YEATS SUMMER SCHOOL - WATCHFUL HEART LAUNCH

I'm reading tomorrow night at the swish Glasshouse Hotel in Sligo at the Yeats Summer School launch of The Watchful Heart. (How many links can I fit in one sentence?!)

The anthology, edited by Joan McBreen, is a useful snapshot of contemporary Irish poetry. Not all the poets are Salmon poets (I'm not!), so it is not as restrictive as some anthologies which are press-specific. All the poets are under fifty and there are essays and poems from each contributor, so it gives a particular look at Irish poetry and poetics.

Also reading are: Mary Montague, Kate Newmann, Paul Perry and Joseph Woods.

My essay is entitled 'The Art of the Body: poem as female self-portrait'.

Venue: The Glasshouse Hotel, Sligo

Time: 6.30pm, Thursday 30th July

MAN BOOKER LONGLIST 2009

Irish interest on the Man Booker Dozen list - always fun! William Trevor and Colm Tóibín have both been longlisted with their novels Love and Summer and Brooklyn respectively. Go n-éirí an bóthar leo.

Addendum: Eimear has pointed out that Ed O'Loughlin is also Irish. Great! Three Irish writers in the dozen. Not bad at all!

More here.

BROUGHT TO BOYLE

I had a great time in Boyle, despite turning up at the wrong venue for my own reading...In fairness to me, I was sent to the wrong place by a local. Apparently there are several Protestant churches in Boyle. I was rescued by an audience member who had also turned up at the wrong church.

The audience was select (meaning small) but they were friendly, enthused and welcoming. I enjoyed doing the reading - I don't always - so that was good. One of my new poems, about pregnancy, got its own separate round of applause which was lovely.

It was Baby Juno's first poetry reading - (my 2 boys generally steer clear; after years of readings, they've had enough). Juno, very co-operatively, fell asleep.

The Arts Festival is vast and they have two stunning art exhibitions on - one featuring locals, the other one featuring professionals at King House. Well worth a look here.

Boyle itself is a small market town, buzzing with life and history. It has lots of brilliant old shopfronts and window displays - I took a few pics (above - click to see bigger). I love seeing towns retaining these great pieces of our vernacular - they're so important. Maybe now that the Celtic Tiger has run off, we'll be more inclined to value what we have.

WILLESDEN HERALD COMP 2009

The good people at the Willesden Herald are at it again. The 2009 short story comp opens on the 1st of September. In their characteristic open style, they are allowing writers to give feedback on their new set of rules, which include:

Entry fee: £3

Winners: Ten shortlisted, one winner and two equal runners up

Prizes: priceless mug plus £300 for winning entry and 2 x £150 for the runners-up

Judge: Richard Peabody

They guarantee to choose prizewinners - unlike before when they reserved the right not to choose a winner - from a shortlist of at least ten.

Ten stories will be published in their anthology which will have a London launch

They say: "What do you think? Let us know (info [at] newshortstories . com). There is still a little time for the new rules to be finalised and published before the opening date of 1 September 2009."

More here at he Herald's blog.

READING & NUDE

I'm reading this Saturday the 25th July at Boyle Arts Festival, Boyle, County Roscommon. I will do a bilingual poetry reading as the emphasis on Saturday at the fest is all things Irish.

Venue: Presbyterian Church, Boyle

Time: 4pm

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My new short fiction collection Nude arrived yesterday from Salt. Wow. It's surreal: after three years of writing, one year of submitting, six months of tightening and proofing etc, to finally have the finished book in my paw. I'm proud of it. Am I allowed a little pride?! Pride is a very un-Irish (lapsed) Catholic thing. Not allowed. (Or maybe it's very Irish lapsed Catholic?!)

Anyway, although publication date is September the 1st, it appears to be already available to buy from Salt's site here for the bargain price of Stg £7.19. Sure who'd be without it?

Now I have to get cracking on the promotional side of things. I have 2 launches organised, 1 launch in the process of being organised, 1 workshop & 6 readings coming up. I am determinded that this book will sell, sell, sell and that Salt will therefore keep me in their stable of writers. Here's hoping!

FRANK MCCOURT - R.I.P.

