The Anti Room @ Dublin Book Festival - Saturday

I'm taking part in The Anti Room @ DBF with Sinéad Gleeson, Anna Carey, Christine Dwyer-Hickey, and Jennifer Ridyard on Saturday 16th November at 4.30pm in The Main Space at Smock Alley Theatre.

Things we will examine: Is women’s writing treated differently than men’s? Does gender define a writer? And what place does feminism have in contemporary women’s writing? Basically, we will discuss what it means to be both a woman and a writer.

More info here. This is a FREE event. And it will be available as a podcast afterwards.

MOTHER-WRITERS: MAGGIE O'FARRELL

Maggie O'Farrell with her daughter Iris
(Photograph: Graham Turner for The Guardian)

Recent Costa-winner Maggie O'Farrell was born in Derry but if she considers herself Scottish, why are we trying to claim her? It's just another irritating national tic - trying to find the Irish angle to everything. President Obama's ancestors were from Moneygall in Offaly, dontchaknow...

Anyway, I enjoyed the profile of Maggie O'Farrell in the Sunday Times where she is reported to have said the wonderful line: 'Motherhood is a great editor.' With less time to write after the birth of her second child (empathise, empathise) she now 'devotes herself only to those ideas she believes are good.' Nice one, Mags. It's just what happens, isn't it? Everything gets madly condensed with kids around so you zone in on what matters in the writing.

When I complain that I haven't enough time to write, people keep saying to me, 'Stop wishing your kids' lives away'. I'm not wishing their lives away! I just want more time to write. There are 168 hours in a week. I can only afford childcare for 10 of those. So I have 10 small hours a week to write. The other 158 are pretty much devoted to my kids and sleep.

The odd thing is, the people who've said this to me are often writers and mothers too. But I'm on to them: none of them wrote when they had small children. So there's the difference. What irritates me is that they seem to resent that I am even trying to write with kids around me and, worse, that I'm succeeding. But worse again I have the audacity to want more time. Who do I think I am??!! The implication is that by wanting more writing hours I am somehow neglecting my children. Hmmm.

Most (all?) of my friends either have no kids or grown-up kids. I think I need a writer friend in the same boat as me, so we can bolster each other up when we feel a bit hard done by time-wise, and just for general writerly support.

But back to Maggie. She says that Cyril Connolly's dictum about the pram in the hall being the enemy of art (which I wrote about here) is 'offensive and misogynistic' and that some people take a gleeful pleasure in taunting female artists 'for the hubris of having children and attempting to have a creative life'. Here, here, Maggie.

In another interview when asked what she most enjoys about writing, she says, 'I love the solitude and the secrecy of it - as well as the escapism.' Ditto!!

Both Maggie and I suffered secondary infertility but went on to have little girls in 2009. And, like me, she is a vegetarian. Unlike me, she swims every day and doesn't drink alcohol or tea, but I think me and Maggie could be good pals. I wonder if she's in the market for a fellow mother-writer friend? Yes, probably not...

POET SHIRLEY McCLURE - INTERVIEW

Author Shirley McClure

I'm delighted to welcome Shirley McClure for an interview about her new poetry collection Who's Counting?. Shirley won the Cork Literary Review Manuscript  Competition and was runner-up in the 2009 Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award with this collection, which has just appeared from Bradshaw Books.

Poet Katie Donovan says of Shirley's work that it is “quirky and wise, studded with razor-sharp double entendres and droll fantasies, these poems introduce a refreshing new voice in Irish poetry”. For me, her work is clear, crisp and witty, but also full of insight and pathos. I found it a very enjoyable collection to read and it tells a few stories which is always satisfying for a reader.

Shirley will appear on RTÉ Radio 1's Arena on Tuesday the 2nd November at 7.30pm.

Welcome to Women Rule Writer, Shirley, and congratulations on the publication of Who’s Counting.

Thanks for having me, it's great to be on your gorgeous blog-spot.

Many of the poems in your collection are very sensuous, sometimes sexual. There are also very beautiful love poems. Do you find freedom in exploring the sensuous in poetry?

