoe is first to speak. He opens with a reprise of the previous night’s performance of Morse code, removing his telegraphy key and oscillator from their case and unwrapping them from a yellow duster. Fainlight turns aside, elbow on table, finger on lips. Does she find her husband a tedious old codger or is that a gleam of tolerant amusement in her eyes? Her posture is non-committal She gives nothing away.
I realise it is all down to Ohm’s Law. Sillitoe, in his memoir, Life without Armour, says Ohm’s Law is his guide to life. Six or seven unpublished books were not enough to discourage an aspiring young writer who had learned, while being trained in radio operation by the RAF, that the current in a conductor is directly proportional to the applied voltage. Sillitoe ends his demonstration of Morse and wraps the telegraphy key and the oscillator in their yellow duster before continuing his story.
He was born into vilest poverty, son of an illiterate father and a defeated mother. However young Sillitoe was fortunate in his teachers who taught him fundamentals of reading and writing. One read aloud from the King James Bible, stopping to explain its rich poetic vocabulary. Another gave him an almanac with tantalising excerpts from literary classics, leading Sillitoe to the public library to borrow the complete books. His earliest written stories, inspired by the criminal activities of his cousins, led to his first brush with censorship. His mother found and burned his juvenilia. An obsession with maps led him into the RAF where he learned to type and was provided, on discharge, with a disability pension sufficient to support him and Fainlight, frugally, during several years of literary wanderings.
“Read your work aloud,” Sillitoe advises. “It’s a good test to discover what is superfluous. And don’t be literary.”
Then it is Fainlight’s turn. She speaks with precision and clarity. Poetry, she says, is the most basic and primitive form of literature, the expression of emotion and of madness. Best Wishes, from Ruth Fainlight, she has written on my copy of her newest collection, Moon Wheels. It will be the weekend before I can reunite the sister with the brother. Sussicran by Harry Fainlight, Ruth Fainlight’s younger brother, has occupied a space on my bookshelf for longer, possibly, than Fainlight’s Quant two-piece may have hung in her wardrobe. Harry Fainlight is only dimly remembered nowadays as the Shelley of Notting Hill Gate even though Roger McGough has declared him “the greatest lyrical and metaphysical poet of the 20th century.”
I bought my copy of Sussicran, slightly used, in a flea market off Kensington High Street, in 1967. It is flanked, on my bookshelf, by other poetry of 1967, The Mersey Sound by Henri, McGough and Patten and Love Love Love, the New Love Poetry. Three books of love poetry in 1967? My chronology notes an infatuation with a Bundoran beach lifeguard. At the end of the bathing season he goes to London to work as a swimming pool attendant. “Look me up if you’re ever in the big city,” he says. Six weeks later, I walk along Queensway towards Porchester Baths, pleasantly surprised at the friendliness of Londoners. Several passing motorists have slowed to a crawl and leaned out of car windows to ask, “Would you like a ride, love?” I decline, explaining that I am not going very far.
It is the point where my chronology almost intersects with others more interesting. Queensway is not so far from Portobello Road where Harry Fainlight was arrested for hitting a policeman and I carry his book in my antique leather shoulder bag. Sussicran, (Narcissus reversed) with silver lettering on its cover and pale blue pages inside, looks and feels like some manual of popular Marian devotion that might have found its way into the lost property drawer in my father’s office in 1954. The poems are melancholy, just the sustenance I shall need, shortly, for my aching heart.
“My mouth on the cold glass.
My breath, endlessly, filling for the dead god hall after hall with flowers.”
“Where did you two meet?” Ruth Fainlight is asked.
“Nottingham.”
In a bookshop in Nottingham, the Sillitoe and Fainlight chronologies converge. It is 1951, the year in which a Labour government goes to the country and I vote in an election for the very first time. It is also my first time to use a pen. An adult hand guides mine as I trace an inky X alongside the name of the Nationalist candidate for Fermanagh-South Tyrone. He wins the seat and Bridie, our housemaid, lets me sit up late to watch the torchlight victory parade pass beneath my bedroom window. There are countercultures and countercultures. As the parade deteriorates into a riot, Bridie explains the difference between us and them, why it is perfectly all right for a five year old to have a postal vote but tell nobody, and why it isn’t wrong for the men in the street to use their torches, tipped with burning pitch, to pin a screaming policeman against a wall.
Fainlight, questioned about translation, explains that translation of ancient classics is not actual translation from the original dead language. It is much more likely to be a poetical re-creation of a literal translation by a classicist. She believes the moral dilemmas of the classical tragedies are still with us. Antigone was performed in Paris under the Nazi occupation and today’s revival of interest in these ancient materials is probably related to the Iraq war.
Although time is running out and there is a courteous disagreement about whether it is five or ten minutes to, Fainlight goes on to emphasise that to write, one must be curious, one must saturate oneself in the natural world, one must know as much as possible.
Then, it is time. Fainlight and Sillitoe leave and I gather my notebooks, understanding that these two have kept faith with the dream. I had despaired of the visions and the dreams. By 1970 the Beatles were disbanding, Jane Bowles was confined in a lunatic asylum and, in the same week in August 1969 that Woodstock proffered its alternative utopia of orgiastic self-indulgence, Northern Ireland became a killing field. Humanity seemed not amenable to improvement.
But Sillitoe and Fainlight survive. They go on living and creating, bearing the torches of counterculture among shades of ageing. Any day now I may pick up the torch I let fall. There is nothing to stop me lighting it up again. “It’s always better to stay alongside of your life . . .life [is] not a tree with a million different blossoms on it,” Alva Perry says in the Jane Bowles story. Alongside is the way to go, stepping carefully round the abyss. A match is all it takes to light the darkness.
Toby Litt
Practise of Writing - Toby Litt 27/04/2007
Toby Litt has been blogging his way around writing classes at UK universities. Having read his blog at myspace.con/tobylitt, I expected to be patronised. However that didn’t happen. This may have been due to his nervous response to Samantha who came in late and occupied the chair next to Toby Litt, which Carlo Gebler had just vacated in order to fetch coffee for the visitor.
“Don’t let anybody sit there,” he said to Toby Litt as he departed and stayed away for ten minues or so.
It was a good beginning. I don’t know how or why Samantha came late. We entered the building together. Did she lie low somewhere in order to enter seconds after Carlo’s vacating of the chair? Was it oneupwomanship? Or had she just loitered in the rest room? Whatever the reason, she intimidated the famous man.
Litt, whom I had heard reading from Hospital and enjoyed, the previous night in a modestly filled lecture theatre in the Lanyon building, is young, prematurely bald with beard neatly trimmed. Positively groomed, one might say.
He decrees that there is a model of good dialogue which consists of 4 techniques. These are:
1 Ignoring. People don’t necessarily listen to or hear what is said to them. A conversation may consist of two unconnected strands as the participants each pursue their own agenda without listening to the other. I remember that this technique used to have a name, parallel dialogue, useful in script writing and doubtless in other dialogue also. It is good to remember. I used to know lots about writing but forgot it during my nardil phase. Remembering something I used to know is cheering.
2 Powerplay. When two men meet in the street and say hello, one of them loses. Who said that? Nobody remembers. I’m not the only one who forgets. Carlo confesses to senior moments and I don’t suppose he can invoke nardil as an excuse. Does he ever forget the name of the fellow who wrote the play about the Scottish king? That’s not senior, just nardil.
To the matter in hand: dialogue is about power. One participant dominates. The power may shift in the course of the conversation.
3 Concealment. Hiding, Toby Litt calls it. A character’s fear of exposure produces dialogue which studiously says nothing, focuses on the banal. Context, however, can make the banal interesting.
4. Whatever became of technique number four? We have moved on, to exercises in dialogue which Toby Litt analyses fulsomely. We glow in his approbation and note his advice to experiment. His own experimentation, a set of novels written in alphabetal order, is, he says, related to a autistic obsession with alphabets.
Writing courses make good writers, not great writers. What would William Blake have got out of a creative writing course?
It’s a good question. I write it large on the wall five feet above my computer so that I can see it as I crane my aching neck at the end of 500 words of Practice of Writing assignment. What indeed would William Blake have got out of a creative writing course?
