A few of us repaired to the Hugh Lane Gallery Cafeteria/Restuarant afterwards, and as we were leaving, Francis O’Duffy spotted the Gallery piano, and proceeded to amaze us with his arrangements of Irish airs, until, just as he finished, and having drawn an audience, he was reprimanded by one of the porters. I hadn’t heard him play in 20 years, so I was gobsmacked.

I think he is trying to arrange a concert, so if he succeeds, I will of course mention it here, and recommend that you give yourself a treat.

All in all, a wonderful afternoon – and the day was fine too!

Anyway, the 24th of October seemed a long way away when John asked me, but now suddenly it’s next Friday. If you happen to be in Central Dublin on Friday do come along. I’ll even try out some new poems! And we’ll leave you enough time to get back to work, if work is what you have to do.
The readings are usually up a couple of flights of stairs, but because of my recent illness the IWC has kindly offered to hold it downstairs.

Out To Lunch reading by Philip Casey.
Venue: The Irish Writers’ Centre, 19 Parnell Square, Dublin 1
Time: 1.15pm
T: 01 8721301
E: info@writerscentre.ie

Over The Edge presents a reading by Philip Casey, Eamonn Wall, Aideen Henry, John Liddy, Jarlath Fahy & John Menaghan at Sheridan’s Wine Bar, 14-16 Church Yard Street, Galway on Friday, July 18th, 8pm.

Philip Casey was born to Irish parents in London in 1950 and grew up in Co Wexford. His publications include three collections of verse: Those Distant Summers (Dublin, Raven Arts Press, 1980); After Thunder (Raven Arts Press, 1985); and The Year of the Knife Poems 1980-1990, (Raven Arts Press Dublin, 1991). A fourth collection of poetry, Dialogue in Fading Light, was published by New Island Books in 2005. He has also published three novels, The Fabulists (Dublin, The Lilliput Press, 1994/ London,Serif Books, 1995); The Water Star (London, Picador, 1999); and The Fisher Child (Picador, 2001). A member of Aosdána, Philip initiated and maintains the website Irish Writers Online. He lives in Dublin.

Eamonn Wall was born and raised in Co. Wexford, has lived in the US since 1982 and is now settled in Missouri. His poetry collections to date are Dyckman–200th Street (1994), Iron Mountain Road (1997), The Crosses (2000), and Refuge at Desoto Bend (2004) all published by Salmon. From the Sin-é Café to the Black Hills (2000), a volume of essays on the Irish Diaspora, received the Michael J. Durkan Prize from the American Conference for Irish Studies for excellence in scholarship. Eamonn Wall teaches at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. This reading will be the Galway launch of Eamonn’s fifth collection of poems, A Tour of Your Country (Salmon Poetry).

Aideen Henry lives and works in Galway. Her poems have been published in The Shop, Soutword, West 47, Crannóg, Revival, The Cúirt Annual & The Stony Thursday Book. She is currently a student on the MA in Writing at NUI Galway. Aideen has also taken part in poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre. She has read her poems many times at the Over The Edge open-mic; was a Featured Reader at the March 2007 Over The Edge: Open Reading and was shortlisted for this year’s Cúirt Festival/Over The Edge showcase reading.

Jarlath Fahy is a native of Tuam Co Galway. He is a dramatic reader of his work. He has read at the Voices from The Tower lunchtime readings in Galway’s Fisheries Tower, been a featured reader at an Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library and also featured at North Beach Poetry Nights. He has been compared to both Paul Durcan and Pat McCabe for his darkly comic content and to ee cummings for his typographical style. The Man Who Was Haunted By Beautiful Smells (Wordsonthestreet, 2008) is Jarlath’s first published collection.

John Liddy was born in Youghal, Co. Cork, grew up in Limerick and now lives in Spain. His poetry collections include Boundaries (1974), The Angling Cot (1991), Song of the Empty Cage (1997), Wine and Hope (1999), Cast-A-Net (2003) & The Well: New and Selected Poems (2007). ‘La Barca de la Arena’ (a translation by Francisco Rivero in Spanish of The Angling Cot), ‘Poisionous Pleasure’ (a tanslation by John Liddy from ‘Tosigo Ardento’ by José Maria Álvarez) will both be published soon. His work has been widely praised by critics such as Desmond O’Grady and Patrick Galvin. He lives in Madrid.

John Menaghan was born in New Jersey to Irish-American parents. He teaches literature and creative writing at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he also serves as Director of both the Irish Studies and Summer in Ireland programs and runs the annual Irish Cultural Festival. His most recent collection of poems, She Alone – a book-length poetic sequence, which traces the life of an imaginary woman from birth to death and beyond – was published in 2006 by Salmon Poetry. It has been described by the Hudson Review as “one of the best books” of the year.

There is no entrance fee. All are welcome. For further information contact 087-6431748.

Over The Edge acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council and Galway City Council.

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AND THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY

Westside Bealtaine Writers & Over The Edge Summer Open-mic

Over The Edge in association with Westside Arts Festival presents a reading by the Westside Bealtaine Writers and the 2008 Over The Edge Summer Open-mic at Westside Library, Seamus Quirke Road on Wednesday, July 23rd from 6.30pm.

The Westside Bealtaine Writers, who recently participated in a series of workshops facilitated by Kevin Higgins at Westside Library, will read their work. Afterwards the annual Over The Edge Summer Open-mic will take place. Everyone who has a poem or story to share is most welcome to take part.

