out and a bout

Did I tell you J and I went to see Seamus Heaney read as part of the country's celebration in honour of his 70th birthday hosted by the National Concert Hall? Well, we did! And 'twas lovely.

We had fab seats, about five rows back two or three seats to his right. The concert hall has 360 degree seating, and he read a few poems to those behind. He selected many love poems--to his mother, his father, his wife, his friends, his writing. The reading seemed a tribute to love and friendship, to human connection.

He read a couple of poems about forging, like this one below, which I think can be read as a writing poem, that to knock words into a shape is like the work of a forge:

The Forge

All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

What a memorable night. Heaney so down to earth, humane. So dawn and birth and not a show-man, not a bard in the big ego sense, though giver of a great show, sowing bearing of the big-ago sense.

At the close, he left heaped in flowers and applause.

all codes lead to roam

john berryman in dublin, 1967, talking about the dream songs.

maid public

nathan l. baker many thanks to you whereever you hour! there's an
amazon review of dog girl by Nathan L. Baker

music flick

for you bloggerissimo!

ConPrizeElations!

Woohoo!! Who? Eimear Ryan! Eimear Ryan, a former student of mine who always delighted and impressed us with her writing and her insight, has won the prestigious Hennessey First Fiction Prize.


Hennessey First Fiction Prize
Winner: Eimear Ryan

Excerpt from 'Caterpillar'
By Eimear Ryan
excerpt orginally published in the Sunday Tribune:

"Aidan is sitting on the floor of his bedroom, juggling three tennis balls. He can hear Ciara's socked feet pass as she paces the hall, dark blurry shapes in the inch of space beneath the door.

"The parents won't be back till tomorrow," he thinks he hears her say. "Yeah, bring whoever wants to comes."

A few more squealed girl pleasantries, then the beep of the phone as she hangs up. She puts her head round his door unasked, like always.

"I'll kill you if you say anything," she says, like she's rehearsed it. Then: "Why are you on the floor?"

"I was just workin' out," he says breezily. "Y'know – push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, the usual."

He allows himself to be difficult sometimes. It's one of the few things he finds fun in his new state. 'New state' – that's his dad's phrase. His way of making it seem like everything's perfectly natural and fine. Like the accident was a chrysalis, creating Aidan anew. A reverse chrysalis, maybe, Aidan thinks – you go in a dancing carefree butterfly, you come out as something people avoid looking at, or tread into the pavement for fun.

"Fuck, did you fall?" Ciara asks, rushing to his side.

"Nah, I'm fine. Dude, I'm not completely helpless."

She sighs, puffing air in his face. "I swear to God, take care tonight. I won't have time to monitor you. I'm the hostess."

With that she sweeps out of the room. The force of the door slamming makes the hanging calendar swing back and forth violently. It's still stuck on April. He'd been ticking the days off until the Leinster championship, until it became pointless.

Reading went brilliantly! Room packed. Each person's work their own. So great to hear the work aloud and see these talented writers own their work. And and all that had gone into the writing since we'd all last seen it. The readers are amazing folks, generous readers, committed and imaginative writers and and and! The experience was truly one of the top experiences I've had in a long time. Here are some photos:





Here we are, from left to right: Niamh Mulvey, Keiran O'Connell, Jennifer Mooney, Alice Redmond, Helen Collins, Rena Garrett, Daniel Hickey, Randall Snare, Roderick McGuire, Meself, and Jennifer Cooley.

You're invited...

Something Strange Happened...



Tuesday 21 April @ 7.30pm

Heidi Lynn Staples presents a reading, 'Something Strange Happened...', by members of her advanced workshop group.

Poetry and fiction readings will be given by Daniel Hickey, Alice Redmond, Randall Snare, Kieran O'Connell, Jessica Colley, Helen Collins, Rod Maguire, Jennifer Mooney, Rena Garrett and Niamh Mulvey.


Odessa Club, 14 Dame Court, D2

update data

for those friends and interested folks, here are a couple of pics of our daughter sophie. sigh. she's getting so big!

hallo!

well, i've completed the ten-week creative writing session at the central mental hospital, and it seemed to go well. the evaluations were positive. the same core group showed up each week. we created an anthology of interesting work. smiles and even laughs lit up the place during the writing pretty much every week. i hope to go back. my return will be based on whether the funding is there.

in ireland, we're in a major recession. the irish writers' centre, where i am teaching, has just gotten a 100% funding cut by the arts council, for example. so i won't be teaching there after this term, as they likely won't exist. as they say here, i'm gutted. very sad about that. not just for myself, but for the writing community, which is buoyed by the centre.

