FAB REVIEW/ESSAY ABOUT *CLOSET* IN THE DUB REVIEW OF BOOKS

Susan McCallum-Smith gives an extremely thoughtful once over to The Closet of Savage Mementos, and some of my other books, in The Dublin Review of Books. Her theme is motherhood in all its guises, a subject (obsessively) close to my heart. As a Scottish writer and mother, living in Ireland, who has personal experience of adoption, Susan is peculiarly well placed to review the book. She does a great (and humbling) job. Full review/essay here.

WRITING MOTHERHOOD

Mary Cassatt drawing

Karren Brady once said, ‘I think you'll find I can use my brain and my uterus at the same time.’ On that theme, writer Carolyn Jess-Cooke has started an interesting project about mothers who write called Writing Motherhood. See her Mslexia blog on the subject and join the conversation here.

WRITERS & TIME INTERVIEW

Niamh Boyce, who will soon be world famous with her début novel, The Herbalist, interviews me today about managing time as a writer. Read it here.

AMY BLOOM ON BEING MOTHER AND WRITER

Amy Bloom - photo from the Guardian

Happy Mother's Day, to my Ma and to my sisters and to all of you who are mother-writers. A couple of quotes for the day from Amy Bloom, who is coming to Cúirt in April. Can't wait!

"I wouldn't be the person I am if I weren't a mother. I would be very different without children. I would still write, but not in the same way. I'm very interested in families, and, of course, having your own children gives you a different take on what a family is. You learn a lot - whether you wanted to or not: things about yourself, your childhood, your own parents."

and:

"Motherhood is a great gift to a writer. I'm quite interested in mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. I get feedback that mothers are received very positively [in fiction]. In fact, the response I get is that mothers are a favorite character."

The rest of the interview, which is twelve years old now, is on Writers Write is here.

FESTIVAL FEVER - Emma Donoghue and Colm Tóibín

I feel like someone on a merry-go-round but instead of candy-coloured horses and stripey poles there are writers. Oh look, there's Emma Donoghue. That's Colm Tóibín! I spy with my little eye Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Brian Leyden, Belinda McKeon...

I am careening around to literary events and happenings like a mad woman. And I love it. But what I essentially need is a nanny to mind the kids while I swan off because I am starting to tire of taking the kids along. Even with a very supportive husband who entertains them while I do my thing or listen to others' thing, I always have to leave early/come home. And that is often annoying. Particularly when one of the kids throws up for the 60 mile journey home. Maybe she's sick of writers?

Anyway I went to hear Emma Donoghue at Galway Arts Festival this week and she was fantastic. If you get a chance to see her at the Mountains to the Sea Festival in September, take it. I've been a fan of hers for years and I am thrilled with her commercial success (to add to her critical success). Because of the former she says she now reads from the book (Room) for 10 mins then takes questions for 50 mins. And so she did on Wednesday evening. The reverse was the case when she was 'merely' a critical success.

Emma D is a brilliant, fluent and intelligent speaker about her own work. She had so many good and interesting things to say. She talked about Room being a very Irish book: 'a boy and his Mammy having fun under impoverished Irish circumstances.' She said the novel represented 'an extreme version of parenthood' and that writing historical fiction had been great practice for writing it: 'You have to create a whole world. It was easier to create the room than, say, the entirety of eighteenth century London.' She said it was the easiest book she has ever written in the sense that it came quickly to her - she drafted it in six months - and she sees it as 'a voice piece', a book of dialogue and very simple monologue.

She talked too about the challenges of being a mother-writer, something that I am always interested in hearing about, being in the same situation myself. Like me she just has a few hours a week while the kids are minded and so she uses the time wisely. 'The more urgent your need for that time, the better you will use it,' she said (paraphrasing) and I totally agree with that.

My friend Karen and I celebrated rather exuberantly after Emma's reading so I was a bit fragile yesterday heading to the John McGahern Summer School in Carrick-on-Shannon, for the launch of the Yearbook in which I have an essay on McGahern's novel Amongst Women. The Yearbook is a gorgeously posh production: A4 size, navy linen covers, heavy paper, beautifully laid out. I was welcomed by editor John Kenny of NUI Galway, who has been very good to me over the past few years, giving me different bits of work to do, supervising his CW students' novel writing etc.

Colm Tóibín - pic from Guardian website

Before the launch, Colm Tóibín delivered a key-note speech on memory, preceded by speeches from John Kenny (the school is guaranteed at least another five years of life - yay!) and Nollaig Mac Congaíl (an amusing talk about the Irish language & McGahern).

