The Western Writers Centre

FRANCE REVISITED

Moving Still. Poems from Barbara Dordi. Cinnamon Press, Pbck. ISBN 978-1-905614-69-1 £7.99  63pp

One is always conscious writing here that out in the weird and wonderful world of Irish poetry there lurks a too-willing hand to copy these remarks and send them off to The Arts Council in Dublin as proof of my personal ‘divisiveness’ and ‘fracture.’ That one may have a fair idea who the culprit is doesn’t lessen one’s distaste. But plain speaking is your only man: Irish poetry is becoming calcified by its island-ness, by its dependence upon and circulation amongst a very small body of devotees, the majority of whom also write poetry. Poetry ’slams,’ however well-intentioned, encourage very bad work and tend to delude people into believing that poetry is not merely easy but is theirs by entitlement - much as the CEO of some Irish State body might consider a cool couple of million pension as an entitlement. So it is refreshing to have poetry which looks outside the island and, in the case of Barbara Dordi’s work, points up the two-headed dilemmas of exile. Like Ireland, France is full of small groups of English, Irish, and other groups of exiles who, for the most part, organise their own amusements and live within their own societies, leaving themselves open to the charge, French-led, that they don’t ‘mix.’ There are English-language French newspapers and English shelves in supermarkets offering English marmalade (’marmalade’ actually being a French invention, deriving from Marie malade, and the concoction created from the fruit of the orangerie when that unfortunate empress was a young girl and ill in Paris ) and Lipton’s Tea. Yet there are those who have made a conscious and deliberate attempt to bring themselves into France and to interrogate France more fully. Barbara Dordi edits The French Literary Review, a journal of work in English and in French which attempts to create a platform for some exiled voices and some native voices. Not surprisingly, this collection bridges the distance between England and France. Thus an elegantly turned poem about the painter Turner, Turner Magic, with its ‘Chimneys, charcoaled squarely/on the horizon. . .’ shares space with the beautifully-crafted Little Marie Cleans Cézanne’s Atelier, with its gorgeously-paced run on lines such as ‘ . . .things which he said spoke together:/rim bottle, green pot, sugar bowl, ginger jar.’ New Zealand is visited, and there’s even a brief sojourn in Los Angeles: but it is through painting and through France that Dordi best expresses herself, like many poets, being drawn to the visual in painting and ending up transposing the image into words and onto paper. The very title of the collection, ‘Moving Still,’ reflects the notion of still-life in painting, in French, nature morte, a phrase that’s weightier yet. Dordi is not the only exile in France who is trying to write through the experience, but these are exquisitely-textured poems which lack and sense of melancholy or, thankfully, nostalgia, and the images and the experiences imagined remain long after the canvases are put away.

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‘SLAM’ FOUNDER FEARS FOR THE FUTURE

According to an item in The New York Times, Chicago Slam poetry founder Marc Kelly Smith is concerned that the form of poetry performance he put together twenty-five years ago is in danger of becoming mainstream and moving away from its initial subversive intention. Slam poets invited to The White House recently haven’t helped. ‘Slam Poetry In Danger of Going Soft,’ shouts the headline. What, the article claims, critic Harrold Bloom called ‘the death of art’ is now becoming something anyone does, and without much skill, to achieve a few moments of fame. Ironic, one might add, that what is happening allegedly to Slam poetry in its cradle has happened to conventional poetry everywhere: standards drop, everyone declares himself an adept. But we live in an age when rock stars pride themselves on having access to presidents, removing themselves brazenly from the open anarchy that rock music always cherished. Punk rockers do TV advertisements for butter. In Ireland, Slam poetry too often took the form of rather adolescent ranting against one’s parents with a few four-letter words thrown in, there being arguably only two or three ‘genuine’ slammers who knew what they were about. Marc Kelly Smith would not approve, so be warned. (Check out The New York Times, May 8th, 2009).

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DEREK WALCOTT FIASCO AND ANONYMITY

The Nobel poet, Derek Walcott, has withdrawn from the race for Chair of Poetry at Oxford on the heels of a malicious - and, naturally, anonymous - smear campaign. Disgusting, of course; it is hotly discussed on the Guardian Online site, where, sensibly and honorouably, one comment asks why one should even discuss something sent anonymously. In England, it is held unconscionable that anyone should heed something forwarded anonymously: here, our Arts Council will not only accept anonymously forwarded correspondence but will act upon its allegations - thus anyone with a grudge can get their own back by banging off a couple of anonymous tales to Merrion Square, without fear that they will be called to put their spleen where their mouth is. It’s an appalling practice wherever it goes on, and it can ruin people. One can only wish Mr Walcott the very best and be thankful that there are still people out there who believe that taking anonymous mail seriously is not good for the soul. Now no doubt this item will be copied and sent - anonymously - to the Arts Council.

