Wisdom from Anne Enright

“I think over the years you realise that your emotions about your work don’t have an awful lot to do with it. They are part of the process, obviously. But you finish the work and it’s shite, and then everybody loves it. Or you think it’s wonderful, and it’s completely ignored. So you learn after a while that whatever you think about the work is a bit like a nervous tic or a spasm of some description, and the work doesn’t care. It’s just sitting there on the page. People will read it whatever way they read it. You have to let that happen.”

I think Anne Enright is a wonderful writer and she comes across as a very down to earth, no bullshit type of person. This quote, which I lifted from last Sunday’s interview in the Sunday Tribune, reconfirms this. I spend a silly amount of time worrying about my work, whether it’s good or bad, if I’m delusional, if I’ll ever be ‘successful’ as a writer (whatever that means). I have had this experience she mentions: the few stories and poems of mine that I am really fond of, no one else ever seems to get them; they are never mentioned to me one way or another. The ones I dislike because they are too light/twee/silly, or seem unfinished/wrong, are the ones I get the most praise for.

I read a very ill-considered review of a friend’s new book and it made me feel annoyed. I don’t think he’s that upset by it, but it upsets me that someone can toss off a few careless, wrong-headed remarks about work that has taken years. My friend’s perspective is probably better than mine. The review is that reviewers opinion. No more, no less. If the work is good, and you know it is good, then that is all that counts.

Tagged - a book meme

Tania Hershman tagged me with a meme. I haven't done one before and I don't think I'll pass on the tag because a) I don't personally know too many bloggers, and b) I don't really want to be tagged back. It's too time consuming! Here it is anyway:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

OK, so here goes:
1. Nearest book is Eithne Strong's Patterns, a short story collection which I dug out of a box of books abandoned in a press, when I was shortlisted for the Strong Award.

2. Page 123 is in the middle of a story called 'The Requiem'.

She wondered had she, hoped she had, wounded him. And almost at once was sorry also. She leaned over him, bending her head down to his but she could not see his face.

Eithne's sentences are short and punchy, aren't they? What's interesting is that it makes you see every word a writer writes when you re-write their sentence. Apparently a lot of wannabe writers re-wrote favourite writers' work 'to see how they do it'. I heard Joseph O'Connor say that at a reading. Also C.K. Williams said he did that when younger to feel like the original poet. Sort of mad but possibly informative?

Cúirt – A Small Review

Living in East Galway, a good distance from the city, plus limited funds and limited babysitters, means I rarely spend more than three days at Cúirt each year. Which of course also means I get to a limited number of events. This year I heard two prose writers and four poets read, as well as spending plenty of hours chatting at the festival club and nosing through Charlie Byrne’s book shop in the Town Hall.


Maria McCann & Mike Mc Cormack, Thursday 24thApril

Maria read four extracts from As Meat Loves Salt her novel set in seventeenth century England. She gave a calm, measured reading and her explanations of the scenes were delivered in a lecture-like way, as if the whole enterprise was an academic project. But the scenes themselves were written in beautiful language and the story was direct and evocative, dealing with drowning, murder, Calvinist musings and gay sex. Maria is from Liverpool (the posh end, clearly) and she was a pleasure to listen to.

Mike read a new story called ‘Drink, Drink-driving, Heart Attacks’; it was a sort of picaresque ramble through a village in West Mayo in the company of two brothers, who lost their father at a young age, and who live in a haze of alcohol, house-building and memory. Not a lot happened in the story, but the audience lapped up (with laughter) the archaic-modern dialogue of the pub-dwellers, particularly. Echoes of Kevin Barry’s work and John McGahern’s, I felt.

Susan Rich & C.K. Williams, Friday 25th April

Susan is from Seattle and has worked supervising elections in Bosnia and also for Amnesty. She read in that slow, deliberate, declamatory style that many American readers favour. The language of her poetry is simple; it’s a prosey-poetry, where it’s hard for the listener to know where lines break, and therefore to hear the music of the poems. Which is fine if you write prose poems but not if the poem is laid out semi-formally. Anyway, she read poetry about Bosnia, mentioning in one poem – where she was being shot at in her hotel – that the shooters fired their rounds to the beat of the song, the Macarena. Bad enough to be shot at…
Regarding the joy of writing and research she said: ‘Poetry is a chance to be nosy about anything you want to be nosy about.’ Yes indeedy!
Susan ended her reading with two moving poems about her deceased parents.

