Lucky me – I got a place on Poetry Ireland hosted masterclass with the Ireland Chair of Poetry, Paula Meehan. A dozen of us met at Ballywaltrim Library in Bray. Time flew, as it always does on such occasions. It was well worth the journey by car, train, DART, bus, & shanks mare to get there.
Thanks to Paula for the gift of her gentle presence and insight, and to everyone around the table who shared their work. And to Jane who kept an eye on the clock.
I stayed in the heart of ‘town’. And the bould bucko above is diagonally across the street from the sun-filled dining room as I type this. Breakfast with Oscar – peachy!
Blue skies over Dublin, so I’ll pop over later to Oscar. I used to work near here. I loved lunchtime moments in Merrion Square – even the frosty days in the heather garden, with the snowdrops and crocuses.
Time is not my friend today, so I thought I’d just pull something out of the poetic lucky bag, so to speak.
And here’s what I chose. Virgil’s Aeneid.
Nope – not the recent posthumous translation of Book VI from Seamus Heaney. (I have my copy, but the Underworld has to wait for Easter, when I can get away from ‘work’ writing.)
During my Classics years at NUI Galway, I had great teachers. Amanda and Mark worked with us on The Aeneid. The translation I have is by Robert Fagles. His work on it, and The Iliad, has brought tears to my eyes; he never loses sight of the Masters’ poetry.
Aeneas leaving Dido by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli
Here are a few lines from BOOK IV – for all you star-crossed lovers out there:
But Aeneas
is driven by duty now. Strongly as he longs
to ease and allay her sorrow, speak to her,
turn away her anguish with reassurance, still,
moaning deeply, heart shattered by his great love,
in spite of all he obeys the gods’ commands
and back he goes to his ships.
……
Then Juno in all her power, filled with pity
for Dido’s agonizing death, her labor long and hard,
sped Iris down from Olympus to release her spirit
wrestling now in a deathlock with her limbs.
Since she was dying a death not fated or deserved,
no, tormented, before her day, in a blaze of passion –
Proserpine had yet to pluck a golden lock from her head
and commit her life to the Styx and the dark world below.
So Iris, glistening dew, comes shimmering down from the sky
on gilded wings, trailing showers of iridescence shimmering
into the sun, and hovering over Dido’s head, declares:
“So commanded, I take a lock as a sacred gift
to the God of Death, and I release you from your body.”
With that, she cut the lock with her hand, and all at once
the warmth slipped away, the life dissolved in the winds.
Last week I was up at the Courthouse Gallery in Ennistymon for a reading hosted by Jessie Lendennie & Salmon Poetry. Find out more about Salmon Poetry, and the bookshop here.
It was lovely to meet Gabriel Fitzmaurice again and to finally meet Thomas Lynch. Click on the gents’ names to find out more about them. There was also a guest star in the presence of Teresa Scollon, over from the American Mid-West. And boy, were we treated to a great evening of poetry. As I said on Facebook that evening – it was more like a session around a hearth. The banter between the poets, and the engagement with the audience, was mighty. The three read turn upon turn, which added an energy to us all – and kept the listeners on our aural toes, so to speak!
It’s always lovely to be introduced to new writing: I was really taken with Teresa’s poems; and the way she delivered them. So, off I went – fishing online. You can read more about Teresa here. And you can order some of her work such as this collection (gorgeous artwork).
So my lovelies … there’s a bit of reading for you!
The literary festival season is seriously kicking off. This weekend there are two to choose from: The Ennis Book Club Festival andDoolin Writers’ Weekend. My bi-location cloak is at the dry cleaners yet again, so what can I do? I will be in Ennis: this trip involves The Mammy, and one can’t let down one’s mammy. Especially when Sunday is Mothers’ Day.
The rest of yez can go where you like. But, may I just say that Jessie and all at Salmon Poetry will be celebrating 35 years of Salmon publishing tomorrow, Saturday 5 March in the Doolin Hotel. At 8pm they will launch a celebratory anthology, Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry
I can’t be there, unfortunately. Maybe some of you can. Either way, have a great reading weekend.
Goodness, would you look at that! February already.
Well, here it is Spring. I like to go by the Irish calendar. Not that you’d know by the weather. As I type, Storm Imogen is on her way.
So – we are due a good ol’ blog post. There will be one soon on my writer’s blog – I promise. But for now, I’m posting a link to an online publication by Poetry Northern Ireland: an anthology to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in January . It has an expanded remit to acknowledge atrocities other than those committed during World War II.
You can read it at the Poetry NI site, or download a PDF:
My poem ‘East’ is included in the anthology. It’s the final poem in my song cycle Notes from the Margins – but in a strange way it’s also where the song cycle began. For many years I had Ottla Kafka (married name, David) in my head. And eventually it was she who inspired the whole concept of the song cycle. The final project was formatted with what I hope might one day become the programme notes. These are the short notes for Ottla:
Ottla Kafka
Ottla David was born Ottilie Kafka in Prague on October 29th, 1892. She was the youngest of four children, the eldest of whom was the writer Franz Kafka. From an early age Ottla proved to be the most independent of the Kafka children. Although she worked in the family shop after she left school, in later years she insisted on going to an agricultural college – against her father’s wishes. In 1917 she went to work on a farm owned by her brother-in-law. Later that year her brother, already suffering from tuberculosis, joined her for an eight-month stay. Throughout this time the relationship with her brother developed into a deep bond which lasted until his death in 1924.
