The first issue will be dedicated to its title. Almatroz is a Portuguese neologism that suggests a unification of opposites. While alma (soul) stands for something pure and immaculate, atroz (atrocious) means its contrary, decadence and inhumanity. With this oxymoron, it is suggested that, along with Walter Benjamin’s idea, there is no document of civilization which is not a document of barbarism. The journal invites the authors to reflect on this concept in order to propose a dynamic dialogue between poetic tradition, historic experiences and artistic sensibility. In this sense, the journal is open to submissions of poems translated from English to Portuguese and Portuguese into English.

GENERAL OVERVIEW
The general objective of the Project is to create translatability for English
language poetry in Brazil. The journal is going to work as a means of reflection about
urgent artistic questions and will encourage debate regarding creativity in the context of
collaboration between Brazilian and foreign literary productions.
ARTICLES, REVIEWS AND POEMS
The Editorial board will consider articles, reviews and poems in Portuguese,
English and Spanish.
Articles should not have more than 10 pages in length. It must include an
abstract, three or four key-words and four lines with its author’s biography. The text
should also include an email to which the details of the journal are going to be sent.
The reviews and poems should not have more than 5 pages. It must also include
the author’s email and a short biography. The reviews have to address books that were
published in the last two years. In case the translations are not public domain, they
should include an authorization of the poet allowing his or her poem to be translated.
Papers should typed in Word for Windows, Times New Roman font, size 12,
and spaced 1, 5 space. Authors are requested to include references in the body of the
article with the author’s surname in uppercase, the date of publication and page number
in parentheses (eg. SPIVAK, 2002, p. 82). Thorough bibliographical references should
be placed at the end of the text.

The articles, reviews and poems are going to be sent to the editorial board, which will not
be informed of the writers’ name or biography.

The journal will receive articles until March 2013.

Revista Almatroz

Le Corbusier painting in the nude at Eileen Gray’s Villa E-1027, & the story behind his leg scar rosswolfe.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/le-…

— Philip Casey (@Philip_Casey) January 26, 2013

Uploaded by Myoilandgas on 20 Sep 2011

http://myoilandgas.org/ Why would Ireland give away its natural resources? Perhaps the good people of Norway have something helpful to say…

Licence:
Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed)

[http://myoilandgas.org/ seems to be down at the moment so I'm posting the video to spread the word,
via @Glenna_lynch ]

Dáil Éireann

photo credit: apanoply some rights reserved.



Just keeping this for handy reference

Medical Treatment (Termination of Pregnancy in Case of Risk to Life of Pregnant Woman) Bill 2012: Second Stage (Resumed)


Thursday, 19 April 2012

Dáil Éireann Debate
Vol. 762 No. 1
Unrevised

LINK

via Michael O’ Keeffe @Ireland2gether

Follow @Philip_Casey

Marathon Irish Dialogue, Vyner St, London – View from the sofa. photo credit: Philip Casey some rights reserved.

Earlier in the month, I travelled with Ronan Sheehan, at the invitation of Mannix Flynn and Maedhbh McMahon to speak at their Marathon Irish Festival at their Dialogue Cultural Space in Vyner Street, London.

Ronan is a lawyer who specialises in copyright law, as well as a writer, and he gave a talk,drawing on the tradition of Colmcille – now cited in Irish copyright law – entitled Downloading the Book of Kells. Given that we were there for the end of the Paralympics, I gave a talk on the origins of the Tailteann Games and their relation to the Greek Olympics.

Many thanks to Mannix and Maedhbh for the invite and their fabulous hospitality.

I managed to finish a second draft of my children’s novel. All fingers are crossed.

In case any long-suffering friends are reading this, including my agent (hi, Lisa) my long-term work, a personal take on Irish history, is ongoing, and I’m now almost up to 1800. Just another 200 years to go.

My big news, discovered some time over the summer, and as I have plastered over the front page, is that two of my novels are now on Kindle and in the iBook Store.

I don’t have access to the iBook Store but here are the links to Amazon.

New The Water Star is now on Kindle amazon.co.uk

Also on amazon.com

New The Fisher Child is now on Kindle at amazon.co.uk

Also on amazon.com

New Both books are also on the Apple iBookstore

If you have published work with Brandon Press, Kerry you need to contact the liquidator Sean O Sullivan in Kerry on this number 066 9151515. Your books (stock) are currently in a warehouse in Dublin with Gill & Macmillan. Hume Avenue, Park West, Dublin 12 waiting to be pulped. The warehouse are anxious that each author be contacted so that they have an opportunity to retrieve their works if they so wish. You must first contact the liquidator on the above number and then you can arrange to collect your works. The list below are the authors whose works are currently with Gill & Macmillan in the warehouse. If you know any of these writers can you please make them aware of this information. The books have already been stored in the warehouse for over 2 years now and they need the space so are anxious to make sure that every author has been contacted. The numbers beside each name are the quantity of books in the storehouse. John Manning of Gill and Macmillan is contactable on 015009534 (only contact him after you have dealt with the liquidator Sean O Sullivan (accountant) and Tom Hayes in Kerry)