C.K. Williams is a Pulitzer winning New Jerseyite, a gravel-voiced and imposing man. His reading was electric. He reads conversationally and his poems are long, and laced with an effective use of repetition. He struck me as someone who really lives, noticing and giving significance to everything, and engaging with the world. His poem ‘Apes’ recounts his despair with man’s inhumanity to man. His ‘Cassandra Iraq’ does something similar. His stand out poem for me was ‘This Happened’, about the casual suicide of a beautiful young French student, which ends with the line ‘Forever. With grace. This happened’. He told us the rather creepy story that just last week he was reading in Texas and one of his hosts showed him a photo of a girl with ‘Forever. With grace. This happened’ tattooed on her back. He said he still didn’t know what to make of it.


Vona Groarke & Breyten Breytenbach, Saturday 26th April

Vona is from the Irish midlands and teaches in Manchester University. She read some new poems, in the typically shy and friendly delivery of Irish poets. (Irish woman poets?) The new poems were from a sequence called ‘Spindrift’, which, she informed us, is the spray that comes off the crest of a wave. Many of the poems were set in Spiddal, County Galway where the poet has been visiting since she was a child, as many of us have. She then read from her brand new book (published that day!) which is a translation of the moving and sensuous Irish language keen/poem Lament for Art O’Leary. Vona is the latest Irish poet to provide a version for non-Irish readers of Art’s wife’s and his sister’s extemporaneous poem. Vona’s translation is all that it should be: ribald, soft, angry and heartfelt.

Breyten Breytenbach is South African: a poet, prose writer, visual artist and political activist; ‘a genuine post-modern hybrid’ as poet Eva Bourke called him in her introduction. She also called him ‘the only nice South African’, paraphrasing a song from the makers of Spitting Image. His delivery of his work was not as powerful as the work itself, or as his banter between the poems, but it was extraordinary to listen to poems that were written by him in prisons such as the so-called ‘Beverly Hills’, where executions took place once a week. He told us that the prisoners who were to be hanged would sing together for the week before their execution and that he would sit in his cell listening to them singing, then later shuffling past in leg shackles to their deaths. He worried about reading a poem which used the Our Father as it’s structure as ‘Ireland is such a religious place’. That made the audience snigger.

All in all it was yet another very enjoyable Cúirt. It’s impossible to go to everything and dangerous to go to too much, but I always come away feeling respectful and in awe of certain writers; more in love with writing itself; and a little anti-climactical to be home again, away from all the wonderful literary atmosphere, chat and gossip.

Tattoo-Tatú Review

There’s a review of Tattoo-Tatú at Small Press Reviews

Small Press Reviews is an American site providing much needed reviews for books from independent publishers who are, more often than not, ignored by the national papers and magazines.

George Szirtes on Strong Award Reading

The poet George Szirtes writes a daily blog here:

George Szirtes Blog

He too read at Poetry Now and the following is what he had to say about the Strong Award reading:

The young poets prize went to Dave Lordan though my pick would have been Billy Ramsell. Both performed their poems with great gusto but Ramsell seemed to me to have several dimensions to spare: playfulness and tenderness as well as sheer force. I have never loved force in itself. All four poets were good, of course. That goes without saying and includes Nell Regan and Nuala Ní Chonchúir.

I thought Billy would have won too. He's unique and clever and a lovely guy to boot. But, like all shortlists and prizes, it's impossible to predict who'll win. Go and see Billy read / recite next time he performs near you.

Cúirt Festival

The Cúirt International Festival of Literature is fast approaching. It is the highlight of our literary year here in Galway and it runs from Tuesday the 22nd to Sunday the 27th of April. There are a few repeat performances this year – Brian Turner and Ronan Bennett, for example, both return after recent Cúirt visits. Both are well worth hearing, by the way.

