POETRY COMP - GALWAY WRITERS

Pic from Galway.net

Galway resident writers are being invited to enter a poetry competition with the theme Eyre Square.

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill will judge and the prizes include €1000 first prize and residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and Áras Éanna on Inis Oírr.

Closing date: 20th September 2009

Entries to: Eyre Square Poetry Competition, Arts Office, City Hall, College Road, Galway.

Winners will be announced on All Ireland Poetry Day, 1st October.

TOO MUCH CRAFT?

In The Fix Marion Arnott reviews Issue 2 of The Yellow Room in which I have a story. She gives mini-reviews of all the stories in the issue. For my story ‘The Ouse’s Call’, she quotes a line and says it ‘whispered too much craft’. I read that, felt mildly irritated and wondered, of course, if it were true.

I took the comment to mean that the writing was too purple, too worked-on. ‘The Ouse’s Call’ is about Virginia Woolf’s last days and her death by drowning in the river Ouse. I originally wrote the story as a radio play featuring a disaffected woman who lived beside the river in which she planned to drown herself. I rewrote it as a story featuring Virginia, because I liked it and didn’t want to dump it when I decided it wasn’t working as a radio play.

The river is the star of the story, really, and the descriptions of it were based on the river Liffey, on top of which I grew up. The Liffey and other rivers feature strongly in my writing and I love describing river water and coming up with new ways of doing just that.

So, yes, I employed a lot of craft in the descriptions of the river in ‘The Ouse’s Call’. I didn’t labour over it and I didn’t work and re-work the wording as I wrote, most of it arrived fully formed and was edited many times, because that’s the way I work.

As a reader, I love crafted, ornate prose; prose that tells me the writer is in love with words and language. I adore the writing of Annie Proulx and John Banville who both employ rich, intricate language, and more recently Wells Tower’s staggeringly beautifully written stories. I enjoy their type of writing more than I like the spare, elegant prose of, say, Colm Tóibín or Jhumpa Lahiri. I like what the latter do but I love sparky, interesting prose more. Maybe it’s because I also love poetry and poets are the most playful of writers when it comes to words.

Is the writing ‘too crafted’ in my story about Virginia Woolf? Is it overdone? Maybe it is - it’s not for me to say. I just know that I always prefer unusual words to ordinary ones and the crafted writing of the Proulxs, Banvilles and Towers is what makes me, as a reader, gasp with delight.

NUDE NOT NAKED TOUR

I kick off my virtual tour for my new short fiction collection Nude on publication day, the 1st of September. That's next Tuesday - woo! I'm starting and ending the tour in the Antipodes, so it's a proper world tour, dontchaknow.

Here's the list of stops - do toddle by and leave a comment at the various blogs which are so kindly hosting me.

1st Sep Rachel Fenton
8th Sep Tania Hershman
15th Sep Colm Keegan
22nd Sep Sara Crowley
29th Sep Barbara Smyth

6th Oct Petina Gappah
13th Oct Dawn Rennert
20th Oct Johanna C. Leahy
27th Oct Vanessa Gebbie
3rd Nov Sylvia Petter

Women Who Changed Literature Course

Some Blind Alleys, the online journal of new Irish writing and visual art, are running an interesting new course called Women Who Changed Literature this autumn.

From their site:
"This course is for students interested in reading the work of pioneering, rebellious, and dissident women writers, from the early revolutionary writings of Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf to the more recent work of Lesley Marmon Silko, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jamaica Kincaid, and many more."

Tutor: American scholar Bernadette Smyth
Starts: Wednesday, September 30th (runs for ten weeks)
Venue: in Dublin's City Centre - TBC
Cost: €350

FLAT LAKE 2009

Festival Dad and Baby Juno - The Butty Barn

My wellies are mucky, my cardigan has straw stuck to it and my picnic blanket is sopping wet. There were Poetry Divas and Chicks; there was short story master Mike McCormack, and opera singing novelist Judith Mok. There was pig-roasting and straw-bale throwing.

Another Flat Lake Festival over, sadly, and it was the usual mix of literature, music, fun and art. There’s a homemade feel to Flat Lake – it’s rough around the edges – and that’s why it’s so special. All the adults get to dress like kids again, in wellies, woollies and raincoats and we get to kick around in tents and mud and hay. There are oodles of beautiful, guileless children with choppy haircuts there each year, dancing unselfconsciously to the bands, heckling the performers with innocent questions: ‘Why is your guitar so small?’ to Little John Nee and his ukulele, for example.