Toby Litt has been blogging his way around writing classes at UK universities. Having read his blog at myspace.con/tobylitt, I expected to be patronised. However that didn’t happen. This may have been due to his nervous response to Samantha who came in late and occupied the chair next to Toby Litt, which Carlo Gebler had just vacated in order to fetch coffee for the visitor.
“Don’t let anybody sit there,” he said to Toby Litt as he departed and stayed away for ten minues or so.
It was a good beginning. I don’t know how or why Samantha came late. We entered the building together. Did she lie low somewhere in order to enter seconds after Carlo’s vacating of the chair? Was it oneupwomanship? Or had she just loitered in the rest room? Whatever the reason, she intimidated the famous man.
Litt, whom I had heard reading from Hospital and enjoyed, the previous night in a modestly filled lecture theatre in the Lanyon building, is young, prematurely bald with beard neatly trimmed. Positively groomed, one might say.
He decrees that there is a model of good dialogue which consists of 4 techniques. These are:
1 Ignoring. People don’t necessarily listen to or hear what is said to them. A conversation may consist of two unconnected strands as the participants each pursue their own agenda without listening to the other. I remember that this technique used to have a name, parallel dialogue, useful in script writing and doubtless in other dialogue also. It is good to remember. I used to know lots about writing but forgot it during my nardil phase. Remembering something I used to know is cheering.
2 Powerplay. When two men meet in the street and say hello, one of them loses. Who said that? Nobody remembers. I’m not the only one who forgets. Carlo confesses to senior moments and I don’t suppose he can invoke nardil as an excuse. Does he ever forget the name of the fellow who wrote the play about the Scottish king? That’s not senior, just nardil.
To the matter in hand: dialogue is about power. One participant dominates. The power may shift in the course of the conversation.
3 Concealment. Hiding, Toby Litt calls it. A character’s fear of exposure produces dialogue which studiously says nothing, focuses on the banal. Context, however, can make the banal interesting.
4. Whatever became of technique number four? We have moved on, to exercises in dialogue which Toby Litt analyses fulsomely. We glow in his approbation and note his advice to experiment. His own experimentation, a set of novels written in alphabetal order, is, he says, related to a autistic obsession with alphabets.
Writing courses make good writers, not great writers. What would William Blake have got out of a creative writing course?
It’s a good question. I write it large on the wall five feet above my computer so that I can see it as I crane my aching neck at the end of 500 words of Practice of Writing assignment. What indeed would William Blake have got out of a creative writing course?
Patrick Spence BBC N. Ireland Head of Drama on writing for TV
Practice of Writing – Patrick Spence BBC Drama 16/02/2007
TV writing is not an art. It is a craft, involving collaboration.
TV is seen by the young as irrelevant. Stations are wooing this audience. BBC3 targets young people only.
BBC 2 makes 3-4 single films and 1 series per annum. These are given to big name writers who have worked for BBC 1. The goal of BBC2 is to upset the Daily Mail and try to match Channel 4 ratings
BBC 1 drama is challenging, original, mainstream. The core TV drama audience is the over 50s. Success in TV Drama is measured by:
TV writing is not an art. It is a craft, involving collaboration.
TV is seen by the young as irrelevant. Stations are wooing this audience. BBC3 targets young people only.
BBC 2 makes 3-4 single films and 1 series per annum. These are given to big name writers who have worked for BBC 1. The goal of BBC2 is to upset the Daily Mail and try to match Channel 4 ratings
BBC 1 drama is challenging, original, mainstream. The core TV drama audience is the over 50s. Success in TV Drama is measured by:
- Ratings. Success is defined mainly by ratings: over 5m viewers = success; over 7m viewers = phenomenon.
- AI ratings (12,000 boxes placed in homes which inform BBC what people watch and when they switch channels.)
- Reviews. Does the production make a noise in the media?
- Does it change the way the viewer thinks? Does it manipulate feelings?
Assorted, random information:
- A TV show is a brand, a piece of work that has an identity.
- Redemption is a major theme in TV drama.
- 8pm Sunday night is a soft sweet drama slot for family viewing.
- Soaps, Doctors and The Bill are where TV writers learn their trade, especially Doctors. Then writers may be rewarded by being let write a 6 episode drama. Soaps are filmed 4 weeks ahead of shooting and writers have to do many, many rewrites, often at last minute, to accommodate changing circumstances on set. Doctors is the most writer friendly show on TV. It was set up to encourage new writers. It takes about 8 drafts for each soap episode. The sting (4 pages) plus the rest. The first draft is 20% of work. Rewriting is 80%. A big name actor can demand rewrites.
- The single writer is back, doing mainly 6 episode dramas but occasionally 10 episodes. The writer should be at the heart of TV creation, at the highest level. Team writing with producer in charge leads to drama being produced, not written. West Wing, Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, are all written by single writer. TV writers are once again the source of the vision. TV drama is now being WRITTEN, not PRODUCED.
- TV is bigger than film, i.e. has more viewers.
- Darragh Carville, script writer, playwright and lecturer interposes to say: "The purpose of writing is to tell the truth in new ways."
- To which Patrick Spence adds, "The writer needs also to engage viewers."
- The upside of TV is that you are engaging with 5m viewers. The downside is that you HAVE to engage them. (Crime Suspect influenced millions of drinkers to go to AA)
- To place work with BBC, DON’T send them your first drama. Find an agent. Write 6-7 scripts if you want to be taken seriously. Approach an existing show and get a writing job on it.
- Single dramas are not wanted, except for Afternoon Play which is a reward for people who have done good work on TV.
Kate Donovan on writing poetry
Practice of Writing – Katie Donovan, poet 15/02/2007
Having attended Katie Donovan’s reading of her poems the previous evening, I was prepared to be engaged, despite my usual disapprobation of poets who read.
She briefly describes the discipline of writing. Unquestionably her method sounds simple. A poem, it appears, can be composed in the intervals between attending to the demands of the bread and butter job, children, childbearing, partner pleasing, etc. I can relate to that but feel that she is a little self indulgent in allowing children and husband to intrude unduly upon the writing. The bread and butter job can’t be helped, I suppose. Bread and butter must be acquired for oneself and dependent others.
Katie offered ten pieces of advice which have guided her on her writerly path, advice which was given to her early in her writing (creative not journalistic) career. They are:
1 The Origin of a piece of writing can be humble. One does not have to write about BIG things.
2 You don’t need a sophisticated education. If you are saturated by other writers you may never find your own voice. Don’t read Ulysses. It takes time and practice to be good, not study of deconstructionist theory. I don’t agree. On must read in the field in which one writes.
3 Isolation is good. Loneliness becomes self sufficiency. Get used to it. It feeds you. (Really? So why am I here in a room with 20 other people instead of sitting alone on my cliff edge in Rossnowlagh[1]?)
4 Don’t show your work to others such as family or significant other. Significant other might actually be jealous, unconsciously or otherwise, of this thing you do alone without his/her support and assistance. Don’t expect balanced supportive feedback from a partner who may be insanely jealous and anxious to destroy the perceived rival.[2]
5 Don’t be seduced into thinking starting is hard, that it becomes easy after publication. It is still hard, but nevertheless, rewarding.
6 Don’t worry if you can’t articulate what your writing is about. Trust your reader. Don’t over explain.
7 The rejects are your babies too. Don’t expect everything to be published.
8 Be who you are as a writer. Let your light shine where it goes.
9 Never rush your work. Go at your own pace.
10 Have a plan as a comfort blanket, not as a locked box inside which you must work.
That was it. More or less. Interesting discussion followed. There was advice on how to deal with publishers who neglect to return work. Katie disagreed with my suggestion that you duplicate your work and send to many publishers. On the matter of using one’s writing to serve an agenda, Katie disagreed. Whatever your axe is, don’t grind it in your creative work.
I still haven’t had the opportunity to examine the ceiling ornamentation. I cannot do it without giving the impression that I am seeing angels. One day I may faint and as I lie on the floor having my collar loosened, I will look up and see it in all its glory.
[1] While staring at the emptiness of the ocean
[2] Is a woman jealous of her husband’s creative work or is it just husband’s who want to monopolise their woman? Think of all the writers/artists who have been served by wifely facilitators. How many husbands have fulfilled this role?
Having attended Katie Donovan’s reading of her poems the previous evening, I was prepared to be engaged, despite my usual disapprobation of poets who read.
