Just about a year ago, Patrick Chapman and I set up an experiment called Irish Literary Revival. As we put it in our introduction,

This is where out-of-print and out-of-circulation Irish books are brought back into the world. Although our name is a pun, our intentions are serious.

Would that we both had more time to promote the site, but there has been some really nice feedback in the intererim, and none more so than from Rosemarie Rowley, who contributed her poetry collection The Sea of Affliction. She tells me she has been invited to conferences as a result of her book’s presence on ILR. Rosemarie, who has been an environmentalist for forty years, and was an eco-critic long before the term was invented, writes:

I suppose at the end of the day, none of us know what will happen to our work once we put it out there…
…I was honoured to be part of a literary conference last year in Austria which had as its theme “Water”. There is now a European Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (EASCLE). It is only when you meet others working in the field that you become aware of the strength of your own work.

That’s one of the most gratifying things I’ve heard in a long time, and I’m delighted that ILR played some small role. As well as the Sea of Affliction on ILR, you can read some of her work on Representative Poetry Online.

Incidentally, we’re in the process of testing how Irish Literary Revival might work in WordPress. It would make everything that much easier. Watch this space.