Prufrock Liz Gallagher


Prufrock Jaki McCarrick

Our performance as the Prufrock Poets in the Theatre Tent went down a treat; we were late starting and a famous person was scheduled for after us – Keith Allen doing Harold Pinter – so while we started with a sizable audience, we ended up with a huge one. Score!


Prufrock Mary Mullen

I know my fellow Prufrocks – Liz, Mary, Barbara and Jaki – as on-the-page or workshop poets mostly, so it was a treat to hear them perform their work. The audience – like all Flat Lake audiences – were enthusiastic, warm and ‘vocal’ with their applause. It was a great gig and we all were pleased afterwards. Juno behaved wonderfully; at 12 weeks she’s an old hand this being her third literary festival. Oh, and apparently Cillian Murphy was in the audience, enjoying it all.


Prufrock Nuala Ní Chonchúir


Prufrock Barbara Smyth

We went to hear mostly musicians on the Saturday – there’s so much on and with a baby in tow you are limited to the type of events you can go to: serious plays and very loud music are no-nos. We enjoyed UK singer Suzy Almond and, later, Dublin rockabilly/country outfit Oonagh and the Devils on the Scan Bitz stage.


Little John Nee

On Sunday we had enormous fun at Donegal man Little John Nee’s performance – he did extracts and songs from a few of his one man shows, including a song from the only punk in Letterkenny in 1976, and various short, hilarious odes to roosters, corn-can guitars and scangers.

He was followed by Dónal O’Kelly who read from his novel-in-progress, which is based in Mayo before and during the Shell to Sea protests. He read brilliantly – it was almost like watching one of his shows, as he took on each character’s accent and personality. He hasn’t got a publisher yet so he is open to all offers.

The Art Car Boot Sale was on again – a regular Sunday treat at Flat Lake – and I bought a gorgeous original abstract acrylic called ‘Red Kitchen’ by Margot Quinn for €20. Twenty euro!! Honest to God, where would you get it? We met poets Matthew Sweeney and Mary Noonan perusing the ceramics there and Mary took a photo of me as Frida Kahlo – funfair antics, Flat Lake style. It looks slightly daft as Frida’s head is huge compared to mine, but what matter.

I could tell you all about the wonderful art at the main auction, the vintage cars, the book stall, the bales of hay, the weather which was surprisingly good, the home-made buns and ice-cream, the tower made of books, Stephen Rea and various other well-known bods wandering about, the Eco Bus Café, the scrummy noodles, the gorgeous setting among trees and sheep and water... But, you know what, you should just go there next year yourself.


Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car - har har!

PROGRAMME FOR FRANK O'CONNOR 2009

The programe for the 2009 Frank O'Connor Festival in Cork has been announced. See Munster Literature's site here.

I can only stay 3 days this year (sob) as I have to dash off on the Saturday for my Clifden Arts Week reading (Cork to Clifden by car with a, by then, 4 month old baby - urgh).

BUT! I will get to see Simon Van Booy read (I am reading his book for review at the moment and am totally lost in it); also Billy O'Callaghan and Petina Gappah.

And my book Nude is being launched there, in the City Library, on the Friday at 4pm - all welcome!

HEROES AND VILLAINS AT INDIEOMA

My short story 'Jacques d'Arc's Dream' is up at Indieoma in the Heroes and Villains commentaries. This story first appeared in my collection To The World of Men, Welcome, published by Arlen House.

STOP DISSING THE SHORT STORY!

I found Gerry McCarthy’s article ‘Brief Lives’ in the Sunday Times Culture mag last Sunday both interesting and irritating. It was ostensibly a review of a new study of Irish short fiction by Heather Ingman – A History of the Irish Short Story. It was hard to tell where Heather’s book and Gerry’s ideas merged or diverged.

If some of the views expressed were Heather’s, I’d be worried about the accuracy and/or breadth of her research, but I won’t know until I read the book. I think they may be Gerry's own thoughts.

This is from the article:
“Banville’s collection of short pieces, Long Lankin, was his first book.... Enright similarly kick-started her career in 1991 with a book of short fiction, The Portable Virgin. Both immediately moved on to writing novels.
Short stories have become apprentice pieces: the small-scale canvas where a budding writer starts off, and where they experiment with different styles and voices. Just as film-makers begin with short films...so writers begin with short tales and move on to novels.”