In 1920 she married a non-Jew, Joseph David, with whom she had two daughters. In 1941 the deportation of Czech Jews began. Both of her sisters were deported to the Lodz ghetto where they died. As the wife of an ‘Aryan’, Ottla was exempt from deportation. It appears that she could not reconcile this situation with her sense of herself as a Jew. Ottla divorced Joseph. Having lost the protection of a Gentile husband, she was sent to the Terezín ghetto in 1942. On October 5th, 1943 she volunteered to accompany a children’s transport to Auschwitz. She was killed upon arrival on October 7th.
Her husband and daughters survived the War. The letters between Ottla and her brother Franz are now in a permanent collection at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
* * * * * * * *
My research led me to the children who survived the carnage of the Bialystock Ghetto, and who were moved to Terezín. It seems to me that the dates of their final journey match that of Ottla. Not long into drafting the poem, I found a list of just over one hundred children omitted from the original Bialystock list.
I will be reading poems with writer Frank Golden and students of the Burren College of Art at 8pm this evening, here in Ballyvaughan.
As Storm Desmond batters the country, the fire and candles will be lit in the old tower and we will hunker down and speak (if not shout) words in defiance of the weather!!
On 11 November, I will be reading old & new work at the White House Poets’ gathering in Limerick. There will also be an open mic. https://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouseLimerickPoetry/
Time: 9pm Location: The White House Pub, 52 O’ Connell Street, Limerick.
A short excerpt from Unsettled – A West Bank Journal has been published by the Bogman’s Cannon. You can read it here: http://bogmanscannon.com/2015/10/30/an-excerpt-from-unsettled-a-west-bank-journal-by-karen-j-mcdonnell/
An account of time spent in Palestine, Unsettled is the length of a chapbook. So – if anyone out there knows someone interested in publishing a literary non-fiction chapbook, let me know!!
Things have been a bit mad in the last couple of weeks since I got back from Beara, but I will have a new post on the writer’s blog ^^^^ . Soon, I promise.
There is, in the town of Loughrea, an organisation.
A group of people capable of severe seriousness, and rowdiness of the highest order.
This group, friends, is the Baffle Writers’ Group. And they’ve been going at it hammer and tongs for many’s the year. In fact, I overheard someone say 2016 is their 30th anniversary. You can find out more about them here. And the full details of the all the events.
Now, summat baffling popped up on Facebook during the week, so I emailed a writer well-versed (ahem) in the comings and goings of said Society. Yes, she said. There’s a DO. A bit of an EVENT. An annual SHINDIG. Get over to Loughrea pronto, and join the fun. So I did.
And I was in such a rush I never posted it here under ‘Events’. Tut tut.
On Saturday night I met Anne Marie Kennedy (she being my Baffle ‘mole’) in Harney’s pub in Loughrea and registered for the Baffle poetry competition. Two heats took place in different pubs, and fifteen people were picked to compete last night in the final, which was held at the Loughrea Hotel.
Well, all I can say is: this lot know how to put on a gig! Great emceeing by Declan, and super interval music from Cian, and – important this, poets are a hungry lot – lovely finger food from the hotel. Heartiest congratulations to all on ‘de comm-itt-eeee’.
The competition for the Baffle Turnip was fierce, and there was also the People’s Choice – voted by everyone in the audience. This year’s theme was ‘The Lady’s Revenge’. Why a turnip? You might well ask. Well, this time of year has the whiff of turnips about it, and I also heard the story of a man hanged for stealing a turnip during the Famine. Now, I heard a lot of stories last night. Those Bafflers are fierce men and women for shtooooorrrries!
The competition was judged by the writer Geraldine Mills. I would urge you to seek out some of her work. Before announcing the winners, she went through the list; with a positive word for everyone. A lady.
Noelle Lynskey took first prize with a lovely poem The Bed, and Tony Callinan (hope I spelt that correctly, Tony!) won both second prize and the People’s Choice for his extremely clever and funny poem about the Bafflers’ patron saint – Lady Margaret Kildysart.
My poem ‘Elizabeth Pepys Contemplates Adultery’ took third prize; I was chuffed to bits. That totally unexpected result was the icing on the cake on my first Baffle weekend.
Then it was home, and as the bould Samuel Pepys often said, ‘So to bed.’
You can read a new blog about my trip to Beara, by clicking above on the Writer’s Blog ^^^^^^
Am just home from a trip into Galway. Haven’t been in all summer; too busy with the Radio Diploma and work experience in West Clare. It was time for a bit of necessary (ahem) shopping: a boxload of my favourite coffee in M&S, mini hot cross buns, and a coffee & walnut cake.
Treats over, there was money spent on paint and a new lampshade for the guest room, and boring but essential printer ink. WHY is printer ink so expensive? Answers on a postcard please …
Karen J McDonnell 