john, husband, and i have started a creative writing school, wordworks (www.wordworks.cc) and i'm not giving up entirely. but the situation--two parents with MFAs in a small city in the midst of a serious economic downturn and not a MFA job or even adjunct job in sight--is ultimately a bit dire and has me 're-skilling'--meaning taking on a second career. i'm gearing up to use my undergraduate degree in psychology to take further study and become a cognitive behavioural therapist, which is remarkably tied in with language use. i'm keen to do it. while also bummed not to be teaching writing for a living.

haven't been to a poetry reading in yonks, since e. boland last year which was utterly wonderful sigh. babu has had me tied close to home. maybe could these days though. she's a lot more independent and the paternal side of things a lot more able for it.

hey howdy and hallelu!

well bloggerissimo, since i've posted the election did be happening. here in ireland, people congratulate me on the election. 'congratulations on your new president' strangers smile. i have not met one person abroad who has supported the bush presidency.

many irish people are relieved that bush is gone but are also concerned about the abortion issue. that obama will make it possible for women to have late-term abortions again in the safest possible way.

i had a long talk with a woman in bewley's cafe about this. she is a nurse who says she has participated in a many abortions and is against them in all cases. she said that 'it's against natural law'. i asked her where she saw this natural law. she asked what i meant. i said in the natural world, animals literally eat each other alive. she said they just didn't know it was wrong. i told her i thought it was a cultural difference. that americans are often more pragmatic and the irish idealistic. but she wouldn't have any of that. anyway, it truly is different here from the states, ireland has a constitutional amendment asserting the 'personhood of the unborn', something that in the states seems quacked out from the right but here is the central pov.

meanwhile, my partner and i went to one of the poorer parts of dublin and saw the blown out apartment blocks and decimated world of those living in ballymun. john will be teaching creative writing to some youth there. what about the rights of these kids to some reasonable expectation for a bit of happiness in the wake of the economic boom?

i've started teaching creative writing at the central mental hospital, the national forensic hospital. and am due to begin teaching at another maximum security facility arbourhill prison, where i'll be working with people who have committed sexual offenses. have been reading up on bibliotherapy and such.

was silly with terribly nervous before the first day of teaching at the central mental hospital. fretted over shoewear. i decided on docs. until my partner pointed out that the police here wear docs. finally, i tied on my green runners.

we wrote self-poems which are cinquains composed from five lists we brainstormed. then, we read william stafford's 'poetry'.

http://www.williamstafford.org/spoems/index.html

we talked about poetry. about how we expect it to rhyme and order us into analysis. then we talked about how this poem has no rhyme scheme and seemed freer than many would have expected. some folks weren't actually sure what the poem was about. then one fella said, 'it's basically just a poem about poetry. i don't like the last line.' then someone else said she loved the last line. that she was going to use it on people. instead of 'speak to the hand' in arguments, she was going to say, 'hey, i don't eat that bread.' then we wrote our own definition poems.

finding poetry that felt useful and appropriate for the situation in which these people are finding themselves proved remarkably difficult. what would you teach in such a setting?

all codes lead to roam

just ran across this great resource. i'm probably just not a cool kid and my bloggerissimo is already hip to this yo. but down deep in the maine woods at the one and only FISHOUSE you can listen to poets with two or fewer books reading their poems and talking about writing poetry. i knew there was some reason i was up again in the middle of the night. now i'm heading over there. and sure pass your cup for a sup o' moonshine.

maid public

hey wow o wow! cain't help but say this blogger's second book is featured today by the Academy of American Poets. down in the right hand corner. forgive the small-town girly glee, but as annie hall would say, neat neat neat! makes for a smile during challenge to the smilings time. yey! so cool to find this feature. i'm up in the middle of the night while babu sleeps, planning a ten week course for the national forensic mental hospital in dublin, looking up poems, and stumbled on it. yey!

maid public

Anuther review bloggerissimo!


I'm filled with gratitude for this blogger's reviewers. Pure gift, no matter good or bad review as long as accurate and a considered reading. They make this blogger's day month week year yearn to earn the generous ear that's yours. Thank you You.

maid public

hello bloggerissimo. a new review of dog girl by patrick james dunagan is up at galatea resurrects.

meanwhile, her babuness is saying full sentences. her first sentence was "mama sit!", which means get your booty down here and play crayons with me. now. or i'll kill ya.

all codes lead to roam

Just read the recent Salon article about Rebecca and Alice Walker. The author, Philis Chesler has this to say:

"Rebecca conflates feminist views of motherhood (as she perceives them to be) with her own personal experience of Alice's choice or inability to mother in a traditional way. In her interview, Rebecca admits that she prefers her white, Jewish father's second wife, Judy, who bore five children and found meaning as a stay-at-home or ever-available mother. Here is how Rebecca sounds about Judy: 'I actually yearned for a traditional mother. My father's second wife, Judy, was a loving, maternal homemaker with five children she doted on. There was always food in the fridge and she did all the things my mother didn't.'

