I'd a busy two days in Dublin: I went to the Plotting History event at the Dublin Book Festival on Friday, featuring Lia Mills, Patricia O'Reilly and Martina Devlin, all of whom were very interesting on their diverse and excellent novels. Tea and cake afterwards with the sublime Mia Gallagher in Queen of Tarts.
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| Karl Parkinson, MCing |
On that evening to the launch of Dave Lordan's new poetry collection from Salmon,
Lost Tribe of the Wicklow Mountains in Toner's. Karl Parkinson was a great MC, Philip Coleman of TCD delivered a considered and moving launch speech (he and Dave are old friends) and Dave read brilliantly, as always.
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| Philip Coleman launching Dave Lordan's new book |
I love hearing the context of poems and enjoyed Dave's explanations about the lost tribes and about learning to love the corner of Wicklow he calls home. It was great to see pals old and new, including Kerrie O'Brien, Dmita Xidous and Nicole Rourke, director of the
Big Smoke Writing Factory. I do so love a night out in Dublin.
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| Dave reading (phone pic, so excuse quality) |
Saturday then was my
Lines of Vision event at the National Gallery with Moya Cannon, Dermot Bolger and Roddy Doyle, with Luke Gibbons as chairperson.
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| Roddy Doyle |
We each read our piece from the
Lines of Vision book (Roddy and me - stories, Moya and Dermot - poems) and then talked about our relationship to Jack B. Yeats and why we had chosen Yeats's particular paintings as jumping off points for the pieces we wrote. The place was jammers, Luke was a great moderator and I learnt even more about Jack B. Yeats which makes me fall even harder for him and his work.
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| Dermot, Moya, Janet McLean (curator and editor of the LoV book), Luke, me, Roddy) |
It was a great weekend of literary chatter, food and drinks, but am happy to be back at my desk now ready to continue on into novel #4. It has slowed down a little so I may need to have a research/brainstorming week with it. As long as I stay in touch with it, anything will do.
Much as I love getting away, I love even more to come back and potter at my desk. So, while I thank the stars for outings, I thank them equally for retreats.
4 comments:
great to see ye at launch Nuala. thanks for photos too and write -up.
You're welcome, Dave. It was a great launch and that room in Toner's is a lovely spot.
Sounds like a lovely and very busy weekend. Would have loved to get to the Lines of Vision event. Luke Gibbons is great - he was one of my lecturers at university, and always infectiously enthusiastic about his work. We often got out late from his sessions ;)
Luke was fantastic, I imagine he was an inspiring lecturer. Lucky you!
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