The MC for the evening will be Kevin Higgins. All are welcome to attend.

Over The Edge acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council and Galway City Council.

When I was asked some time ago by Sarah from 7Towers to read with Oran Ryan, March 19th seemed like an age away.
Now suddenly it’s here.
In case you think that Chapters is still in Abbey Street, it moved to a fine, spacious premises on Parnell Street, a minutes walk from the top of O’Connell Street.

Wednesday 19.03.2008
Chapters and Verse Reading: Philip Casey and Oran Ryan

Oran Ryan is the author of The Death of Finn and Ten Short Novels by Arthur Kruger.

Philip Casey is the author of The Fabulists, The Water Star, The Fisher Child, and Dialogue in Fading Light.

Venue: Chapters, Parnell St, Dublin 1
Time: 1.15pm-1.55
Admission: free

Paul Durcan, Harry Clifton, Kit Fryatt, Luis de Paor, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Philip Coleman (the main organizer), Michael Augustin, Sujata Bhatt, MacDara Woods, Vincent Woods, Ciaran O’Driscoll and Michael O’Dea among other writers and academics will read from, discuss and lecture about Hutchinson’s life and work.

By the by, the Provost of Trinity College hosted a reception to honour past alumna Anne Enright last night in his fine residence at No 1 Grafton Street. It was touching to see her former tutor the distinguished Professor Nicholas Grene so chuffed at her Man Booker success and he gave a simple but affecting speech on her career both as student and author. It’s so nice to see writers honoured, even if it might never have happened but for the fame of the Man Booker, rather than the sustained quality of her work. I’ve heard different opinions of her winning novel The Gathering, all of it trenchant, and for my part I think it’s wonderful – alive in every line.

Finally, my old friend Jim Greeley is a year dead today. It doesn’t at all seem like a year, hardly even a few months, but he’s gone and his family and friends, not least his partner Richard Lewis, miss him badly. I know I do. Peace to your ashes, Jim. You were a great pal.

It’s only available in Dublin, on FM 103.2 Anna Livia, but you may be able to listen to a streaming version live on the web by following these instructions. The Parlour Review goes out at 1pm (1300) each Tuesday.

I was very impressed by Marion’s preparation. She knew more about my work than I did, and it was a real pleasure being interviewed by her.
Anna Livia FM

In a nutshell, it hosts out-of-print and out-of-circulation books by Irish authors, in digital form, but under a Creative Commons licence/license. Check the website or the Creative Commons FAQ if you’d like to know more about the legal bit.

It’s a slow process getting a book online, as I discovered with The Fabulists, but Patrick and I have been bowled over by the enthusiastic response from writers, and indeed from everyone who’s commented so far.

With some writers, it’s not just scanning in (or in Sara Berkeley’s case, typing in) the book. There’s also in many cases – especially where it is out-of-circulation rather than out-of-print – the question of getting permission from publishers. We hope publishers will respond in the same enlightened way that Anthony Farrell of Lilliput Press did when I asked him for permission to post The Fabulists online, and indeed, so far Pat Boran of Dedalus and Jessie Lendennie of Salmon Publishing and Dennis Greig of Lapwing have expressed strong interest. It’s often a question of practicalities – some books will be suitable and others not – but as long as the goodwill is there, it will happen despite difficulties.

So there are just several rather than several dozen writers on the site so far, but we believe this is going to be much bigger, and in the vanguard of a worldwide movement.

We’re not in it to make money out of the site, although we won’t object if individual readers buy our books on the strength of what they find there.

That’s the beauty of it. The books are available for free download in digital form, but in some cases there are books still in publishers’ warehouses, and indeed, most authors have current titles available from bookshops, or at least online at amazon, Kennys, readireland, and bookirish, the online store of the great Books Upstairs. (Unfortunately the latter is still down due to a revamp.).

The original inspiration for Patrick and I putting our own poetry on our websites was Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (see Doctorow’s other novels here).

Then one evening, discussing how the idea would be much stronger with more Irish writers involved, we brainstormed and came up with Irish Literary Revival.

There are other books, mostly science fiction, out there for free download, but we think our idea is unique as such.

And then of course there are musicians who are ahead of the pack, among them Jane Siberry (thanks for your support, Jane) and Kristin Hersh (music links courtesy of Patrick Chapman).

We can foresee the day when publishers will be delighted to release hard-copy books simultaneously with free digital copies as a publicity generator, just as musicians are doing now, but that may be a few years down the road.

However, the revolution starts here.

Irish Literary Revival

Initially I’ve posted it in WordPress, one chapter per post. (There are fifteen chapters), but it will soon be available on the main Fabulists page on this website in MS Word, Open Office and PDF.

It will also be available on a new website created for Irish writers by poet Patrick Chapman and myself. More about this around May 1st.

Many thanks especially to Antony Farrell of the Lilliput Press and to my former agent Lisa Eveleigh for not only giving me permission to do this, but for being enthusiastic about the idea.

Hard copies (in trade paperback) are still available from Lilliput if you’d prefer to read it that way.

The Fabulists Online

this head is a poet’s head,

this head holds a galaxy.

All that culture and knowledge and grace, gone with him into the grave…
I never knew him, but reading tributes over the weekend, it was obvious what a wonderful companion he was, and I’m sure my heart is not the only one to go out to his widow, Madeleine.

See Sinéad Gleeson’s The Sigla Blog