I find freedom in writing about whatever is obsessing me at the time - death, dating, our dog. Once I started writing the love poems I found, as so many others have done before me, that there's a lot to mine, in terms of language and humour. It's good clean fun.

The poems are often wry and always modern. I’m thinking of the title poem ‘Who’s Counting?’ where the lover wears a French Connection shirt and braises tofu and the final lines read ‘[you] said you loved me/on the sixty-second date’. Are there any poets you would cite as influences on this style of writing or do you feel it’s purely your own sensibilities coming through?

I enjoy poets like Adrian Mitchell ('A puppy called puberty') and Billy Collins ('Sailing alone around the Room') for their conversational styles and bold ideas. I like language that sounds colloquial better than 'poetic' writing. I am amazed by how Sharon Olds, who writes so strongly about the sexual, can pack such a punch on her final lines, as in her incredible poem, 'I go back to May 1937' (Selected poems), where Olds points out to her parents in a young photograph of them, that they are 'going to do bad things to children'; she ends, reverse-prophetically, 'Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it'.

If I could write like any of them...

I'm a huge Sharon Olds fan myself - oh to write like her!

In the poem ‘Remembrance’ there is a crude, sectarian intrusion on grief. Would you like to comment on being a Protestant writer in a culture that is dominated by Catholicism? Does your religion inform your writing, do you think?

I must say that the taunt, “She's a fine arse/ for a Protestant!”, struck me at the time because it was so rare, and my experience of being brought up as a Protestant in the South has been a very peaceful one.

I think the main effect of being part of a minority religion was to instill a sense of difference, or separate identity. This is no bad thing for any writer, as writing is often, I think, a way of finding and expressing our individuality.

I certainly feel that my early church-going years helped to nourish a love of language- the poetry of the King James Bible, and the hymns and poems of George Herbert in their unembellished power were definite influences.

Conversely, I lose out on the richness of symbolism that Catholicism offers- I was taught from an early age to eschew symbols and have not been able to shake of that Presbyterian taboo- I take things literally!

The poems about mastectomy come across as very positive, which is a feat in itself. Was this a deliberate decision or did the poems just emerge that way?

I started writing about the experience of mastectomy a week after the surgery, encouraged by my surgeon to do something I loved doing. It was such an intense experience, shocking and painful but cushioned by the camaraderie of the ward and the support of my friends and family, I just had to write about it. I don't see the poems as wholly positive, more that they attempt to express that pain but are accompanied by the voice in my head that refuses to take myself completely seriously. No, it was not a deliberate decision, the poems came along in that form.

A number of women have come up to me after readings and told me of their own experiences of breast cancer, which is very moving and encouraging too.

I ask this question of all women visitors to this blog, Shirley: Who are your favourite women writers and why?

I have mentioned Sharon Olds, her honesty knocks me for six. I enjoy the Zen-like poems of North American writer Jane Hirshfield ('After') and the immensely clever and original language of Carol Ann Duffy. 'Mrs. Midas' is a delight. Irish women writers I particularly like are Katie Donovan for her sensuous, tender and sometimes shocking poems ('Rootling') and Rita Ann Higgins, whose 'Hurting God' I'm reading at the moment. I heard her read at Electric Picnic this summer, she is so naturally funny and really gets in under the dusty carpets of Irish life.

Shirley, thanks so much for your wonderful responses. It's been a pleasure to have you here.

Readers, you can buy Shirley's book by phoning Tigh Filí on +353 21 421 5175. It is also for sale in Books Upstairs on Dame St in Dublin; Dalkey Book Exchange, Castle St, Dalkey and Bridge Books in Wicklow town. Or from the author via www.thepoetryvein.com

Her book would make a lovely Christmas present for anyone - poetry lover or not. 

