Crossroads

I received, this day last week, an anthology of creative writing from the Deansgrange Writer's Group, based in Dublin, called Crossroads. It's edited by Katie Donovan, a poet whose work I've admired in the library up at the TGC at Annaghmakerrig. Katie has a new & selected due in 2010 from Bloodaxe, entitled Rootling.

Katie modestly describes her input as that of a selector, and her choice of work throws up some interesting poems, stories and memoir - and when you look at the bios in the back you realise that many of these names are people you've seen namechecked before in journals and mags around the country.

11 contributors, too many to mention, all interesting work, with a good opener (William and Eileen - Catherine Paradise) and a great close (The Coat - John Piggott). I'm still dipping into it, alongside the great tome from RTE's Sunday Miscellany programme, and they're a good complement to each other for bedside reading.

It's a great credit to the group to organise the anthology - I know exactly how much hard work goes into them, from my own foray into anthologies last year (Drogheda Writes 2, anyone?) and I know DWG would appreciate the support. The group are donating proceeds to the National Rehabilitation Hospital, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin; a worthy cause from a worthy group of writers. Copies are available at their website for only €10.00.

Oh and did I mention how lovely the cover is...? ;)

Dundalk Summer School

This weekend coming, Dundalk Writing Group are having their Summer School.

On Friday, Noel Monahan from Co. Cavan will visit:

Noel has four collections of poetry published with Salmon Press: Opposite Walls (1991), Snowfire (1995), Curse of the Birds (2000) and The Funeral Game (2004). He is Co-Editor of Windows Publications. His literary awards include: Poetry Ireland’s Seacat National Award, The RTE PJ O’Connor Drama Award, The Hiberno-English Poetry Award and The Irish Writers Union Award for poetry. His play, The Children of Lir, was performed by Livin Dred Theatre in 2007. His poetry is on The Leaving Certificate English Course for examination in 2011 & 2012.

On Saturday, Kate Dempsey from Kildare, will also visit:

Kate writes fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Her fiction successes include a story published in the Sunday Tribune, for which she was shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writing, another broadcast as part of RTE’s Francis MacManus Short Story Awards and another included in the Poolbeg/RTE anthology 'Do The Write Thing' for Seoige and O’Shea. Her novel was shortlisted for the London Bookfair Lit Idol. She loves teaching creative writing and has run workshops in schools and libraries, festivals including Electric Picnic and at the National Gallery.

Everyone is looking forward to the Summer School, which I set up last year and have managed to keep going despite the downturn. So, it's our chance to celebrate writing's success in the face of the current economic climate - yay!

And, I've just found out that I've been successful in a bid for teaching another summer writing course in Meath - so, go me :)

NaPoMo

National Poetry Month - here, not just over there and everywhere! Get a daily poem from Daily Lit, today's poem being Eliot and an extract from The Wasteland.

In other places, PFFA set their usual challenge of writing a poem a day for all 30 days of this month. I tried last year (lasted 17 days?) and the year before (lasted 3 days, I think). You do need strategies to get through this and the threads over at PFFA show how good the competition are ;)

Anyhoo - what am I doing? I'm thinking about using the Daily Lit poems as a daily bounce to get me going on some poems, since I've not been writing much of my own stuff for the last three months.

Instead, I was engaged in editing other people's writing - an art for which you need endless patience and a good computer programme (which hasn't been invented yet). The anthology runs to 136 pages (I hope) and will be published in May (I hope), to huge applause and interest (again, I hope!). What else - oh yes, it will be called, Drogheda Writes 2. Just hope I don't get into trouble with anyone here in Dundalk ;) Apparently these two towns, based in the same county aren't terribly fond of each other. Since I belong to neither town fully, I can mention this (I hope...)...

Guess Who's Coming to Town

It's been a hectic few weeks. We've got Nuala Ni Chonchuir coming to Dundalk tomorrow to work with the two writing groups that I teach CW to.

We're very much looking forward to her visit and words of encouragement and advice. It's going to be a full on day, with lots to mull over afterwards.

On other fronts, I'm knee deep in a project at QUB, an artist's book that each of us has to make, incorporating text and image. I've spent the last three Thursdays in the dark room at Belfast Exposed, making photograms, and developing B&W pictures from negatives. I'm using a poem about taking photographs with an old fold-out camera.

Our tutor managed to source a camera shop in Scotland which was selling off old camera stock. She brought me home a rather marvelous 'Soho Cadet,' made from bakelite, about mid 1930s or so. I've taken pictures with it, developed the film and am dying to see the photographs - alas no time yesterday.

Still waiting for the result from the MA... at this stage I'm pretty nervous. They should be out soon...

A Resounding Success

The Dundalk Summer School finished today. After two days of hectic workshops, the participants and contributors all thought that the workshops were very stimulating.