TITLE STOCK

2 9780863220531 MCDYER:AUTOBIOGRAPHY @ 726
3 9780863221798 QUIGLEY:BORDERLAND @ 12
4 9780863222023 MACKEN:QUENCH THE MOON @ 0
5 9780863222047 RAYMO:IN THE FALCON’S CLAW P/B @ 216
6 9780863222153 MCDONNELL:IMAGINATION THE HEART P/B @ 14
7 9780863222221 COOKE:PERSECUTING ZEAL H/B 56
8 9780863222443 BRENNAN:STORY OF IRISH DANCE @ 4
9 9780863222467 PHELAN:ISCARIOT @ 32
10 9780863222511 RICE:SONG OF TIANENMEN PB 19
11 9780863222528 TROLAN:SLOW PUNCTURES PB 29
12 9780863222559 FINLAY:ALWAYS IN MY MIND P/B 56
13 9780863222580 FITZGERALD:SNAPDRAGONS @ 37
14 9780863222603 O’NEILL:RELLIGHAN, UNDERTAKER @ 32
15 9780863222610 O’NEILL:DUFFY IS DEAD @ 26
16 9780863222634 MACDONOGH:OPEN BOOK:ONE PUBLISHER’S WAR@ 53
17 9780863222641 O’NEILL:OPEN CUT @ 48
18 9780863222658 TROLAN:ANY OTHER TIME@ 38
19 9780863222689 REES:OSCAR’S TALE @ 56
20 9780863222757 MILLS:ELLIE P/B 57
21 9780863222771 CHAPMAN:JEREMY`S BABY 56
22 9780863222818 BRUEN:THE GUARDS 1
23 9780863222832 DUHAN:THERE IS THE TIME H/B 466
24 9780863222849 MCCARTHY:MY EYES ONLY LOOK OUT P/B 99
25 9780863222887 QUINN:MAVERICK H/B 8
26 9780863222900 WASSELL:THE THING HE LOVES P/B 126
27 9780863222962 HAIRE:THE YARD@ 149
28 9780863222986 O’DOWD:FIRE IN THE MORNING P/B@ 441
29 9780863223013 SINNERTON:DAVID ERVINE-UNCHART WATER HB@ 73
30 9780863223037 CONRY:FLOWERS OF THE FAIREST 83
31 9780863223044 BLUNT:I SAILED THE SKY IN A SILVER SHIP 85
32 9780863223068 CONLON:SKIN OF DREAMS@ 426
33 9780863223082 KEARNS/TAYLOR:TOUCHSTONE FOR TRADITION@ 78
34 9780863223099 HANAHOE:AMERICA RULES 201
35 9780863223105 BARRETT:MARTIN FERRIS-A BIOGRAPHY H/B@ 57
36 9780863223112 FOSTER:LAND WHERE STORIES END@ 213
37 9780863223129 SINNERTON:DAVID ERVINE-UNCHART WATER PB@ 273
38 9780863223167 POWER:FROM THE HEART OF IRELAND P/B 9
39 9780863223181 O DUBHSHLAINE:DARK DAY ON BLASKETS H/B 6
40 9780863223211 MEEHAN:KARAOKE NO MORE P/B@ 479
41 9780863223259 CONLON:LATER ON H/B@ 12
42 9780863223297 RONAN:THE IRISH ZORRO H/B@ 568
43 9780863223334 MAC MANAIS:ROAD FROM ARDOYNE H/B@ 24
44 9780863223365 COOK:A COLD-BLOODED SCOUNDREL P/B@ 203
45 9780863223419 MAC MANAIS:ROAD FROM ARDOYNE P/B@ 1
46 9780863223426 MACMAHON:HERO TOWN P/B@ 606
47 9780863223433 KIRWAN:GREEN SUEDE SHOES P/B@ 337
48 9780863223471 CURTIS:LIGHTNING TREE P/B (R) 13
49 9780863223488 VELICKOVIC:LODGERS P/B (R) 481
50 9780863223495 MAGAN:ANGELS & RABIES P/B (R) 1019
51 9780863223549 BARRY:MISS KATIE REGRETS P/B (R) 334
52 9780863223556 WALL:NO PARADISO P/B (R) 665
53 9780863223624 SCHWARTZ/VON FLOTOW:THIRD SHORE P/B (R) 432
54 9780863223631 MARTIN:BRANWELL P/B (R) 399
55 9780863223648 ELLIS:BOCKETY P/B (R) 356
56 9780863223655 MARTIN:BABY ZERO P/B (R) 389
57 9780863223662 CALLAGHAN:BILLY, COME HOME P/B (R) 344
58 9780863223686 MAGAN:MANCHAN’S TRAVELS P/B (R) 214
59 9780863223716 MACDONOGH:BRANDON TWENTY FIVE P/B (R) 776
60 9780863223761 MONAGHAN:COLOMBIA JAIL JOURNAL P/B 508
61 9780863223808 MCCREA:FIRST VERSE P/B (R) 390
62 9780863223839 URCH:AN INVITATION TO DANCE H/B (R) 239
63 9780863223846 MCCULLAGH:FUNNY PECULIAR P/B (R) 3363
64 9780863223877 CURTIS:LIGHTNING TREE P/B NEW EDN.(R) 436
65 9780863223884 CALLAGHAN:A BIT OF A SCANDAL H/B (R) 6
66 9780863223891 MAGAN:TRUCK FEVER P/B (R) 540
67 9780863223938 TAYLOR:IRISH COUNTRY DOCTOR H/B 452
68 9780863223945 KABDEBO:TRACKING GIORGIONE P/B (R) 1053
69 9780863223952 URCH:AN INVITATION TO DANCE P/B (R) 1151
70 9780863223969 CALLAGHAN:A BIT OF A SCANDAL P/B (R) 979
71 9780863224027 TAYLOR:IRISH COUNTRY VILLAGE H/B (R) 140
72 9780863224058 KEENAN:PLOT 34 P/B (R) 742
73 9780863224072 MURPHY:AT FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON H/B (R) 148
74 9780863224089 O’NEILL:CORCA DHUIBHNE H/B (R) 141
75 9780863224126 O DUBHSHLAINE:INISVICKILLANE P/B (R) 1
76 9780863224133 MACDONOGH:BARACK OBAMA MONEYGALL PB (R) 797
77 9780863224140 MURPHY:AT FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON P/B (R) 672
78 9780863224188 KIRWAN:ROCKIN’ THE BRONX P/B@ 63
79 9780863224225 TAYLOR:IRISH COUNTRY CHRISTMAS H/B 131
80 9780863224232 TAYLOR:IRISH COUNTRY VILLAGE P/B (R) 1374
81 9780863224249 MAGAN:ODDBALLS P/B (R) 1240
82 9780863224263 MURPHY:AT FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON P/B@ 1222
83 9780863224270 CAMPBELL:HERE’S HOW P/B@ 1960
84 9780863224287 SIMPSON:DUPLICITY & DECEPTION P/B@ 1629
85 9780863224300 HYNES:DOWN TO THE DIRT P/B (R) 1689
86 9780863224331 MACDONOGH:PIONEERS H/B (R) 421
87 9780863224348 GIBNEY:HANDBALL! P/B (R) 2298
88 9781902011066 O’NEILL:BENNETT & COMPANY (R) 15
89 9781902011073 FINLAY:CASSA (R) 27
90 9781902011127 TUOMEY:LIKE ONE OF THE FAMILY (R) 30
91 9781902011158 FINLAY:CASSA`S CHOICE (R) 168

Baby Zero by Emer Martin

I’ve already retweeted Emer’s alarm on Twitter. I don’t use Facebook but Mannix Flynn sent me what Emer posted on Facebook and I’m reproducing it here for non-Facebook users who may be interested.