MARY MULLEN, POET, INTERVIEW

Today I interview the wonderful Mary Mullen, poet and memoirist. Mary was born in Anchorage, and raised on her parent’s homestead in Soldotna, Alaska.  She moved to Ballinderreen, Co. Galway, Ireland in 1996, where she still lives with her daughter Lily, a sparkly Galway girl who was born with Down syndrome. Her debut poetry collection, Zephyr, was published by Salmon in 2010. Mary’s poems and non-fiction work have been published in The Stinging Fly, Crannóg, Landing Places: An Anthology of Irish Immigrant Poets, and Anchorage Daily News among many places. She holds an MA in Writing from the National University of Ireland, Galway.  A savant of memoir, she taught memoir writing at Galway Arts Centre, and now tutors writers privately.

A big welcome to Women Rule Writer, Mary, to celebrate the publication of your début poetry collection Zephyr by Salmon. It’s always great to host women writers here and it’s lovely to have one of the members of my Peer Group today.

The title of the book, Zephyr, appears in the poem ‘August Lament’. Can you tell us why you chose this as the title of the book?

Like all writers, I  collect words. I first heard the word zephyr a few years ago when a friend told an animated story about her father driving their family around Cork in a 1950's Ford Zephyr, and I loved the word zephyr, which means a 'warm gentle breeze'.

 

I wanted the title to be a line from the poem called The Sarah M, Named after his Mother: 'Before Life Becomes Ordinary', but that was nixed by a friend who emphatically pointed out that there was nothing ordinary about my book. Selecting a title for my collection, which took four years to write, was a very last minute decision.

 

I am very curious about what readers think of the title. I think Zephyr suits my collection which, despite some darkness in it, also possesses humour about childhood and motherhood and Down syndrome. Zephyr, the God of Westerly winds, is the only God I've ever heard of who was known for his gentleness. The rest of them are always clattering and clashing around.

 

Collections of poetry change as they become what they are. In this collection, the title changed until it could be changed no more.

 

You are from Alaska but you have made your home in Ireland for the last 14 years. Do you consider yourself an Irish writer or an Alaskan writer? Or does that kind of labelling matter to you?

 

I'm Irish by genes and Alaskan by birth. I am a writer who has profoundly experienced two exotic places. Lucky me! But I do envy people who have the security of having stayed in one place their whole lives.

 

Fortunately, writers belong to the world, and the craft of writing is respected universally. I've read a few Irish writers who are a bit full of themselves and try to sail on and promote themselves based on their place of birth, but history will not be very kind to them. Place features greatly in Zephyr, and I trust that the poems go to a larger more universal place than either Ireland or Alaska.

 

I had the good fortune of meeting Kay Ryan, 16th Poet Laureate, in Homer, Alaska, last week. She was staying with friends at my sister's vacation rental. We shared a few meals together and she read a few poems at the end of my reading there. (I'm still a bit googly-eyed at my immense good fortune.) She thought my poems indicated that I had 'picked up a lot of the Irish.' When Michael D. Higgins read my poems he thought they were 'very American'. Both comments sit well with me. I'm an outsider, a place in which I am comfortable. Most days.

 

The book reflects your two homes beautifully – there are beluga whale pods and snow and salmon aplenty; there are Irish funerals and Burren blackberries. Among all that, though, is a sense of homesickness and longing for your original home. How has being an exile influenced your writing?

 

An exile!

 

Looking at Alaska from a great distance away has given me some clearer vision, especially about childhood memories. I'm in Alaska as you interview me and had forgotten some important things; smells for instance...the seeds from the cottonwood trees are blowing around like unenthused snow right now. They smell fresh and earthy in a shampoo kind of way. My mother and I spent the day pressure-cooking salmon in pint jars, so her house smells like dozens of dirty sea-soaked socks.

 

Alaska is a strange and wonderful place, it looms large in the hearts of locals and tourists alike. Remember your most pleasurable kiss? Alaska is a bit like that, massive and memorable. Hense the homesickness and longing in my writing.

