The Scattering -A Collection of Short Stories by Jaki McCarrick - A Post in Observation of Irish Short Story Month

The Scattering - A Collection of Short Stories by Jaki McCarrick (2013, 235 pages)

March 1 to March 31

Jaki McCarrick

Dundalk

Posting on a collection of short stories presents more of a challenge, to me at least, than posting on a novel.    For me I find the best way to write about a collection of short stories, both in terms of assisting  possible readers or buyers of the collection and respecting the writer, is by  posting in some detail on a representative number of the stories and then make some general observations on the collection and offer my thoughts to prospective readers.

  For those in a hurry, I will say The Scattering - A Collection of Short Stories by Jaki McCarrick is an amazing body of work, withing shimmering and incredibly entertaining stories that go deep into the heart of many of the issues facing contemporary Ireland.  This book deserves tremendous success and a very wide readership.  It both confirms and rises above the common elements of the Irish short story I have spoken about this month;; the weak or missing father, the presence of the stage Irishmen, the uneasiness of the relationships of men and women,  the heavy reliance on alcohol, the temptation toward arrogance as a way of dealing with the humiliating consequences of colonialism, the obsession with death, and the false rebellions of posers of all sorts.  

"By The Black Field"

"There were times when Angel thought that the land
communicated with him. He knew that this was irrational, and
probably due to overwork, and to the fact that he had not yet lost
his city-born infatuation with green fields (and also, possibly,
because he’d spent his childhood summers in this place and had
fond and lively memories of it). He imagined that after a few
more years on the farm he’d be as hard nosed towards the land
as every other farmer he knew. Still, he could not dispel the sense
he had that wherever he went on his six acres he was not alone."

"By The Black Field", the lead story, gets this collection of to a marvelous start.  It is set on a six acre farm in Ireland, up near the border with Northern Ireland.  Angel not to long ago inherited the farm and he and his wife not to long ago moved back there from London. Angel loves working the farm but he misses the excitement of London and his wife misses it more than he does.    As the story opens he is building a fence on some wet land and he is thinking maybe he should have built a stone wall.  He and his wife live in an old cottage but all their neighbors live in modern houses.  This is a story, in an oblique way of how a returning exile feels a deeper connection with Ireland than those who never left.  (You can see this some of the better short stories of George Moore also.)  Like any short story  master McCarrick gets us interested in the people in the story (there is something different about them and I loved how this was slipped into the story so subtly), we learn a bit about their life history, a sort of conflict with a neighbor the man does not like, she reminds him of the things he does not like about London, then something big happens. We are left with a mystery as to exactly what did occur but that just makes the story all the better.  "By The Black Field" is a wonderful story, it also give you a kind of feel for what can be the darker side of Ireland, never far from the surface.  Death has been my constant companion this month as I read Irish Short Stories and he is with me today.  I do not mind him so much as I once did.  

"The Badminton Court"

"She says little at breakfast. The evening before she had been
on fire. Rapid, erratic thoughts, unfinished sentences, sentences
that unravelled, ending in lacunae, gibberish. She had been
rude, her inhibitors obstructed by that thing, growing,
multiplying inside her. Tumour talk, Frances calls it."

"The Badminton Court" is a very moving story about a debt repaid through service to seventeen year old Miranda, dying of a brain tumor. It is a story of the memories of twenty two years ago when the narrator never dreamed these would be her happiest times.  Her father is rich and always away on business trips an her mother is simply gone and no one ever speaks of her.  There are two people taking care of Miranda.  One is Francis, a household servant of long standing and the other is the daughter of a man who was in debt to Miranda's father for some dubious business deals and somehow the debt is being paid by his adult daughter being Miranda's final companion.  This is a tale which can only end one way or another in death.  It is also about how happiness comes often from small seized moments of joy as shown in these wonderful lines spoken twenty years after an amazing act of kindness and cruelty is committed.  We never quite know why but that works perfectly.

"Once he asked if I was happy. Before I had the chance to
reply, he said his own life had been good and prosperous, but
hardly happy. Mine was the same, I said. What is happiness? he
asked, as if I knew any better than he. I pondered on this. For
me, I said, happiness is two girls playing badminton under an
azure sky with clouds that are bird-shaped. Those summers
were best, he replied, when I used to watch you play. It occurred
to me then, that for nearly a quarter of a century we had both
been sustained by a few intoxicating memories squirrelled from
our youth. I told him it was high time we lived a little. He agreed
and told me then of his plans to flatten the court."

"The Scattering" 

"Further along the beach he saw a car parked above the dunes.
A woman was standing by the edge of the dunes looking at the
sea. She was holding a blue plastic bag tensely against her
cream coat. He thought of turning back as he was now alone
on this stretch and did not want to alarm the woman, who had
begun her descent to the beach. Suddenly a dog came
bounding towards him. He had seen the exuberant three-legged
collie on the beach many times, always alone, absurdly oblivious
to its missing limb."

"The Scattering", the title story of the collection, like the two prior stories I have posted on have death at its core.  The "plot action", not a phrase I am crazy for, is fairly simple. A man has died and following his wishes his ashes have been scattered in the ocean.  A quick look at images of the Ireland seacoast in Google will reveal lots of dramatic sea shore cliffs that would make an excellent venue from which to scatter ashes in the water.  I suspect this is what often leads to the request.  Maybe it also the fulfillment of a wish while living, to throw oneself in the water.  It is the story of contrasts of two scatterings, one with a large respectable number of people and one with just a woman with a blue plastic jug and a three legged dog for her company.  There is a great deal in this work and I hope you will be able to read it for yourself.  


"The Burning Woman"

"Despite his name, Quigley claimed
no Irish heritage, and John’s Irishness was meaningless to him
as he had left Limerick at fourteen and had never returned. To
find as neighbours two young Irish ‘artists’, was, John told me
later, an enormous relief to him. We gave him hope, he said, that
a gay man with no interest in hurling, in Leinster vs Munster, or
the Irish language, might be able to go home one day without
fear of being strung up. On the basis of our mutual disregard for
any particular nationalism, we four formed a strong friendship,
avoiding Irish haunts in London like the plague despite his name."