Steve MacDonagh the publisher at Brandon Books died in 2010. It was reported in the Irish Times that O’Briens Press bought the company. In fact they only bought the ten most lucrative titles. I am presenting awards for the SCC today and they requested 30 copies of my book Baby Zero as prizes. I tracked down the liquidator, who sent me to Gill and MacMillan the distributor. When I arrived at the warehouse the very accommodating manager brought me to the site of all Brandon Books and informed me that they would all be destroyed on June 1st. He was aghast that no author was informed of this. If you are a Brandon author, or know one, please alert them to the fact that all their books will be pulped in one month if they don’t contact the liquidator. (I thought I’d seen everything in Publishing)

You can search for Brandon-published authors on Irish Writers Online Note: not all are necessarily in print.

on Twitter: Emer Martin @emermartin ; Mannix Flynn @mannixflynn ; Philip Casey @Philip_Casey

It is no coincidence that imprisonment for non-payment of fines has soared during the present recession, from 1,335 in 2007 to over 7,000 last year.

The Vicious Circle of Social Exclusion and Crime: Ireland’s Disproportionate Punishment of the Poor is available from the Irish Penal Reform Trust.

click to enlarge

The Old Triangle

A celebration for the benefit of the Irish Penal Reform Trust

Sunday, 26th February 2012 at 8pm

Abbey Theatre, Dublin 1

A celebration of music and words for the benefit of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, The Old Triangle seeks to raise awareness of the need for penal reform and the place of prison and prisoners in society. Many of the artists taking part in this celebration have worked in prisons, and we are mindful of the important role the arts and artists have to play in the life of our prisons.

The featured musicians and writers, all of whom are waiving fees for the night, are:

Christy Moore

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Peter Sheridan

Karan Casey & Niall Vallely

Tony Curtis

Shaz Oye

GREENSHINE

(Noel Shine, Mary Greene & Ellie Shine)

Leanne O’Sullivan

Jimmy Kelly & friends

The artist Eddie Cahill, introduced by Brian Maguire

The event is hosted by Paula Meehan and Theo Dorgan.

We are all aware that there is a huge debate going on in Ireland right now about what kind of civil society we should be striving for. Artists are as much part of the
debate as anyone, and conscious of the need to make this debate as inclusive
and wide-ranging as possible.” – Paula Meehan, Patron of IPRT

Booking details

Tickets are €20 (standard) with a limited number at €40 (premium supporters).

Tickets can be booked online at www.abbeytheatre.ie or by calling the AbbeyTheatre box office on (01) 87 87 222. (The Box Office is open Mon – Sat from 10.30am – 7pm.)

IPRT is very grateful to Poetry Ireland and to Sheehan & Partners for supporting this event.

Ich am of Irlonde,
And of the holy londe
Of Irlonde.
Goode sire, praye ich thee,
For of sainte charitee,
Com and dance with me
In Irlonde.

Anon. (14th century)

It inspired Yeats, of course.

‘I am of Ireland’

I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity,
Come dance with me in Ireland.’

One man, one man alone
In that outlandish gear,
One solitary man
Of all that rambled there
Had turned his stately head.
That is a long way off,
And time runs on,’ he said,
‘And the night grows rough.’

‘I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland.’

‘The fiddlers are all thumbs,
Or the fiddle-string accursed,
The drums and the kettledrums
And the trumpets all are burst,
And the trombone,’ cried he,
‘The trumpet and trombone,’
And cocked a malicious eye,
‘But time runs on, runs on.’

I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
“Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland.’

– W.B Yeats, The Winding Stair and Other Poems, 1933

Links:

Higher resolution image of John Speed’s map of Ireland

Middle English lyrics Miscellaneous Texts

Inaugural Speech Given by Her Excellency Mary Robinson,President of Ireland,
in Dublin Castle on Monday, December 3, 1990

Richard Stallman at Marlboro College

In an age where business dominates our governments and writes our laws, every technological advance offers business an opportunity to impose new restrictions on the public. Technologies that could have empowered us are used to chain us instead.

With printed books,

•You can buy one with cash, anonymously.
•Then you own it.
•You are not required to sign a license that restricts your use of it.
•The format is known, and no proprietary technology is needed to read the book.
•You can, physically, scan and copy the book, and it’s sometimes lawful under copyright.
•Nobody has the power to destroy your book.

Contrast that with Amazon ebooks (fairly typical):

•Amazon requires users to identify themselves to get an ebook.
•In some countries, Amazon says the user does not own the ebook.
•Amazon requires the user to accept a restrictive license on use of the ebook.
•The format is secret, and only proprietary user-restricting software can read it at all.
•To copy the ebook is impossible due to Digital Restrictions Management in the player and prohibited by the license, which is more restrictive than copyright law.
•Amazon can remotely delete the ebook using a back door. It used this back door in 2009 to delete thousands of copies of George Orwell’s 1984.

Even one of these infringements makes ebooks a step backward from printed books. We must reject ebooks until they respect our freedom.