She briefly describes the discipline of writing. Unquestionably her method sounds simple. A poem, it appears, can be composed in the intervals between attending to the demands of the bread and butter job, children, childbearing, partner pleasing, etc. I can relate to that but feel that she is a little self indulgent in allowing children and husband to intrude unduly upon the writing. The bread and butter job can’t be helped, I suppose. Bread and butter must be acquired for oneself and dependent others.
Katie offered ten pieces of advice which have guided her on her writerly path, advice which was given to her early in her writing (creative not journalistic) career. They are:
1 The Origin of a piece of writing can be humble. One does not have to write about BIG things.
2 You don’t need a sophisticated education. If you are saturated by other writers you may never find your own voice. Don’t read Ulysses. It takes time and practice to be good, not study of deconstructionist theory. I don’t agree. On must read in the field in which one writes.
3 Isolation is good. Loneliness becomes self sufficiency. Get used to it. It feeds you. (Really? So why am I here in a room with 20 other people instead of sitting alone on my cliff edge in Rossnowlagh[1]?)
4 Don’t show your work to others such as family or significant other. Significant other might actually be jealous, unconsciously or otherwise, of this thing you do alone without his/her support and assistance. Don’t expect balanced supportive feedback from a partner who may be insanely jealous and anxious to destroy the perceived rival.[2]
5 Don’t be seduced into thinking starting is hard, that it becomes easy after publication. It is still hard, but nevertheless, rewarding.
6 Don’t worry if you can’t articulate what your writing is about. Trust your reader. Don’t over explain.
7 The rejects are your babies too. Don’t expect everything to be published.
8 Be who you are as a writer. Let your light shine where it goes.
9 Never rush your work. Go at your own pace.
10 Have a plan as a comfort blanket, not as a locked box inside which you must work.
That was it. More or less. Interesting discussion followed. There was advice on how to deal with publishers who neglect to return work. Katie disagreed with my suggestion that you duplicate your work and send to many publishers. On the matter of using one’s writing to serve an agenda, Katie disagreed. Whatever your axe is, don’t grind it in your creative work.
I still haven’t had the opportunity to examine the ceiling ornamentation. I cannot do it without giving the impression that I am seeing angels. One day I may faint and as I lie on the floor having my collar loosened, I will look up and see it in all its glory.
[1] While staring at the emptiness of the ocean
[2] Is a woman jealous of her husband’s creative work or is it just husband’s who want to monopolise their woman? Think of all the writers/artists who have been served by wifely facilitators. How many husbands have fulfilled this role?
Hanna Slattne, Tinderbox Theatre
Practice of Writing – Hanna Slattne, Tinderbox Theatre. 02/03/2007
Hanna Slatne is literary manager and dramaturge at Tinderbox Theatre, Belfast. The aim of Tinderbox is to present new writing from writers in or from this region.
Her role is to receive the play from the playwright. Her readers will read the play and report to her in detail. She and the reader may decide that a re-read is necessary. Then, if the play shows merit, she will show it to the Artistic Directors. Tinderbox reads all plays submitted.
When submitting a play:
1. Find out about the theatre companying question. Check their website. Do they read unsolicited scripts?
2. Check the company’s artistic remit. Does the play fit the theatre’s remit?
3. Who is the literary manager
4. How do they want the script? Hard copy/soft copy.
Don’t send off a first draft. Leave it on the shelf for 2 months. 98% of Hanna’s scripts get a reject because they are too raw, need revision and rewriting. However you can send off an early draft asking for professional feedback but accept that it is not yet ready for production.
After writer/company interaction, the writer may get a commission.
The Dramaturge has a similar role to literary manager. She is deeply involved in development process of play, particularly, in how meaning is delivered.
Writer and director each work with their own artistic vision but dramaturge does not use her own artistic vision. She asks, what did you set out to do? What is your preoccupation, which aspect of humanity to you want to reveal? The lucid moment occurs when writer, director and dramaturge share a vision which leads to artistic decisions. Be prepared to guard the integrity of your work. Don’t hand over too much
Shape of play: establish a hierarchy of what the play is about.
You can’t experiment with form and insist on a conventional story. What are your preoccupations? When decisions have to be made, refer to your hierarchy.
Keep little notes about what the play is about. The rewrite. Test your decisions against the hierarchy.
Other issues: All characters must be 3 dimensional. Where does the story begin and end? What is the rhythm? Structure is elusive. You must deal with structure of each scene, tensions, flow structure of act, character journeys, structure of the play. Think away from your plot in order to open doors.
A final draft leads to production which leads to actors’ questions. The Dramaturge, at this point, starts to examine the creation of the meaning which the director wants.
Writers choices/directors choices/actors’ choices – any of these can put it wrong.
Deadly theatre/The empty space – are caused by the failure of professional theatre to deliver emotion, to engage audience.
The rise of the monologue. Monologues are hard to do for stage. Monologue deletes theatricality, breaking the 4th wall by talking to the audience. We can’t use conventions or abandon them, willy nilly. They must belong, cannot be used as a crutch.
Read plays. See theatre.
Hanna Slatne is literary manager and dramaturge at Tinderbox Theatre, Belfast. The aim of Tinderbox is to present new writing from writers in or from this region.
Her role is to receive the play from the playwright. Her readers will read the play and report to her in detail. She and the reader may decide that a re-read is necessary. Then, if the play shows merit, she will show it to the Artistic Directors. Tinderbox reads all plays submitted.
When submitting a play:
1. Find out about the theatre companying question. Check their website. Do they read unsolicited scripts?
2. Check the company’s artistic remit. Does the play fit the theatre’s remit?
3. Who is the literary manager
4. How do they want the script? Hard copy/soft copy.
Don’t send off a first draft. Leave it on the shelf for 2 months. 98% of Hanna’s scripts get a reject because they are too raw, need revision and rewriting. However you can send off an early draft asking for professional feedback but accept that it is not yet ready for production.
After writer/company interaction, the writer may get a commission.
The Dramaturge has a similar role to literary manager. She is deeply involved in development process of play, particularly, in how meaning is delivered.
Writer and director each work with their own artistic vision but dramaturge does not use her own artistic vision. She asks, what did you set out to do? What is your preoccupation, which aspect of humanity to you want to reveal? The lucid moment occurs when writer, director and dramaturge share a vision which leads to artistic decisions. Be prepared to guard the integrity of your work. Don’t hand over too much
Shape of play: establish a hierarchy of what the play is about.
You can’t experiment with form and insist on a conventional story. What are your preoccupations? When decisions have to be made, refer to your hierarchy.
Keep little notes about what the play is about. The rewrite. Test your decisions against the hierarchy.
Other issues: All characters must be 3 dimensional. Where does the story begin and end? What is the rhythm? Structure is elusive. You must deal with structure of each scene, tensions, flow structure of act, character journeys, structure of the play. Think away from your plot in order to open doors.
A final draft leads to production which leads to actors’ questions. The Dramaturge, at this point, starts to examine the creation of the meaning which the director wants.
Writers choices/directors choices/actors’ choices – any of these can put it wrong.
Deadly theatre/The empty space – are caused by the failure of professional theatre to deliver emotion, to engage audience.
The rise of the monologue. Monologues are hard to do for stage. Monologue deletes theatricality, breaking the 4th wall by talking to the audience. We can’t use conventions or abandon them, willy nilly. They must belong, cannot be used as a crutch.
Read plays. See theatre.
Ian Sanson - Expressionable Joy; also Carlo Gebler's opening Practice of Writing class
Practice of Writing - Ian Sansom 16 March 2007
Expressionable Joy
Till today, I wrote a weekly 500 word account of Practice of Writing sessions with the aim of summarizing the information dispensed from the echelons of literary wisdom, in a small neat package, where I might access it again if I should ever want to access it again.
Not any more. Today, as directed by our tutor, Carlo Gebler, I write subjectively.
Starting with Number five. The title of a novel by Glenn Patterson but, on University Square, simply the wrong the door. I enter and note wallpaper in a Byzantine shade of red. There is a notice which states, “Greek tragedy and the modern world”. I wonder if it shouldn’t it read “Greek tragedy is the modern world,” before going back outside and finding the correct door. Yes, there’s my class, loitering on the staircase of number four. Carlo and the visiting lecturer are on the landing, discussing the rightwing press.