My personal choices are short story writer and novelist Mike Mc Cormack on Thursday; poets Susan Rich and C.K. Williams on the Friday; and poets Breyten Breytenbach and Vona Groarke on Saturday afternoon. I’ll report back after the events.

Tickets are in the €5 to €10 range, generally, which is to be welcomed. Some festivals overcharge for sure. Not Cúirt!

See their full programme here:

Cúirt

Strong Reading Review

Writer PJ Nolan has blogged today about the Strong Reading at
PJ Nolan online

I don't know you, but thanks very much, PJ. I feel - and I'm sure my fellow Strongers would agree - it's a very considered review, with a lot of effort gone into listening to each reader.

Calling Emerging Poets!

Here's a great competition for new poets from the ultra hard-working and innovative people at the Munster Literature Centre:

Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition 2008
Prize of US$1000 and publication of chapbook by Southword Editions.
Winner will receive ten author copies.
The winner will be invited to Cork, Ireland for the book launch in February 2009

Entries should be:
3 Copies of 15 page manuscript consisting of either a selection of poems or one long poem of any subject or theme from a poet of any nationality writing in English.
Poems may have been published previously in periodicals or anthologies but not in solo chapbooks or collections.
Entry fee is US$20 or 15 euros.
First 500 entrants will receive by return a free copy of Never Trust Where A Cat Sits by Irene A. Mosvold of Louisville, Kentucky, winner of the inaugural Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition.
Send by October 31st to:

Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition,
The Munster Literature Centre,
Frank O’Connor House,
84 Douglas Street,

Ariel – Sylvia Plath

I’m reading Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. I’ve read it before but I’m kind of coming at it with a lighter mind this time; less expectation, or something. And I’m finding more to like in it

My copy is a beautiful, slim, slate grey Faber edition, with Ariel written in red. A perfectly gorgeous handbag-sized book. I brought it to the swimming pool today while my son was swimming. The other mothers fell away as I fell into Sylvia’s world, where she is ‘cow-heavy’ after giving birth, and her thoughts fly many times over death and her wish to be ‘utterly empty’.

It’s a book that makes me think about lots of things: young mothers and writing; writers who are married to each other; Sylvia herself; Ted and their children; depression and suicide.

I watched the film 'Sylvia' recently; I wouldn’t recommend it, it's very down-beat. Both she and he come off badly, though Gwyneth Paltrow was good in the role. There was no spark between the actors; no lingering on the couple’s early love; it was straight into paranoia and meanness. I think that was an ill-judged move by the film makers. They were two people after all, gifted and in love. So it went wrong. Some people recover from hardships, some don’t.

Poetry vs Fiction Writing

It strikes me that novel writing and editing promotes routine. Whereas poetry and short story writing often do not. For me, anyway. With a novel there’s the sense of having to get back to it, day in, day out. It’s good.
That’s not to say that I don’t get to the desk every day when I’m not working on a novel or short stories; it just seems to keep me concentrating there for long hours, more so than poetry, which is what I am mostly working on these days.
Yes, I sit down every day, but because of the shortened attention span needed, or the flitting back and forth over the work, I have more room in my head for other concerns: the internet, reviewing, submitting work etc.
There’s a sense of ‘full speed ahead’ with longer fiction, whereas poetry seems to promote a gentler work ethic. Still, once I am writing at all, I am happy. I had been thinking for ages what a gift it would be to have the time/headspace just to work on poetry (normally there are so many fictions cluttering up my head.) Now, in my fallow fiction period, I am getting to do just that and it’s interesting. I am embracing it more as time goes on, reading more poetry than ever, writing more than ever in one big push. It’s satisfying and strange to me.

Notice board snippet #4

'Writing - a strange process of anxiety
crowned by pleasure.' Camille Paglia

Poetry Now & Siar Scéal Fests - the aftermath

So Poetry Now was a blast and a whirlwind. RTÉ on Thursday for an interview with the lovely Vincent Woods – he put us four Strong Award ’listees at our ease. We were all still rattling but we did OK.