Just because a writer starts with a book of short fiction doesn’t mean they will go on to write novels. Many don’t. Claire Keegan and Philip Ó Ceallaigh spring to mind – both have produced two successful collections of stories each, with not a sign of a novel.

And short stories are not ‘apprentice pieces’ (what an irritating notion) – they are a different genre to novels and are a highly crafted art in themselves. Many novelists wouldn’t even attempt to write a short story knowing that it’s a difficult genre to write well.

More from Gerry:
“[William Trevor is] almost the only prominent writer with a preference for the short form and its nuanced observations.”
Gerry further says about contemporary short fiction books “...in most cases, they are stepping stones to a novel”.

No! John McGahern loved writing short fiction as did Edna O’Brien earlier on. The aforementioned Claire Keegan is a prominent, gifted and committed short fiction writer. There’s also Kevin Barry, Philip Ó Ceallaigh, Mary O’Donnell, Mary Leland and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne. These are all contemporary Irish writers deeply tied to the form.

I really object to this dismissal of the short story as something reduced and unimportant compared to novels. It’s a common stance and it’s disappointing to see this narrow view presented once again in The Sunday Times, which actually publishes a new short story every week.

Gerry McCarthy also misunderstands the world of both writers and publishers with this view. Anne Enright writes stories all the while she is writing novels. Many writers do. And larger publishers seem reluctant to publish collections, though writers would like them published. Ah, I could go on and on but I feel dispirited to be discussing this topic YET AGAIN!

If you want more, see The Rumpus for a lively debate on the short story and its status here.

PRUFROCKS AT FLAT LAKE FESTIVAL

I am reading at the crazy and cool Flat Lake Festival again this year, this time as part of a group of women poets called The Prufrocks. We are: me (!), Barbara Smyth, Mary Mullen, Jaki McCarrick and Liz Gallagher.

Our reading is at 3pm, Sat 15th August 2009 on The Theatre Stage, Flat Lake Festival, Hilton Park, Co. Monaghan

Out with the ladybird wellies again this week-end (that's me, above, reading at Flat Lake 2008.) I hope it doesn't bucket rain for the whole time like it did last year - I have a baby to keep dry this time. Hmmm.

WEBSITE REDESIGN for 'NUDE '

My webmaster has redesigned my website to coincide with the publication of Nude and he has included a Nude page.

It features the opening paragraphs to each of the nineteen stories in the collection and a couple of quotes from fabulous, famous writers William Wall and Robert Olen Butler.

Clicky here to see what my lovely webman has done. Thanks F!

MY NEW PENGUIN MUG

I love Penguin books; I've always loved them. We used to go to the local Garden Fete as kids and run straight to the books table; it was a good one if it had piles and piles of orange Penguin spines. My sister Nessa and I would fill our arms and pay about 20p each for them. Reading fodder for weeks. I read tons of classic Penguins as a teenager - I'm probably due to revisit them all. If only I had the time...

My little friend K knows I love Penguin books and when she heard I had foolishly passed by the Penguin Virginia Woolf mug in Cork's Waterstone's saying, 'I'll come back for that later' - and of course never did - she bought it online and had it sent to me. Sweet, yes? Thanks, K, I'm enjoying my decaf more than ever these days!

MY NIK PERRING INTERVIEW

I'm interviewed by Nik Perring today, mostly about my new collection Nude, over at his blog here.

NOVEL WORKSHOP - STINGING FLY

The Stinging Fly is looking for writers in the early stages of writing a novel, for their upcoming workshop at the Irish Writers' Centre, who feel they will benefit from a relationship with a group of others engaged in the same process.

The group (of no more than 10 writers) will meet once a week in a workshop setting over a 6 month period. A serious long-term commitment from all participants is required. The ultimate aim is for each participant to complete a strong first draft of her/his novel.

Alongside the workshops, on one Saturday every month, there will be a series of specialist talks on issues around the process of writing and the imagination. The workshop and group discussions will be overseen by the novelist and short fiction writer Seán O'Reilly.

Deadline: 4 September.

The cost of the workshop: €1,500

Start date: 12 October.

More on the application process etc here.

THE SHORT REVIEW - AUGUST 09 ISSUE

I have a review of Michael J. Farrell's Life in the Universe here in the current Short Review. There is also an interview with Michael here.

Also reviewed/interviewed in this issue is Chris Beckett with his Edge Hill Prize winning collection The Turing Test, and Galway writer Alan McMonagle's début Liar Liar.