Launch of Circle and Square by Eileen Casey

All sorts of reasons prevented me from attending the launch of Circle and Square in the Shopping  Centre, Tallaght recently so I want to take this opportunity to welcome another fine book into the literary world. Edited by, and the brainchild of, the indefatigable, Eileen Casey, it is an anthology of poetry and fiction to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Square Shopping Centre. Having lived in South County Dublin when there was only the village shop, the arrival of the Pyramid changed all lives. It is fitting therefore, to have such a  collection of vibrant voices to paint its many faces through the looking glass of  new and established writers, with contributions from Platform One Writing Group and guests. The Tallaght Photographic Society brings the whole book together with its interpretations of the work. I am delighted to be part of such great company. Thank you Eileen. 

 Here is the opening to my story:

Coming Down the Line

I’ve always loved the driving. Diesel in my blood from the time I could toddle out to the gate as my father drove the truck home from the quarry. He’d stop, hoist me up onto his lap, big calloused hands guiding mine on the steering wheel as we moseyed into the yard. No surprise, then, says you, that I’d end up with a job like this, seeing the tops of nine houses in my little bus driving around the back roads.

            Checking my rear-view I head towards Kate Gunnings’ spot. Before her diagnosis, Kate was the sort of woman who’d use a dead man’s hand to skim cream off the milk, but that’s not her now. She’s there at her allotted place, between the crossroads and the back-side of the cemetery doing her best to be invisible while her husband makes a big farrago of fussing around her. He leans into the road, sticks his hand out like a scarecrow for fear I mightn’t stop, for fear I’d drive on by and she wouldn’t get to where she’s supposed to get to, before the morning has gone up its own arse.

I pull in close beside them on the grass virgin. The door ‘gillie-gillies’ open and the scent of rain creeps in on top of me.

With her scarf tied under her chin, the scarf with horses and hounds jumping all over her head, there’s a gimp on her because Jim’s helping her up the steps. She pushes his worried hand away, hauls herself along the aisle to her seat with nothing more than a nod to me, the world in her little bag of toiletries. She always sits at the other side of the bus, away from her husband, so he can’t decipher the lines on her grey face or, more importantly, she doesn’t have to read the pain on his.

            I indicate out onto the main road. The trees sway back and forth in the breeze and up through them the blue shirt of sky has sleeves of clouds ballooning out, little dark buttons of birds fastening it down the front.

The bus trundles along at its ease until it gets to Breege’s house. She’s not waiting outside like she usually is, so it’s handbrake on, I jump down and ‘cnagg, cnagg’ at her door. The statue of our lady is sitting on the windowsill with her back to us, her mantle of blue hiding her from the grey faces in the bus. Even she doesn’t have the stomach to look at the world anymore and watch the crosses that people have to bear. She’s seen it once; she doesn’t want to see it again.

Poems in Live Encounters

Thanks to Mark Ulyseas and Terry McDonagh for  choosing my poems to be published in the current issue of Live Encounters


 http://liveencounters.net/2015/10/31/live-encounters-celebrate-six-years-2010-to-2015/

Jobs for a Wet Day by Ger Reidy

Jobs for a Wet Day by Ger Reidy was recently launched at the Westport Arts Festival by Arlen House.  'A powerful chiselled collection of short stories which are by turns funny and bleak and compassionate,' is how Mike McCormack describes it and how right he is. This in no mean feat for a debut collection.

There is no sentimentality here but an authentic and scrupulous depiction of rural existence in all its drudgery and small lives. Characters move through the pages with resigned acceptance of the weather and the pain and the few bob that comes to them through the headage payments but with that resignation comes humour too. We are introduced to Gaughan, whose life revolves around the arrival of the postman and what he might bring or, Reilly who stretches his life beyond the grey confines of his world to visit a woman in Mexico City. Then there is the wonderful world that Reidy creates in 'My Big Day' where the character seems like he has just stepped into, or out of, a page from Juan  Rulfo's Pedro Páramo..

The stories are well and truly imagined by the perfectly chosen art work by Dermot Seymour on the front cover. Congratulations to Ger on this  fine achievement. That it may soar.

Once Upon a Place

For the children in all of us, Once Upon a Place is a must read. Launched last Monday in Iveagh House, Stephen's Green I was so honoured to be there and to be part of the anthology. With its synergistic blend of outstanding poets and short fiction writers, stunning artwork by PJ Lynch and the publishing expertise of Little Island, it is definitely greater than the sum of its part and can only be a winner. 

The brain child of Eoin Colfer, Laureate na nÓg, in his introduction he writes that ‘ with every word you read you will be transported to various places around Ireland where magic is as warm and golden as the summer sun.’ And he’s not making it up.

There are magical stories and poems of place by Eoin himself. Derek Landy. John Connolly, Seamus Cashman, Siobhán Parkinson, Marie Louise Fitzpatrick, Sarah Webb, Enda Wyley, Pat Boran,Mark Granier, Roddy Doyle, Paula Leyden, Oisín McGann, Jane Mitchell, Kate Newman, Jim Sheridan and there I am  plonked in the middle of such illustrious company.    

 

As if that wasn’t enough, when I climbed the very fancy stairs of Iveagh House not only did I have the pleasure of meeting, Eoin, PJ Lynch and his son Sam, but PJs illustration of my poem ‘Snail Pals’ was framed for all to see alongside Kate Newman’s’ How to Feed a Stranger’s Donkey’.

   

I have no doubt but we all suffered from a most welcome writer's cramp as we sat conveyor-belt style and signed for all we were worth.

Thank you to all who were involved in the creation of this beautiful book, all at Laureate na Óg, Children’s Books Ireland, Little Island and Poetry Ireland. An anytime present for young and old.

Reading with John Banville and Orflaith Foyle at Westport Arts Festival

What a highlight of the year it was for me to read at the Westport Arts Festival last Saturday with fellow writer, Orflaith Foyle, and  Man Booker prizewinner, John Banville. It has been a while since I have read with Orflaith so it was a real treat to hear her poetry again, and listen to her stories of where she has lived throughout her life so beautifully told in the poem: And Where Else?

Sometimes we were mistaken for Canadians

And because we replied  Australian

We seemed to make sense.

School friends demanded why we weren't black

Since we came from Africa too.

And where else?

Some years ago I heard John Banville say that he regards the sentence as the greatest invention of human kind. It is not the characters who have the power. It is the language that has the power. Listening to him read from his stunning new novel The Blue Guitar certainly proves that he is the master of the perfect sentence. The final scene from which he read was powerful in its tenderness and beauty.

And what a lovely dinner we all had together afterwards with John and his wife, Janet, Orflaith, Ger Reidy,  Westport poet,short story writer and committee member, Alan Hayes of Arlen House and Colette Nic Aodha.

Thanks to all of the committee for inviting me, and for looking after us so well. A special thanks to Bláth of the High Street B&B where we had the most delicious and interesting breakfast while listening to Maeve Edwards reading her pitch-perfect piece about being a Skype Granny, on Sunday Miscellany.  

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