The lovely Frank McCourt died last night in New York. He was by all accounts a fantastic teacher and he was certainly a gifted writer. I'm glad to hear a high school in New York will be named after him.

If any of you haven't yet read his Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Angela's Ashes, do read it - it's hilarious and heartbreaking. Not many books make you laugh and cry but I guarantee this one will; whole scenes and characters from the book have stayed and stayed with me. Frank famously and wittily said about his Limerick upbringing: "Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

He signed our copy of the book in Kenny's in Galway when he was here promoting it. My fifteen-year-old son was about three when we met Frank and he held a sweet conversation with Cúán, asking him if he liked eating bacon, cabbage and spuds. Cúán said, emphatically, 'No! Chips!'

Sympathies to Frank's wife Ellen, his daughter, brother Malachy and all their family. A sad day for them and the literary world too.

Irish Times report here.

FEEDING BABY POEMS

In the tradition of mother-writers making poems about baby feeding - writers like Eavan Boland and Sylvia Plath - I've written a poem about feeding my new baby. I don't usually put my stuff up here but what the hey, it's small and simple.

Here are extracts from Eavan's 'Night Feed' and Sylvia's 'Morning Song' first - such beautiful poems:

From 'Night Feed':

"I crook the bottle.
How you suckle!
This is the best I can be,
Housewife
To this nursery
Where you hold on,
Dear life.

A silt of milk.
The last suck
And now your eyes are open,
Birth-coloured and offended.
Earth wakes.
You go back to sleep.
The feed is ended."

From 'Morning Song':

"One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons."

And here's my poem:

Nightfeed

I elbow-cradle her plump
she grunts and guzzles,
unsuckles, then surveys me
with one squint eye.

A pearl of milk slips
from nipple to lips
into the oyster of her ear;
she smiles and re-nuzzles.

WOW! goes from online to print mag

Bucking the trends, Galway-based ezine WOW! (Words on the Web) will be a print mag from Spring 2010 and its contents will consist of the best entries for the WOW! Awards.

Other than publication, I see no mention of prize money for the WOW! Awards but I'll contact the organisers and ask, and update this anon.*

The WOW! Awards are for both poetry and fiction.
The first print edition of WOW! will appear in the spring of 2010 and will feature the three WOW! Award Winners in both categories plus 7 runners-up.
You could be in it!
The closing date for entries for a WOW! Award is September 1st 2009.

Rules

Poetry: maximum number of lines 50
Fiction: maximum number of words 3000

Entries by email as a MS Word attachment to wowaward@wordsontheweb.net
Or by post to: WOW! Award, Six San Antonio Park, Salthill, Galway, Ireland.

Entry Fee

Poetry: €5 per poem Two Poems €8 Three Poems €10
Fiction €10 per story Two Stories €16 Three Stories €20

More here.

* Update: prize is publication.

WE'RE WET AND DRY AT INDIEOMA

Over at Indieoma this week we're talking Wet and Dry. Only most of us are talking wet... as Johnny Others, one of our editors, points out:

"Maybe it's because water makes up 65-80% of a human body, represents around 75% of the world's surface, helps to create the most far-out forests, or simply the fact that (to our knowledge) life is impossible without it; Indieoma invites you to share our excitement at a decidedly moist feature."

I have three soggy poems here. I live in Galway for God's sake - all we know is the wet!

MY TEMPLAR POETRY PAMPHLET

The four winners of the 2009 Templar Poetry & Collection Competition were announced last night and I'm one of them. Yay! Tim Liardet was the judge, so thanks goes to him. (I've been keeping this under my hat for 6 weeks on instruction from the organisers - not easy for a blabber mouth like me!)

How I love pamphlets and chapbooks and I am thrilled to be one of the winners in this competition. My pamphlet is called Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car and the image above is the cover art. Cool! It's appropriate on two leverls: obviously the title poem but there is also a poem called 'Woman and Cosmetics' that mentions 5 different red lipsticks. I love the way they got that in to the design.

I really admire the way Templar produce their pamphlets - the quality is superb: they are proper little books with French flaps and a spine. I have a couple of last year's winners - Siobhán Campbell and Maggie O'Dwyer's ones - and I had poems in their Buzz anthology, which was really what prompted me to enter again this year, with a whole new set of poems.