The ebook companies say denying our traditional freedoms is necessary to continue to pay authors. The current copyright system does a lousy job of that; it is much better suited to supporting those companies. We can support authors better in other ways that don’t require curtailing our freedom, and even legalize sharing. Two methods I’ve suggested are:

• To distribute tax funds to authors based on the cube root of each author’s popularity.
(See http://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.html.)
• To design players so users can send authors anonymous voluntary payments.

Ebooks need not attack our freedom, but they will if companies get to decide. It’s up to us to stop
them. The fight has already started.

Copyright 2011 Richard Stallman
Released under Creative Commons Attribution Noderivs 3.0.

Taken from the Sunday Tribune 30th Jan 2011

Diarmuid Doyle – Bertie is out of public sight but it’s never been more important to keep an eye on him….

Timely, because Ahern cannot yet be consigned to history. In fact, now that he will be out of public sight, it has never been more important to keep an eye on him. He remains a menace and a threat to Ireland’s prosperity through his significant, but little commented on, position as chairman of the International Forestry Fund.

So far, only the Sunday Tribune among the country’s newspapers has paid close attention to Ahern’s role in this private company. Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan has asked a Dáil question and Sinn Féin’s Martin Ferris has thrown a few shapes about the former taoiseach’s latest gig. But, as with John O’Donoghue’s expenses a few years ago, it is taking the political classes a while to wake up to this issue.

Although the International Forestry Fund sounds like a vaguely cuddly group, which loves trees the way some of us love kittens, it is in fact a very profit-conscious joint venture between two private asset management companies, Helvetia Wealth and IFS Asset Managers Limited. It makes its money by acquiring existing forests on behalf of investors. As it says on its website, Helvetia has 1.1bn Swiss Francs (€867m) in assets “following a number of very successful acquisitions in the UK, Germany and Ireland”. IFS currently manages in excess of €100m of forestry assets on behalf of 18,000 private and corporate clients in this country.

In Ireland, most of our trees and forests belong to the state agency Coillte, which owns more than one million acres of land – about 7% of Irish land cover. In July last year, Colm McCarthy issued his An Bord Snip Nua report in which he suggested, among other ideas, that the government look at flogging Coillte as part of a mass sell-off of state assets.

This obviously piqued the interest of the cash-rich International Forestry Fund and five months later it announced that Bertie Ahern had been appointed as its chairman. “MrAhern implemented bold economic initiatives that included corporate tax incentives and education reform”, the Fund said at the time. “His efforts laid out a welcome mat for international corporations, making Ireland an attractive location for foreign companies”.

Indeed. Seven months after that, in July 2010, McCarthy was given a new job – to look in more depth at the idea of selling off the state assets he had mentioned in his 2009 report. One of the companies specifically targeted was Coillte.

By now, the International Forestry Fund, with Bertie Ahern firmly ensconced at the top, was salivating at the prospect of getting its hands on Coillte and the 7% of Ireland that comes with it. “We would certainly have an interest in that regard,” Paul Brosnan, the fund’s director, told this newspaper last year. “We have always had an interest in Coillte. It certainly would not be beyond the bounds of possibility that we would acquire it.”

Of the very many questions that arise from all of this, here are just some: why on earth would we sell 7% of Irish land to private investors? Why is a former taoiseach heading up a company registered in the Virgin Islands which wants to profit from more than one million acres of the country he used to run? How much is he getting for whatever advice or help he will be giving to help secure this grand sell-off? Does the Green Party have anything to say? Will Bertie Ahern make a statement on the issue?

Many of these questions would be irrelevant if Ahern was to resign from the International Forestry Fund or if the fund was to confirm that it had no interest whatsoever in Coillte, now, or in the future. Such outcomes seem unlikely, however. The former taoiseach and the company he chairs are apparently both driven by an insatiable greed for money. They are perfect bedfellows.

An Píopa/The Pipe

The Pipe, The Film website

Update: the video has been removed from YouTube for copyright reasons

#ge11 is the Twitter tag for the Republic of Ireland’s general election 2011

Boards.ie 2011 General Election Poll Brilliant take on the ballot paper, allowing you to make a virtual vote, and better, to acquaint yourself with your candidates in your constituency. Its current overall vote appears to be closely tracking conventional polls in newspapers etc, which is interesting in itself. Whether it is accurate for each constituency remains to be seen.

Some candidates you might not have been aware of (with links to boards.ie/vote)

Declaration of interest: I’m a friend and Aosdána colleague of Mannix Flynn. I follow Kate Bopp on twitter.

. Vote Mannix Flynn. running in Dublin South East
It has become a universal truth of General Election 2011 that “the people want change”, but, as citizens, we need to reflect on the nature of that change. Do we merely want to “modify” the way we are governed with a tired reshuffle of the personnel and values that have served us so badly? Or do we want “transformation”? Transformation requires courage and hope. Don’t do the same thing, expecting a different result

Mick Wallace, running in Wexford

We need political reform to bring a new politics, an end to political donations which separate the electorate from the legislature by allowing those with the most money to have greatest influence, a smaller Dáil with accountability and transparency in all its workings, a genuine effort to provide a decent State Health System for all, a greater emphasises on education including access to pre-school education, an end to expenses and pension abuse, and real local Government that works.

Kate Bopp running in Tipperary North

I believe we must pass power & responsibility to local Government at local level. Introducing directly elected mayors and giving local councils more executive powers. This will allow national legislators to focus on National Issues. The identification and abolition of cronyism is a top priority. I will also strive for shorter terms in office allowing for a regular influx of fresh knowledge and ideas. I will promote a greater accountability of those in office.

Gerry Kinsella and Pat Kavanagh of Fís Nua, running in Wicklow

Fís Nua is an all-Ireland federation with a political structure that seeks to bring together, under one umbrella, all those disaffected with the corruption in politics and government and who feel that they have been left without a voice within the political arena in Ireland.

Egypt

Perhaps, and perhaps not, relevant to #ge11, but a thought-provoking essay nonetheless. The Egyptian Revolution: First Impressions from the field. , a deeply moving essay by Mohammed Bamyeh.

