Available now from BlazeVOX Books, ‘A Shopping Mall on Mars’ is my fourth full-length collection of poems. You can buy it at BlazeVOX.org or Amazon.com — see the link to the right under ‘Books, film, audio.’
“Many of the poems in A Shopping Mall on Mars, Patrick Chapman’s fourth collection, take a wry and satirical look at the dangerous new world in which we find ourselves, looking back with a certain nostalgia at the relative innocence of the nuclear age. Others offer compassionate yet unsparing insights into death, madness and childhood. A few speculate with science-fictional clarity on the kind of future we might be heading towards. This is work of the finest order from one of the most original Irish poets of the last two decades.”
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June 10th, 2008
My third collection, Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights, was reviewed in the Irish Times Saturday edition, 17th of May.
Fiona Sampson said:
PATRICK CHAPMAN’S Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights, the poet’s third collection, is a more conventional volume. Carefully and intelligently divided into five sections, its poems deal with the familiar challenges of an approaching mid-life: that stage where the pattern in the carpet has begun to reveal itself, but the speaker has not yet given up on agency. The volume’s first part tells the story of a failed relationship; the book really comes alive, though, from its second section. In Recess: Requiescat in Pace is a series of seven short, crystalline poems about a fatal car crash in Recess: “And I can have no faith/ Or offer comfort”. They include the keening Loss Chant: “The world is passing into Recess./ [ . . .] Evening, always passing into night./ Night is always passing into morning” [sic]. Equally felt is the third section, telling of a passionate affair, where intense emotion impacts into images of death and decay. Here, too, is the book’s best poem, Planet Virgo Collage: “‘Are you in love with me/ Or with the strangeness, the exotic?’// Eat the sea”. Chapman writes at his very best when, as here, his subject is unmediated experience.
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June 8th, 2008
Just back from London where I read on Thursday the fifth of June, as part of the launch evening for Trespass Magazine, issue four. Fellow poets reading included Roddy Lumsden, Aoife Mannix and several others. The evening was hosted by Trespass editor, Sara-Mae Tuson.
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June 8th, 2008
Coming up — I’ll be reading at the Cúirt Literary Festival as part of the Salmon Celebrations on Sunday 27th of April, Brigit’s Gardens, Roscahill, Galway. Do come along.
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April 20th, 2008
There’s a review of ‘The Wow Signal’ by Nuala Ní Chonchúir at the Short Review; as well as an interview with me. Check them out.
Review: http://www.theshortreview.com/reviews/PatrickChapmanWowSignal.htm
Interview: http://www.theshortreview.com/authors/PatrickChapman.htm
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April 20th, 2008
It’s my pleasure to read along with Nuala Ni Chonchuir, Enda Coyle-Greene and Billy Ramsell at the Dublin Book Festival — Sunday, March 9th at 1 pm in Dublin City Hall. I’ll be reading from Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights.
From the Dublin Book Festival programme:
Author Reading: with Patrick Chapman, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Billy Ramsell and Enda Coyle-Greene
Introduced by Pat Cotter (Munster Literature Centre)
Patrick Chapman’s collections include Jazztown (Raven, 1991), The New Pornography (Salmon, 1996) and Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights (Salmon, 2007). His story collection is The Wow Signal. With Philip Casey, he founded the Irish Literary Revival website in 2006.
Enda Coyle-Greene is pursuing a long-held ambition to study towards an MA in Creative Writing at Queen’s University Belfast. Her first collection, Snow Negatives, won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2006 and was published by Dedalus Press in 2007.
Billy Ramsell began writing seriously in 2000 when he moved to Barcelona and in 2005 was short-listed for a Hennessy award. In 2007 his debut collection, Complicated Pleasures, was published by Dedalus. He lives in Cork where he co-runs Forum Publications, Ireland’s fastest growing educational publishing company.
Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s debut bilingual poetry collection Tattoo : Tatú was published by Arlen House in 2007, following two successful short fiction collections. She is fiction editor for Southword magazine for 2008; she will also judge this year’s Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize.
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March 6th, 2008
I’ll be Gerald Dawe’s guest along with novelist James Ryan on the Poetry Programme, RTE Radio 1, 7.30 pm, Saturday, March 8th. We’ll be discussing the Dublin Book Festival, and I’ll read poems from ‘Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights.’
Update: You can now listen to this show here. Select Programme 14.