“Ha,” I say to Yvonne, “that figures.” She nods in agreement and rolls her eyes.
The visiting lecturer renders his name mnemonically. Ian S-A-N for nutter, S-O-M for mad. He notes the ceiling above our heads. The ceiling of our seminar room is a lavish survival of the age of optimism which has, on two previous occasions, been the object of subjective reference in my otherwise objective rendition of Practice of Writing. Ian Sansom’s attention to the ceiling wins him a niche in the cluttered storeroom of my subjectivity.
He wears gold rimmed spectacles on his forehead. His sage green tie matches his sage green waistcoat. He is bearded and communicates with the rapid speech and energetic gesticulation of an early Ealing studios stereotype of a London barrow boy. And barrows do have relevance, I find, as Carlo Gebler and Ian Sansom, exchange fond memories about which barrow boys, where, offered 10p for unwanted review copies of otherwise new books. First editions of books that would be valuable today, says Ian Sansom, with gleeful regret.
Once again we are informed that writing does not generate sufficient income on which to live, unless one is kissed by the Gods. Consequently, one will eke out supplementary income by reviewing. Personally, I’d rather prep vegetables in the Smugglers’ kitchen at minimum wage. It would be more fun and would probably pay better. Samantha’s protest exceeds propriety this week as she extends an indignant nazi salute to Carlo and Ian. Oh dear. But I see her point. Since when has writing been about making a living? Isn’t that why Nora Barnacle took in laundry?
Ian drops a superb word into our midst. Sitzfleisch. The ability to sit down and actually do the job of writing. I knew I didn’t have a fat ass for nothing. It’s a fine piece of sitzfleisch and for the future, I will respect it as such.
Ian Sansom urges us, as MA students, to read at whim. Because there is an intimate connection between reading and writing. Because reading is an aspect of expressionable joy.
And so is the ceiling, I think, not in a spirit of mockery but of expressionable joy.
Practice of Writing - week 1 with Practice of Writing tutor Carlo Gebler who ha requested 500 words, no more, no less, per week. I ahve buried my verbosity in footnotes.
Practice of writing: Week 1 (500 words. Precisely. No more. No less.)
We introduce ourselves. I discover a lot about the lives and ambitions of my classmates. I try to say something about the episode of block that brought me to 102 MA CREATIVE WRITING: PRACTISE OF WRITING. Six years of block. Actually more but I don't count it all. I can cope with saying six years. [i]
The first point concerns management of failure.[ii] We didn't actually deal with the first point. Just elaborated a little. Literature is dead. 70 percent of humanity, English speaking humanity, presumably, doesn't read. I suspected that. I've been a teacher.[iii]
I note the superb ceiling mouldings in room 105 but can’t observe them in their excruciating detail because I have to pay attention and answer the question, "Why are you here?" I answer the question but I am RETICENT. [iv]
I am so intimidated by the overpowering presence of the speaker who probably does not at all intend being intimidating or overpowering, that I think I should ditch my Marchlands which is more or less for mid-teens though maybe it will cross over a bit, and write a post modern book about writing a book about writing a book about writing a book, which I also have in mind. I am indecisive on the issue. Prior to the first class in 102 MA CREATIVE WRITING: PRACTISE OF WRITING, I was going to ask Glenn's advice about changing to a new piece of writing but feel uncomfortable with that now. I've dumped two episodes of Marchlands on his class last term and this, so I ought to explain myself if I move to doing anything else. But now it's not Glenn's class any more and switching novel seems somehow disloyal.
So that's one thought arising out of my class. And here's another. I've made a note about Lisa. She's flirting with the speaker while she tells her life story. I wonder is she aware of it. [v]
We are shoeless peasants (ie writers). The robber baron (publishers) has all the money in his castle. How do I get in there to get a jewel out of his treasury? I'm elaborating. The speaker didn't say it in quite those words, but close enough.
Nineteenth century literature had the impact of Premier football today. 20th century literature has the impact of lacrosse, not counting Canada. I take it Canadians care about lacrosse.
TV and music are today's media. Reviewing books that you hate gives you cancer. [vi] Narrative = inner change; plot = incidents. For difficulty in ending story. Write an end, put it in a drawer. Use or not, as the story dictates.
Do people recognise themselves when you use them as characters? No.[vii]
Hugo Hamilton writes dramatisations, not autobiography or memoir. He said so himself. Somewhere. Recently.[viii] The novel is dead. Write non-fiction memoir which doesn't need to be true.[ix] Read JR Ackerley My father and myself superb example of previous sentence.
Then we did layout. So what did I learn? Write a fictional memoir, not a novel.[x]
Footnotes:
[i] On 8 April 1998 I promised a New York editor a book about N. Ireland. He had just flown into Dublin to meet me. No other reason. Opportunity beckoned. So what did I do? I died and stayed dead. The NY editor had flown in from Bologna where he had picked up US rights on a couple of books. One was mine. The other was the first Harry Potter. Rowling delivered. I didn't. It looks as if I have a built-in fail device. I spent whatever number of years it has been, sitting at my desk, looking past my computer screen at the beach and the sea, noting whether the tide is in or out, whether the brent geese have come or gone.
[ii] I am trying to wipe the silly grin off my face. I googled the speaker's name when I received the email notification of the change of lecturer. Gebler, it was familiar but I lacked detail. Google revealed the son of the author who upheaved the supplementary reading room in 1964 or was it 1965? There we were, Esther Rafferty and those girls from Armagh whose names I have forgotten and two or three from Derry who hung about there, all of us getting hot and bothered and dying our underwear sinfully black under the influence of The Country Girls and the Girl with Green Eyes.
I have a view of an ear and some grizzled curls belonging to what was biological speaking, the cause, historically speaking, the consequence, of that hot and bothersome fiction/memoir. I wipe the silly smile off my face and concentrate on listening.
[iii] I died there. Today I finish mourning my death.
[iv] Nobody in Belfast is going to find out that I was ever a depressive burned out writer.
[v] And are those diamonds flashing on Lisa's ring finger? Has the fellow up the Malone Road made a proper commitment? Good for Lisa. I will ask, next week. I could email, better not. Beats hitting him with a full wine bottle garnered at a reception held in the Famous Seamus House for a poet laureate. Eh, Lisa? (Added comment, 26 Nov 2007, Lisa is up for a caesarian section on 3 Dec. How's that for committment? Will she make it to graduation on the 14 Dec?)
[vi] Not true. Reviewing books at all gives you gnawing jealousy that is a literary, intellectual cancer. I know. I've reviewed for the Donegal Democrat Arts page. Till Vinney Britton waylaid me in Ruby's shop to say, stop writing about other people's books and fucking write your own. Well said, Vinney.
[vii] But they recognise themselves in characters that they didn't inspire. eg Surf Summer. Surf dudes think they know who is who there. No, Jill Murphy didn't inspire the pyromaniac. Patrick B inspired the pyromaniac and then Poolbeg insisted on giving him a sex change because 1) boys don't read books 2) girls don't like boy protagonists . . . such as Harry Potter? Jill did plant the initial idea for a pyromaniac who became a boy one afternoon I gave Patrick a lift from Sligo and he told me what inspired him to burn down a prefab classroom. I left a tame prototype of him in the story but moved his pyromania to one of the girls. And as for the hotelier in Surf Summer, no he doesn't live in Rossnowlagh or Bundoran or even Donegal. I didn't write the blurb. You won't find a mention of Donegal or Ireland anywhere in my book. It is an anyplace book. Anyplace there is a beach with waves.
Surfers don’t even know who Patrick is. As for Jill, last time I heard, she was in Afghanistan living the great adventure as a US Marine. She can burn anything she wants now, I suppose, and get a medal for it.
[viii] I'll have to make more detailed notes. And listen to the detail as it's uttered so that I’ll know what to write down.
[ix] As in Defoe, Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe et al? Possibly.
[x] Isn't that what Marchlands is? Barney Timoney and my mother's separate stories from Whealt 1922. So maybe I'll go on writing it for now. I have about 2 weeks to make up my mind.
Expressionable Joy
Till today, I wrote a weekly 500 word account of Practice of Writing sessions with the aim of summarizing the information dispensed from the echelons of literary wisdom, in a small neat package, where I might access it again if I should ever want to access it again.
Not any more. Today, as directed by our tutor, Carlo Gebler, I write subjectively.