At this moment, out of the deadweight of inwardness and self-contempt, there emerged spontaneous order out of chaos.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, 1932. Carl Van Vechten photograph collection (Library of Congress), reproduction number LC-USZ62-42516 DLC (b&w film copy neg.).

I became interested in the painter Jackson Pollock through a poet, Frank O’Hara. They were both Americans, and oddly enough, both died in car crashes.

Like a former director of this gallery, Thomas MacGreevy, O’Hara was a poet who had a deep and professional interest in painting. Amongst other institutions O’Hara worked for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Many of his friends were painters, and some, including Larry Rivers, illustrated his books.

He is one of the most amusing poets I know, and I would like to quote a favourite and hopefully apposite poem called Why I am not a Painter

The New Spanish Painting and Sculpture and Jackson Pollock, published in 1959, are just two of his publications on art. Of course I had previously seen many photos of Pollock’s work, but it was the O’Hara Monograph which sparked my interest and which eventually led to the small poem called Prophet, which largely depends on an O’Hara quote from the monograph, which is: ‘In the state of spiritual clarity, there are no secrets.’

When I look into the abyss of The Deep I find it a paradoxically fearful and peaceful experience. But stripped of any symbolism, I think it is in itself a beautiful painting, and achieves what painting is best at doing, that is to say, it achieves beauty on its own terms, those of colour and composition, without necessarily having a subject or theme. In other words, he has achieved a state of spiritual clarity, which can either mean that there are no secrets, basically, or that in this state, all secrets are revealed. This dilemma is constantly present in contemplating The Deep, to my mind.

Image: Number One 1949

A few years back, and maybe it still continues, there was a vogue for comparing the findings of quantum physics with eastern philosophies and religions. Such books as The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu Li Masters made quantum physics seem not only comprehensible, but spiritual too. The Wu Li book is particularly interesting, if only for its title. Chinese syllables can apparently be pronounced in several different ways, depending on the meaning. To cut a long story short, there are several meanings for Wu Li in this context, which includes Patterns of Energy – the Chinese way of saying ‘Physics’. Other meanings include ‘My Way‘, ‘Nonsense‘, ‘I clutch my Ideas‘ and ‘Enlightenment‘, where, in the latter case, wu means ‘My heart,’ or my mind.’

End of Chinese lesson.

It seems to me that any or all of these meanings could be applied to the masterpieces of Jackson Pollock. Moreover, they seem to me reminiscent of the restless sub-atomic world as I understand it, in which case the artist has envisaged the sub-atomic world before the scientist, and is in this sense a prophet.

Image: White Cockatoo

And whether I’m being totally fanciful or not, it also seems to me that in The White Cockatoo he closed his eyes and travelled inward until he came to a group of nerve cells in his brain in which was entangled the lost memory of a white cockatoo.

PROPHET

When he closed his eyes

he saw The White Cockatoo,

forgotten in the ganglia.

Pressing them further closed,

tension induced a magnified

print of connective tissue,

which he dripped onto canvas,

scattering electrons in fright.

He saw what physicists

would predict and measure.

‘In the state of spiritual

clarity there are no secrets,’

wrote Frank O’Hara of Pollock.

In The Deep, there are no secrets.

Pollack was deeply interested in the great Mexican muralists Orozco, Siqueiros, and Rivera, and in Rivera’s dictum that art should express the ‘new order of things … and that the logical place for this art, … belonging to the populace, was on the walls of public buildings.’ O’Hara suggests that this statement may have somehow pointed the way to the heroic scale of his later masterpieces.

Image: Self Portrait, 1947

Diego Rivera was married, twice, to the much younger Frida Kahlo.

This is The Two Fridas, one of many paintings which document their tempestuous relationship. Although she always claimed that she was born during the Mexican revolution of 1910, she was born in 1907, and christened Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon. Her first two names were given to Frida so that she could be baptized with a Christian name. The third, the one her family used, means ‘peace’ in German – her paternal grandparents were German. One of her maternal grandparents was Indian, a fact which was most important in her life and art.

At the age of six, she contracted polio in her right leg, but the event which transformed her life and gave the world such a rich legacy occurred on September 17, 1925, when Kahlo suffered horrendous injuries in a road accident.

Image: The Broken Column

I’ll spare you the bizarre details, which are given in Hayden Herrera’s biography, FRIDA. Suffice to mention that her spinal column was broken in three places; her collarbone was broken, and her third and fourth ribs. Her right leg had eleven fractures and her right foot was dislocated and crushed. Her left shoulder was out of joint, her pelvis broken in three places.’

Image: El Autobus

Now I knew nothing of all of this when I first became fascinated with Frida Kahlo. As is alluded to in Waking To The Plain, (which was originally called Homage to Kahlo) I first heard of her through an artist friend, who happens to share with me a significant experience of hospital. We were discussing pain, and she recommended that I should look up Kahlo’s paintings.

Image: Tree of Hope

Image: Without Hope

Of course I was very interested in her account of Kahlo, and I fully intended to investigate further, but the truth is I forgot all about it. Until a few months later that is, when I received a very excited letter from a close friend in Berlin. Enclosed were black and white copies of several Kahlo self-portraits and my friend knew me well when she predicted my interest in them.

Image: Self Portrait 1926

Shortly after this, I met a Mexican, and – you’ve guessed it – she loved Frida’s work and knew a great deal about her. She also spoke about the difference of colours in Mexico and Europe.

Image: The Love Embrace of the Universe

So now, three women, within a very short space of time, had come to me with the gift of Frida Kahlo. It was as if I hadn’t taken the hint on the first or second occasion, and now the gods were sending me a third messenger to make sure I got the message. I had already begun the first of many, many drafts of a poem which I hoped would lead me to the core of what was for me an enigma. (return to slide of ‘The Tree of Hope’) Even without their emotionally-charged colour, I was fascinated, particularly by The Tree of Hope. Now, I know there is a powerful feminine presence in this painting which transcends the self-portrait, and that is part of its attraction for me, even though, insofar as I am a man, it excludes me in a sense; but it also vividly states a personal and universal experience of which up to then I had only been vaguely aware.

