The Western Writers Centre

The Conservatoire de la Poésie Classique Francaise is based at the rue Esquirol, Paris. As the name suggests, its primary concern is to investigate and conserve French poetry in all the Classic styles; I was gratified recently to receive some poems of my own from the Conservatoire over which great diligence had been exercised, line-for-line as used to happen with good editors here, and my faults in connection with French alexandrines and even simpler things unsparingly pointed out. It struck me, of course, that we could well do with a similar organisation here, where free verse, or, more pointedly, you-won’t-tell-me-how-to-write-poetry verse, proliferates like a poisonous algae. Anyone who describes such poetry as gibberish is, naturally, called an élitist. So who cares more about poetry - the Irish, or the French? A plenitude of literary workshops does not a literary culture make. Perhaps an academy wherein trochees, spondees and the odd iambic pentameter can feel at home is long overdue?

- Fred Johnston

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The current (April) issue of the French literary review, LIRE offers a fine essay on the late John McGahern, by André Clavel, coupled around a French edition, Mémoire, of his autobiography. McGahern, says Clavel was a writer who “cherche désespérément à se réconcilier avec la grâce, dans un pays dont il combettra tous les démons.” On the same pages there is a side-bar review of the French edition of Gerard Donovan’s novel, Julius Winsome, (translated by Georges-Michel Sarotte and published by Seuil), which is a sort of melted down Deliverance; Clavel (for ’tis he again) compares the whole to the work of Cormac McCarthy, not unnaturally, and adds that it is a “roman magnifique, tendu, envoûtant.” So there. In the ‘jeunesse’ section, Nathalie Riché reviews Siobhán Dowd’s intriguing La parole de Fergus (’Bog Child’)(Gallimard/Scripto). Dowd, who was brought up in London, died tragically young of breast cancer in 2007. “Une oeuvre piussante”, says Riché of this novel set in Northern Ireland: “ . . . .voici qulques-uns des messages de (un) hymne à la vie.” LIRE can be found at www.lire.fr Arguably, and sadly, no such elaborate and informed publication would be possible here, with its essays and reviews and letters pages, because contrary to what we believe – even though fewer than 15% of French people read more than a book a month – we do not hold literature in high esteem.

(LIRE. No 374. AVRIL 2009. €5.90. Subscriptions: tél 03.44.62.52.84 B1104 - 6-732 Sainte Genevieve Cedex.)

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Burt Kimmelmann will read for the Western Writers’ Centre, Galway, at The Imperial Hotel, Eyre Square, Galway on Tuesday, April 14th, at 8pm. Admission is free.

Burt Kimmelman has published five collections of poetry – Musaics (Sputyen Duyvil Press, 1992), First Life (Jensen/Daniels Publishing, 2000), The Pond at Cape May Point (Marsh Hawk Press, 2002), a collaboration with the painter Fred Caruso, Somehow (Marsh Hawk Press, 2005), and There Are Words (Dos Madres Press, 2007); his volume of poems titled As If Free is forthcoming in 2009 (from Talisman House, Publishers). For over a decade he was Senior Editor of Poetry New York: A Journal of Poetry and Translation. He is a professor of English at New Jersey Institute of Technology and the author of two book-length literary studies: The “Winter Mind”: William Bronk and American Letters (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998); and, The Poetics of Authorship in the Later Middle Ages: The Emergence of the Modern Literary Persona (Peter Lang Publishing, 1996; paperback 1999). He also edited The Facts on File Companion to 20th-Century American Poetry (Facts on File, 2005) and co- edited The Facts on File Companion to American Poetry (2007).

Further information: westernwriters@eircom.net 087.2178138

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