All participants filled in an anonymous questionnaire afterwards, and I was almost moved to tears by the positivity shown by them. They all loved the variety: the radio writing workshop, the drama workshop, the writing for children workshop - heck they even loved the poetry workshop!

It's agreed that it should become an annual fixture (so fingers crossed on that one), and the writers involved: Catherine Ann Cullen, Enda Coyle-Greene, Jaki McCarrick and me, all got huge pleasure out of being able to offer this variety to them - all credit to us.

One of the things that came up was that the participants would have liked longer workshops, and someone to come talk to them about prose - so that's an addition I would gladly like to make in the future!

Dundalk Summer Writing School

Tomorrow marks the first day ever of the Dundalk Summer Writing School. I mooted the idea with the Dundalk Arts Office back in late March, and they thought it would be a good idea, building on the support that the Creative Writing classes have built up since September last.

Featured writers include:

Catherine Ann Cullen’s award-winning children’s books, The Magical, Mystical, Marvellous Coat, and Thirsty Baby were published in the US by Little, Brown. Her debut poetry collection, A Bone in my Throat was published last year. Her workshop, ‘Writing for Children,’ will cover the elements of successful children’s fiction and young adult fiction.

Jaki McCarrick is a published writer whose plays include, The Mushroom Pickers, The Moth-Hour and The Stag of Doohamlet. Jaki’s ‘Drama Workshop’ will guide participants through setting, dialogue and narrative arc, and will encourage them to think dramatically about how a story can be developed as a piece for theatre.

Enda-Coyle Greene’s first collection, Snow Negatives, was the winner of the prestigious Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Prize for an unpublished manuscript in 2006. Enda’s prose and poetry can often be heard on RTE Radio 1’s, Sunday Miscellany, and Lyric FM’s, Quiet Quarter. Her workshop, ‘Writing for Radio,’ will consider subjects, guidelines and lengths of pieces for radio.

Barbara Smith’s debut poetry collection, Kairos, was published in 2007. She won an award at Feile Filíochta / Poetry Now 2008, and has completed an MA in Creative Writing at Queen’s University Belfast. Barbara’s ‘Lyrical Workshop’ will cover the lyric poem, from Kavanagh to Heaney inspiring participants to create their lyric vision of Dundalk.

There will also be two lunchtime readings on both days in Dundalk Library, Enda and Jaki on Wednesday, and Catherine Ann and I will read on the Thursday. The readings are free, the workshops are very reasonable at €60 all in. Next year, we'd love to add a third day of workshops, looking at prose.

The Joys of...

..writing! O, but spring has sprung here, even if it is cold and I am enjoying my return to college: full as this year's semester is going to be.

On Wednesdays, I attend a class on Life Writing, facilitated by the bould Ian Sansom. I have come across his writing in The Dublin Review (great round-up of the great and good in Irish (and beyond) writing) and The Yellow Nib (journal of the Queen's Seamus Heaney Centre). I believe he also writes for the Guardian (of a Saturday) and he organised a poetry appreciation class last semester, which alas I was unable to attend. You might get a flavour for his writing here, on his well-organised, informative and amusing website.

Yes, I'm gushing, aren't I? It's hard not to gush when you've attended one of Ian's classes: the sheer energy of his delivery; his enthusiasm for books and book recommendations; the simplicity with which he sets sparks blazing in you and the good sound advice he gives on the subject of writing alone, have been worth the fees for the MA alone (not to mention Sinead Morrissey, Medbh McGuckian, Daragh Carville - but enough name-dropping already!).

So, the subject is Life Writing, and the various forms thereof: biographical; essays - whatever you want to explore - it's all there. And the reading list alone is throwing up some wonderful books that I'd never come across: Jack Barzun's Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers is a lucid example. This book will serve either the beginner writer, or the writer who's ready for a brush-up. It's full of great examples of how not to write and contains exercises for helping you re-appraise how you use your words.

Last week's opening salvo was a twenty point 'Things Writers ought to Know:' otherwise billed as an undergraduate's course in Creative Writing Techniques. Now, I know that some might say that that is terribly reductive - but there is a sense in having it all there; simple and direct, I guess. That's just fifteen minutes from the class!

Anyway. I must go and do my homework while I still have some finger-stumps left to work with: An Essay of 1000 words on a subject from a list I made earlier of 'Things That I Would Like to Write About Before I Die.' When you look at it like that you really don't want to mess about in what's left of your writing career, do you?

Back To School

Yay! Kids are back since Monday, so some relative calm has descended on the house, allowing for some productivity... I'm up as far as six sonnets now... but have had to take a break - otherwise I was going to end up speaking and thinking in iambics forever! Arrgh! I will post one of them as soon as I've got my pruning shears out.

In the meantime, I'm off to Limerick today to read. I was there about this time last year for the launch of their journal Revival - that marked the start of all this travelling around Ireland for the sake of poetry - and I can't help marvelling at how far I've gone in a year.