I really liked this story.  It begins with an invitation to a funeral.   Sometimes people say they going to someone's funeral means you won and they lost.   The deceased is an artist, from Ireland who moved to London in a time when he had no way to make a living in Ireland.  He made it big time as a painter, living out the dream of the crazy artist, his description makes it seem he looked a bit like Aleister Crowley.  There is just so much to like in this story.  In the figure of the man, who they have not seen or heard from in decades, John, we have the crusty embittered writer raging at the world for its failure to see his genius.  We also have occult elements, pentagrams, paintings of burning women and such.  I do not have a way to talk about what happens in this story without trivializing it so I won't.  It is about exile, about wanting to forget your are Irish, about why Jack Kerouac still matters, about what London means to the Irish, about failure of nerve.  In this  story I came to see the full power of McCarrick, it is deeper, danker and darker than the first three works I spoke about. 

"Blood"

"What are you researching, Lara?’ he asked.
‘Oh. Settlers to this area in the fifteenth century.’
‘From Britain?’
‘No,’ Lara replied, scanning the huge ivory pages. As she did
not elaborate, and as he was afraid to enquire further, Fred
turned to his wastepaper basket and began to sharpen his
pencils. The room seemed to fill with small, intrusive noises:
the trembling chalky sound of the ivory pages being turned, the
pencil shavings hitting the screwed-up balls of paper like rain,
the swish of Lara’s dress each time she moved, her assured slow
breathing."

Like "The Burning Woman", "Blood is in part about an Irish writer.   I have come to see this as kind of a license for eccentric behavior sometimes accompanied by the arrogance mentioned above, almost as if it were on loan from W. B. Yeats and James Joyce to name but a few exemplars.  

One of the characteristics of a society in which the old certainties are dying is a preoccupation with non-standard accounts of history,  occult systems.   One saw this in Ireland when for a time leading figures flirted with the theories of the Order of the Golden Dawn, the Waite Tarot and such.  Knowledge of arcane systems brought with it a feeling of superiority a smugness made all the more annoying as it was parasitic upon the backs, the blood of others for whom they claimed to speak but for whom they had contempt.  There are two on stage characters in "Blood" a simply marvelous, very smart, very funny story that helps explain why vampires are central to Irish culture and why they always seem to be so elitist acting (Carmilla this means you.)  We have Fred, he is a 30 year old who has never done anything but go to school.  His aunt is a world famous researcher into middle Eastern culture  and is often away at international conferences.  She has an incontinent cat and in exchange for taking care of the cat, he gets to live in her mansion.   The mansion contains a library of rare books and manuscripts and Lara has a letter authorizing her to use the library.  She is also female, something Fred has had no personal knowledge of for six years and sees as way to complicated a topic.   He will stick with academia.   Besides the cat, they are the only ones in the mansion so of course they talk.   I want you to read this story (and the whole collection) without it being spoiled for you.   I will just say it is flat out hilarious and you will marvel at the close.  

"Trumpet City"

"There was a danger to what he could smell in the
music, and he liked that. He liked that a lot."

I have recently started reading, after hearing it was chosen as the One City One Book selection for April James Plunket's classic novel set in Ireland in 1913, Strumpet City and I am betting this title is a play on that account of the mean streets of old Dublin.

The crazy musician seeing more in the world than the mundane people of the world do is a standard character in lots if novels and short stories.   This story does a great job with that idea.   The trumpet player dreams of playing in New York City or New Orleans, the holy cities for jazz music.  I believed in his love of music.  The story is also about the changing times in Ireland, the hard times where it is not easy for an aging musician to make a living.   A very good story.   

"The Hemingway  Papers"

"She felt it would be
like reminding him of his enormous failure as a father. That
he’d neither seen to the removal of their furniture from London
to Ireland – nor to the transportation of his own things, that
he’d hung back in London while her mother had reared her and
her siblings alone and that he’d only holed up with them years
later when he’d run out of money. That was the truth of it and
Clare knew that somewhere inside her father, he knew it. But
there was no point in going through all of that again. They had
rowed about it for too many years – about his drinking"

"The Hemingway Papers" is a very good story and almost a text book illustration of the extreme importance of the weak or missing father to Irish literature.  It also is about a man who hid behind drinking and his ability to be a good friend to other men, if not a good husband or father.  Story telling, whether real stories or made up lies also is a big factor in the Irish short story.  Another one is the complications involved in the relationships of adult children to their parents.  In this story the father is in a hospital ward.  For thirty years now he has been claiming he had an extensive correspondence with Ernest Hemingway.  He  had sent Hemingway a number of short stories to read and he had told the father to submit them to his publisher and he will try to help him.  Of course the man never followed up on it and he always told the family he left the letters and stories in a box in an apartment he illegally sublet to somebody when he lived in London.   The daughter somehow tracks down the man who now has the box and she brings it back (spoiler alert) and yes the father was actually telling the truth all those years.  The big story of his life was true. The ending is very suspenseful and I will let you have the pleasure of reading it yourself.

I totally endorse this very Irish collection of short stories with themes that are universal and people that those far from Ireland can see as totally real.

There are eleven  other marvelous stories in this collection, each one a delight to read.   



I want to share the description of the book from Seren Books, the publisher of this and lots of other great books.

The Scattering is a collection of 18 stories, many set on the Irish border, where this London-born author currently lives. These stories explore states of liminality: life on the Irish border, dual identities, emigration, being between states - certainty and doubt, codependency and freedom. Some explore themes of catastrophe and constraint. All explore what it means to be alive in a fraught and ever-changing world. This first collection from prizewinning author and playwright, Jaki McCarrick explores the dark side of human nature, often with a postmodern ‘Ulster gothic’ twist.

One of the stories ‘The Visit’ won the Wasafiri Prize for new fiction, and many have been published to much acclaim in literary magazines.

Author Bio

Jaki McCarrick

Jaki McCarrick lives in Dundalk and studied at Trinity College, Dublin, gaining a Master of Philosophy Degree, Creative Writing – Distinction. Before this Jaki gained a BA Performing Arts, First Class Honours Degree at Middlesex University. She has also completed an RNT Directors Course, 2001.