Image: Tree of Hope. Now, I know there is a powerful feminine presence in this painting which transcends the self-portrait, and that is part of its attraction for me, even though, insofar as I am a man, it excludes me in a sense; but it also vividly states a personal and universal experience of which up to then I had only been vaguely aware.

As I thought about this talk, it seemed that there was a link between several of the paintings I wanted to explore, both those of Pollock and Kahlo. I’m thinking of the tension created by the presence of opposing ideas or states, and nowhere is this more graphically illustrated than in The Tree of Hope, where defeat and triumph are simultaneously present. It is, I suppose, a very Christian idea; in any event, I find it a haunting image.

A year earlier, in 1945, she had painted the heart-rending Without Hope. Perhaps more than any work of art I know, this goes to the core of the despair which is the inevitable visitor to those who suffer chronic illness and pain. However, on closer observation, there is a glimmer of hope. Her specially-constructed easel is on her sick bed, and it was on this, with the aid of a mirror, she painted many of her of her self-portraits, and this is a partial explanation of why she was herself her principal subject.

As I mentioned earlier, Kahlo developed a system whereby an emotion or state corresponded to a particular colour. If I could quote her biographer Hayden Herrera:

“The self-portraits from 1940 also show clearly the degree to which Frida had by this time grasped the power of colour to communicate emotion. To eyes accustomed to the French tradition in the visual arts, Frida’s colour choices – olive, orange, purple, many earthy tones, and a hallucinatory yellow – are jarring. Although her bizarre palette reflects her love of the untutored colour combinations in Mexican popular art, Frida cunningly makes colour set off psychological drama. Pink is often used in ironic contrast to violence or death; in several self-portraits (slide The Little Deer) a yellow olive accentuates the feeling of claustrophobic oppression; (slide Henry Ford Hospital) the grey-blue of Frida’s skies and the lavender or burnt sienna of her earth give an edge to the expression of alienation and despair. Since not much black is used to model forms, her paintings often have a visionary brilliance.’

And here is an extract from her diary in the mid-nineteen forties:

Green: warm and good light.

Yellow: madness, sickness, fear. Part of the sun and joy.

Cobalt blue: electricity and purity. Love.

Black: nothing is black, really nothing.

Leaf Green: Leaves, sadness, science. The whole of Germany is this colour.

Greenish Yellow: more madness and mystery. All the phantoms wear suits of this colour… or at least underclothes.

Dark Green: colour of bad news and good business.

Navy blue: distance. Also tenderness can be of this blue.

Well, to quote from Waking to the Plain, there is bad news and good business in The Henry Ford Hospital. The bad news is that, because of the damage done to her pelvis in her accident, Frida is enduring yet another miscarriage, and the profound grief that, naturally, caused her. In the background one can see industrial Detroit, which was then dominated by Henry Ford’s factories which were producing babies of a kind – the Baby Ford car, illustrating yet again her black humour.

This, Self Portrait with Monkey, 1940, is Frida some eight years later, which she painted in a hotel room in New York for a wealthy collector, Conger Goodyear, and which graces the cover of the U.S. edition of her biography by Hayden Herrera, sent to me by an Irish friend who at the time lived in New York. Along with a gift of boxed cards of Kahlo’s paintings, this biography revealed to me why I was so obsessed with Kahlo, and finally allowed me to write about my obsession with a degree of honesty, and thereby lay it to rest.

I’m very fond of this particular painting, partly because of its attention to fine detail; also its suggestiveness, where the ribbon which binds her tightly combed hair is also the link to her pet monkey, and in turn, the monkey’s hand seems to grow out of her hair; and finally for its unrelenting honesty. It was one of several in which she is accompanied by pet animals and which were painted during the years of her divorce from Rivera – the monkey here was actually a gift from Rivera. Her eyes reveal her loneliness, but her batwing eyebrows and her light moustache are forceful presences, and dressed in her finery, she is sensual and proud.

This is The Dream, painted in the same year, 1940. According to Herrera, she was preoccupied with death during the period after her divorce, and that she actually did keep a skeleton on top of her bed’s canopy as – to her – an amusing reminder of her own mortality, as she explained to visitors. This is a Judas skeleton, part of the Day of the Dead folklore of Mexico.

But if Frida Kahlo was often preoccupied with death, and she had good reason to be for much of her life, she took a great sensual pleasure from her life and art. She was admired and loved by many of the great figures of her time, including Trotsky, Kandinsky, Juan Miro, Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O’Keeffe and even that arch-egotist Picasso, who if my memory serves me right, wrote to Rivera that she was a greater portraitist than either of them. She once told a friend that her view of life was: Make love, take a bath, make love again. She was still painting up to her death in 1954, and on her last painting she wrote VIVA LA VIDA – Long Live Life.

Image:
Self Portrait 1947

WAKING TO THE PLAIN

Here I painted myself, Frida Kahlo, from a mirror-image. I am thirty-seven years old, and it is the month of July, nineteen forty-seven. In Coyoacan, Mexico, the place where I was born. – Frida Kahlo

I tried to understand you through the self–portraits you began when the collision of a bus and tram changed your life as time slowed down.

They chronicle the trials of your body’s broken column; your love affair through two marriages with Rivera; the miscarriages; your passion compressed into a high tension and expression.

I must have known it was impossible, but blinded by what I thought was love – and it was, by some measure – I made draft after draft, losing my way through your subtle world of guise and fantasy, through what is at once concealed and revealed. The Tree of Hope was my prime enigma:

Dressed in her red Tehuana costume,

she is Kahlo the desert queen,

reigning over her butchered flesh and bone

that lies defeated on a surgical trolley -

where the moon is mistress beyond the orange sun.

The moon, Frida, and that old orange the sun, that your childhood teacher held in one hand – a candle in the other – to explain the solar system. Darkness and Light.

And the fissured desert that stretches to the distant, eternal mountains is the desert that encroaches when hope is ruined to often. Isn’t that so?

The images return to haunt, and I repeat the attempt to write them out:

Bound in plastercast, she paints in

the hair on her lip from a mirror-image,

rapt in search of the meaning of what

she is doing again, and again, and again.