Yes, and Alice did all the things that women like Judy don't want to do and can't do: Write great poems and novels, devote oneself to world work, crusade for human and women's rights. Rebecca: Trust me, a woman really cannot do both. The myth that we can is a dangerous one."

This blogger has some issues with the assertion that a woman unequivocally CANNOT write great works and commit great works as well as keep food in the fridge and dote on her kids. I do see how the EXPECTATION to do all foists an enormous burden on women, a burden different from men, who traditionally aren't expected to perform as many hours in the domestic sphere. Concurrent fulltiime toddler raising and great civic work may not be much possible. Heck, showering and fulltime toddler raising aren't particularly compatible. But with excellent organisational skills and some domestic help, a personal assistant, par example, certainly one could do a bit of it all during the course of a lifetime. Not that I have either. Scary! But especially if women are supported financially by their partner, the kids are in school, and modern conveniences abound (say, a dishwasher and tumble-dryer and self-cleaning oven), a woman can manage. But to claim that a woman cannot write great work, perform meaningful acts out of a social conscience, and be a beloved and appreciated woman about the place can force women into seeing motherhood and civic personhood as mutually exclusive.

Okay, so now I need a list of women who have been remarkable in both the personal and private sphere. Here's a quick brainstorm written while my own toddler says Mama and looks at the latest issue of the Irish journal Stinging Fly and then wraps my earphones around her big toe.

Sharon Olds, who has a few kids, has doted on them a good bit at least by her own account, and has written a good number of very relevant books of poetry. Not sure about the social justice piece.

Nuala Ni Dhomnail (whose name I cannot spell right now) who has championed the Irish language, written works cherished by her country, raised kids, and nursed her ill husband.

Okay, that's it. Bloggissimo, please help me make this list! I'm just too tired to come up with any names and I'm supposed to be ironing, to take Babu for her walk, to put the dishes away. In fact, Babu is here now putting her tiny pots and pans on my knee, begging for some compay during her cooking. Don't we all want some company in the kitchen? I don't even have time to blog, much less to finish that commission for the library about my year in Rosslare or to think about a third collection and whatever happened to that review for the Chicago Review I was doing of Reginald Shepherd's latest book. This situation, of course, makes ol' Philis Chesler seem spot on.

Pedant Antics

Okay, anuther new category for my teacherly instructorly self: Pedant Antics. Have started teaching the class at The Irish Writers' Centre. Great to be back in the classroom.

We focused the first class on breaking the ice--that frozen water between us and also within. We read a couple of Michael Martone's Contributor's Notes and then each participant wrote her own contributor's note. They were asked to start with where they were born and maybe describe their childhood home(s)--and go from there. This writing prompt and subsequent sharing really worked. For one thing, we learned bits about each other that we might not have after six months of one-on-one chats, which created intimacy and bonding as a class. For e.g. one person grew up across the street from a toilet paper making factory,


another person kept slipping of the forceps when she was born and had such a large head she was carted off for closer investigation.


Also, the writing produced was mostly concrete, specific, and detailed--which can be difficult to achieve. We had a laugh as well as a good few sympathetic sighs. 'Twas good stuff.

We also had a listen to Bob Dylan's 'It's a Hard Rain Gonna Fall' as a starting point for writing.



The Hard Rain Project has come to Dublin. I thought tying in our creative work with another medium and a local exhibit might help connect the workshop participants with the larger world of creative activity. Don't know if that happened. Didn't get to hear a lot of the resultant writing, because we were out of time. But I wrote as well and found this prompt more difficult. Not sure why. Hard to get away from the song itself. Hard to get lost.

Now I'm preparing the tutorial for next week: Mastering the Masters--Imitating Your Favorite Writers. All ideas for the tutorial welcome!

all codes lead to roam

hello bloggerissimo, here, it's all multitaskorama. the tasks include juking to this video we found on youtube while encouraging sophie in her new found jukeability. and i also want to let you know about this interview with arielle greenberg on her theory of gurlesque . and now i'm to eat this cracker that's been shoved in my mouth by sohie and maintain patience as she strews oats across the floor and i'm to blog. she'd say i'm too blog and i'm to go. so off i go, cracker now in slipper.