I was just thinking the other day how much I managed to pack into 2007; the CW course, the finishing of the degree, getting onto the MA course, and not least travelling up and down to Kerry, working on edits for the book and getting Kairos 'out there.' I don't think I ever stopped to appreciate just how far I went!

This year looks equally exciting: more CW classes (it seems they like how we work); off to London in February to read at a literary festival; off to Rome to be a tourist (and do some sneaky research too); a Belfast dual reading/launch of Kairos with Enda Coyle-Greene and her collection Snow Negatives, in March and then there's all the material that I'll have from the MA.

Then there's the possibility of a trip to Cornwall and my best friend is coming home soon from her very long travels... all this from these marvellous blog connections.

It seems that those years of waiting around and kicking my heels (pointy ones at that) were just me getting ready... to take on the world! The future is pink.

2008 looks marvellous already, guys :)

Shh! Writer at Work!

I wish I could find one of those amusing red triangle road signs to accompany this post and to park outside the bedroom door - it's bedlam here as I try to work on one of the many projects I'm supposed to hand up in about three weeks.

There were some kids hanging out of light fittings (voluntarily, I add) a few moments ago - at least that's what it sounded like. And I also heard some crashing a while back. Good job I have some cover-all music going in the background, or I might hear more things I don't want to hear!

See, I had this idea about objects, a big mountain and, well, snow and cold and wind - a bit like it was outside earlier, only way colder - anyhow, I thought I'd throw in the extra handicap of writing all of these things into sonnets.

Oh yes. If you're going to do something, may as well make it real hard. Real hard. So why not set yourself a goal - say, ten sonnets? Five down, and five to go... by Sunday!

Oh - and make them rhyme as well - why not the whole kit and kiboodle, while you're at it... I know - I should really write them with handcuffed wrists behind my back whilst whistling Dixie... hasn't someone done that before...?

Gallivanting again

This week saw me fulfil some more reading obligations: briefly, a lunchtime reading in Chapters book shop of Parnell Street, in Dublin on Monday and then the Poetry Ireland reading in the Unitarian Church on Tuesday night alongside Catherine Ann Cullen, Hugh O'Donnell and Anatoly Kudryatsky.

It was a great pleasure to be reading at this venue; having watched and listened to many other poets of good standing from the (not uncomfortable) pews, it was a truly great feeling to get my turn in the pulpit. We were also very lucky to have two very accomplished Japanese musicians- a harpist and a violinist (sadly I forgot to take note of their names on paper) as well as an unusual music-scape in the form of Nepalese singing bowls, played by Anatoly.

The occasion was tinged with a little sadness as Poetry Ireland is losing its manager of two years, Deryn O'Brien to the Kingdom of Kerry; alas for PI, yay for Kerry. But I believe that she was given a very rousing send-off by the Dublin contingent and I know that she will do very well in the Kingdom.

I have another reading to do in Cork on Monday 10th Dec, at 8.30pm as part of the O'Bheal series of readings/open mic nights that happen down there on Monday evenings. I am looking forward to this one very much, as I've not had the chance to be at one of them before.

In the meantime, the CW Saturday class is just finished for the Christmas break - we are hoping to continue on again in the New Year (once I get my module assignments over and done with) and I am finishing up in Queen's on Friday until the new semester starts. They give you these generous holidays and then fill them with lots of hard work to do; I've three megadocious assignments due just before the end of January and frankly the thoughts of them frighten me half to death.

Results are due from the Open University on Friday 14th December. That's when I'll finally know the grade for my CW course of much earlier in the year and (fingers crossed) I will be asked to accept my degree in English Literature... Booking for the award ceremony opens on the following Monday. Can you imagine me, in Robes, Scroll et al... accompanied by the rabble of my family! What better way to do it than to bring them all along and get my youngest to (loudly) upstage the distinguished guest on the day ;)

Bits & Bobs

I have been in oxter-land! That's where you're so damn busy that you don't realise that the sh-loppy stuff is right up to your armpits and rising faster than you can say, 'Get me out of here, I'm a celebrity poet!'

Firstly, at another book launch last night in Belfast for an anthology of Canadian, Newfoundland and Irish poetry. The readings from the book were only inspirational and the lovely laid back setting of Bookfinder's Cafe, was completely ideal for creating the necessary ambiance for a weighty tome like this one.

The Echoing Years is produced by The Centre for Newfoundland & Labrador Studies of the School of Humanites, Waterford Institue of Technology. Edited by Stephanie McKenzie, Randall Maggs and John Ennis, the book is literally about 3 inches thick in the spine: and contains some of the great and good poetry that is contemporary now.