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/poetryprogramme/1124237.html
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March 5th, 2008
On the second of February, along with several other Salmon poets, I read at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York. We were launching the Salmon anthology, A Journey in Poetry. It was a great night, with a full house and an enthusiastic reception from the American audience. Salmon’s Jessie Lendennie, who edited the anthology, introduced us. The anthology came together over a period of a year and is a fine production, featuring over a hundred Salmon poets who have published with the press in the last 26 years.
This event was part of the AWP conference where Salmon took a table. I did a book signing on the first of February for my collection, Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights, and met many interesting folks from the U.S. book world.
Aside from all of that, I attended readings and addresses by some fine writers including Galway Kinnell, John Irving, Frank McCourt and Billy Collins. Irving in particular impressed with his tales of how he writes — start with the final sentence and work towards that. Frank McCourt gave an amusing account of his time as a teacher in New York. Billy Collins, given the audience, read many funny poems on the subject of writing. And Galway Kinnell told of his meeting Robert Frost.
The conference itself was a great opportunity to promote both Salmon and our individual volumes, and it was lovely to meet my fellow Salmon poets from both Ireland and the U.S. I also met up with Geoffrey Gatza of Buffalo-based BlazeVOX Books, who will shortly release my fourth collection, A Shopping Mall on Mars.
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February 6th, 2008
Happy new year to you all. A new interview and a review of Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights are now available to view at the Fix online.
Here:
http://thefix-online.com/features/patrick-chapman/
and here:
http://thefix-online.com/reviews/breaking-hearts-and-lights/
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January 1st, 2008
On Tuesday the 11th of December there will be an event at New Ross library in Co. Wexford to celebrate the new anthology, Salmon: A Journey in Poetry. Jo Slade and I will appear along with Jessie Lendennie from Salmon. We’ll be discussing our work and careers, as well as reading and signing books. I’ll read from my new collection, Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights. This event is part of the Clé ‘Author and Editor’ Library Tour. See the Clé website for more details:
http://www.publishingireland.com/news_07tour.shtml
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December 2nd, 2007
I’ll be taking part in some readings in November and December. First up, the schedule for November.
November 15th at Damer Hall, Dublin, 6.30 pm. This is to introduce the new anthology, Salmon: A Journey in Poetry, which features the work of over a hundred poets who have been published by Salmon since 1981. Buy it from www.salmonpoetry.com
November 29th at Damer Hall, Dublin, 6.30 pm. A reading by several poets who have published with Lapwing over the years. I’ll be reading from Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights, as some of its poems were first collected in two Lapwing chapbooks, Touchpaper Star (2004) and Cicatrice (2006).
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October 24th, 2007
The writer PJ Nolan has blogged my recent book launch at Waterstone’s, Dublin — you can read a full report at http://www.pjnolan.blogspot.com/
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October 22nd, 2007
Following the publication of Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights, I’ll be doing a number of readings in the coming months. Next up is a Salmon Poetry event on Saturday, October 20th at 6.30 pm at the Irish Writers’ Centre, Dublin. I’m delighted to be reading with Mélanie Frances and Gordon Walmsley, who have fine new books out.
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October 19th, 2007
[Click on image for larger version]
My third poetry collection, Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights, is out now from Salmon Poetry. The book was launched at a reading in Waterstone’s, Dublin on October 18th. You can buy it at Waterstone’s, Hodges Figgis, Books Upstairs and from the Salmon website.
“Intimate and daring, the poems in Patrick Chapman’s remarkable third collection explore with often searing clarity the naked spaces of love, sex and death. Startling, original, sometimes quietly devastating, this is the finest work to date from a writer hailed as ‘one of the very best modern Irish poets.’”
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October 19th, 2007
Mine’s a quadruple whiskey and a chaser of melancholy grandeur.
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September 24th, 2007
On Thursday the 20th, I read with Geraldine Mills as part of the Frank O’Connor Festival of the Short Story in Cork. Hosted by the inimitable Pat Cotter, this was a fun event in the Triskel Arts Centre.
At 1.15 pm this Saturday at the Aspects Festival in Bangor, I’ll be introducing two of Ireland’s finest writers: Dermot Bolger, who will read from his latest novel, The Family on Paradise Pier; and Hugo Hamilton, who will read from his memoirs, The Speckled People and The Sailor in the Wardrobe.