 

Plus, poets must be honest. Living in Ireland without my family and dear old friends has been conducive to examining the concepts of family. There are many things about America that are very flawed. But Americans are very good at friendship. Alaskans up the ante by adding open-heartedness to the mix. Because everyone is originally from somewhere else, the concepts of family and friendship are very expansive. I long for that wherever I am. Additionally, my mother is ninety years old. I wonder and worry about her too much. Perhaps there is a bit of guilt about living in Ireland so far away from her. All of that probably seeps into my poems. Maybe I'm a sentimental fool. Hope none of that has seeped into my poems!

 

No, there's not sentimenatality whatsoever, rest assured!

 

Your daughter Lily is central to this book – there are beautiful and moving poems about her birth; the challenges of the mother-daughter relationship; Lily’s acquisition of language. Did becoming a mother change your approach to writing, as much as it changes one’s life in general (completely!)?

 

Yes, having a baby changed my life completely. Tra la! I had written for many years before my daughter Lily was born.

 

Lily has Down syndrome.

 

I grieved her extra chromosome and all the complications in life that her disability would mean for both of us for a few years while at the same time being extremely smitten by her. And I gave myself to her completely. When the nurse with the Brother's of Charity came to our home to give me suggestions about what to do to bring Lily on to her fullness, we did everything, and more. 

 

When the speech and language therapist gave us homework, we did it all, plus more and more. I was motivated by a powerful love. I was determined that she was going to be the most competent person with Down syndrome in the world, or at least in the West of Ireland. (I'm sure all parents of children who are not 'typical' developers feel and do the same.) Which of course, did not happen. She is just Lily. A twelve year old girls who is very busy being herself. Perfectly herself...moody, lovely, charming, sassy, stubborn, bright. She is a handful.

 

Giving so much of myself to Lily's early childhood helped me take my writing more seriously. In fact, writingthe poems for Zephyr not only gave me a big kick in the arse, they kicked me towards my own life and grounded me as a writer.

 

What do people who are not writers do to come to grips with something of such importance?

 

I have no idea, Mary. I always think writing keeps me sane throught the hard times. And I wonder how other people cope.

You write both memoir and poetry. Which form is your favourite to write in? And why?

  

I know a ton about memoir writing. I've read hundreds of memoirs and teach memoir courses. There is great truth in the saying that good teachers often learn more than they teach. I love lively stories about resilient people. Writing personal essays comes easy to me. There are definitely a few recently published memoirs that I wish I could have gotten my hands on before they went to print. A good memoir must be snappy not sappy, important but not self-important. That's tricky. And great fun.

 

Poetry is very hard for me to write. I sweat over each word, each line break, each foot. I am still full of hoy about having my first book of poetry published, many thanks to Jessie Lendennie of Salmon Poetry. I am also very humbled by the experience. I am a middle-aged woman who is a baby poet trudging to toddler status. Seamus Heaney is quoted as saying that he did not 'feel' like a poet until his third volume was published. Kay Ryan did not include any poems from her first two volumes in her 'New and Selected'. This does not take any joy away from me about my debut collection.

 

This is a meandering way to say I'm not sure which form I like best. Poetry. Definitely my fav today. And probably will be tomorrow as well, even though there is nothing quite as lovely as reading very good non-ficiton. Ah, hell. Poetry wins. It's a love that will stick with me forever, much like Alaska, just can't shake it loose, thank God and the Goddesses.

 

I ask this question of all women visitors to this blog: Who are your favourite women writers and why?

 

Women writers that I love: Elizabeth Bishop, Jane Jacobs, Zora Neal Hurston, Carson McCuller, Emily Dickinson. Kay Ryan, the women in my writer's group, the women who write by candle-light in a war zone, Mary McCarthy, Isabel Allende, Ella Fitzgerald, the immigrant in a night class, Maya Angelou. Why? Because they are brave.

 

Thanks for these great answers, Mary -  honest as always. Huge congrats on the publication of your first book of poetry. It’s a funny, warm, moving collection of poems and I highly recommend it to all my readers. Enjoy the rest of your stay in Alaska and I look forward to catching up in the autumn.

 

Buy Mary's book and read extracts here at the Salmon Poetry website.