Placing poetry from both sides of the pond, from countries not as used to being highlighted, as shall we say the US or the UK, means that the spotlight is allowed to play a lot longer and brighter on this selection of poets. There are some real thrills and surprises in the book: such as Leonard Cohen, Michael Ondaatje and in the Irish section a wonderful translation of Barbara Korun by Theo Dorgan. I haven't even skimmed the surface with this volume - it is (and I am sorry to have to use this cliche) a veritable cornucopia; with the contents page running to 34 pages alone from a total of 1280... some mighty reading over the next few weeks! If you know someone who loves contemporary poetry, you could do a lot worse than stick this in their Christmas stocking(s).

Two: people are starting to send me virtual champagne (how did you know!) and I am awaiting my before-birthday present from my husband with the proverbial bated breath! This evening we are having a family party for me with the kids; tomorrow I set off to stomp around sarf Landin, wiv me gud OU mate (sorry, came over all cockney there!) and later on have a generally good time indulging myself at the Saturday blogmoot for Bookarazzi in London's West-End and hang with the Minx and the Debi one - you know they very conveniently decided to have the moot on my birthday ;)

I have officially decided to get on and enjoy this birthday for all I can - see you this time next year! ;)

****

Okay - maybe not - And my piece of knitting in the Grace story has made it into the Shameless Lion's Writing Circle; go on and have a deko (writer 15), you'll need to scroll down!

Fiddle dee dee!

I've so much to catch up on, this post will be in danger of sounding a little breathless... so here goes!

Firstly, the Shameless lions writing project has moved on apace - when I last checked in it was up to five writers already: Shameless, CB, Scarlett, Minx & Vanilla, with the next nominated writer being Verilion.

Grace the protagonist seems to be getting around a lot, and secondary characters are being developed. The initial potential of 'Grace' has widened out a great deal, and each writer has brought their own unique flavour and style to the proceedings.

*****
Another thing I forgot to blog is that skint writer's Blagsite has gone live, with lots of interesting articles about writing, by writers and you should really check it out, if you've not already done so. I did a wee piece myself, on - well, it had to be poetry, really, didn't it? I've read all the other articles and can't wait to see how this one grows - fair play skint!

*****

In case you were wondering, the Saturday Creative Writing class that I'm facilitating is going from strength to strength. Today was Week 3, (having had to do two readings last weekend) and we were critting the final pieces produced from the group - I was utterly astounded by the variety of writing and talent in the group! Each mini-story showed great potential and with some gentle suggestions made by the group could be made even better. We are hoping to produce some kind of publication next year, so these stories could be the seedbed from which we can grow a small anthology in the form of a chapbook.

Next week we move on to poetry and (rubs hands) that's where the fun will really start! I have some great ideas for workshops lined up and hope the group enjoys them as much as I have putting them together.

*****

The MA is starting to feel settled for me, although I still have to pinch myself that I am going up to Belfast to Queen's every week for classes - the campus has some terrific old buildings, and in the quad there are some beautiful trees with a blaze of red leaves - sadly the day I that I see this, did I have my camera there to capture this..? Did I heck! Anyway, I think I have enough on my plate producing one new poem a week for twelve weeks for the workshop - which includes some mighty fine writers... keeping up is going to be challenging; but as August's Guardian Workshop as reinvented by Rob showed, I think I thrive on challenges ;)

*****

Kairos is selling at a very steady pace. My publisher is absolutely delighted with the ongoing interest, as I was very much an untried and unknown quantity for his publishing outfit... and, it looks like there may be a Belfast launch in the offing, as well as perhaps a venture forth to the UK - more about this later on!

*****

So there you have it - life after the madhouse is live!

Creative Writing Classes

Today, I began facilitating the first of a series of eight Creative Writing classes. I must admit that I felt like I fell into the whole thing by accident. I didn't allow myself to believe that they were going to happen, because I thought that no-one would come. Imagine my pleasure and surprise to read about them in the local paper (once again) and then be told yesterday that the classes were actually over-subscribed by participants!

So today we set off down the writing road, beginning at the beginning - with basic CW techniques of clustering and freewriting, to free up the mind and imagination and then ending with homework of creating a character and then 'taking them for a walk.' Next week we'll get stuck into critiquing techniques and how to improve writing through criticism.

It's fantastic to be at the other end of a period of learning, where I'm now translating all the learning into facilitating other people's writing development. There were times when I was in the midst of the Literature degree, when I wondered what the hell I was doing it for.

How I smiled inwardly today as a class participant advocated for a plot first, character second, type of approach. Rather than get tied in knots, I cited Henry James as an example of an author with a character in search of a novel: The Portrait of a Lady, as opposed to an author with a novel plot in search of characters: Wilkie Collins and The Woman in White. It brought back many memories of the same conversation on the OU conferences and I must say that it is nice to know now, what all that study and endless essay writing was for. Ginnie Woolf - eat your heart out :)