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September 24th, 2007
Salmon: A Journey in Poetry, is a new anthology celebrating a quarter-century of Salmon Poetry. It’s soon to be available from all good bookstores, and the Salmon poetry website. Featuring 106 Salmon poets in nearly 500 pages, it’ll make a great Christmas present. Each poet is represented by three poems. Mine are: Break Up (from The New Pornography) and Eidolon and Easter Comet from the forthcoming Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights. Pop over to the Salmon site and have a look.
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September 4th, 2007
Coming soon: a special, limited, hardback edition of The Wow Signal, signed by the author. It’s part of the Bluechrome Select series, which features three ‘Red’ fiction books and three ‘Blue’ poetry collections. For more details, see the bluechrome site.
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August 30th, 2007
Thirty years ago today, astronomer Jerry Ehman at Ohio State University’s Big Ear observatory recorded a signal from ‘out there’ that was so strange he wrote ‘Wow!’ in the margins of the printout. It became known as ‘The Wow Signal.’
There has been lots of speculation that this signal could have been artificial, from some extraterrestrial intelligence.
Of course, Elvis died that same day, so the ‘Wow!’ signal was probably his celestial limo driver ringing to say that he was waiting outside the gates of Graceland for the King to leave the building one last time.
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August 16th, 2007
[click on image for larger version]
‘The Wow Signal’, my first collection of stories, is out now from Bluechrome. On July 24th, it will be released in a limited-edition signed hardback, as part of the Bluechrome Select series.
“A faded TV queen takes delicious, devastating revenge on the man who ruined her career. A couple, breaking up, burn their conjugal bed on a beach in the northwest of Ireland. A woman in San Francisco, coming to terms with the suicide of her lover, discovers that she’s carrying his child. A man who may be the reincarnation of a murderer, watches the ghost of the victim in the house across the street – as she draws him towards a stunning confrontation.
“Already acclaimed on individual publication, the stories in The Wow Signal are beautifully written vignettes that have a filmic quality. One story has, in fact, been filmed, starring Gina McKee and Aidan Gillen. Another has won a Cinescape award in the United States. In The Wow Signal, you’ll find terror and wonder, love and regret, and a vision of the world that ranges from haunting tragedy to the darkest comedy.”
See ‘The Wow Signal at Bluechrome
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May 1st, 2007
Doctor Who: Fear of the Daleks reached No. 2 in the Play.com top ten for general audiobooks, just behind Ricky Gervais; it reached number one in the sci-fi chart.
Fear of the Daleks stars Wendy Padbury as Zoe and Nicholas Briggs as the Daleks. Written by me, directed by Mark J. Thompson.
Here are some reviews.
“It’s a fun story that captures the comic-strip feel of late Troughton-era Who.”
– Saxon Bullock, SFX no. 155, April ‘07
“Read with gusto by Wendy Padbury, this second talking book returns to the 1968 era of Doctor Who as an amnesiac Zoe Herriott is plagued by dreams of her Time travelling with the Doctor and Jamie. This tale is primarily set on an asteroid where two cultures are engaged in peace talks; the travellers are captured by an ambitious tyrant who wishes to use Zoe as an assassin. ‘Fear’ fits into the period perfectly, right down to the theme tune, an authentic score, the talk of ‘space rockets’ and the twist that the Daleks survived their ‘Final End’. The depiction of Troughton’s Doctor as a bonkers sage is perfect, Padbury hits all the right dramatic beats while Nicholas Briggs acts out the Dalek lines with relish.”
– David Richardson, TV Zone magazine no. 213.
‘Making much reference to Zoe’s fabled photographic memory and intelligence, writer Patrick Chapman keeps the story moving along at a decent pace and…captures the second Doctor’s distinctive mannerisms well.’
– Doctor Who Magazine no. 381
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April 6th, 2007
Irish Haiku Society – Haiku Reading
I will appear with other writers for a reading at the Damer Hall on Tuesday 20 February 2007, 7p.m.
Here’s the lowdown.
Haiku Evening
(Patrick Chapman, Mark Granier, Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Clare McDonnell, Kate O’ Shea, Bee Smith & Martin Vaughan)
Poetry Ireland in association with the Irish Haiku Society
Damer Hall, St. Stephen’s Green West, Dublin 2
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February 15th, 2007
There’s a new interview with me at Authortrek, here:
http://www.authortrek.com/patrick-chapman-interview.html
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January 30th, 2007
Three new haiku are now up at The Select Six, edited by Sam Smith. You can see them here:
http://www.bewrite.net/select_six.htm
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January 30th, 2007
Here’s hoping that 2007 will bring health, happiness and sunshine (but not too much of it – mind those UV rays) to all of you out there.
