WORLD BOOK DAY WINNER

The names in the cup

 And the winner is:

Congrats, Pamela!! Please send me your address to nuala at nualanichonchuir dot com and I will send on your signed copy of The Juno Charm.

WORLD BOOK DAY GIVEAWAY!

Happy World Book Day, everyone!

I hope you all manage to do something to celebrate books today. For my own contribution I am giving away a copy of The Juno Charm, my new collection of poetry.

Just leave a comment saying you want to be in the draw in the comments box. If you don't say it, you won't be in! I will post to anywhere in the world. Draw tomorrow.

Good luck!

'NEW TRICKS WITH MATCHES' - LIT COMPS

Fiction judge, Mary Morrissy

There are two very fine judges for the UCD MA in Creative Writing Anthology Contest: Paul Perry for poetry and Mary Morrissy for fiction. I bought Mary's short story collection A Lazy Eye when I was just starting to write short stories myself and loved it. Mary will be in Arkansas at the International Short Story Conference, which I am also taking part in, so I am looking forward to spending some time with her there.

Here is the info on these two comps:

The annual UCD MA in Creative Writing Anthology Contest is currently accepting submissions. Categories include the short story and poetry, one winner will be chosen from each. The competition is open to ALL writers. Work must be previously unpublished. Entry is online only and the prize is publication.

Closing date: 30th of April 2012

Each winning entry, along with the entrant's short biography will be published in the Class of 2012 anthology New Tricks with Matches which will be distributed at Dublin-area literary events, local bookshops, as well as online. 'There are no requirements as to subject matter, only originality,' the competition organisers say.

Queries: newtrickswithmatches@gmail.com

Short story competition:

Max 2000 words
Entry fee: €7 or two for €10
Unlimited number of entries allowed

Poetry competition:

Max 40 lines
Entry fee: €7 or two for €10
Unlimited number of entries allowed

For more see here.

REVIEW - PICTURES FROM HOPPER

Second Story Sunlight - Edward Hopper

English writer Neil Campbell has many gifts, not least his amazing facility for language. His poetic skills are brought to bear on his latest short fiction collection Pictures from Hopper (Salt, 2011) where almost every sentence has some gem tucked into it – a beautiful word, a startling phrase, a gorgeous image. Campbell’s début collection of stories, Broken Doll, was also published by Salt, in 2007. Two chapbooks of poetry, Birds, (2009) and Bugsworth Diary, (2011) were published by Knives, Forks and Spoons.

Pictures from Hopper is, as you might guess, a collection inspired by Edward Hopper’s paintings. It is peopled with the marginalised and the broken and their lives are mapped out in stunning imagery. Some of these stories are like prose poems where the story lurks in the background. Some of them are a series of linked vignettes. ‘Texas Wildflowers’ describes a group of different women and what they meant to the narrator: Black Eyed Susan played fiddle with the Catoosa Brothers and ‘In the afternoons we’d make love to the sound of freight trains. Once we rolled in a field of bluebonnets.’ Silky Camellia was a ‘crazy fireball’ and ‘in Tijuana her red heels seemed to float over the dust and she was a black fire of oil in the neon heat haze.’ Huisache Daisy was ‘red ray petals on the bed sprawling over cream.’

There is a unity of voice in these stories; each one is different but there is a sort of weary Americana that hangs over everything, they have the stillness and eerie quality of the paintings they bring to life. But they are also packed with compelling and sordid adventures: murder, drinking on a grand scale, illicit love.

Not all of the stories are from Hopper paintings, though his influence may still be there. ‘Why I Don’t Have Love’ is set in Manchester and is mostly in the form of two badly written letters from the narrator’s former lover telling him she is pregnant. The first letter is angry and Campbell doesn’t slip in his portrayal of the voice of this hurt, rejected woman. ‘If YOU don’t like a baby please find someone to adopted them..you have responsible Dave (I’am not joking and it not funny) Now I have an employment benefit and get monet for apartmet too...’. Things get worse for Dave, though, when it turns out the letter writer is also HIV positive.

If there is one fault to be found with Pictures from Hopper, it’s the lack of dialogue in the stories. When Campbell does dialogue he does it well and a bit more of it would be welcome in the dense slices of prose that make up many of these pieces. His first person narratives are often bold and sassy, as in ‘Office at Night’ where Mary Fires is a secretary who needs to keep her ‘blood up’ and this need is fulfilled by the outlaw Clyde, rather than by her boring boss.

Famous Hopper paintings are given the Campbell treatment: ‘Gas’, ‘Second Story Sunlight’, ‘Office at Night’, ‘The Lighthouse at Two Lights’, ‘Nighthawks’ – the results are original and not as you might expect. And herein lies his skill – it takes little to set his imaginative cogs in motion and the results are often beautiful. Raymond Carver said about writing short stories: ‘A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best’. Add a little Hopper to that mix and you have a good Neil Campbell story.