Jaki is a playwright and short story writer who is also working on a novel. She has won many awards for her work including: Winner of the 2005 SCDA National Playwriting Competition for The Mushroom Pickers; Shortlisted for the Sphinx Playwriting Award 2006, Bruntwood Prize 2006, Kings Cross Award 2007 for The Moth-Hour; Shortlisted for the 2009 Adrienne Benham Award for Leopoldville and the 2009 Asham Award for short fiction for The Congo – in this collection. Most recently her short story The Visit, included in the Badlands collection, won the Wasafiri Prize for New Writing in October 2010 and Jaki was declared the first ever winner of the Liverpool Lennon Paper Poetry competition, which she was awarded by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. Another story from the collection, Hellbores, was recently shortlisted for both the Fish Short Story award and Bridge House Publishing's World Stopping Event writing prize. Bridge House want to publish that story in a new anthology and it has also appeared in the Irish Pages journal.

Jaki McCarrick's blog jakiscloudnine.blogspot.ie

I hope to read and post on more of her work in the future.  She has kindly agreed to participate in a Q and A Session for Irish Short Story Month so please look for that.

Mel u

A Snowy Night on West Forty-Ninth Street by Maeve Brennan

March 1 to March 31

A Guest Post by Elizabeth MacDonald

author of

A House of Cards

on
"A Snowy Night on West Forty-Ninth Street"  by Maeve Brennan 

If you are interested in participating in Irish Short Story Month, please e mail me.

I first became acquainted with the work of Elizabeth MacDonald when I read her brilliant collection of short stories, A House of Cards.  A House of  Cards  was listed for the Frank O'Connor Prize in 2007.   It is a beautiful work set mostly in the Tuscany region of Italy. 

My post on A House of Cards is here.

Q and A Session with Elizabeth MacDonald (I strongly urge you to read this.)

author bio

 

Elizabeth MacDonald was born in Dublin, where she studied Italian and Music at UCD. In 2001 she completed the M.Phil in creative and Music at UCD. In 2001 she completed the M.Phil in creative writing at Trinity College, Dublin. She teaches English at the University of Pisa, where she lives with her husband and son. Her translations of the short stories of Liam O'Flaherty were the first in Italy. She has translated the poetry of Dermot Healy, Seamus Heaney, Brendan Kennelly, Dennis O’Driscoll, George Szirtes, Derek Mahon, and Old Irish nature poetry. She has a special interest is the poetry of Mario Luzi. Her translations have appeared in  many journals, including Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Ireland Review, The Cork Liteary Review andSoglie. A House of Cards was first published by Pillar Press in 2006 and a second edition will be published by Portia Publishing later this year.

“This is a tender, understated and beautiful collection of stories that will leave you longing for more. ” Emma Walsh, The Irish Book Review.  

Today she has favored us with her thoughts on the work of another great Irish woman writer, who like herself, spent much of her life outside of Ireland, Maeve Brennan.

A Snowy Night on West Forty-Ninth Street

by Maeve Brennan

(taken from ‘The Rose Garden’)

Reading this story is like being able to enter into a painting by Hopper, one of those late night scenarios with people in their solitude etched against a background of hotel rooms or diners. The narrator opens the story with a detail, it has snowed, and then tells us where we are – Broadway. The detail is in the past tense, while the setting is in the present. This juxtaposition is maintained for the whole story, giving it an otherworldly dimension as, like the snow hovering over the city, it fluctuates between a narrated event and the universality of experience:

It snowed all night last night, and the dawn, which came not as a brightening but as a gray and silent awakening, showed the city vague and passive as a convalescent under light fields of snow that fell quickly and steadily from an expressionless heaven.

The narrator then tells us that the area where she (I’m presuming it’s a ‘she’) lives near Broadway “seems to be a gigantic storehouse of stage flats and stage props that are stacked together as economically as possible and being put to use until something more substantial can be built, something that will last.”

This sets the tone of quiet regret that permeates the story, an over-riding sense of impermanence, a solitude so immense that it reduces one to invisibility:

… there are times, looking from the window of the hotel where I live at present, on West Forty-Ninth Street, when I think that my hotel and all of us here on this street are behind the world instead of in it.

Waiting in the wings of existence. But something stirs her as she looks at the snow-covered city and she heads out to her usual restaurant, the Étoile, for dinner. She shows us the macrocosm of the city, then reduces the visual to the area around Broadway, and finally she settles us in with her to the microcosm of the almost empty, snow-bound restaurant.

There is an elderly Frenchman who comes to be able to listen to and speak French; Robert, a waiter; Leo, the Dutch bartender; Mees Katie, the French owner’s daughter; three businessmen from the suburbs, stranded in town; Michel, another foreigner, who imports foreign movies; a newcomer, the stout middle-aged Mrs. Dolan; Betty, a young woman who has moved to New York; and the shadowy, reticent narrator.

Whether the characters are there by chance or because they are regulars, none of them really knows anyone else. They move self-consciously within the restricted space of the restaurant, saying lines to each other in a vain attempt to while away some time and stave off the loneliness. None of them really seems inclined to move beyond the superficial, each in his or her own way, rebuffing more meaningful contact. The narrator remains at a remove even from this impoverished form of communication, noting with a certain approval the silence that falls between Mrs. Dolan and Betty: through it they move beyond the shame of the gaping need for company that manifests in vacuous chatter. The silence forms an intangible bond between them.

The theatrical metaphor is continued especially with Michel, who is partial to making an entrance and even more dramatic exits. He plays his part, recites his lines, while flitting between Mees Katie, Mrs. Dolan and Betty. But his most important communication is with the telephone, for business matters.

Eventually the narrator returns to her empty hotel room. And here, in the hushed darkness of a snowy night in New York, the Joycean note is becomes clear. Miss Kate and Miss Julia’s Christmas party has been given an ascetic New York setting in the Étoile with Mees Katie, and the snow “that was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves”, now falls on this city of giant skyscrapers. The narrator looks out her window at the foggy skyline, her eye passes over what is visible and invisible under the covering of snow, buildings reduced to geometric forms, the street emptied of people - everything transfigured in this shroud of snowy silence:

I pushed open the window. The cold air rushed in, but no noise. What sound there was was drugged, as though I were a hundred floors above the street instead of only eleven floors. The wind had died down, and the snow fell thickly, falling in large, calm flakes.

End of Guest Post

My great thanks to Elizabeth MacDonald for sharing her thoughts on Maeve Brennan with us.