Coming in the new year:
‘Doctor Who: Fear of the Daleks’ – an audio play from Big Finish, narrated by Wendy Padbury as Zoe, with Nicholas Briggs as the voice of the Daleks. This was produced and directed by Mark J. Thompson with sound design by Lawrence Oakley.
‘The Wow Signal’ – my first collection of stories, to be published soon by Bluechrome.
‘Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights’ – my third collection of poetry. Due in October from Salmon.
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January 1st, 2007
In advance of my third print collection, some of the poems in it are now available as a free ebook published by BlazeVOX, Buffalo, NY. American Singularity is available at the BlazeVOX site and is free to download. visit blazevox.org
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November 3rd, 2006
Just published by New Island Books is Sunday Miscellany: A Selection from 2004 to 2006. It’s culled from pieces broadcast on the Sunday Miscellany radio programme on RTE 1. My poem, Sea of Tranquillity, appears in it. There are also many other intriguing pieces – prose and poetry – from some fine writers. It’d make a great present for Christmas and is a cool book to dip into.
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October 20th, 2006
Babylon Burning, the anthology which commemorates the fifth anniversary of 9/11, is now available in a print edition from Lulu.com, having been a download at nthposition.com for the last month or so. Edited by Todd Swift and published by the tireless Val Stevenson at nth, it’s well worth a read and not just because I’ve got a poem in it. All profits from this book go to the Red Cross.
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October 12th, 2006
The Irish Literary Revival website has just posted its tenth author. Philip Casey and I founded the site to host out-of-print books of Irish interest, with the co-operation and approval of those concerned. (You’ll find the full mission statement and submission guidelines at the site.) For the record, those ten writers are: Sara Berkeley, Philip Casey, Patrick Chapman, Philip Davison, Noel Duffy, Terry McDonagh, Ciaran O’Driscoll, Nessa O’Mahony, Rosemarie Rowley and William Wall. We’re proud to host these writers – check them all out at irishliteraryrevival.com
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October 10th, 2006
Two poems from my forthcoming collection are now online at nthposition.
You can see them here:
http://www.nthposition.com/author.php?authid=369
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August 13th, 2006
Three of my poems have just gone up at The Virtual Writer. They’re from my third full collection, Breaking Hearts And Traffic Lights, which will appear next year from Salmon.
Link:
http://www.virtualwriter.net/poetry/featuredpoets.asp?action=2&contentid=546
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August 4th, 2006
The Wow Signal, my first collection of short fiction, has been accepted for publication by Bluechrome, UK. Due in 2007.
It contains stories I wrote between 1992 and 1998, and one from last year. These include Burning The Bed, which was turned into a multi-award-winning film with a script by me and sterling performances from Gina McKee and Aiden Gillen. Also in there is A Ghost, which won the Cinescape award in 2003. Another story, Happy Hour, was a finalist for a Sunday Tribune Hennessy Award in 1999. There’s also Return of the Empress, which appears in the anthology, Sex And Chocolate, from Paycock Press. And the title story, which was published in Future Welcome: Moosehead Anthology X. More details when the time comes.
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July 14th, 2006
The sound of a telephone rang in a room, in a house in Tuscany ten kilometres from Siena. It was a sunny day, which is to say, this day was like the one before it and the one after it. The telephone turned out to be a cicada, trapped inside the house. I’d only ever heard them at a distance, and this one was surprising; one of many unexpected moments at a fiction workshop I attended, from the 10th to the 17th of June, in a Contessa’s vineyard in the Chianti hills.
Michael Mele and Linda Mironti host workshop groups at various locations throughout Italy, throughout the year. The one I was on, the fiction workshop with Maureen Brady, shared a space and a week with a photography workshop and a painting course. One night the writers and the photographers joined forces to visit the local graveyard and put together a multimedia show for presentation the next evening. It was fun, but for us writers, the real business of the week was the morning sessions at the table by the swimming pool. There were five writers on the course: Dominique, Alethea, Evalyn, Robin and me. We had all brought work; I found the others to be good readers, their criticism spot on. Maureen’s way with leading a workshop was relaxed, professional and empowering. We all did a lot of writing, but it didn’t seem like work. I came away with a new enthusiasm, and a fresh perspective on the novel I’m finishing. Mornings after breakfast began with a different writing exercise after which we would give feedback on the pieces we had brought with us.