After dinner one night, an artist told me about you. The house we were staying in was old and later I sensed a ghost in my room. I think it was a part of myself, long forgotten. A few months later a letter arrived from a friend:

A bulging letter, postmarked Berlin.

I read the excited hand, unfold

the black and white copies: Kahlo.

So began the obsession. Spring passed into summer, and one evening I ambled down Kilmainham Lane, admiring the elderflowers, the peace of this rus-in-urbe broken only by guard-dogs and the rhythmic clack of my crutches. Then an odd thing happened:

A red car stops, a puff of dust

rising before the tyres,

and a Mexican asks for directions.

Later, in a bar, I ask about Kahlo,

who, she insists, painted with colours

which don’t exist in Europe.

The burnt siennas of your Mexican earth, Frida; your yellows at once pouring out sickness and fear, sun and joy; your dark blues occupying both distance and tenderness. Dark green, you said, was the colour of bad news and good business. There is bad news and good business in your Henry Ford Hospital, 1932:

In the Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit,

Frida has lain in her own blood

since 1932,

her miscarried foetus spirited above her

like an African fetish – her pelvis, her tear,

the hopes of her famished love, so much debris.

Its foreground is green, and the spiritual drama of your miscarriage is played out against a backdrop of Henry Ford’s factories delivering Baby Fords. It took me a while to see humour where previously I could recognize only suffering. Now I’m glad to know it was typical,like your parrot who drank beer and tequila and croaked:I’ll never get over this hangover!

This is a quote from the story of your work and life by Hayden Herrera, who wrote it with the ring of respect and truth. A friend sent it from New York, while another gave me reproductions I had never seen. It was then I realised that all my drafts were false. I was writing about myself.

Something as formerly innocent as a cloud or landscape or as utilised as a polluting bus, can recall you as if you were seated in them, a mirror before you, your brush in hand.

So many correspondences where nothing is strictly itself might unbalance a mind. How many women limp through a crowd? Might they have light moustaches or eyebrows joined like batwings?

They, the correspondences, are sane because you are unique, like a giant river from whom tributaries flow away through the thoughts and emotions of those who need you.

She floats, asleep

in canopied rest, rooted

high over the earth -

her vigilant companion

a Day of the Dead skeleton

decked in dynamite and flowers.

She has journeyed a long way,

and no one can follow

into the shell

of all she has yearned for.

The Real Frida Kahlo Con musica de Cafe Tacuba (Esa Noche)
Fragmento extraido de un documental dedicado a esta gran artista, (The History Channel Español)
Ojessy Youtube channel

frida kahlo including The two Fridas (1939); Wearing a velvet dress(1926); The little deer (1946); What the water gave me (1938); Without hope (1945); The Broken Column (1944). Chanystears Youtube channel

Jackson Pollock 51, 1951 (excerpt)
Hans Namuth and Paul Falkenberg (directors) Morton Feldman (composer)
Facs100b Youtube channel

Elephants Dream is a computer-generated movie made using open source applications that premiered on March 24, 2006. Beginning production in September, 2005, it was developed under the name Orange by a team of seven artists and animators from around the world. It was originally known as Machina, before being changed to Elephants Dream to more closely match the storyline.

Big Buck Bunny tells the story of a giant rabbit with a heart bigger than himself. When one sunny day three rodents rudely harass him, something snaps… and the rabbit ain’t no bunny anymore! In the typical cartoon tradition he prepares the nasty rodents a comical revenge.

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license
http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/

Bella Akhmadulina

The Russian poet Bella Akh­madulina has died. I saw her read once, in the old Project Theatre in Dublin, and was so moved by the way she read her poems in Russian, which reminded me of chanting in a cathedral, that I wrote the following piece, published in my collection The Year of the Knife.
Thank you, Bella. May you rest in peace.

THE RED CATHEDRAL
   –on see­ing Bella Akh­madulina per­form her work

‘The Cathed­ral is aligned East to West,
a circle on two rect­angles
over a blind spring where pil­grims sup.
Its red­stone wings spread North and South.
It greets the rising sun,
and accepts dark­ness as it comes.
Requir­ing noth­ing, it is noth­ing to itself.
To enter into it
is to be given a hard grain as talis­man.
Solitude touches its high, bare walls.
Grass has split the flag­stones;
dust swarms in light from the stained glass.
The Cathed­ral is home to ter­rains and cit­ies
and those who live in them
as they breathe fumes, travel on shunted trains;
and just now, a woman dressed in black and gold
is the swooned instru­ment
through whom the Cathed­ral fills with their song.
High in the dome, a swal­low loops and skims
to the soar and whis­per
of grief, to the little shuffle of the woman’s fun.

  – Philip Casey



The Red Cathedral by Philip Casey is licensed under a Cre­ative Com­mons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Congress Altar Cappagh Hospital May 16 2008

As the result of an early childhood illness, by fourteen my right leg was five inches shorter than my left, and inevitably without attention would fall further behind, so I was brought to Cappagh Hospital in October 1964 for a series of operations which would stop my growth and leave me two inches shorter in height, but with only a slight limp. Most of these operations would be under Mr McCauley, but at least one was under Mr Joesph Gallagher, who I not only respected, as of course I did Mr McCauley, but warmed to as a person. On one occasion he introduced me to his entourage thus: “This young man is as healthy as a trout.”
When you’ve been confined to bed for some time, a remark like this can only be described as Positive Medicine, and I’ve never forgotten it as such.

For me, Cappagh was a positive place. When I entered St Mary’s ward for the first time on a beautiful autumn evening, the ward was full of light and sound. It was like walking into a tropical aviary, such was the energy and colour. Being from the country, adjusting to twenty-four hour company took some time, but almost immediately I realised that while many of the boys had been here for years with ailments such as polio, most of them were full of normal, healthy mischief and fun.