My posts on Maeve Brennan are here

Mel u

Jennifer Mathews A Question and Answer Session with the Editor of Long Story Short

Thanks for including me. I do work for the Munster Literature Centre, which hosts the Cork Spring Poetry Festival and the Cork International Short Story Festival. I'm technically not an organiser--I'm the administrative assistant here. Things are a bit hectic for me at the moment, so I've only been able to answer some of your questions. I hope that's ok. I do appreciate the interview! Here's a little bio note for my work outside the Munster Literature Centre:

Jennifer Matthews writes poetry and book reviews, and is editor of the Long Story Short literary journal. Her poetry has been published in The Stinging Fly, Mslexia, Revival, Necessary Fiction, Poetry Salzburg, Foma & Fontanelles and Cork Literary Review, and anthologised in Dedalus's collection of immigrant poetry in Ireland, Landing Places (2010). In 2012 she read at Electric Picnic with Poetry Ireland, and had a poem shortlisted by Gwyneth Lewis in the Bridport poetry competition. She is currently working on a collaboration with poet Anamaría Crowe Serrano.

Here are the responses to some of the interview questions.

1. Stories that have stayed with me the longest include 'The Sorrow Acre by Isak Dinesen; 'The White Heron' by Sarah Orne Jewett; 'The Birthmark' by Nathanial Hawthorne; 'The Swimmer' by John Cheever; and 'A Good Man is Hard to Find' by Flannery O'Connor. My favourite up-and-coming short story writers are Danielle McLaughlin (Ireland) and Julia Van Middlesworth (USA). Danielle has a rare blend of sharp humour, spot-on perceptiveness about human foibles, along with an immense reservoir of compassion. Her characters are incredibly well rounded, and you are completely drawn in to their world because of it. For me, Julia a spiritual heir of Flannery O'Connor--she's able to create an atmosphere, a darkness of tone, that immerses the reader completely in the world she's created. I suppose if I were to commit to a favourite author--Flannery O'Connor is the end all, be all. She tackles big themes, is a genius with dialogue and description, and does the important work of showing us that the only things we control in this world are our own actions in the face of darkness. Since we're speaking of Irish writers in particular, I'd recommend anything & everything by Frank O'Connor--'Guests of the Nation' is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it. Although it was very specific to Ireland's struggle, I think it could strongly resonate with the current Israeli / Palestinian conflict.

2. To be honest, I can think of scores of important conversations in Irish literature that happen without the presence of drink. Social oppression and the dominance of family and religion are more relevant topics of discussion when considering 'classic' Irish short stories. Think 'Ballroom of Romance' by William Trevor, for example. It's quintessentially Irish. With contemporary stories, themes of concern are changing again to everything from fertility issues to losing money in the economic crash. You also have to consider that Strumpet City was written in the late 60s about the early 1900s. This was a different time--Hemingway, although working a bit earlier than Strumpet City, frequently wrote about boozing. Not to be flippant, but stuff like 'Mad Men' is exploring that drinking culture was more 'acceptable' in the 50s and 60s and not dealt with consciously in the past. Most contemporary and many classic Irish short stories have little to do with drink. To be honest, the whole stereotype of the Irish as a nation of drinkers is a false one in my own experience, having lived here for 10 years. Many Irish would disagree with me, and some participate in perpetuating the stereotype through self-deprecating jokes. Drink is part of the social culture, this is true, but it's true throughout most of northern Europe. I've lived in the UK and they drink at least as much as the Irish. German and Polish friends often chat about the prevalence of drink it their culture. The thing is, meeting in a pub is a social act, not an excuse for getting drunk. As an American, it would be equivalent to meeting friends out for dinner. The real emphasis is on having a decent conversation, in a place that buzzing with social energy. Like any country, there are of course struggles with alcoholism & drink-driving, but it's something contemporary Ireland is very conscious of and working on. Once most folks hit their late 20s they begin to settle down, like everywhere else.  

3. Two contemporary Irish poets I continually return to as 'touchstones' are Mairead Byrne (Lord Nelson and the Huburu Bird) and Anamaría Crowe Serrano (Femispheres and One Colombus Leap). They both are quite masterful at using innovative language and poetic technique, challenging their reader but never abandoning them. They are both emotionally moving in their work, and also provide an aesthetically gorgeous read. As for poets outside of Ireland, I think Ilya Kaminsky is one of the finest living poets. I read his 'Dancing in Odessa' nearly every year, cover to cover. It's rich in imagery, incredibly precise and honed in its phrasing... stunning stuff. Bruce Snider is a new find for me--he writes beautifully about the midwest of the USA, the region I come from. As for my zombie-poet reading, I'd like to bring back Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, and TS Eliot. I'm resisting saying Emily Dickinson as the poor woman clearly needed privacy in her lifetime and I'd say it'd be traumatic for her to not only be resurrected, but also to be forced to read her work in public. Whitman would be massive craic, and I'd love to chat to TS Eliot about leaving St. Louis (the town we both came from) and chosing a life in Europe. Bishop I just worship, it would have been incredible to hear her read.   

4. The Munster Literature Centre hosts two festivals a year: The Cork Spring Poetry Festival and The Cork International Short Story Festival. During these festivals prizes for poetry and short stories are given, and writing workshops are offered. The readings at the festival bring world class writers to the south of Ireland. We also publish a literary journal called 'Southword', which is free to read online. We have two full-time staff: the Artistic Director, Patrick Cotter, and myself (Administrative Assistant). We've been lucky to have a variety of talented interns and volunteers who help us out as well.

5. I know the 'troubled poet' thing is thought to be a stereotype. And working with writers as I do, you meet a variety of folks in truly varied states of existence. Some seem perfectly well adjusted, others seem to have their personal demons hovering around them at all times. I do wonder if those of us who pursue writing are responding to an early developmental experience that encouraged silence. Some writers seem so desperate to be heard/approved of that any small rejection sends them back into the wounding they clearly experienced at some point. Again, this isn't all folks. But if you look at what we do--we sit alone in a room, writing out what we want to say in isolation. Then we send it out in the world, away from us, and hope someone reads and understands it (us). Writers largely enjoy that bit of distance, whereas musicians, actors, comedians seem to crave that direct interaction, face-to-face. Psychologically, I do wonder what that means.