Evenings, the wonderful Kim from New Jersey prepared delicious local meals, with wine to suit. Those dinners would usually end up in long conversations into the night, even when we had each other’s work to read for the morning.
There were side trips to Siena and a restaurant in a local village where Andrea, a friend of Michael and Linda, cooked for us using vin santo in each dish.
This workshop, set in those glorious vineyards, had a special feeling about it. Maybe it was because we worked well as a group; we were all enjoying ourselves. On my return to Ireland, I was hungry to get writing, to take the feedback to my novel and finish it.
But before that, there was the final night. In the barn-space beneath the main house, everyone gathered for a polenta party. The painters had hung an exhibition of their work on the walls. The writers all read from writing they had done while here, and some they had brought with them. Then, as darkness fell, the photographers projected images they had made during this week.
Thanks to the two Michaels, Linda, Kim and Jennifer for keeping the whole thing running ship-shape, to my fellow writers, and to Maureen Brady for her insight. And, in the words of David Byrne: How did I get here? Todd Swift sent me an email, alerting me that this was happening. I applied with a sample of the novel, and got lucky.
The Contessa, of course, remained a mystery. Her dogs are buried in their own pet cemetery near the pool. Her voice could be heard in the distance, some times, calling to Prince. Her history is a tale in itself.
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June 19th, 2006
Eyewear, the cutting-edge literary and cultural review, has blogged my new chapbook, Cicatrice – see link under Arts & Reviews, to the left.
UPDATE: The poems in Cicatrice will appear, some in modified form, in my third full collection, due from Salmon in 2007.
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May 11th, 2006
Grant McLennan, co-founder of The Go-Betweens with Robert Forster, has died of a heart attack in Brisbane, aged 48. He will be sorely missed. Forster and McLennan were the Lennon and McCartney of their time, their apparently effortless songcraft bringing light and joy to listeners. They were never really commercially successful, but influenced many bands, including REM and Belle & Sebastian, who would later acknowledge this. His early classic, Cattle and Cane, was recently named one of the best Australian songs of all time.
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May 8th, 2006
Philip Casey and I appeared on The Enchanted Way on Saturday, May 6th, discussing The Irish Literary Revival which launched last week. We also read a couple of poems each, I from my next collection, and Philip from his latest book, Dialogue In Fading Light. The site is going well – with several authors’ books already up, and more to come. If you missed the show, you can listen to it at The Enchanted Way website, linked to the left.
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May 7th, 2006
Cicatrice, my new chapbook, has just been published by Lapwing, Belfast. It’s the follow-up to Touchpaper Star.
You can buy a copy from Lapwing at this email address: dennis (dot) greig (at) ntlworld (dot) com, or direct, signed, from patrick (at) patrickchapman (dot) net.
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May 3rd, 2006
Mayday. The Irish Literary Revival is live today at irishliteraryrevival.com, with our first authors already up, and many more to come.
Over the weekend, there were articles in the Irish Times and the Sunday Independent. We’ve also recorded an interview for The Enchanted Way on RTE Radio 1 which should be broadcast soon.
Several more authors are currently preparing their manuscripts for inclusion, and we’ve had positive feedback from a good few publishers.
Visit the Irish Literary Revival and have a look around. We hope you enjoy your stay and that you’ll spread the word.
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May 1st, 2006
A new short film, Toxin, has just been released on DVD by Songway Films. It’s part of a trilogy of experimental films directed by Denis McArdle, who also directed Burning The Bed. All three films, Toxin, Undertow and Room are on the DVD. Toxin is based on a script which I adapted from my own poem. It is a co-production of Songway Films and Aphasia, from a proposal by the author. It stars Mary Doherty as the illustrated woman. The film also features music by David Stalling and art direction by Anthony Kelly. You can buy the DVD at the Songway Films and Aphasia websites – see links.
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April 29th, 2006
Announcing a brand new website, Irish Literary Revival, which launches on May 1st. It’s created by Philip Casey and me, with the aim of bringing out-of-print books by Irish authors back into circulation. We’re putting up books by Irish authors, Irish-published authors, or those with a connection to Ireland.
We’re doing press, internet and radio media promotion, including an interview we’ve recorded for The Enchanted Way, RTE Radio 1.
Already several writers and publishers have agreed to participate and there are a good few books up on the site. It’s been received very enthusiastically, and we look forward to welcoming more writers and readers.