Colm Tóibín gave an amazing, learned, erudite speech on the parallels between McGahern's use of real life instances in both fiction and memoir. Colm posited that, in Irish writing, only McGahern and Aidan Higgins had used events in fiction first and memoir later. He specifically drew on the deaths of both authors' mothers and the language used in their fictional and factual acounts. Colm said that writers are uneasy about their relationship between real life and fiction: 'Fiction is what actually happened to us, tarted up a bit.' He also said 'a novel is a created truth' and that 'writers use memory and put it into fiction like a ship putting its anchor down.' He brought in Borges, Cervantes and Hardy and all sorts of other parallels and examples, and wove it all together with ease. The speech must have taken him months to write. Impressive stuff. He is always impressive.

Afterwards there was wine and abundant food (I was still too wobbly to indulge) and the Yearbook was officially launched. I had a nice time chatting to various writers until the kids let me know it was time to go. Before we left, Colm Tóibín demonstrated his magical, magnetic glasses to Finn and Juno, and he also showed them his croc-like red rubber heels on his shoes. I don't know what the heels were all about, tbh :)

All in all a great few days of literary activity and I have plenty of food for thought and, also, hope which is what these events often give me.

Ethel Rohan in Interview

Today I have the privilege of interviewing Ethel Rohan, a writer and editor from Ireland who makes her home in San Francisco, with her husband and two daughters. She says of her own work: "My stories and writing center on the body—its joys, secrets, memory, urges, drives, and horrors. In writing about the body, my hope is to reveal the human psyche and ultimately to give testimony to the human spirit."

Welcome, Ethel. Tell me about your début short story collection Cut Through the Bone.

Thank you, Nuala, for inviting me here today. It’s an honour and a pleasure. Cut Through the Bone is a collection of thirty very short stories set largely in modern-day America. The stories are grounded in loss and the body and centre on the missing. I am fascinated by empty spaces and the voids both visible and invisible.

And your latest book, the just released, Hard to Say. What was the genesis of that book and was it difficult to write?

The title, Hard to Say, is apt. Along with the imagined, I consciously drew on memory and experience for the fifteen linked stories in this tiny collection. The cover for this little book is also apt. While these stories are fiction, they give voice to past pain and say much of what I never thought I could say. I struggled with why and how to write these stories, knowing they might disturb readers and my loved ones. Change is impossible though without disturbance.

The cover image for Cut Through the Bone is very striking. Can you tell me about it?

Both my book covers are the work of the brilliant young artist, Siolo Thompson. Siolo read both my book manuscripts and thereafter created these original covers. I am thrilled and honoured to have my stories bound between these gorgeous works of art. Perhaps what I most love about the cover for Cut Through the Bone is that it’s as layered, complex and intense as I believe the stories in the book to be.

Why do you write?

I write for many selfish and shallow reasons: to be known; to feel good about myself; to be considered ‘good’ by others; to get the high that creating gives; to feed and stroke my ego. I also write because I believe I was put on this earth to make and share my stories. I’ve long stopped trying to figure out the ‘really?’ and the ‘why’ of the latter and instead try to write meaningful works that affect and matter.

What is your writing process – morning or night – longhand or laptop?

I can no longer write at night. If I work at night, I have an even harder time than usual falling and staying asleep. I write throughout the day whenever my daughters are at school and as much as I can during our crazy weekends. When writing, I’m mostly at my desk, on my desktop. I don’t write nearly as much longhand as I once did. However, every now and then, especially for new stories, I’ll take paper and pen and go at the blue-lined page. I also sometimes write longhand with my non-dominant hand, a supposed surer path to our sub-conscious.

Which short story would you like to see on the Leaving Cert exam?

That story would ideally be by a contemporary Irish woman writer.

Who is your favourite woman writer?

Right now, I’m besotted with Margaret Atwood and can’t get enough of Caitlin Horrocks.

What is your favourite bookshop? (In the USA and in Ireland.)

In San Francisco, it’s the wonderful Green Apple Books. I’ve spent years in this wonderful neighbourhood bookstore, yearning after writers and drooling over great books, and spending way too much money and never having enough time there. It was fantastic, then, to have my first reading from Cut Through the Bone at Green Apple Books.

In Ireland, my favorite bookstore is long gone. I grew up in Phibsboro and can still feel the long ago wonder and thrill of buying ten pence books from Bob’s Bargains on Doyle’s Corner. I bought every Agatha Christie, Harold Robbins and Penguin Classics title they ever sold, and countless other books.

What one piece of advice would you offer beginning writers?

Only two things make you a writer: reading and writing. Publishing brings its perks and its pitfalls, but does not make you a writer. Show up every day to read and write and banish all anxiety and self-doubts, you’ve answered the call to write and you are a writer. Now go to it.

A great answer and I totally agree! What are you working on now? Any plans to write a novel?

I recently ‘finished’ a third story collection manuscript and a novel manuscript. We’ll see what happens when I finally send out both works … somewhere.