My fellow winners - congrats to them - are:

Paul Maddern with Kelpdings

David Morley with The Rose of the Moon

Dawn Wood with Connoiseur

The pamphlets will be launched at the Derwent Poetry Festival in October or early November.

SOUTHWORD 16 ONLINE NOW

Munster Lit have made the transfer online with Southword and Issue 16 is available now here. In the editorial Patrick Cotter says: "The word as visual symbol is on the move again, this time from paper and ink to ether and binary code. Acid-free paper is potentially more durable than the internet and one risks the possibility that future generations will learn more about us from our books than from our internet traces. Yet the new technology has its advantages in the here and now."

The magazine looks clean and clear, like the print edition always did & is full of interesting work. I have a Paris-inspired poem here in the issue. Not that I'm saying my poem is spectacularly interesting...though it is to me...oh, just go and read the issue. And submit poems only until September. Subs guides on the site.

POETS CORNER ON THE DART - CALL FOR SUBS

For over 22 years Poets’ Corner has been a regular feature on all DART trains, bringing poetry to the train-going public. To mark the ongoing success of Poets’ Corner, Iarnród Éireann is inviting submissions for a poetry competition.

I had the poem above in Poets' Corner last year (click on it to see it better). I loved the idea of my poem being unleashed on weary commuters and general travellers.

The competition is specifically looking for train related poems so if you have one lurking in your pile of unpublished poems, get it out. Or if you can write to order, get cracking!

Length of poem:
No longer than 19 lines, including line spaces, e.g. four four-line stanzas, 19 lines with no spaces, and so on.

Deadline for entries:
Submissions must be sent by post only to DART Poets’ Corner Competition, P.O. Box No. 16127, Dublin 2 no later than 14 August 2009.

Prize:
The three winning poems will be awarded a prize of €500 each and they will be displayed on trains and on station platforms for thousands of DART travellers to enjoy.

More on the rules and regs here.

STONY THURSDAY - CALL FOR POEMS

The Stony Thursday Book is calling for submissions from local, national and international poets for the next issue which will be published in Limerick as part of Cuisle, Limerick City International Poetry Festival in October 2009.

This year the editor will be Ciaran O’Driscoll.

Poetry submissions are now being accepted for issue No. 8 which will be published in October 2009.

Closing date: August 10th 2009.

How to submit:

Send no more than 6 poems

When submitting poems, write your name and address on each page.

Send poems by post to :

The Arts Service, Limerick City Council, City Hall, Merchant’s Quay, Limerick

Please mark your envelope : The Stony Thursday Book

Please enclose a self-addressed envelope if you wish to have the poems returned

Or by email : artsoffice@limerickcity.ie

Telephone : 061 407363 or 061 407421

QUOTABLE QUOTES - SHORT FICTION

What does the word "story" mean to you?

"A story is something which wobbles reality, affects a change in the reader, shakes things enough that we see anew. I do not much care for the American style 'condensed novel' sometimes called a short-story. Shortness (under 10K) is not my definition of a short story. A short-story should, I think, have poetic elements and should think of itself as an extended poem, not necessarily poetically languaged but trying to unseat the reader, with a single insight, a beautiful phrase or the perfectly placed punctuation mark."

Alex Keegan, author of Ballistics, interviewed in July's Short Review.

MY GUEST BLOG AT PETINA GAPPAH'S

I am a guest blogger today (my first time!) on the amazing Petina Gappah's site. Petina was just this week shortlisted for the €35,000 Cork City Frank O'Connor Award for her début short fic collection from Faber An Elegy for Easterly.

On Petina's website she has a Proust questionnaire and her answer to the question 'What do you most admire in a woman?' is:
'A good sense of humour, especially the ability to laugh at herself. Kindness, integrity and elegance.' I like that. And what does she most admire in a man?
'A good sense of humour, especially the ability to laugh at himself. Kindness, courage and integrity.' Interesting!

Anyhoo, see my post on Ms Gappah's site, about the notorious pram in the hall, here.