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MAURITIUS IN POETRY

Point Barre is a modest but carefully and artfully-produced poetry magazine edited by Yusuf Kadel and which features poetry in French and in the French-based argot of the countryside and islands. Not all of the poets by any means are from the island; there’s Algerian poetry here, poetry from France, Martinique and elsewhere. Even Ireland, indeed, and Luxembourg. The illustrations are quite amazing, based in native art. The various written argot is interesting: mintnan for maintenant, for example. It’s probably more correctly described as a dialectal subversion. Teddy Iafare-Gangama from Réunion gives a good example in his poem, ‘Avan’:

I di na poin ryan avan

I di navé poin ryan avan . . . .

Any guesses as to how that works out in French? José Le Moigne’s prose-poem, ‘Montfaucon,’ is bleak yet oddly liberating: Montfaucon was the site of the gibbet outside Paris. No one dies there, he says, one just vanishes into forgetting.

POINT BARRE: revue de poésie contemporaine No 7. 49pp. Pbck.  NPG. Contact: yhkadel@yahoo.com

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CULTURAL CORK TRUMPS GALWAY YET AGAIN

Seven years on, The Western Writers’ Centre still hasn’t been offered a premises by Galway City Council due to direct opposition from within City Hall itself. For shame, indeed. But all will be forgotten, no doubt, in the tidal celebration of the Volvo Boat Race. Meanwhile, other cities leave Galway behind in the culture stakes, including the city that beat Galway (’lack of suitable infrastructure’) to the title of European City of Culture, Cork. In April, Cork is hosting The World Book Festival. Somebody in Cork City Hall clearly has foresight and imagination and knows when to support the arts; the current Cork City Manager was once City Manager to Galway! There will be  a series of free events on Grand Parade, in the City Library, Bishop Lucey Park, and Triskel over the weekend of the 21 to 23 April. Round-the-clock readings for both children and adults by well known authors and poets will take place, including Paul Durcan, Rita Ann Higgins, Rommi Smith, Christy Kenneally, William Wall, Mary Leland, and Conal Creedon. Some new Cork writers will also give readings under the New Voices banner. Nice one. If the Western Writers’ Centre had been in Cork . . . forgive me! Ahead of Galway yet again, Cork already has a writers’ centre.

The recent controversy over ‘guerilla’ artist Conor Casby’s portraits of An Taoiseach Brian Cowen, which involved the intervention of the Gardái, begs a question as to how long it will be before the work of a poet, novelist or dramatist will suffer similar investigation; how long, let’s say, before RTE self-censor themselves and withdraw a radio or TV review of a play or other piece of literature in case it might give offence to a politician. It is remarkable that artists and writers are not paying more attention to this case; what starts with the censoring of legitimate satire might very well end with the withdrawal of someone’s novel from bookshops before we know what’s happening and even a visit to the author by the police. This may sound unlikely. But a few weeks ago anyone suggesting that an Irish radio station would be raided by police seeking information on a couple of paintings by an Irish artist would have been laughed at. We know better now. Perhaps, for all we know, there are other subtle ways in which the State or an agreed political or social consensus can censor artists who do not toe the line. But any Irish artist who ignores what has happened with Conor Casby does so at his or her peril. These are tricky social times and during such, even art can be deemed to be subversive and treated accordingly.

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INCOGNITA AND FULL OF LA GLOIRE

As has been remarked previously, many French literary magazines distinguish themselves by including articles and essays, as well as reviews, on visual and plastic arts, from film to painting; thus providing what might be termed a holistic view of the written arts. From Nantes comes Incognita, a glossy literary review of the kind we simply do not have here, which features interviews - one with Guillivec, the Breton poet - photos, new poems, and a whole treatise on Brasil. In full colour, the magazine costs €15 per issue and is available from Éditions du Petit Véhicule, 20 rue du Coudray, Nantes. ISBN 978-2-84273-662-0 pp 152, card cover. In with the post this morning comes the more humble but no less important Verso, No. 136, beautifully-produced and choc-a-bloc with new poems, small reviews, and news from around the French litmag world. Jean Tardieu is the principle subject of articles in the magazine, which is viewable at http://revue.verso.free.fr/ and is edited by Alain Wexler at Le Genetay, 69480 Lucenay. ISSN 0297-0406. pp 135 pbck. There is certainly a case for Irish poetry magazines to (1) embrace a more all-round view of the arts and where literature fits in, and (2) include interviews, discussions, essays on the state of poetry and literature and so forth and how they interplay with politics and social life. One might take the view that it is the French concentration on the teaching of philosophy from an early age that inculcates a more rounded view of the arts and culture generally: it is virtually impossible to find a poetry journal which does not somewhere discuss the role of poetry in the world, or some aspect of visual arts and even music.