9. This one I agree with. I'd say Ireland has more literary (and musical) geniuses historically (per capita) than most countries. And game changers too. I mean, between Yeats, Joyce and Beckett alone... I really don't know why this is. I can make guesses (ancient history as a centre of learning, rich oral and mythical tradion), but am afraid I'd come across as a romantic. And nothing irritates the Irish more than a yank being romantic about Ireland!    

10. Again, nothing irritates the Irish more than a yank being romantic about Ireland. I don't believe in fairies, and I get annoyed when Irish people make cracks about my fellow Americans going to look for leprechauns on their Irish vacations. But then the American visitors do ask where the fairies are when they get here and I'm back to being cross and embarrassed.

11. Cork has an active and vibrant literary life. There are so many institutions that contribute to this--besides our own work at the Munster Literature Centre the city library and the Triskel Arts Centre run the World Book Festival; there's a crowd called 'The Avant' that promotes work of innovative poetics, and there's are a couple of weekly events--my favourite being O'Bheal Open Mic Night which draws everyone from teenagers rapping, to professors of the Irish language reading work in translation.

12. I'm a 'behind the scenes' person at our festival helping out with the administrative tasks. It's always great getting a chance to chat with the writers. The highlight for me is discovering authors I hadn't read before, who soon become new favourites. To my embarrassment I hadn't read Karen Russell (author of 'Swamplandia!') before she read at the Cork International Short Story Festival, and now I'm a loyal reader.

13. I find this question a bit unnerving, as I'm not sure what publication or interview you're referring to. Unfortunately last year I had an extraordinarily unsatisfactory experience with a local paper, where the journalist was feeding me their 'angle' on the story rather than asking me questions, largely because she seemed to be uninterested in the topic she was writing about and was attempting to make it more 'exciting'. I was misquoted and misrepresented throughout, but didn't complain for fear of discouraging media coverage of our events. I absolutely do not think academics are degrading the quality of poetry. As someone who went through the MA system myself, the advantages are giving fledgling writers connections to the professional world, and time/space to write. Nothing wrong with that. I do think there's a bit of an ethical concern in that the programmes are so expensive, and statistically can offer their graduates very little earning power once they've graduated. That is, unless the students go on to be teachers in the MA programme. I think they do need to be conscious of how they are shaping writers of the future--but one could say publishing houses have the same power. Writers of extraordinary talent and voice will always be the driving force in literature, whether or not they have an academic qualification. 

16. I hope to write an extensive blog post on this soon. The stories that appeal to me the most as a reader are those that do something beautiful with language. Charles Boyle's 'The Rainy Season' incorporates vivid imagery. Julia Van Middlesworth's 'Misbegotten' is rich in atmosphere. Someone who can write strong characters has an instant advantage with me. Valerie Sirr's 'Balan' is spot on with the tensions between mothers and sons, and she resists any going over the line into exaggeration. Every detail is totally sincere and realistic.  

17. American poet Tracy K. Smith read in Cork last week at the Triskel Arts Centre. I hope she'll forgive me for the paraphrasing so loosely, but she answered this exact question in a beautifully optimistic way. She said she believes utterly in the value of poetry, because the skills needed to engage in the reading and writing it creates a depth and awareness in people that can create a better society. I'm a natural pessimist who is forever battling my own cynicism. I'd very much like to believe as Ms. Smith does in the power of poetry. I suppose if I didn't believe in its power on some level, I wouldn't write it. I want to believe it makes a difference. I sent a poem I wrote with a tongue-in-cheek dedication to the Westboro Baptist Church to them in a Christmas card last year (basically a poetic protest of their fear-mongering and fear-worship). Sadly, I received no response!

27. I'm a poet who's working towards a first collection. I'm also working on a collaborative poetry project with Dublin-based poet Anamaría Crowe Serrano. My love for short stories and my love for poetry developed around the same time as a teenager. There's a 'balancing' effect to my life when I keep my writing life to poetry-only, and my editing life to fiction-only. This may change in future, but I'm quite happy having these parts slightly compartmentalised.

28. I don't know how to recommend only five contemporary Irish poets after Yeats! There's a saying that 'you can't throw a rock in Ireland without hitting a poet'. I suppose if we're going for the modern "cannon" (i.e. the most internationally recognised in the poetry world), you've got the likes of Paul Durcan, Medbh McGuckian, Michael Longley, Eavan Boland, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Derek Mahon, Ciarán Carson... I could keep going. If you want to get more adventurous and go beyond the traditional cannon, I'd recommend reading Irish literary journals to discover work by the many contemporary poets publishing here. Publications like Southword Journal, The Stinging Fly, The Penny Dreadful and Cyphers are great places to start. If you're looking for poets who merge performance and 'page' poetry, some strong voices are Maighread Medbh, Dave Lordan and Sarah Clancy.... there are so many more. This is not at all a comprehensive list. Once you start finding your way into Irish poetry, you'll have endless avenues to wander down. 

Well, Mel, I hope this works and very sorry I didn't have time to answer all the questions! Thanks for your support of Irish literature!

Best regards,

Jennifer Matthews

House of Gold by Liam O'Flaherty (1929)

 In 1929 the stock market in New York City crashed, starting a ten year world wide economic down trend which was part of the cause of WWII.   The post important book published that year was The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.  1929 was also the year in which the Irish Free State Board of Censorship first banned a book.  That book was House of Gold by Liam O'Flaherty (1896 to 1984 - Inishmore, Ireland) which was declared obscene.  O'Flaherty went on to have a long successful career as a writer, living mostly in America.  

I have read and enjoyed a number of O'Flaherty's short stories.   I first became aware of his set in Galway House of Gold through publicity surrounding its recent republication.  The novel opens with a section in which a woman married to a prominent local business man and power broker and her lover have sex, outdoors as was common in a time of no motels and gossips everywhere.  It is not at all graphic but there is a reference to the woman putting her skirt back on at the end of the encounter and I am guessing this is what was seen as obscene.  As is well explained in the introduction to the book by 1929 the British landlords and officials had been replaced by home grown tyrants.   The narration of the story refers to the common people of the area as "peasants".   I think, in part, The House of Gold is a protest of the romanticizing of the Irish peasant seen in much of the popular literature of the time.  Even the political leaders of the period tried to use the image of a happy contented populace away from the corruption of modern influences to manipulate the citizens of Ireland.  Much of the novel can be seen as an attack on the role of the Catholic priest as a tool of the wealthy to control the masses.  O'Flaherty was a Communist and subscribed fully to the view that religion was "the opiate of the people" and served to keep the "peasants" servile.   No doubt one of the factors in the novel that caused outrage in the censorship board was the depiction of a priest as lusting after a married woman.   