Thanks so much, Ethel, for being with me today. Ethel's books can be bought here and here.

LÁ 'LE MAMAÍ - MOTHER'S DAY

Joan of Arc - Gaston Bussiere

Lá 'le Mamaí faoi mhaise! Happy Mother's Day! Best wishes to my own mother and especially to all my mother-writer friends - you are my inspiration.

I looked through my poems, trying to find a cheery poem about mothering. Um, I don't seem to have any particularly light-hearted ones. Anyway, I've decided to share this one, 'La Pucelle', which was in my collection Tattoo : Tatú. It's about Joan of Arc and her mother. It's sort of sad but it's about the love we have for our mothers.

Have a great day!

          La Pucelle

In the hush of my father’s house,

before dusk rustles over the horizon,

I take off the dress my mother made

– it’s as ruby-red as St. Michael’s cloak –

and with a slitch of linen, bind my breasts.

By the greasy light of a candle,

I shear my hair to the style of a boy,

in the looking-glass, I see my girlhood

swallowed up in a tunic and pants,

I lace them tightly to safeguard myself.

My soldiers call me ‘pucelle’, maiden,

they cleave a suit of armour to my body,

and know, when following my banner

over ramparts into Orléans, that

there will only ever be one like me.

When the pyre-flames fly up my legs,

I do not think of the Dauphin,

or my trial as a heretical pretender,

but see my mother, head bent low,

sewing a red dress for her daughter to wear.

MORE FROM MAGGIE O'FARRELL

My old pal - though she doesn't know it - Maggie O'Farrell is interviewed in the Irish Times today. Touching on themes I brought up when I blogged about her here. Including the un-named interviewer trying to claim her as Irish.

A couple of quotes:
'O’Farrell says that having children has had a beneficial effect on her work. “With young children, you write when you have half an hour. Time at my desk feels like an indulgence, a treat. I find the whole process of writing hugely enjoyable. It’s satisfying, like a puzzle that needs to be solved.'

'“Children are good editors. I don’t mean they get out the red pen, just that I have less time to follow up every whim, and I cut less from my books than I used to.”'

Maggie's three tips for aspiring novelists are included at the end of the interview. They are:

Read. Keep reading. Don’t stop. And don’t worry too much about starting your novel at the beginning. A blank page can be terrifying, and nothing will give you writer’s block faster.

Start in the middle, or wherever you want. Build up a solid word count – keep going, and don’t look back. It gives you something to work with.

Take advice. Give the manuscript to as many people as you can. You might not always like what you hear, but you need someone to be honest.

I love the first two tips. Not sure about that last one - unless the people you give it to are writers, professionals in the book world or very good, critical readers, you might end up with some pretty useless advice...just saying...

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...

C-DAY!

Well C-Day is here. Gone is my absolute influence over my baby daughter; here is the quiet time I need to write. 3 and a half hours, 3 mornings a week. Heaven.

How was it? Well, it was FANTASTIC! She sailed in the door of the creche and had a ball. I did not go on the internet and went straight to a story I have been itching to finish. I started it in March 2009. And I've known for ages how it would end and I got it down today. Which I can't quite believe. I've been irritated when people go on about the stuff they are writing on Facebook etc. but only because I've been so frustrated about not having time and quiet to write. Now I have it, and it feels FAB! No more sighing and moaning for me, it'll be all productivity, I hope. I feel I am off to a great start. Happy days, as the young people say.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, LADIES

I want to wish a Happy Mother's Day to all my mother friends and all my mother-writer friends, especially. I am hungover - the Group 8 launch last night was a huge success. Loads of people turned out to support us and the exhibition looked fantastic. Report and/or pics anon. So, I intend to spend my Mother's Day doing very little. Looking forward to eating chocolate and reading the papers, taking it easy.

I looked through my poems for a mothery one. The one I'm posting is in my pamphlet Portrait of the Artist with A Red Car and I wrote it before my baby girl was born last year.

Enjoy your Lá 'le Mamaí, ladies!

A Sort of Couvade

There is a distance in me, a removal
from this, my last pregnancy,
few chinks let in the possibility
of a positive coup de grace
to end all the years of strife and faith.

I dream other people’s babies,
ones who refuse to suckle,
so I hand them back to be
cauled in their mother’s love,
but still my baby labours in me,
adding lanugo and vernix
to her cornucopia of miracles,
positing layers of fat
that will insulate her
when she delivers herself to us
in the cool-aired birthing suite,
borne down by my body’s rhythms,
because and in spite of me.

Wrapped in a battle dress of
grease, blood and bruising,
she will wear me like a crown
before forcing through, pulling labia taut,
and I will be present because
that is what I am made for,
I will perform a sort of couvade
at my only daughter’s birth.

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.