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POETRY AS WISHING WELL.

The Wishing Ball. Poems by Clare Sawtell. Pbck.28pp

Co. Clare resident Clare Sawtell is well-known there and in surrounding areas as a musician and teacher and has fairly recently, and with great freshness, come to poetry. That said, some of this work has appeared in Crannóg magazine in Galway. From the starting-gun opening poem, the linguistic brightness and craft is evident:

“Trent and Ouse,

one of a line;

no glinting angles to

snag a salmon’s

eye but bobbing

globes . . .”

- ‘The Wishing Ball’

There is something of Ted Hughes here, something gritty and unbargaining. ‘Like the Sea’ is similar in its personalised but delicately devised revelation, depending on : ” . . .the way the waves roll in,/beinding before the wind, the way,/each thing is something else. . .” One marvels at the quirky but obviously deliberate use, the rebounding, of ‘the way’ against itself. So this is poetry that knows its way around. A number of these poems ponder the urbanised England of which Sawtell is a native: ‘The Girl on the 73′ drags us through “St Pancras, Angel, Stoke Newington . . . into The Cricketers,” and describes a middle-class(ish) English girl who “Reads novels, Miller, Greene,/and Flann O’Brien who she doesn’t quite understand. . .” This is not the star-spangled imagination of a girl come to poetry through a weekend workshop, but the revealed experiences of a mature woman making sense of secret places, personal space and redefined histories. Eavan Boland is here, ghosting the experiential notebooks of Sawtell’s better poems. ‘The Cellists’ is pure Eliot: “We expect honey, mellifluence/but some are gruff, tinny; we expect prima donnas/but the octagenerians are business-like, the grey-haired women tend to slump.” Do they, in their off moments, slip from room to room, considering great paintings? Unsurprisingly (Sawtell plays very fine music with her partner, the equally-well known and much travelled Co. Clare singer and instrumentalist, Mary O’Sullivan), more than one poem here is about, or built around, traditional tunes; ‘The Kid on The Mountain,’ is here, as is ‘Breaffa,’ a lovely tribute to the great musical arranger and member of the group Parsons Hat, Paul Wilkins, whose accordeon and whistle music, I would venture, will (and should) experience a renaissance of its own. who died a couple of years ago. I played often with him, as many musicians did. He was a composer of a rare strength, blending English folk music with his adopted Irish folk music to produce the sorts of arrangements not commonly found in the genre, and there are two albums and tracks on others which may benefit from re-hearing. For Sawtell, there is “The silence of/a musician’s parting. . .” and it seems that too many traditional musicians of a particular generation have left us in the past few years. Wilkins’ own compositions are notated and with luck they will be played into the ears of a wider audience. His ‘ The Green Bowl’ on piano and long whistle on his group’s very first album is elegaic and reminiscent at points of Vaughn Williams. Nuala O’Faolain is remembered here in a poem entitled, simply, ‘Here.’ Nothing maudlin, but the quiet acceptance of ordinary death yeilding to ordinary things: “In the dentist’s waiting area/ - left side frozen, the street/bright with heat - the photographs felt/intrusive: your friends’/farewells. Not wanting to look.”

It’s difficult to suggest anything but that one goes out and finds this book and reads its contents, then reads it again. And no, it is absolutely not visually hemmed in by a few parishes and the mountains of the Burren, it’s reach by contrast is vigorously in flux, its language and poem form reflecting this. It is, above all, interesting in a way that much contemporary poetry is not and one can only hope that some established poetry publisher out there will get in touch with Sawtell for the next work. Hers is a poetry of life’s events writ in a fine hand. We lose by ignoring it.

- Fred Johnston.