Starting with Number five. The title of a novel by Glenn Patterson but, on University Square, simply the wrong the door. I enter and note wallpaper in a Byzantine shade of red. There is a notice which states, “Greek tragedy and the modern world”. I wonder if it shouldn’t it read “Greek tragedy is the modern world,” before going back outside and finding the correct door. Yes, there’s my class, loitering on the staircase of number four. Carlo and the visiting lecturer are on the landing, discussing the rightwing press.
“Ha,” I say to Yvonne, “that figures.” She nods in agreement and rolls her eyes.
The visiting lecturer renders his name mnemonically. Ian S-A-N for nutter, S-O-M for mad. He notes the ceiling above our heads. The ceiling of our seminar room is a lavish survival of the age of optimism which has, on two previous occasions, been the object of subjective reference in my otherwise objective rendition of Practice of Writing. Ian Sansom’s attention to the ceiling wins him a niche in the cluttered storeroom of my subjectivity.
He wears gold rimmed spectacles on his forehead. His sage green tie matches his sage green waistcoat. He is bearded and communicates with the rapid speech and energetic gesticulation of an early Ealing studios stereotype of a London barrow boy. And barrows do have relevance, I find, as Carlo Gebler and Ian Sansom, exchange fond memories about which barrow boys, where, offered 10p for unwanted review copies of otherwise new books. First editions of books that would be valuable today, says Ian Sansom, with gleeful regret.
Once again we are informed that writing does not generate sufficient income on which to live, unless one is kissed by the Gods. Consequently, one will eke out supplementary income by reviewing. Personally, I’d rather prep vegetables in the Smugglers’ kitchen at minimum wage. It would be more fun and would probably pay better. Samantha’s protest exceeds propriety this week as she extends an indignant nazi salute to Carlo and Ian. Oh dear. But I see her point. Since when has writing been about making a living? Isn’t that why Nora Barnacle took in laundry?
Ian drops a superb word into our midst. Sitzfleisch. The ability to sit down and actually do the job of writing. I knew I didn’t have a fat ass for nothing. It’s a fine piece of sitzfleisch and for the future, I will respect it as such.
Ian Sansom urges us, as MA students, to read at whim. Because there is an intimate connection between reading and writing. Because reading is an aspect of expressionable joy.
And so is the ceiling, I think, not in a spirit of mockery but of expressionable joy.
Practice of Writing - week 1 with Practice of Writing tutor Carlo Gebler who ha requested 500 words, no more, no less, per week. I ahve buried my verbosity in footnotes.
Practice of writing: Week 1 (500 words. Precisely. No more. No less.)
We introduce ourselves. I discover a lot about the lives and ambitions of my classmates. I try to say something about the episode of block that brought me to 102 MA CREATIVE WRITING: PRACTISE OF WRITING. Six years of block. Actually more but I don't count it all. I can cope with saying six years. [i]
The first point concerns management of failure.[ii] We didn't actually deal with the first point. Just elaborated a little. Literature is dead. 70 percent of humanity, English speaking humanity, presumably, doesn't read. I suspected that. I've been a teacher.[iii]
I note the superb ceiling mouldings in room 105 but can’t observe them in their excruciating detail because I have to pay attention and answer the question, "Why are you here?" I answer the question but I am RETICENT. [iv]
I am so intimidated by the overpowering presence of the speaker who probably does not at all intend being intimidating or overpowering, that I think I should ditch my Marchlands which is more or less for mid-teens though maybe it will cross over a bit, and write a post modern book about writing a book about writing a book about writing a book, which I also have in mind. I am indecisive on the issue. Prior to the first class in 102 MA CREATIVE WRITING: PRACTISE OF WRITING, I was going to ask Glenn's advice about changing to a new piece of writing but feel uncomfortable with that now. I've dumped two episodes of Marchlands on his class last term and this, so I ought to explain myself if I move to doing anything else. But now it's not Glenn's class any more and switching novel seems somehow disloyal.
So that's one thought arising out of my class. And here's another. I've made a note about Lisa. She's flirting with the speaker while she tells her life story. I wonder is she aware of it. [v]
We are shoeless peasants (ie writers). The robber baron (publishers) has all the money in his castle. How do I get in there to get a jewel out of his treasury? I'm elaborating. The speaker didn't say it in quite those words, but close enough.
Nineteenth century literature had the impact of Premier football today. 20th century literature has the impact of lacrosse, not counting Canada. I take it Canadians care about lacrosse.
TV and music are today's media. Reviewing books that you hate gives you cancer. [vi] Narrative = inner change; plot = incidents. For difficulty in ending story. Write an end, put it in a drawer. Use or not, as the story dictates.
Do people recognise themselves when you use them as characters? No.[vii]
Hugo Hamilton writes dramatisations, not autobiography or memoir. He said so himself. Somewhere. Recently.[viii] The novel is dead. Write non-fiction memoir which doesn't need to be true.[ix] Read JR Ackerley My father and myself superb example of previous sentence.
Then we did layout. So what did I learn? Write a fictional memoir, not a novel.[x]
Footnotes:
[i] On 8 April 1998 I promised a New York editor a book about N. Ireland. He had just flown into Dublin to meet me. No other reason. Opportunity beckoned. So what did I do? I died and stayed dead. The NY editor had flown in from Bologna where he had picked up US rights on a couple of books. One was mine. The other was the first Harry Potter. Rowling delivered. I didn't. It looks as if I have a built-in fail device. I spent whatever number of years it has been, sitting at my desk, looking past my computer screen at the beach and the sea, noting whether the tide is in or out, whether the brent geese have come or gone.
[ii] I am trying to wipe the silly grin off my face. I googled the speaker's name when I received the email notification of the change of lecturer. Gebler, it was familiar but I lacked detail. Google revealed the son of the author who upheaved the supplementary reading room in 1964 or was it 1965? There we were, Esther Rafferty and those girls from Armagh whose names I have forgotten and two or three from Derry who hung about there, all of us getting hot and bothered and dying our underwear sinfully black under the influence of The Country Girls and the Girl with Green Eyes.
I have a view of an ear and some grizzled curls belonging to what was biological speaking, the cause, historically speaking, the consequence, of that hot and bothersome fiction/memoir. I wipe the silly smile off my face and concentrate on listening.
[iii] I died there. Today I finish mourning my death.
[iv] Nobody in Belfast is going to find out that I was ever a depressive burned out writer.
[v] And are those diamonds flashing on Lisa's ring finger? Has the fellow up the Malone Road made a proper commitment? Good for Lisa. I will ask, next week. I could email, better not. Beats hitting him with a full wine bottle garnered at a reception held in the Famous Seamus House for a poet laureate. Eh, Lisa? (Added comment, 26 Nov 2007, Lisa is up for a caesarian section on 3 Dec. How's that for committment? Will she make it to graduation on the 14 Dec?)
[vi] Not true. Reviewing books at all gives you gnawing jealousy that is a literary, intellectual cancer. I know. I've reviewed for the Donegal Democrat Arts page. Till Vinney Britton waylaid me in Ruby's shop to say, stop writing about other people's books and fucking write your own. Well said, Vinney.
[vii] But they recognise themselves in characters that they didn't inspire. eg Surf Summer. Surf dudes think they know who is who there. No, Jill Murphy didn't inspire the pyromaniac. Patrick B inspired the pyromaniac and then Poolbeg insisted on giving him a sex change because 1) boys don't read books 2) girls don't like boy protagonists . . . such as Harry Potter? Jill did plant the initial idea for a pyromaniac who became a boy one afternoon I gave Patrick a lift from Sligo and he told me what inspired him to burn down a prefab classroom. I left a tame prototype of him in the story but moved his pyromania to one of the girls. And as for the hotelier in Surf Summer, no he doesn't live in Rossnowlagh or Bundoran or even Donegal. I didn't write the blurb. You won't find a mention of Donegal or Ireland anywhere in my book. It is an anyplace book. Anyplace there is a beach with waves.
Surfers don’t even know who Patrick is. As for Jill, last time I heard, she was in Afghanistan living the great adventure as a US Marine. She can burn anything she wants now, I suppose, and get a medal for it.
[viii] I'll have to make more detailed notes. And listen to the detail as it's uttered so that I’ll know what to write down.