I saw a Hopper painting on my recent trip to Nebraska: ‘Room in New York’ – it was melancholic and hypnotic and that is exactly the mood that Neil Campbell captures in these stories. As a reader, you revel in his language, the mood, and the deep atmosphere that he creates; like Hopper’s paintings, there is an intricacy and a richness to Campbell’s work that is second to none.

As an extra treat, when I was finished reading each story, I googled the Hopper painting it was inspired by, to soak it in. Then I read the story again and the two have now become intertwined in a pleasing way. I recommend this collection to those of you who like a slice of noir wrapped up in gorgeous prose.

*

I previously interviewed Neil Campbell about this collection here. You can buy Pictures from Hopper here.

OF PROOFS AND JOSH RITTER

Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey - Robert Franks

Doing proofs is exhausting but ultimately satisfying. I've just delivered the first set of proofs for Mother America and other stories to my lovely editor, D. You get to knock all the sentences into shape before the MS goes off and is magicked into a book; that's daunting and enjoyable work, I find. I also got to zone in on what particular words were obsessing me over the three years or so that the book was written. In this case 'drear', 'moon', 'swoon' and 'filthy'. Some of them were ditched, naturally.

I always get cold feet about the book at this point. I grump around the place, sure that the whole thing is an absolute dud. Then one story will give me confidence and maybe one more will do the same. That brings a flicker of excitement.

This book is about parents and children. About the awful things they do and say to each other, and about their fierce love. There are lots of mothers and sons trying to figure it all out. The stories are set in Ireland, Paris, New York, Rome, Mexico and beyond.

The designer has been sent the brief for the cover (I can't wait to see what she comes up with) and the blurb is being edited and re-edited. I'm gathering review quotes from previous books too and I'm slowly starting to believe that it's all happening. The same thing with every book - disbelief and tension and, eventually, the finished book.

Mother America and other stories will be published by New Island in May. And I have a new stablemate - the wonderful Josh Ritter. But, of course, he and I are old pals as you'll see from this blog post here :).

Josh's début novel Bright's Passage will appear from New Island in April. Coup!

AIR SCHOONER INTERVIEWS

When I was in Nebraska for the Prairie Schooner launch, Scott Winter of Air Schooner recorded the writers over the course of the few days. I had already been interviewed so he asked me to tell a joke instead. I cannot tell jokes. Luckily the recording was poor so Scott re-told the joke himself :)

The first voice you hear is Schooner editor Kwame Dawes. Have a listen - you'll hear Aidan Rooney reading; then Sandra Bunting at the reception talking about what Ireland means to her and to North Americans; Karen Babine reads part of an essay on Galway, where she lived for six months; last up is Aidan Rooney with an amusing/frightening poem on the Troubles.

CRANNÓG READING & WURM AFTERS

I'll be reading a short story set in Rome, 'From Jesus to the Moon', at the launch of the 29th issue of Crannóg tomorrow night (Friday 24th) in The Crane Bar, Sea Road, Galway. 6.30 - 8.30pm. There will be readings, pints and chat. All welcome!

Wurm director, poet Kit Fryatt

Last night's reading at Wurm in Apfel in Dublin went very well. The Loft Bookshop on Abbey Street is a cosy shop above a bar and I got a warm welcome from Kit Fryatt, who is the woman who puts the worm in the apple of the poetry scene in Ireland.

Poet Natasha Cuddingon

My fellow reader was Canadian writer Natasha Cuddington who lives in Belfast. She read from a haunting poem sequence set in Canada and the USA, which had an intriguing set of characters (Girl, Clyde and Cousin Randall, to name a few). I've been steeped in American language lately, what with being in Nebraska and also devouring the wonderful novel The Help, and I very much enjoyed Natasha's language. Much of the sequence was about cotton pickers and Native Americans and I jotted down a couple of lines that struck me: 'thirteen sharecropper babies, each lucky and unlucky'. Then a Cree man who 'wears the country in his braids'. Beautiful.

The audience. Yes, I am grinning maniacally :)

I have a curious love/hate relationship with doing readings. I dread them and act like a narky witch for hours beforehand but, once I hit the stage, I'm fine. It helps when the audience are receptive and enthused and I had a lovely audience last night (they laughed! they sighed!). Among them were fellow writers and editors Patrick Chapman, Christodoulos Makris, Eimear Ryan, Deirdre O'Neill, John Kenny and his wife Susan Caldwell, and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. I read exclusively from The Juno Charm, which felt neat and uncluttered, rather than the usual fiddling with books and pages. I think I'll do it again!

Meself, reading from The Juno Charm

And, look, I got prezzies: Christodoulos Makris's wonderful collection and a Wurm im Apfel mug - I love mugs:

My prezzies from Wurm!

All in all, a wonderful night and I highly recommend going to Wurm events in The Loft for the convivial atmosphere - where else can you sit in a book shop above a bar and sip beer as you listen to readings? As my Kiwi friends like to say, choice :)