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April 28th, 2006
This Valentine’s Day sees the publication of a brand new anthology of erotic confections called Sex and Chocolate, from Paycock Press in Washington DC. It’s edited by Richard Peabody and Lucinda Ebersole, and features my story, Return of the Empress, which I wrote especially for this anthology. Chocolate – and sex – will never be the same again.
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February 8th, 2006
Touchpaper Star is now online at the link to the right. It contains two sequences, begun in 1994, and published as a collection in 2004. You can buy the paper version from Lapwing in Belfast at dennis (dot) greig (at) ntlworld (dot) com.
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January 28th, 2006
Jazztown, my first collection of poetry, first published by the Raven Arts Press in 1991, is now online at the Irish Literary Revival. This book is out of print; posting it here makes these poems available for the first time in over a decade. Many thanks to Dermot Bolger, who said yes, way back in 1990.
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January 3rd, 2006
The Actor Speaks 5: Louise Jameson, featuring Sea of Tranquillity, is out now.
For a good few years now, Mark J. Thompson’s MJTV has been consistently producing high-quality audio dramas and a series of intriguing interview discs, The Actor Speaks. Each volume features the life and work of an individual actor. Previous discs have centred on Paul Darrow, Gareth Thomas, Elisabeth Sladen and Jacqueline Pearce.
The Actor Speaks 5 is all about Louise Jameson. You’ll know her from her roles in The Omega Factor (brilliant as Anne Reynolds), Doctor Who (opposite Tom Baker), Tenko, Bergerac and Eastenders. I’m thrilled that Louise will be performing my poem, Sea of Tranquillity in a version I adapted for her.
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December 12th, 2005
‘Something Beginning With P’, the amazing anthology of poetry and illustrations for children, was published in October 2004. Now it has won a Merit Award in the Children’s Book Awards 2005 from the Reading Association of Ireland, having previously won a Bisto award.
I’ve got a poem in it: Robot Kid. The book is chock full of work by over a hundred other poets including many big names. Each poem is illustrated beautifully. ‘Something Beginning With P’ is edited by Seamus Cashman and published by O’Brien Press.
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December 2nd, 2005
My short story, The Wow Signal, appears in the new Moosehead Anthology X: Future Welcome, edited by Todd Swift and published by DC Books in Montreal. The Wow Signal is a science fiction story about memory, viruses and dogs.
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November 8th, 2005
Burning The Bed is now showing at the Curzon cinema in Soho, London, in advance of selected showings throughout the UK. It’s the first Irish short to get a UK release in twenty years, since Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s film, The Woman Who Married Clark Gable.
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November 8th, 2005
The Dublin Quarterly have published three of my poems in issue number 5. The poems are Cicatrice, Drown and Sunday Morning.
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August 23rd, 2005
In the current issue of Contexts magazine, I’ve written an article about how I go about writing a poem. This is part of a larger article in which various artists write about how they do their work. Not quite like dancing about architecture, more like writing about not knowing what goes on when one is writing. I sense a spiral.
The issue has some really interesting stuff in it about art and architecture, and is well worth checking out. Edited by the irrepressible Gemma Tipton.
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July 29th, 2005
Last Friday Tim Cunningham and I read to a packed Scribblers cafe in Middle Street Galway. Despite the accompaniment of a passing hen party, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and I hope the audience did too. Look out for Tim’s book, Don Marcelino’s Daughter, from Peterloo. Excellent stuff.
This follows the hugely fun reading in Oxfam, London, earlier in the summer, as part of their Summer Poetry Series. Jamie McKendrick, Robyn Sarah, Kate Clanchy, Alan Brownjohn, Eric Ormsby and yours truly read for about three hours in total, again to a full house. It was great to listen to the other readers, all very different, all very good. The host, Todd, Swift, read some of his own work, too, which was nice. Afterwards, the assembled readers and certain groovy members of the audience (not that all of the audience weren’t groovy), went for a late supper to a local creperie, where wine and chat finished the evening. The reading was punctuated by a sudden thunderstorm, which seemed to explode whenever a poet acutally had the word ‘thunder’ in his verse. Nature adding special effects.
Even earlier in the summer, I read with Anne Le Marquand Hartigan at Filmbase, in the Dublin Writers Festival. That was fun, too, though the venue was closing up immediately after the poetry so there wasn’t much chance to meet people afterwards. Still, the reading was enjoyable and precisely two of the audience, both friends of mine, and I, ended up continuing the afternoon’s artistic endeavours (i.e. drinking Guinness) in the Oak Bar on Dame Street. As it should be.
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July 29th, 2005