[ix] As in Defoe, Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe et al? Possibly.
[x] Isn't that what Marchlands is? Barney Timoney and my mother's separate stories from Whealt 1922. So maybe I'll go on writing it for now. I have about 2 weeks to make up my mind.
Poets - Cathal Ó Searcaigh & Yuyutsu RD Sharma
Practice of Writing – Cathal Ó Searcaigh & Yuyutsu RD Sharma 09/03/2007
Who is the beautiful boy? He sits silently at the head of the table, his eyes looking inward, Nepalese perhaps, or Indian. Is he a son of the gaelic poet who, last night, in the Great Hall, under portraits of smirking vice-chancellors, read a poem about his son in Katmandu? If so, there is not a hint of his chubby, pinkly Irish father in him. On the surface of things it seems more likely that he belongs to Yuyutsu RD Sharma’s entourage. A student, a young relative, a catamite? Nobody offers an explanation for his presence. He might as well be a monk on the brink of Nirvana, for all the attention he pays to anybody in the room.
The poets arrive. Cathal Ó Searchaigh under his pillbox cap. Yuyutsu RD Sharma also under a cap, a cap of thick black hair that reaches his eyebrows and hides the handsome brow that I glimpsed several times last night as he self-consciously pushed back his foilt before intoning a poem in accented English or better still, in Nepalese.
The poets have a story. They met in Yuyutsu RD Sharma’s family owned bookshop in Katmandu. An extended family bookshop, an extended family that includes 23 children. These family details emerge in response to questions from poet, Maeve McGuckian who has slipped, obtrusively, into the room about half an hour into the session. Would a woman in Katmandu enjoy the same freedom to write and travel as Yuyutsu RD Sharma? Yuyutsu RD Sharma equivocates. It is unlikely that he is unaware of the feminist obsessions of women poets so his equivocation is probably evasion. Maeve McGuckian persists, briefly, then the topic fades away. Nobody else in the room cares all that much that Mrs Yuyutsu RD Sharma may not be as free as her husband to tour the world on a Rockefeller fellowship.
Yuyutsu RD Sharma is overtly political. A poet must speak out. Nepali poets always have. That is why the anthology of Nepalese poetry which he edited is entitled Roaring Recitals. He speaks of rule by corrupt oligarchies and corrupt democracy. Poets, in Nepal, have always struggled against the establishment. He speaks of the anguish of Gopal Prasad Rimal who is driven mad when democracy for which he has striven degenerates into vile corruption. He ends his days “roaming insane in the streets of Kathmandu with the dream of a true democracy seething within him.”[1] Oddly, the poet’s doctors removed one of his ribs to create pain that would distract him from his madness.
The role of poet, according to Yuyutsu RD Sharma, the Nepalese muse “is in connection with politics” and again, “politics is an axis on which poetry turns.” He sees analogies. Belfast, with its violence, is like Khatmandu. The suppression of Cathal’s Irish language against the encroachment of English colonialism is similar to the Nepali experience of encroachment by corrupt government. I am grateful for a poet who engages with the struggle of the underdog, wherever.
His route to poetry has been an alternative one. At seven years old be became possessed by a snake goddess at a shrine that is a focus of pilgrimage. He was honoured by devotees, even by his own devout father who bowed before his seven year old son. His father wished to give him to the associated monastery but the chief monk advised him to send the child to college. Thus, Yuyutsu RD Sharma received his education and lost his early gift of being a vessel of the goddess. However poetry also is a possession. One has prefigured the other.
Cathal Ó Searcaigh is anticlimactic. How can a man from up the road compare with a Nepali whose literary career has begun with possession by a snake goddess? It would have been wiser for him to have spoken first. He tells of his preoccupation with words and of his gaelic speaking neighbour who had to invent names for new household appliances, names that did not previously exist in the pastoral gaelic language. Fridge became ice trunk, vacuum cleaner, a whirlwind brush. Ah. The moment of engagement as the pastoral tongue conftonts globalization. His poetry is for reading aloud so that it can create the sense of incantation that is at the heart of poetry. Cantrach, in the gaelic. Chanted too, in Nepali, Yuyutsu RD Sharma interposes, operating on the human nervous system, in the manner of a mantra which is the utterance of one full breath, eventually instigating tranquility. Tranquillity?
Yuyutsu RD Sharma and Cathal Ó Searchaigh engage in mutual translations. Both are bestsellers in Khatmandu. A gaelic poet needs translation, the imprimatur of English, Cathal notes. Presumably the same applies to the Nepalese poets. Cathal Ó Searcaigh’s career is almost contemporaneous with my own. He was influenced by a teacher who read an extract from Hilaire Belloc. “What do you think of that?” the teacher asked, creating a seminal event for the young Sharkey who awakened to the beauty of language. Then there was Yevteshenko’s “A Precocious Autobiography” and the Liverpool poets. Ah yes, the beat poets. Our generation. I wanted your soft verges and you gave me your hard shoulder. Motorway poem. Ah, memory.
Another epiphany was when Cathal realized he must write in his own language. It happened in a pub in Cricklewood where he read Derek Mahon and learned what is meant by the word home. Irish can be loud and rhetorical. It allows amplification of utterance. In English yu have to turn the volume down. In Irish you can write in the manner of the eighteenth century and still be contemporary.
Yuyutsu RD Sharma interposes. Translation, he belives, should be a recreation of the poem, not a literal translation. The poem becomes something new in its transition from one language to another, becoming partly the creation of the translator.
There is a pause. The beautiful boy stands and I realise that the visit of the poets is over.
Who is the beautiful boy? He sits silently at the head of the table, his eyes looking inward, Nepalese perhaps, or Indian. Is he a son of the gaelic poet who, last night, in the Great Hall, under portraits of smirking vice-chancellors, read a poem about his son in Katmandu? If so, there is not a hint of his chubby, pinkly Irish father in him. On the surface of things it seems more likely that he belongs to Yuyutsu RD Sharma’s entourage. A student, a young relative, a catamite? Nobody offers an explanation for his presence. He might as well be a monk on the brink of Nirvana, for all the attention he pays to anybody in the room.
The poets arrive. Cathal Ó Searchaigh under his pillbox cap. Yuyutsu RD Sharma also under a cap, a cap of thick black hair that reaches his eyebrows and hides the handsome brow that I glimpsed several times last night as he self-consciously pushed back his foilt before intoning a poem in accented English or better still, in Nepalese.
The poets have a story. They met in Yuyutsu RD Sharma’s family owned bookshop in Katmandu. An extended family bookshop, an extended family that includes 23 children. These family details emerge in response to questions from poet, Maeve McGuckian who has slipped, obtrusively, into the room about half an hour into the session. Would a woman in Katmandu enjoy the same freedom to write and travel as Yuyutsu RD Sharma? Yuyutsu RD Sharma equivocates. It is unlikely that he is unaware of the feminist obsessions of women poets so his equivocation is probably evasion. Maeve McGuckian persists, briefly, then the topic fades away. Nobody else in the room cares all that much that Mrs Yuyutsu RD Sharma may not be as free as her husband to tour the world on a Rockefeller fellowship.
Yuyutsu RD Sharma is overtly political. A poet must speak out. Nepali poets always have. That is why the anthology of Nepalese poetry which he edited is entitled Roaring Recitals. He speaks of rule by corrupt oligarchies and corrupt democracy. Poets, in Nepal, have always struggled against the establishment. He speaks of the anguish of Gopal Prasad Rimal who is driven mad when democracy for which he has striven degenerates into vile corruption. He ends his days “roaming insane in the streets of Kathmandu with the dream of a true democracy seething within him.”[1] Oddly, the poet’s doctors removed one of his ribs to create pain that would distract him from his madness.
The role of poet, according to Yuyutsu RD Sharma, the Nepalese muse “is in connection with politics” and again, “politics is an axis on which poetry turns.” He sees analogies. Belfast, with its violence, is like Khatmandu. The suppression of Cathal’s Irish language against the encroachment of English colonialism is similar to the Nepali experience of encroachment by corrupt government. I am grateful for a poet who engages with the struggle of the underdog, wherever.
His route to poetry has been an alternative one. At seven years old be became possessed by a snake goddess at a shrine that is a focus of pilgrimage. He was honoured by devotees, even by his own devout father who bowed before his seven year old son. His father wished to give him to the associated monastery but the chief monk advised him to send the child to college. Thus, Yuyutsu RD Sharma received his education and lost his early gift of being a vessel of the goddess. However poetry also is a possession. One has prefigured the other.