ÓRFHLAITH FOYLE INTERVIEW

Today my dear friend and Peer Group fellow, poet and fiction writer Órfhlaith Foyle, joins me to talk about her recently published poetry collection Red Riding Hood's Dilemma (Arlen House, 2009). The Irish Times said it has a 'fresh perspective' and 'playful energy'.

Órfhlaith was born in Africa to Irish parents and lives in Galway. Her first novel Belios was published in 2005 by Lilliput Press to critical acclaim. Patrick McGrath called it 'a dark, rough, funny novel about a dying genius'. A collection of Órfhlaith’s poetry and short stories, Revenge, was published in September 2005 by Arlen House. She is currently working on her second novel.

Firstly a big welcome to Women Rule Writer, Órfhlaith , and congrats on the publication of Red Riding Hood’s Dilemma.

Hello Nuala and thank you for inviting me on your blog. Thank you for your questions also.

You were born in Nigeria and lived in various parts of Africa as a child, and it features in many of your poems. What has Africa’s influence been on your writing as a whole?

It made me a reader. We lived in countries where television was either non-omnipotent or it was banned. So I read everything I could get my hands on. Also my mother is a great reader and I remember our book shelves in Malawi were full of Shakespeare, Dickens and newspapers.
Also living in Africa and being white made me realise that the world just didn’t follow straight lines and it made me curious. So I asked questions even though I knew there were some questions you never asked because you didn’t know who was listening.
Africa is a country that is romanticised via Karen Blixen; Elspeth Huxley: the ‘White Highlands’ set; various films and famines. We lived there as children and so to us it was a normal childhood and Ireland was foreign; even though we realised we were the foreigners in Africa, it was still our home. Our parents had friends both black and white and being a child, I don’t believe we bothered with anything other than making friends and going to school.

I am always conscious of the white African label. I don’t live in Africa anymore and sometimes I have to remind myself that I grew up there. Your childhood informs your work as a writer. You cannot escape it and growing up in Africa; I saw the absence of certain things. People disappeared; you were advised not to talk about things and I loved to talk. I was constantly given out to for telling secrets; not because I wanted to but because the words just got out.
I used to look at South Africa and be glad my parents never brought us there. I could not understand the whites there. They seemed so far removed by the whites I knew. But I only saw things from a child’s perspective although I was grown-up for a child.

Africa has and had such extremes of experience for me. There were friends in school whose lives were so different to mine, almost dangerous and yet we played rounders, giggled in the tuck-shop queue, visited each other’s houses yet there was always this membrane of difference between us. The difference was that my experience of Africa would never match the experience of the girl sat next to me in Sir Harry Johnson’s primary school. I could weave in and out of adult conversations and know that certain words were codes for something else. I could ask my friends questions that they just couldn’t and wouldn’t answer.

So Africa made me realise that people hid things; they used certain words and your colour of skin categorised you. It’s influenced my writing in that I have always being fascinated by why and how people hide themselves. I am fascinated by difference and how it can either foster love or destroy it.
I could have got these fascinations if I grew up in Ireland perhaps but never to the same intensity. There was always something disturbing about living in a country where you were the colour of the finished yet recent colonialists.
Africa today still has extremes. Black and white Africans are still eyeing each other but I would not give up my childhood in Africa for anything.

Fascinating stuff.
Questions of religion – or the questioning of belief – arises often in your poetry. Do you think poetry is helpful or important for exploring personal beliefs?

This sort of question makes me squirm. Poetry has always been mysterious to me. I readily admit to not being an academically astute poet. I know the differences between a sonnet and a villanelle and poetic parameters can be good training for a poet, but I have always been lured by feeling most of all.
So how I feel and how I believe does come out in my poetry. It’s odd but I have always been conscious of how many ‘I’ poems I write and they are not always me! I believe that poetry reaches into you and your outward looks may never show it but you can be changed by poetry or at least arrested.
I have still so much to learn as a poet and that both frightens and enthrals me. I believe that the human heart and mind are as worthy of exploration as far distances or oceans are.