In the introduction it is stated that the peasants in House of Gold are kind of corrective figures to the smiling shuffling figures in the works of Sommerville and Ross and I see this.   

The dominating figure in the novel is a former peasant who through great industry and shrewdness has made himself a very big fish in a small pond, dominating the economic life of the area.  The adulterous woman is married to him and it is a pure sham of a marriage.  

O'Flaherty is known for his wonderful descriptions of nature and landscapes and I found many beautiful and lyrical passages that I relished.   

This a worth reading novel for those seriously into Irish literature and history.  It lets us see a lot about "real life" in Ireland in 1929.   It is not a great novel but I think it is an important book for its historical value.  

 

There are lot of typos in this edition, enough to make me think nobody proof read it.  

Mel u

Martin A. Egan A Question and Answer Session- Poet, Painter, andMulti-Platinum Song Writer

A question and answer session with Martin A. Egan

Biography Martin A.  Egan

Martin A. Egan is an Irish Singer Songwriter who had until March 5th 2010 never released an Album but despite this reached Multi Platinum Status in Ireland and Europe in 1997 and also 2006 writing "Casey" a Song about the adventures and misadventures of the profligate Bishop of Kerry for Christy Moore, 1997 also saw Egan working in Collaboration with the Hothouse Flowers, resulting in  “The Making of Us All” featuring on "Your Love Goes On" the first Single from their 2005 "Into Your Heart" Album. While working with the Flowers a number of Songs were written and recorded in Peter OToole's Home Studio in Lacken Co Wicklow. One of these Songs "The Tune"  featuring Peter on Bass, Bouzouki and Guitar became the Title Track of his Current Album. Another Co-write "Talking to the Wildman" also ended up on the Album.

The Black Romantics Collective featuring members of Jack's Band, In Tua Nua, The West Seventies and other seminal Dublin Bands recorded Egan's  Spoken Word Piece: “The Shepherd and his Maiden” on their Album  “Nine Parts Devil" Martin also worked with Poppy Gonzalez (ex Mojave 3 piano player) and her Band Hush Collector for whom he co-wrote the Title Track “Flowby” for their Debut E.P. on Candy Cone Records and the Late Woody Sagoo whom he also managed.

Martin has also worked with Eamon Carr of Horslips and written a number of Songs with Will Merriman of the Harvest Ministers one of which "Ruined Shoes" currently features as part of his Live Set.

He was Nominated along with Mary O'Regan of Draoicht for the German Music Award in 1997 for Mary's Solo Album "Every Punch needs the Kiss" for which Martin wrote the Title Track along with 3 other tracks.

Martin Egan is also a recognised Irish Neo-Expressionist Artist and although he has not produced any new work since 1997 is about to begin a New Multi-Media Project involving Experimental Music, Painting, Spoken Word, and has also completed a Book of Sonnets on the Theme of Grief and Loss which will also be incorporated into the New Project.

Martin Egan returned to the Studio on March 22nd 2010 to complete Recordings begun in Ashtown Studio's in late 2009.  having finally released "The Tune" along with a Video of the Title Track on March 5th 2010 on his own Slinky Vibe Label Martin feels that he has at last put his past to rest. The New Album fondly known by the Working Title Part I includes work written with the participation of Brian Conniffe the Sound Sculpture Artist who has worked with a number of highly respected Musicians. Part I features Paul "Binzer" Brennan and Tommy O'Sullivan on Drums and Dara "Dip" Higgins on Electric and Double Bass. Tommy O'Sullivan also  contributed Guitar on a number of Tracks. Martin begins work on Part II on January 6th 2011 and Part I will be released in 2012Creating work in many disciplines is a way of Life Martin and Other Projects which for the moment remain secret are in train and will be brought to fruition over the next few years.

"The Tune"recorded between 1992 and 1997 with a great many Irish Musical Luminaries of that and the current time is now available in a Signed Limited Edition C.D. Format or by Download or at www.slinkyvibe.com and is Distributed Nationwide by Mail Order from Claddagh Records http://claddaghrecords.com/WWW/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=Martin+A.+Egan&x=14&y=14 is available by Download from www.itunes.com or on C.D. from City Discs in Eustace Street Temple Bar Dublin, Freebird at the Secret Book and Record Store in Wicklow Street, the Sound Cellar in Nassau Street and also on all the usual Online Outlets. A slide Show of Martins Paintings is available in the Photo Gallery and will also be available to buy with a Price List included.

1.  One of your songs, “Casey” is about the “misadventures of the profligate  Bishop of Kerry”-I have no idea what that involved and I am guessing outside of Ireland not many people understand what that means.  My first thought was that it might be related to the scandals in the Church in Ireland-can you explain this a bit and let us know why this inspired you to write a song about the Bishop, please?

Bishop Casey was the local Bishop in Kerry when I moved there from Galway in 1980. He had been Bishop of Galway while I was there also. He was notorious for his very erratic and high speed Driving. I was told the Core of the Story when I was working cutting turf with the local villagers and added my own idea's after that. Bishop Casey was arrested in London for drunken driving and I compared the British approach of "We don't give a damn who you are" to the Irish Gardai at the time which was very subservient to the Church. Later on the Song was recorded by Christy Moore and when Casey was exposed
along with Michael Cleary as having in Casey's case a Child by Annie Murphy Christy added the current last verse. It was written initially as a bit of fun but turned into something more serious after the Niall O'Brien Affair and all the Polticis of those times which we are only seeing the very nasty results of now,