Cathal Ó Searcaigh is anticlimactic. How can a man from up the road compare with a Nepali whose literary career has begun with possession by a snake goddess? It would have been wiser for him to have spoken first. He tells of his preoccupation with words and of his gaelic speaking neighbour who had to invent names for new household appliances, names that did not previously exist in the pastoral gaelic language. Fridge became ice trunk, vacuum cleaner, a whirlwind brush. Ah. The moment of engagement as the pastoral tongue conftonts globalization. His poetry is for reading aloud so that it can create the sense of incantation that is at the heart of poetry. Cantrach, in the gaelic. Chanted too, in Nepali, Yuyutsu RD Sharma interposes, operating on the human nervous system, in the manner of a mantra which is the utterance of one full breath, eventually instigating tranquility. Tranquillity?
Yuyutsu RD Sharma and Cathal Ó Searchaigh engage in mutual translations. Both are bestsellers in Khatmandu. A gaelic poet needs translation, the imprimatur of English, Cathal notes. Presumably the same applies to the Nepalese poets. Cathal Ó Searcaigh’s career is almost contemporaneous with my own. He was influenced by a teacher who read an extract from Hilaire Belloc. “What do you think of that?” the teacher asked, creating a seminal event for the young Sharkey who awakened to the beauty of language. Then there was Yevteshenko’s “A Precocious Autobiography” and the Liverpool poets. Ah yes, the beat poets. Our generation. I wanted your soft verges and you gave me your hard shoulder. Motorway poem. Ah, memory.
Another epiphany was when Cathal realized he must write in his own language. It happened in a pub in Cricklewood where he read Derek Mahon and learned what is meant by the word home. Irish can be loud and rhetorical. It allows amplification of utterance. In English yu have to turn the volume down. In Irish you can write in the manner of the eighteenth century and still be contemporary.
Yuyutsu RD Sharma interposes. Translation, he belives, should be a recreation of the poem, not a literal translation. The poem becomes something new in its transition from one language to another, becoming partly the creation of the translator.
There is a pause. The beautiful boy stands and I realise that the visit of the poets is over.
Faith O'Grady, Lisa Richards Agency, Dublin
08/02/2007
Faith O’Grady spoke on publishing, book selling, the role of an agent and how to present work to an agent.
Discounting practices by book sellers have impacted hugely on publishing and the impact has been negative, reducing the risks that publishers are prepared to take. Discounting also affects an author’s royalties. It is important that an author check contracts to ensure that royalties are paid on a percentage of list price (7.5% – 10%) rather than on net receipts (17.5% – 20%). Net receipts are on discounted books and so the author receives much less money.
Publishers will focus on a few books and give them maximum publicity, promoting them at book trade events and paying for prominent shelf space in book shops.
Because of narrowing profit margins, publishers are heavily influenced by trends in reader tastes. Currently popular trends themes are historical fiction, death, horror, supernatural. Also, the short story collection is back in vogue.
Because of the cutting back of costs in publishing houses, copy editors no longer copy edit. They are involved in producing and selling the book and the editorial role has reverted to the book agent who, if the book has potential, will advise the writer and edit the book before presenting it to one publisher or to several, by auction and negotiate the best advance.
To get an agent, check books of the same genre as one’s own, check acknowledgements which often indicate agent, and make contact, initially by telephone in order to get name of person to whom the book should be sent along with any other relevant information about presenting the book. An initial submission should be a covering letter which includes a brief CV of relevant detail and, for fiction, a synopsis of about one and a half pages, to give an overall sense of what the story is about and 3 – 4 chapters; or, for non-fiction, a proposal, sample chapter and chapter outline for the whole book. If interested the agent will ask to see the whole book. Do not bind the full manuscript.
The covering letter, as well as indicating what the book is about should say what makes it unique and include anything relevant about yourself, eg your Queens MA Creative Writing course.
Include reviews of your work and any testimonials from people who can speak authoritatively about your book. (Not your mother or your best friend)
Polish, control and restraint and essential in a book. Does the person who is writing know what he/she is about? Pay attention to rejects and take on board what they are saying.
Book clubs and big booksellers are hugely influential on what gets published. A good title can sell a book. Bestsellers are High Concept. ie Intriguing, big plot, a twist, accessible. The top 50 selling books make lots of money. The midlist makes some. After that, royalties are small. Bestselling writers are expected to produce two books a year.
Adult Books should be between 60,000 and 120,000 words. Blockbusters are 180,000 approximately.
Faith O’Grady spoke on publishing, book selling, the role of an agent and how to present work to an agent.
Discounting practices by book sellers have impacted hugely on publishing and the impact has been negative, reducing the risks that publishers are prepared to take. Discounting also affects an author’s royalties. It is important that an author check contracts to ensure that royalties are paid on a percentage of list price (7.5% – 10%) rather than on net receipts (17.5% – 20%). Net receipts are on discounted books and so the author receives much less money.
Publishers will focus on a few books and give them maximum publicity, promoting them at book trade events and paying for prominent shelf space in book shops.
Because of narrowing profit margins, publishers are heavily influenced by trends in reader tastes. Currently popular trends themes are historical fiction, death, horror, supernatural. Also, the short story collection is back in vogue.
Because of the cutting back of costs in publishing houses, copy editors no longer copy edit. They are involved in producing and selling the book and the editorial role has reverted to the book agent who, if the book has potential, will advise the writer and edit the book before presenting it to one publisher or to several, by auction and negotiate the best advance.
To get an agent, check books of the same genre as one’s own, check acknowledgements which often indicate agent, and make contact, initially by telephone in order to get name of person to whom the book should be sent along with any other relevant information about presenting the book. An initial submission should be a covering letter which includes a brief CV of relevant detail and, for fiction, a synopsis of about one and a half pages, to give an overall sense of what the story is about and 3 – 4 chapters; or, for non-fiction, a proposal, sample chapter and chapter outline for the whole book. If interested the agent will ask to see the whole book. Do not bind the full manuscript.
The covering letter, as well as indicating what the book is about should say what makes it unique and include anything relevant about yourself, eg your Queens MA Creative Writing course.
Include reviews of your work and any testimonials from people who can speak authoritatively about your book. (Not your mother or your best friend)
Polish, control and restraint and essential in a book. Does the person who is writing know what he/she is about? Pay attention to rejects and take on board what they are saying.
Book clubs and big booksellers are hugely influential on what gets published. A good title can sell a book. Bestsellers are High Concept. ie Intriguing, big plot, a twist, accessible. The top 50 selling books make lots of money. The midlist makes some. After that, royalties are small. Bestselling writers are expected to produce two books a year.
Adult Books should be between 60,000 and 120,000 words. Blockbusters are 180,000 approximately.
Wisdom of the Greats
Today I am going to start sharing with you and posterity the wisdom of the great and the mighty in the field of writing who shared their knowledge and experience with me, during my student days, only last year, it seems a lifetime away, in the Seamus Heaney Centre in QUB where all the new buildings and cutting edge ideas are called Seamus.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Edward Dundas finds God in 1079 words
“Do you know God?” the preacher asked at the riverside on Sunday afternoon and Edward Dundas could not honestly say that he did. Upstream the river cascaded under a bridge and flowed noisily past back gardens on one side of the village but down here in the riv
er bottoms it moved sluggishly, flooding its rushy banks and submerging low lying winter meadows. Edward followed the river downstream from the village that Sunday afternoon to the field where a congregation gathered to listen to a tramp preacher who came to call them to salvation. “Do you know God?” the preacher asked and Edward knew that he did not.
For five years he had served his time, diligently and honestly, to Mr Bert Johnston, grocer and general merchant of Derrygonnelly. Mr and Mrs Johnston were satisfied with his hard work and good character. “A young man who has passed through a village as sinful as Derrygonnelly without a stain on his character is a young man who can go anywhere,” Mrs Johnston said. It was the day Mr Johnston announced that Edward, having served his time satisfactorily, would in future receive a wage of seven shillings a week.