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FINAL TALES OF GALWAY, by Peadar O’Dowd. €10 Pbck. 66pp

Previous works by Galway writer Peadar O’Dowd include The History of County Galway, Galway City, and Down by the Claddagh. He pens a weekly column for the Connacht Sentinel newspaper, carries out educational tours of the county and city, and has a keen interest in remembering a Galway of a different age (or perspective) when, arguably, things were and are simpler. There’s nothing overly-nostalgic about the fifteen brief stories and reminiscences published here - some are quite contemporary reflections - though undoubtedly they will bring a smile to native Galwegians who have seen their city change, some parts for the better, some parts definitely not. Interestingly, O’Dowd acknowledges the cultural scene with a memory of a work by the painter, Derek Biddulph and Kenny’s Gallery and Bookshop - Kenny’s, like many other recognisable landmarks of Galway, is now gone from the city. The arts scene was simple thirty years ago, when I and others arrived in Galway, yet energetic, as O’Dowd remarks. Now it is virtually certain (as I have learned recently) that any written criticism of the Galway arts’ world, such as this piece you are reading, will be copied by an anonymous or hardly-credible ‘citizen’ and sent to The Arts Council in Dublin as proof that I am ‘divisive.’ O’Dowd’s work reminds one that native Galwegians have a unique and open warmth, humour and honesty often absent from the ‘blow-in’ arts’ scene; as if creativity itself produced ethical disintegration. New wealth or the hope of it challenges the moral and ethical fibre of any town: O’Dowd remarks in his marvellous short story, ‘The Crossword,’ of a young girl sitting beside a character in a pub: ‘Granite would melt beneath her glare . . .’ The Galway of ‘The Cellar Bar’ and Taaffe’s shop, even of Kenny’s Gallery and Bookshop in High Street, is gone forever. The tales here circle a smaller and more intimate world, where things were and are new and the city is no less vibrant for it. These tales could be transferred, one imagines, to virtually any similar-sized town in the country. They are a glimpse of simpler honesties, reminiscent of de Maupassant. We should be thankful for them. Now who will be first in copying out this piece and sending it to the Arts Council as proof of . . . .

- Fred Johnston

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HUMAN RIGHTS AS A CARTOON?

Some of us will have noticed and even read the series of The Irish Times essays by Irish writers over the past while to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A worthy idea, of course - so why was one of the essays ‘penned’ by - and advertised as penned by - the fictional Irish Times columnist of Dublin 4, ‘Ross O’Carroll-Kelly?’ Anyone feeling even a tad uncomfortable with this might feel all the moreso to read in The Irish Times Weekend Review section for November 29th a long advertisement for a series of readings and discussions, to be filmed, due for Trinity College soon, featuring Seamus Heaney, Eugene McCabe, Roddy Doyle and a host of others - including ‘Ross O’Carroll-Kelly.’ No, not his creator, but the fictional character himself, whose illustration is squeezed between a photo of Seamus Heaney and Roddy Doyle in an elaborate bottom-page advertisement. Some of us may think that the inclusion of a cartoon character as a speaker/essayist in this instance rather dilutes, even demeans, the seriousness of an event around human rights. It is difficult to imagine what was the use, or point, of cartoonising so serious a subject, or what the real-life human writers, some of considerable distinction, think about it. Is this the new ‘journalism-lite’?

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BREATHLESS IN BRITTANY HOPALA! No 30 Novembre 2008-Fevrier 2009. Pbck. €10 97pp ISSN 1296-2031

The Breton-published review of the arts and culture generally is published at Landernau, Brittany. It carries for this issue a number of poems, articles on cinema and humanism, essays on the late René Char (a signed letter from whom adorns my wall), Mahmoud Darwich and Paol Keinig, the latter who fell, it appears, between two languages and discovered ‘the other French language,’ that of Breton. There is an article in Breton here too, book and CD and festival reviews. Founder Jean-Yves Le Disez and Philippe Le Stum contibute an illustrated article which could have been written about certain Irish painting of the same period, on how foreign painters came to view the Bretons from roughly 1870 to the end of the ‘Thirties. As they point out, the view many painters had of the Bretons was a view from their studio windows. ‘Jours tranquilles a Belfast’ is a wonderful illustrated essay by writer Hervé Bellec on Belfast; he reminds us that the peace Ulster now enjoys is not unlinked to the US and UK-enhanced fiscal improvements (and let’s not forget European aid) throughout the island, but he was writing, one suspects, before greedy bankers on both sides of the Atlantic messed things up. “Belfast,” he quips; “the name puts a little shiver up one’s back . . .” But Breton readers should not confuse photos here of buildings demolished with bombed-out buildings. At it’s worst, Belfast was not Beirut, though some scribes tried to imagine it so. HOPALA! is a valuable publication which doesn’t have an equal here. We should, of course. Kernavo! www.hopala.assoc.fr hopala.buro@wanadoo.fr

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CORK CITY THROWS DOWN A GAUNTLET TO GALWAY