2.  How did you get involved with writing a song for Mary O’Reagan?

I didn;t actually. I was a Busker for many years in in Dingle and Tralee in Co. Kerry, playing Music and having Exhibitions in the Summer and Writing and Painting through the Winters. Mary was in a Band called Draoicht with the Mulcahy brothers Frank and Tom (a very fine Songwriter himself). They heard me singing when they were starting off and then included "Every Punch Needs a Kiss" in their Live Set . Mary left the Band after a Tour of the German Speaking Countries in Europe, Austria, Germany Switzerland etc and was offered a Solo Deal by Magnetic Music in Germany. She recorded the Album and honoured me by using the Song "Every Punch Needs a Kiss" as the Title Track and recording 3 more Tracks as well. To everyone's surprise it was Nominated for the German Music Award (Folk Category) which helped with Radio Play and Sales very nicely

3.  Your bio says you are recognized as a Neo-Expressionist artist-can you please explicate this in non technical terms.

I was actually called a Neo-Expressionist by people within the Arts but never really saw myself as that. I began Painting as a means of getting beyond word based writing a medium in which I found myself having increasing difficulty expressing myself. I was suffering Writer's Block more and more and became a Painter quite by accident beginning by painting with cheap Chinese Acrylics I saw in a shop window in Dingle and progressing to Large Canvas Paintings. I was driven mostly by a need to express what was occurring internally that words
could not convey. The Primary drive was a search for a sense of Identity as a man and as an Artist after the loss of 3 children and the resultant collapse of my marriage, Music and Wors while still present were increasingly unable to express the non-verbal aspects of Loss. A lot of this had to do with my Upbringing, it also had to do with a stubborn streak in me as an Artist, a refusal to let any experience of my life pass by without documenting it and I suppose a refusal to experience all that Grief and Loss without getting anything Creative or for want of a better word Eternal out of it.

4.  Regarding your poety, I hope this is not to personal a question but it is brought up on your webpage.  What is the personal background to the 89 sonnets you lost  in the summer of 2010, which were sonnets to your deceased children?  

I have been writing since I could talk. Not just Poetry but Monologues, Spoken Word with Poetry, Songs, Short Stories, Plays and 3 Feature Film Scripts Poetry is how I initially began Performing live. I am from a very Musical Family and I think writing gave me a sense of separateness from the Family, in terms of identity especially musically. I wrote and had published my first Poems in the U.K. at the age of 13 after an
English Teacher told me I would never be a Poet. It is only recently that I have started to publish Poetry again. I was born in the same Hospital as Michael Hartett, grew up in the same street and then New Housing Complex Assumpta Park in Newcastle West and have only recently put the Writing pattern that has emerged into context from reading extensively about Michael and his methods of writing which parallel my oww methods in an uncanny fashion without any planning on my part.. The loss of the 89 Sonnets was a big deal but I had Working versions of about 40 transferred to my Computer so in fact really only lost 49 but once the heat of writing goes off things it is very difficult to reheat them so to speak. The loss of my Children has taken me into far deeper losses a lot of which were hidden within the Family History and have led to a lot of thinking about Cultural Identity and the reduction of the Irish to a second class Race in many ways and I do not
mean in the sense of how to look good or earn a living or any of that social nonsense. This as you might imagine is open to a lot of misunderstanding but being misunderstood is the Poets lot in my experience.

5.  “Green Water” seems almost like an elegy to lost youth, to memories of a passion once felt.  Is there a sense in which a long for the past, better times before time and sadness deeply intrudes in all of your work?

"Green Water" is an Elegy to the 3 Women I have loved most in my life, none of whom I am going to name here. It is also related to the place of Water in the great Mysteries of Nature, Reproduction and Love. Its Symbolism of a connection to Flow, Eternal Life and the original Irish Muse.

6.  Over the last year I have listened to a lot of traditional Irish music through the internet on my IPAD.  Much like “Green Water”, a lot of it is a longing for the past and an attempt to accept that your best and maybe Ireland’s best days are over?   What is your reaction to this?

My Parents love of Music and their playing of it was evenly divided into 2 Camps. My Mother loved Irish Traditional Music and played with a lot of the greats in Sessions in London in the 50's and 60's. My Father loved Jazz and played the Tenor Saxophone so Home Rehearsals were always a Comedy Routine and a Battle of Wills over what would be played in the Live Sets, my Father cursing
the Irish Content and my Mother my Father's attempts to Jazz up Irish Music. They were both Trained Reader's and had played with Show-bands before the Economic conditions of 50's Ireland forced them to emigrate. I think it was G.K. Chesterton who said of the Irish that "All their Wars were Merry, and all their

Songs were Sad". "Green Water" is
more about my own capacity to feel love deeply after being frozen by loss for a very long time than it is actually about sadness. It is also a paean to the loss of deeply experienced love for my exes and my children.

I

7.  What were the last three books you read?

I suppose to be honest I can't say I've read any of the last number of Books I've been reading as they are all Poetry
and in my experience Poetry changes every time I read it so there is no actual "Read" involved. On the other hand I read a vast amount of Genre Fiction particularly John Connolly the Irish Supernatural Author whose books I found really beneficial right from the first one in that they dealt with the same issues (apart from all the violence) as those that preoccupy  me. John lives locally and we run into each other locally all the time so he knows the impact books like the "Killing Kind" ~"Bad Men" etc have had on my own process. I have the kind of mind that cannot learn much by rote but can learn volumes from someone else's description of a state or experience and John's Books are so well researched that the conditions described (while in a fictional situation) are in fact real experiences related to the Author by people who actually experienced those events.

8.  Why did you stop painting for eleven years-what has given you the motivation to start again.  How has the business side of art, selling and buying pictures changed in the laat decade?

I felt that I was continually repeating myself. I was commanding larger and larger Prices fro my Work but felt that I was conning people. That I had reached the limits of whatever skills I had and I needed more. Circumstance dictated things as well. I moved and had nowhere to paint and couldn't afford a Studio. I wanted to work big and the Computer Generation has meant that Studio Space is measured by the Square Foot rather than the needs of the particular Artist. The Movement toward Animation etc and all the things which can be done Online has impacted on Space and Proce of Space enormously. I personally hate small Paintings unless they are a use for waste Paint from another Picture. I painted anything up to 25 Medium to Large Paintings at a time when I lived in Kerry. So I stopped. My Songwriting was vastly
improved by Painting as I wasn't trying to squeeze the inexpressible into a mode of expression any more.

