News/Events
I'm delighted to have had Savage Solitude accepted for publication by Dedalus Press. The book is a dramatised look at the solitary state, using three voices, one of which speaks quotations from a wide variety of sources. I also include an extensive bibliography for further reading. Look out for this publication in late 2012 or early 2013. For the past six months, I've been re-writing a fantasy-fable, which has kept me quite busy and manically absorbed. In November, I visited the universities of Vigo, A Coruña and Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. I gave poetry performances in them all, and in Santiago I gave a talk on Irish women's short fiction. It was a great experience and Galician food is an extraordinary delight.Form in Poetry Workshops
These will start again on Tuesday 28th February 2012, 6pm to 8pm. They will take place on the last Tuesday of every month.
Each workshop will focus on a particular aspect of form in poetry, and there will be time to begin work on a poem.
Venue: Swords Library, Rathbeale Road, Swords, Co. Dublin.
Booking: 01 8404179 or Email: swordslibrary@fingalcoco.ie
Twelve Beds for the Dreamer
"In my dream I'm dragged struggling to the people.
I'm thrown among them,
accounting for myself as the gallows is hammered.
I wake to silence, endemic hypocrisy,
and a huge wheel I'd like some room upon."
from 'Bound' (Sagittarius)
The 'twelve beds' in the title of this collection refer to the twelve astrological signs. I began by noting the stages of the moon's monthly cycle and checking whether my dreams might bear any relation to them. Would I dream of conflict when the moon was in Aries, or of love when it was in Libra? I didn't pursue the experiment scientifically, but I did write the dreams as poems and found that they could be allocated thematic places within the astrological divisions. I added other poems of the night and half-light to achieve an exploration of the inner life and a celebration of the zodiac, astrology having proved a remarkably effective map-maker in my experience.
The journey in the sequence is from Cancer (home, children, tradition) to Gemini (information, communication, restlessness), a road which has also been walked by my generation. The last poems in the sequence are steeped in the clamorous demands of the Celtic Tiger mentality.
Read a review here.
Forthcoming Publications
The narrative sequence set during the Irish famine of 1845 to 1849 sold out on its first edition. Salmon Publishing now plan to publish a new, revised edition. Details of the launch will be published here and the highlight will be the dramatic performance of the poems.
The Making of a Pagan, reprint
Arlen House intend to publish a new edition of my first collection, which elicited quite an interested reaction when first published. This edition
will contain seventeen new poems, which, I think, comment and expand on the thematic scope of the original. Watch this space for updates.