Imposing order on this chaos was Sister Angela. I was only fourteen, but I quickly saw through the stern mask to a deeply human heart and sense of humour. Once, I was dared to ask her did she want a Kiss, which was a popular toffee. Without hesitation I intercepted her on the corridor and popped the question. She was of course taken aback at my effrontery and disrespect for her vows, but when I quickly proffered the tube of Kisses, she erupted into laughter.

Because children were often in Cappagh for years, I remember many of them, though not all of their names, of course. There was Larry W., a fine tall youth who was disabled by polio. He once had a classic, slow-motion fight from his wheelchair with a tall, thin boy, Alan K., also stricken with polio, over a chess game. It took them so long to get their fists to a sufficient height to land a blow, that the strike count was probably one a minute, but it was no less ferocious for that.

Although they had ample reason, very few if any of these boys showed self-pity. Danny M. struck me as particularly brave. He had brittle-bone disease, and invariably fell and broke another bone almost as soon as he had recovered from the last misfortune, but invariably, hopes dashed as they were risen, he smiled through it. There was Gerry from Clare, and Philip from Finglas, and Oliver from Kilkenny, and Willie, famous as Little Willie – but by the time I knew him was far from little; he was wild, and great fun. There was Mossy D., about whom more in a moment, and the great Tommy Lavin, who had an arm amputated and who died from cancer a few years later. He, too, never lost his spirit in adversity, a young man of noble courage and elegant character.
There was John C., from Waterford, an inveterate reader who advised me to read something decent, rather than endless Agatha Christies, and handed me the plays of Sean O’Casey, thereby changing my life.

And there was Paddy Doyle. A few years later Paddy would be muscular and married to Eileen – I would be his best man. But when I first met him, he was a small, skinny thirteen year-old orphan, his feet twisted by what would later be diagnosed as dystonia. There was certainly no inkling that he would be internationally famous as the author of The God Squad.
Being a farmer’s son capable of carrying a sack of wheat, Paddy was like a feather to me, so I carried him on tours of the hospital, including around the Congress Altar and up to the top of the fire escape of the Nurses’ Home, from where we had an excellent view of the farm, which if I’m not mistaken was owned by the Sisters of Charity and partially supplied the hospital – but I’m open to correction on that. Later he would reach the Congress Altar under his own steam.

Beneath the Nurses’ Home was the Occupational Therapy department, run by Sister Bride. She was so beautiful she could have starred in The Nun’s Story, but would probably have been horrified at the suggestion. One of her occupational therapists was an English Rose called Pat, so all in all the atmosphere in the OT department was very pleasant! I had my first inkling of a literary bent when I was asked to work on a magazine with Paddy and others. I can still smell the Gestetner ink. Paddy was particularly good at weaving as he would be at writing.

Needless to say, Paddy and his wife Eileen and their three sons and their partners are my friends to this day.

Then there were the lovely girls in the girls’ ward, every bit as lively and mischievous as the boys. In summer, the beds were wheeled out onto the verandas, and we didn’t need binoculars to see them. On the long summer evenings, there were not-so-secret rendezvous behind the Congress Altar, no pun intended. Separating us was a ward, or wards, for asthmatics, but there were girls there too, including the stunning Hannah, who I’m sure had a legion of admirers. I remember several lovely ward maids, too. It was all great fun.

Of course there were dark moments. Operations are never easy, and the aftermaths of some were excruciating over a long period. Some of the children were orphans, and others weren’t but never had visitors. No doubt some of them envied me my visitors, specifically the gifts of my visitors. It was of course difficult for relatives to travel long distances in those days, but it was thought that some children had been abandoned by their families. Some had diseases which would dog them all their sometimes abbreviated lives.

But the nurses were heaven on earth for a teenage country boy. Goddesses in their pristine uniforms, it was only later that I realised that the student nurses were teenagers like us – only more mature. We gave many of them nicknames. I was in love with some of them, of course, including Twitty from Wexford and Benjy from Dublin.

Benjy, a beautiful redhead whose perfume I will never forget, swore she’d never marry…
Some of them, like Fritz and Benjy, and indeed one of the primary school teachers, sometimes brought some of us to see Dublin, with Sister Angela’s blessing. Sister Angela on at least one occasion gave us money “to treat the girls.”

As nurses, some of them were outstanding. I believe that a staff nurse, Martha Moroney, saved my sanity when I was having my leg lengthened. Her calmness and superb nursing skill saved me a great deal of pain and I want to thank her here, some 42 years later. Perhaps I remember her particularly in contrast to another staff nurse at the time, who I dreaded coming near my leg.

Among other great healers were Fritz, and Staff Nurse O’Callaghan, also both deeply calm in a crisis. Some have a healing touch and others don’t and one doesn’t forget it. I have been in hospital a lot since then, and their skill and demeanour has always been the gold nursing standard for me.

It must have been 1966 when Mr O’Malley, Minister for Education, swept through the wards and decided there should be a secondary school in Cappagh. It was held in the more spacious girls’ ward, and the teacher chosen was the bi-lingual novelist and poet Eoghan O Tuairisc/Eugene Watters. His first wife had recently died and he took the post to help him endure his bereavement. It was more like a university, or perhaps a hedge-school, than an orthodox secondary school, though of course the curriculum was addressed. Arriving in beds and wheelchairs and on crutches, there were no benches. We were encouraged to think and to ask questions. He lectured us on the Bible, including, if memory serves me, the Song of Songs, and he lectured us on John Keats, a great literary love of his. He had just won an Oireachtas prize for one of his books, and he put up a monetary prize for the best essay on Keats, which I won – my first literary prize. But the best moment of education I have ever received happened by accident.
Mossy D. had a spinal problem, and was confined, on his back, to a striker, a narrow, semi-rotating bed. Mossy must have been sleep-deprived, but in any case he fell asleep in Eoghan’s class, whereupon there were cries of “Sir! Sir! Mossy’s asleep.”

Eoghan put his finger to his lips and shusshed us.

“Listen,” he said slowly and quietly, “to the beautiful sound … of the human body at rest.”

First published in the Cappagh Centenary Commemorative Book, 2008