9.  You have written a long poem entitled “Falling for A Dolphin”, about the arrival of Funghi the Dingle Dolphin.
  Can you talk a bit about how swimming with Funghi impacted you?  How can swimming with dolphins have a healing impact on people with psychological issues?  Did you sense a higher level of intelligence in dolphins than in say, dogs?  Did you feel a sense of bonding from the dolphin to you?   

I was involved with the whole Funghi explosion in Kerry and met Dr Horace Dobbs, one of the Pioneer's of the Research into Dolphins healing capabilities but never swam with Funghi myself. I also DID NOT write "Falling for a Dolphin", this was written by the English Actor and Polymath Heathcote Williams whom I had known in the early to mid 70's in London where he was involved in the Anti Jubilee Festivities and also acting in Derek Jarman's Films of the time. I saw the obsession with Dolphins and Healing in a lot of people as a form of transference or substitution in much the same way animals substitute for children with some people. While I understood the principle of "innate healing" within certain creatures I certainly didn't partake of it myself. I think I was too involved with working out how
to deal with my problems internally that I didn't want to invest emotional energy in an outside Agency animal, vegetable or mineral. The "Dolphin Song" was inspired more by the Ancient Greek ideal that Dolphins are harbingers of good luck, good health and a boon from the Gods than swimming doctors. I think the presence of absolute innocence in the animal sense is also a contributing factor

10. Please talk a bit about government funding of the arts in Ireland.

I think the main problem with Arts Funding is one you have already pointed out and is one that troubles me a lot. Control. True Creativity is beyond all social control and merely reflects the Society it manifests within. The Artist or the Organisation becoming the Art is nonsense of the highest order. It results in a political landscape of people scrabbling for position, grants and titles, visibility at all costs. Art will happen whether there is money or not. It is not a thing to be trifled with or boxed off into Categories or into dry Semantic platitudes and concepts as is currently happening with the Graduate and Post Grad Class. They have developed a language and a sense of being apart which is neither good for Art nor for emerging Practitioners. What needs
to be remembered is that Art must be separated from the Establishment for it to develop properly. The collusion between the Establishment, Trinity, D.I.T. The Abbey and the Gate to make Art in all its forms a safe preserve for the cultured few is what is killing creativity. This applies across the Board from incomprehensible (to me) Academic Texts to equally incomprehensible to me Arts Criticism. The Irish are particularly prone to this horrible habit of applying a Snobbery Quotient. a Music for Middlebrows attitude to Art which would reveal infinitely more were it left to be a mystery and thus outside all the intellectual juggling and mind games that go on.  Not that I wouldn't mind being inducted into Aosdana because some very fine (and uncontrollable Artists) whom I know personally are numbered among its Fellows.

11.  Who are some of your favorite authors?  what writers do you find yourself returning to over and over again?

Charles Bukowski, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, Louis Ferdinand Celine, Michael
Hartnett, Brendan Kennelly, Michel Vassal, Kate O'Shea, Kit Fryatt, Oran Ryan

12.  People say Shakespeare killed the English theater -did Yeats do something similar to Irish poetry?

Shakespeare didn't kill English Theater, he created it to a certain extent and certainly expanded it out of its then shape of rabble-rousing Pro-Government Policy. Post-Modernism killed English Theater. A lot of the Playwrights of the last 100 years have run out of Idea's and certainly in the last 50 started to emulate current Film-making as in dumping nods and references to other Writers/ Director's/ D.I.P.'s all over their Work to the detriment not only of the Work but to the forward motion of Film and Theater. The extremes in Irish
Playwrighting are exactly the same, the present mixing of multi discipline themes together in the hope of getting a bit of originality via contrast and juxtaposition or Homage is a prime offender. It has made Theater a pain for me and Film an irritation. I don't go to see things that have been done or Pastiches of things that have been done. I go to see what hasn't been done. Yeats for all his faults viz a viz Celtic Twilight and proper Therapy for Mother Issues not being available in his youth was incredibly honest emotionally. His use of Noh Concepts was revolutionary and his calling of the emerging Bigots and advocates of Violence equally valid. I know a number of Yeats Poems by heart and can see why he would be so misunderstood by peop-le that have never learnt how to use their minds properly. Hartnett had a very valid point also in his condemnation of Yeats and his very clear understanding of Yeats as being and belonging behind the Pale Ramparts and
poaching on native Irish Cultural territory from there and other questioners of Cultural Identity in Ireland such as Hartmett and Brendan Kennelly. That by no means cheapens or demeans Yeats' contribution to the visibility of Ireland as a serious contender in the framework of World Arts. A  lot of the Native Irish Writers and Poets saw Yeats' metaphysical concerns as a sort of inverted snobbery, an "Us and "Them" mentality applied to the entire Country but that has more to do with the "Plain People of Ireland" being sat on as a subject race and very little to do with Yeats's search for the core Identity of the Irish. What people tend to forget is that all of Yeats' work was Poetry, not just the Love Poetry but all the Dramatic Work as well. I always advise people that Yeats continually changed his work as he said himself  A Paraphrase) "I do not simply remake the Poem, I remake myself".

13.  An experiment-please make up your own question and answer it?

Q: "Whats the best way to see over the horizon?

A: "Get off your knees"  

14.  How did you first get involved in writing, song and poetry?

I wrote a Book based on the Adventures of Spartacus after seeing the Kubrick version of it when I was 6. I wrote my first Song when I was 7 when I was given a Harmonica to help with asthma

15.  What is your latest project?

My latest Projects are a Book of Poetry
and a Triple Album Part 1 of which I am hoping to release in September 2013

16.  Quick Pick Questions

a.  Samuel Beckett of John Synge:  Beckett

b.  Dogs or Cats? Neither

c.  Day or Night:   Night

d.  last movie seen? Djago Unchained

e.  RTE or BBC?  Both useless

17.  Tell us a bit about your educational background, please.

Attended Convent School St Ita's in Newcastle West, also National School in Newcastle West. Secondary Modern St Gregory's in Kenton Middlesex U.K.  Left St Gregory's at 15. Hated every minute I spent at School.

18.  What jobs have you had outside of artistic/literary musical work?

Printer, Greengrocer, Council Worker, Laborer, Organic Farmer

End. I offer my great thanks to Martin A. Egan for taking the time to provide us with such interesting responses.

Mel u