I had to dash to Roscommon on Friday for a reading at the Siar Scéal Festival in the very posh Clonalis House. A lovely night of poetry and harp, monologues and local history. And what a house. I have extreme delusions of grandeur and could definitely see myself living there…

Back to Dublin then for more Poetry Now. Dinner at the same table as Séamus Heaney, while chatting to George Szirtes and Mimi Khalvati – it doesn’t happen every day! They were all lovely. Also bumped into Colm Tóibín and I muttered how much I had been moved by his story ‘Donal Webster’, then I scuttled off.

Henri Cole was a wonderful reader: clear and engaging, with a slant view in his work. By all accounts Daljit Nagra stole the show at his reading.

Dave Lordan won the Strong Award, with his book The Boy in the Ring. Big congrats to him. It was a relief when it was over – the pre-reading/award nerves are the worst. I turn into a devil. Afterwards I have a personality transplant!

Back at the desk now and glad to be; this is what it is truly all about: the serenity of my study.

THE SHORT REVIEW - APRIL ISSUE

The latest issue of The Short Review is live.
The Best of Best American Erotica is under review and there's also a review of Karen Russell's collection, which I really disliked (the book, that is, not the review.)

Our own Patrick Chapman - wonderful poet, short fiction and screen writer - is reviewed and interviewed.

Check it out: SHORT REVIEW - APRIL

We are chicks, hear us cluck

Anyone who knows me knows that I hate chick lit. It’s not just the predictable fluffiness of it all that I can’t stand; it’s the conformity of the characters. They are the literary equivalent to everything that’s wrong with the new breed of women in Ireland: Californian tans, enormous jeeps, tacky waggy-style dressing, complete vacuousness, anorexic thinness etc. It’s all so insulting to women writers and to women in general. And what’s worse is you are seen as a jealous whinger if you say anything about it. It’s meant to be ‘all girls together’, as if we are all still 14 and all cut from the same cloth. I don’t want to be with those girls, and I never did!

But Liam Fay – the extraordinarily brilliant Liam Fay – put it better than I ever could in the Sunday Times last week-end. He was talking about a TV programme but he was using the analogy of chick-lit:

“Chick lit is not a victimless crime. Apologists for the publishing world’s most formulaic genre – modern fairy tales for grown women – claim that these starry-eyed novels are a harmless brand of escapism for the sluggardly feminine mind, posing no threat to those people who choose not to read them. In reality, however, the noxious effects of chick lit are not confined to its immediate consumers…’

He’s talking about TV programmes, I would argue that every bus stop, book shop and newsagent I go into is dripping with pink covers with inane titles such as ‘When the Going Gets Tough, Get a Man Quick’. Etc. And our TOP publishers are the ones who encourage this nonsense. But, of course, all they want is cash. I know that. And chick lit, if it does anything, sells in bucket loads. But, so will good literature if it is marketed to the hilt.

Liam Fay again: “Chick lit isn’t so much a literary style as an ideology, It amounts to repeated exclamation of the slogan ‘Aren’t girls great!’. The juvenile and fundamentally silly nature of this sorority cheerleading is especially ironic given that the genre purports to tell stories about independent, smart, grown-up women.”

This is the problem. For every chick lit confection that is belched from a publisher in the name of Irish women’s writing (God save us), there is a good, intelligent woman writer who is not getting published. I resent that ‘Irish woman writer’ has become synonymous with chick lit. One of our own has just won the Man Booker, for God’s sake! Now, Anne Enright is a REAL Irish woman writer. And she is not an anomaly. There are dozens of women writers in this country writing intelligent characters within multi-layered, wry, sensual fiction: not all of us write chick lit nor do we read it. There are many women with small publishers, or still trying to get work out there.

Readers will read literary fiction by women if those books are published and promoted. If they are not available to readers, or if they don’t know about them, they won’t buy them. After all, the book-buying public will only buy what they are sold.

Siar Scéal Festival

The Siar Scéal festival takes place this week-end in Castlerea. It's billed as is "a Historical and Literary, Bilingual Festival inspired by the culture and heritage of Roscommon's River Basins."
Those of you in the midlands, who are not off to Dublin for the Poetry Now Festival, might like to take a look.

I'll be at both, racing up and down the country like a yo-yo!

Their site:

SIAR SCÉAL