The Western Writers Centre

“I write about the passage of life from ease to unease to disease.” This quote from Ann Enright concludes an interesting Editorial in the Fall/Autumn 2008 issue of Ars Medica, published from Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada. As usual, this splendid magazine is concerned with the creative in terms of healing, diagnosing and testifying to the nature of illness through material written by established and not-so-established poets and writers; some articles, stories and poems are written by people who have suffered illness or who have witnessed the suffering of others, and some are written by medical professionals, but this is not a coded medical textbook. The Book of Negroes is an extract from a longer book of the same title by Lawrence Hill, a sort of one woman’s diary of slavery; Making Images by Arthur Robinson Williams is a selection of photographs, quite beautiful in black-and-white, of transgender individuals. Sunday Nights at the Shangri-La is a tale by Cindy Dale of what it means to log in to a suicide survivor’s online chat-site. The Excessiveness of Witnessed Cruelty, by Edward Salem, is a sequenced poem describing vividly the kind of small cruel things that happen when people - and medical practitioners - become immune to the proximity of illness and death. A Discussion Guide concludes the magazine. One might raise questions as to why such a magazine doesn’t exist here, when such emphasis, however slowly, has been put on the notion of the arts and health. It would seem easier to plan or programme writers’ residencies in hospitals, for instance, than to thoroughly examine the nature of illness from a wider and more informed and published perspective. Whereas in some cases such residencies have - regrettably - become mere components in cultural one-upmanship, the production of a seriously debating magazine such as Ars Medica would require particular skills and particular involvement which might sort the men from the boys, as it were. It would be up to an Irish hospital (not some outside committee) to consider the possibility of such a publication, which could be both literary and health-informational. This is not merely a venture for writers, for without the participation of the medical profession it cannot have any value.

Ars Medica - A Journal of Medicine, The Arts, and Humanities. Vol.5, No1. Fall 2008. $12. Pbck. Illustrated. 132pp. ISSN 1910-2070. www.ars-medica.ca

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The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, ‘without warning or consultation,’ has severed all financial support to the CWN (Community Writers’ Network) under the ASOP programme. This a £60,000 cut in financial support to a very worthy and very enterprising literary organisation. Two salaried posts will go by the end of March. Part of the ASOP services provided by the CWN include The Brian Moore Short Story Awards, the CWN weekly update, workshops and masterclasses and Ulla’s Nib magazine. Writers’ South of the border will be aware that the CWN unhesitatingly published in the updates news of events and workshops down here. Naturally, they are seeking a ‘review of this decision’ and are hoping to meet with the ACNI’s heads within a fortnight. The CWN is asking for writers’ opinions to be forwarded to ACNI Chief Executive, Roisín McDonogh, at chief@artscouncil-ni.org  With the Arts Council here in the beautiful South killing off the Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin and withdrawing grant-aid from the Western Writers’ Centre partly on the head of letters published in local Galway newspapers critical of the arts in that town, one has to wonder what in God’s name is happening. Why are the literary arts on both sides of the border being so clearly targetted? Why are some singled out and others have their grants upped? Whatever other reputations are being damaged in the Republic, our reputation as a haven for literature is gone, and now the rot seems to have spread Northwards. No doubt some concerned Galway citizen will copy this item and send it to the Arts Council in Dublin, as they have done in the past. Good luck to them. Meanwhile the ACNI should immediately reconsider this utterly daft decision regarding support for the CWN. It is not to be assumed that all of Ulster’s literary art revolves around Belfast or, for that matter, Queen’s University; no more than one can take a lead from what is produced in Dublin. CWN’s embrace was far and wide. We should support them.

REPLY FROM THE ARTS COUNCIL OF NORTHERN IRELAND:

The Arts Council considered an application from Creative Writers Network at its meeting on 11 February 2009. The Council took the view that there were serious deficiencies in Creative Writers Network provision of services to the sector as well as critical weaknesses in management, financial administration and governance. The Arts Council has received an independent Value for Money Review of Creative Writers Network and its recommendations will have a bearing on the future relationship between CWN and the Council. The Arts Council has made an in-principle offer of funding to CWN to run from 1st-30th April 2009. This offer is equivalent to one month of its 08/09 grant, i e £5,000, and is intended to give the organisation a month’s breathing space.

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Sad to learn belatedly by letter this morning of the death of poet and TLS poetry editor, Mick Imlah, who died on January 12th, aged 52. He had motor neurone disease. Educated at Magdalen, Oxford, Mick Imlah had been particularly encouraging of the efforts of this writer with some early work and had published me on two occasions in the TLS, for which I was grateful. Born in Aberdeen in 1956, he had published pamphlets and even a collection of poetry, but true success arrived with the publication by Faber of The Lost Leader in 2008, which took the Forward Prize that year, his first full collection for twenty years. His generosity as a promoter of poetry was considerable, and, again, he had considered a selection of my own poems for a Chatto collection on new poets some years ago too: his first collection had been published by Chatto and Windus in 1988. We never met, sadly, exchanging letters and short notes. There is a brief Galway connection: Imlah’s first collection was reviewed with great praise by poet Douglas Dunn for the TLS; Dunn read at Galway’s Cúirt festival in the festival’s first days. The BBC’s ‘The Culture Show’ released a review of Imlah’s work, with poets including Andrew Motion, in December of last year. He will be sadly missed. - Fred Johnston

Poet and prose-writer John Montague is soon to celebrate his 80th birthday, and our sincerest congratulations to him, a gentleman of the Irish poetry world. Time, then, for anyone interested in Montague the story-writer (and he is an excellent one) to hop out and purchase his just-published collection, A Ball of Fire - Collected Stories, with a Preface by Montague himself. A New Yorker by birth, he found his ancestry in the Clogher Valley, Co. Tyrone; these stories reflect his musings and ramblings and are masterly, he himself admitting a certain debt to William Faulkner and, of course, James Joyce. But many world events have influenced Montague’s writing, both prose and poetry, and it is irritating to read so often of this poet and that novelist being our first Irish European writers, when Montague and many others have been writing stories out of partial or complete exile or a European sensibility for decades, the most notable being Aidan Higgins, Beckett, even Joyce himself. Time to get a copy of these stories, then, and engage with a master storyteller.

A Ball of Fire - Collected Stories. John Montague. Hbck. ISBN 978-1-905483-45-7 288pp. The Liberties Press. €25

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