But was it enough to be blameless? Was that enough to secure salvation? Edward asked the rector of the village church. “You think too deeply,” the rector said. “Why don’t you buy yourself a raquet and join the badminton club? Thursday night. Eight o’clock in the hall. You’ll meet other young people. That will keep you from brooding.”
Edward bought a raquet and a pair of white canvas shoes. He quickly mastered the art of sending a shuttlecock flying over a net and was soon being invited to partner various young ladies to play foursomes. However his misgivings persisted.
He would have asked Mr Johnston for advice except that he doubted Mr Johnston knew the road to salvation. He was a God fearing Presbyterian who read daily in his Bible and rarely missed church on Sunday but he had the defect, common among businessmen, that he kept religious belief separate from his business practices. Edward could not have accused Mr Johnston of dishonest dealing yet it was on his instructions that he filled tea and sugar into bags before weighing them so that paper bags could be sold at the same price per pound as tea and sugar. When farmers’ wives came into the shop to sell their butter, Mr Johnston directed Edward to unwrap butter from its wrapping of greaseproof paper wrapping and place it into a clean dish that weighed five and a half ounces. When the weight of the dish was subtracted from the total weight of butter and dish, Mr Johnston paid for the exact weight of butter, but not for any weight of greaseproof paper.
Mrs Johnston was generally called into the shop at that point, to taste the butter. If it was tainted or tasted of a poorly scalded churn, there was a deduction of a penny from the price per pound. In wintertime butter was pale because cows were being foddered with hay instead of grazing on grass and there was a further deduction of a halfpenny per pound from housewives who neglected to add grated carrot to the churn to colour the butter. It might have been a fair and honest arrangement if the selling price reflected these deductions but it did not. Instead, the butter was stacked indiscriminately on a slate slab in the cool store and customers paid the same price for butter, no matter what its colour or taste.
Besides Mr Johnston and Mrs Johnston were worldly. Mr Johnston came from behind the counter to greet customers who were wealthy and proud. Mrs Johnston mocked the poverty of women from the thatched cottages on the edge of the village who sometimes asked for a loaf of bread or two ounces of tea on account. When Mr Johnston caught Edward lending a shilling out of his own pocket to a woman who came with a raggle taggle of children hanging at her skirts to ask for credit, he took him aside and reprimanded him. “Don’t encourage the likes of them. If it gets out that you’ve lent that one a shilling we’ll be overrun with the whole trash of the countryside. We don’t want that, do we?”
Perhaps not. Nevertheless, Edward felt it was not how Jesus Christ would have run a general grocery and hardware store.
Each night he knelt at his bedside in the small back bedroom he occupied above the store and asked God to reveal himself. Night after night God ignored his request. December came and he worked late in the shop, wrapping Christmas gifts for giving to customers. He used colourful Christmas paper to wrap tins of biscuits for superior customers. They were people who spent money thoughtlessly on luxuries such as canned sardines or jars of chutney or exotic fruits and ginger crystallized and packed in pretty boxes. He used plain white paper to make up pokes of sweets for the farmers’ wives who came to the shop to buy tea, sugar and flour, the things that they could not produce themselves, on their farms. Mr and Mrs Johnston said goodnight and went to bed but Edward decided to work until midnight, when the Sabbath would begin.
Although he was tired when at last he went upstairs, he did not forget to kneel in prayer at his bedside. It was the night of solstice, the darkest hour of the deep midnight of the year. To Edward it seemed that his soul struggled against a darkness deeper than the night. What if he were to die in that moment? What if he died without ever knowing God? “Help me,” he called out, forgetful of Mr and Mrs Johnston alseep in the front bedroom. “Lord help me,” he cried aloud out of the dark loneliness of his soul.
A voice answered. It said, “Come to me.”
“Lord?” Edward trembled. He did not dare raise his bowed head.
“Come, my son,” the voice said.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Light filled the small back bedroom. Edward raised his head and looked at the light. It poured over him like a baptism and God took possession of his heart. “Do you know me now?” God asked.
“Yes, Lord, I know you.”
For five years he had served his time, diligently and honestly, to Mr Bert Johnston, grocer and general merchant of Derrygonnelly. Mr and Mrs Johnston were satisfied with his hard work and good character. “A young man who has passed through a village as sinful as Derrygonnelly without a stain on his character is a young man who can go anywhere,” Mrs Johnston said. It was the day Mr Johnston announced that Edward, having served his time satisfactorily, would in future receive a wage of seven shillings a week.
But was it enough to be blameless? Was that enough to secure salvation? Edward asked the rector of the village church. “You think too deeply,” the rector said. “Why don’t you buy yourself a raquet and join the badminton club? Thursday night. Eight o’clock in the hall. You’ll meet other young people. That will keep you from brooding.”
Edward bought a raquet and a pair of white canvas shoes. He quickly mastered the art of sending a shuttlecock flying over a net and was soon being invited to partner various young ladies to play foursomes. However his misgivings persisted.
He would have asked Mr Johnston for advice except that he doubted Mr Johnston knew the road to salvation. He was a God fearing Presbyterian who read daily in his Bible and rarely missed church on Sunday but he had the defect, common among businessmen, that he kept religious belief separate from his business practices. Edward could not have accused Mr Johnston of dishonest dealing yet it was on his instructions that he filled tea and sugar into bags before weighing them so that paper bags could be sold at the same price per pound as tea and sugar. When farmers’ wives came into the shop to sell their butter, Mr Johnston directed Edward to unwrap butter from its wrapping of greaseproof paper wrapping and place it into a clean dish that weighed five and a half ounces. When the weight of the dish was subtracted from the total weight of butter and dish, Mr Johnston paid for the exact weight of butter, but not for any weight of greaseproof paper.
Mrs Johnston was generally called into the shop at that point, to taste the butter. If it was tainted or tasted of a poorly scalded churn, there was a deduction of a penny from the price per pound. In wintertime butter was pale because cows were being foddered with hay instead of grazing on grass and there was a further deduction of a halfpenny per pound from housewives who neglected to add grated carrot to the churn to colour the butter. It might have been a fair and honest arrangement if the selling price reflected these deductions but it did not. Instead, the butter was stacked indiscriminately on a slate slab in the cool store and customers paid the same price for butter, no matter what its colour or taste.
Besides Mr Johnston and Mrs Johnston were worldly. Mr Johnston came from behind the counter to greet customers who were wealthy and proud. Mrs Johnston mocked the poverty of women from the thatched cottages on the edge of the village who sometimes asked for a loaf of bread or two ounces of tea on account. When Mr Johnston caught Edward lending a shilling out of his own pocket to a woman who came with a raggle taggle of children hanging at her skirts to ask for credit, he took him aside and reprimanded him. “Don’t encourage the likes of them. If it gets out that you’ve lent that one a shilling we’ll be overrun with the whole trash of the countryside. We don’t want that, do we?”
Perhaps not. Nevertheless, Edward felt it was not how Jesus Christ would have run a general grocery and hardware store.
Each night he knelt at his bedside in the small back bedroom he occupied above the store and asked God to reveal himself. Night after night God ignored his request. December came and he worked late in the shop, wrapping Christmas gifts for giving to customers. He used colourful Christmas paper to wrap tins of biscuits for superior customers. They were people who spent money thoughtlessly on luxuries such as canned sardines or jars of chutney or exotic fruits and ginger crystallized and packed in pretty boxes. He used plain white paper to make up pokes of sweets for the farmers’ wives who came to the shop to buy tea, sugar and flour, the things that they could not produce themselves, on their farms. Mr and Mrs Johnston said goodnight and went to bed but Edward decided to work until midnight, when the Sabbath would begin.
Although he was tired when at last he went upstairs, he did not forget to kneel in prayer at his bedside. It was the night of solstice, the darkest hour of the deep midnight of the year. To Edward it seemed that his soul struggled against a darkness deeper than the night. What if he were to die in that moment? What if he died without ever knowing God? “Help me,” he called out, forgetful of Mr and Mrs Johnston alseep in the front bedroom. “Lord help me,” he cried aloud out of the dark loneliness of his soul.
A voice answered. It said, “Come to me.”
“Lord?” Edward trembled. He did not dare raise his bowed head.
“Come, my son,” the voice said.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Light filled the small back bedroom. Edward raised his head and looked at the light. It poured over him like a baptism and God took possession of his heart. “Do you know me now?” God asked.
“Yes, Lord, I know you.”
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