Religion, I cannot divorce myself from it. I don’t want to either. Why should I shut down that questioning part of me when it makes me see that the world is so much stranger and beautiful than I ever gave it credit for?

Poetry is personal. Before Red Riding Hood’s Dilemma came out, a poet I know said to me: ‘Now I’ll know what you’re like.’ So I suppose you do open yourself through the poems you write but for some reason it does not sit as easy as writing on Facebook or a blog. I think it’s easier to hide on social networks, no matter how creative you are.

Poetry can show you to yourself yet it also shows the world to yourself. It’s crazy to do it. But I admire crazy.

Sorry for making you squirm - I know the feeling!
There’s an international feel to this collection; apart from Ireland and Africa, there’s Russia and France. How important is travel to you as a writer?

I suppose it goes back to the ‘difference’ angle as well as my childhood. The one thing that we are all encouraged to fear in this world is difference. Travel does that most clichéd of things: it broadens the mind and as a writer it stretches that visual panorama in your head. My parents took a chance on the world so I’m always grateful to them.


You write full time. Could you describe a regular working day?

I’m disciplined. I begin work early in the morning and I work until early afternoon. Whatever I am working on takes priority. Sometimes I get nervous as I approach my desk but once I start, I keep on going. If I’m not working on anything, I read or daydream. Afterwards, I like to run to get out of my head and sometimes I bake chocolate cake.


Who are your favourite female writers and why?

Flannery O’Connor – never apologised for the way she wrote and the odd, violent people she created always had humanity.

Katherine Mansfield – read ‘The Garden Party’ for those last scenes.

Emily Bronte – her determined passion for story.

Emily Dickinson – the way she inverted, contorted and created poetry.

There are more but these are ones who are always on my desk.


What two or three pieces of advice can you offer the fledgling writer?

Read books – some writers don’t and their imaginations crumble.

Foster your own writing process – takes a while to understand yourself and how you write but once you have the feel for you own work, don’t compare it to that of others.

Write with your guts.

Thanks so much, Órfhlaith, for such honest and insightful answers; I've really enjoyed our chat. I wish you tons and gazillions of good luck and continued success with all your writing.

Órfhlaith's books can be bought from Kenny's Irish Book Shop and The Book Depository.

MOLLY KEANE AWARD

The Molly Keane Memorial Creative Writing Award, organised by the Arts Office of Waterford County Council, is closing on the 25th March. This is one of the very few awards named for one of our women writers. When I am filthy rich I intend to set one up for one of my own favourites. I hope I get rich soon so the dear woman can live to see it...

This comp is for a previously unpublished short story up to 2000 words.

Fee: no entry fee - woo!

Prize: €650 will be awarded to the winner at a special ceremony during the IMMRAMA Literary Festival in Lismore, Co. Waterford (June 10th – 13th 2010).

Deadline: 5pm, Thursday 25th March 2010.  

Full details and an entry form on the Waterford Co Co site here.

A MAXIMUS MIRACLE IN GALWAY - WELCOME LIZ

I want you all to give a céad míle fáilte to the lovely Liz Gallagher who is stopping by for her Maximus Miracle book tour with her Salt-published poetry collection, The Wrong Miracle. Liz lives in Gran Canaria and in order to celebrate an Irish homecoming for her and The Wrong Miracle, Liz is offering a free copy of the collection (posted to anywhere in the world!) to readers of Women Rule Writer.

All you have to do, to be included in the draw, is mention the interview, book and draw on your blog and/or on Facebook and confirm that you have done so in the comments box here from today. (Or at TFE's blog from the 19th of Nov.). The draw will take place on the 25th of November over at Liz’s blog Musings.

All royalties from Liz’s collection go to SANDS, the stillbirth and neo-natal death charity.

So now, readers, pour that tea, grab that scone and pull up a chair.

N: First of all welcome to my blog, Liz, on your Maximus Miracle Virtual Tour with The Wrong Miracle. Many congrats on the new book – it is an inspiring read. This is my first ever bloggy interview and I’m delighted that you are my guest. So settle down there by the fire and prepare for some woman-centred questioning.