There is always the risk that this item will be copied and sent anonymously or under an assumed name to The Arts Council or some similar body as evidence of personal cultural bolshiness - that’s been the routine to date. It’s a symptom of a certain cultural dysfunction. Nonetheless it is worth remarking that a new brochure for events at Cork’s marvellous Triskel Arts Centre, now celebrating thirty years on the go, remarks, in a list of achievements, that “Pat Cotter and the Munster Literature Centre deserve much praise for continuing to raise the profile of Cork as an International City of Literature” (sic.) In spite of having the Cúirt literature festival since 1986 and the Western Writers’ Centre for seven years (to name but two projects) Galway lost the City of Culture title to Cork because it lacked ’sufficient infrastructure:’ that is, there wasn’t enough going on. That should have been a wake-up call; instead, Cork is laying heavy - though deserved - literary claims and Limerick City has opened its new writers’ centre while Galway’s cultural powers continue to play politics with its literary projects and programmes, creating massive and blatant remit duplication and seeming at some level to relish the resentment and confusion which results. Fair play to Cork and Limerick, who strive ahead. Galway’s claims to be a city of culture are, of course, consequently diminished. In spite of this, the Western Writers’ Centre continues to plan and move on, with new workshops in the Irish language planned for the New Year and a second literary festival at Gort. *****************************************************

TAKING OFF FOR HIGHER ACCLAIM DÉCOLLAGE - New and Selected Poems. Patricia Burke Brogan. wordsonthestreet publishers. ISBN 0-95526-046-9 Pbck. €11.99 99pp.

In an age when poets are two-a-penny and the standards of poetry have dropped accordingly, when one can be a student in a poetry class on Tuesday and be a published poet teaching a poetry class by Thursday, it is easy to forget that very good work continues to be produced. If any Galway-based poet deserves publication and decent critical acknowledgement for her literary work (in drama, no less than in poetry) it’s Patricia Burke Brogan, whose ‘new and selected’ is overdue. The title means (in aviation terms) a ‘take-off’ or, more mundanely, an ‘unsticking’; a breaking away, if you like. The cover is a painting, ‘Gaillimh,’ by Brogan. The overall production values of this enterprising independent publisher are extremely high. I admit to having always been a supporter of Patricia Burke Brogan’s work, understanding too that she was miserably treated by some who wanted to piggy-back creatively on the success of her revelatory play, ‘Eclipsed.’ The poems here range widely in content and reach - there is a poem, ‘Haunted Space,’ written to commemorate the occasion of ‘Eclipsed’ first being produced in the innovative (and, consequently, now gone) Punchbag Theatre, Galway. There is a strong histroical awareness running through som of the poems, mingling deftly with discussions on painting and painters, notions of spiritual intimation. The Introduction by Ken Bruen doesn’t quite do her work justice, being more epigrammatic than critical, and the comparison to the work of Hopkins is not credible, given Hopkins’ style and imagistic resonance. Patricia Burke Brogan’s language does not require decoding and it’s strength lies in this; the reader is aware of an underlying fierce gentleness, a slicing critical eye, coupled with a deceptive simplicity and a disarming linguistic beauty. A good glossary concludes the collection. All in all, a solid and worthy collection of poems by a mature and disciplined poet of whom more should have been heard long before now. Unlike some others, this ‘New and Selected’ was long-awaited and is a welcome brief of fresh air in a stale room. Congratulations to Galway-based wordsonthestreet. www.wordsonthestreet.com

- Fred Johnston.

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LIMERICK WRITERS’ CENTRE WORKSHOP

- Limerick literary lights : at the recent Poetry Workshop given by Tim Cunningham at the Limerick Writers’ Centre were: Front - Beth Dennihy, Clare Dollard, David Tobin, Tommy Collins. Back - Dominic Taylor; Limerick Writers’ Centre, Gerard Sheehy, Mike Finn; Limerick Writers’ Centre, Tim Cunningham, Mark Lloyd; Limerick Writers’ Centre, Joe Healy and Michele English.

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BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID . . . The pseudonymous sender of nasty e-mails is back! Just when you thought it was safe to turn the lights off, another unverifiable e-mail saying nasty things has been sent, complete with ancient press-clippings, to a statutory body. Tends to happen mostly when the Western Writers’ Centre gets publicity or begins a new venture; very curious, like having a full moon event. Anyone with any clues should come forward, of course. God knows what will happen, and what horrors will be sent by e-mail, come Hallowe’en! - everyone likes a fan, but this is ridiculous.

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