L: Nuala, thanks for the welcome and for having me here, it is a real pleasure, it's great being back here in Galway. I have fond memories of being here during the September heatwave. And now, in autumn, the cosy fire-side setting is ideal for some woman-centred questioning...fire-away!

N: Liz, some of your poetry reminds me of the work of Belfast poet Medbh McGuckian – specifically the surreal nature of many pieces in the book and also the linguistic acrobatics. Would you feel an affinity with Medbh? Are there other Irish women poets who inspire you?

L: I have read some of Medbh's work and like it a lot but must say that I haven't really explored an awful lot of her work....but will do so now out of curiosity...thanks. : )
Irish women poets whose work I know quite well and who would inspire me would be Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Leontia Flynn, Rita Anne Higgins and Mairead Byrne. I also really like Colette Bryce and when I first started reading poetry in the late 80's, I loved Sara Berkeley's work, especially Penn and Home Movie Nights...I haven't read her work in a long while though so not sure what I would think of it now.

N: Maya Angelou said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” How would you like people to feel on reading and/or hearing your poetry? And – a sneaky sub-question – who do you write for?

L: To answer your sub-question first, Nuala, I definitely start out writing for me – to amuse, surprise and entertain myself...and then when the honeymoon period of me and brand new poem is over...I try to look at it with fresh eyes in order to think of how it will fare on its own with other readers and without me on standby to defend it. It is at this stage that I take a close look at what is working or not working... I try not to lose what got me excited in the first place...there is a fine line between doing that and making a poem ready for others' consumption. So, essentially, I am aware of audience but that awareness doesn't come into play until after I have written the first draft or so.

Regarding how I'd like people to feel on reading/hearing my work, good question, Nuala...naturally, I'd like people to be able to 'click' with my poems, one of the really great things about doing the readings in Ireland during the summer was getting feedback from the audience and hearing them say that they could relate to what I was saying. I think there are a lot of emotions at play in my work and knowing that a reader or listener could maybe feel that emotion or a version of that emotion on hearing or reading the work would be very rewarding for me.
I'd also love for people to feel amused and surprised. Humour is important for me in my work and it's great when people 'get' that humour and read between the lines...

N: You are, obviously, an accomplished poet. Do you also write fiction? Who are your favourite female fiction writers?

L: Thanks, Nuala. I have written flash-fiction, 100, 150 and 200 word pieces and I've had some flash-fiction published in an Anthology by Guildhall Press titled: The Wonderful World of Worders edited by Jenni Doherty.
I have written some non-fiction pieces and have had some published. I would love to attempt to write a short story or two but have not yet had the discipline nor time to sit down and try it ….but maybe some day...
Some of my favourite female fiction writers, apart from yourself, Nuala, and Vanessa Gebbie, another Salt writer whose work I love, would be Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, Flannery O' Connor, Amy Tan, Anne Enright, Edna O'Brien and Marian Keyes...got to just love her humour and style.

N: Thanks so much, Liz, for your time and for stopping by at my blog. Good luck with the rest of the tour. Next week Liz will be at The People's Lost Republic of Eejit with the inimitable TFE.

L: Nuala, thanks very much for your hospitality and for such great questions which I thoroughly enjoyed answering. It's been fun. Hope to catch up with you again next summer!


Liz and baby Juno at Flatlake, summer 2009

THE MUSTARD PURSE

Here's a poem written by my American friend, poet and artist Marcella Brown. I'm off to Sligo to see the lovely Martha and while deciding what bag to bring, I remembered this poem which Marcella sent me recently. That's my bag! Yay!

THE MUSTARD PURSE

I wonder how it feels
to be a mustard purse,
to hold the secrets precious to a woman.
The color makes me quiver
from the inner sanctum of my eye.
I have to touch this mustard purse
just to hold its grassy hue.

I'd like to be a mustard purse
so I could be caressed and held,
hung and slung,
opened and undone,
guarding coins and pens and books,
stashing buried notes
...and poet's quotes.

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.