Writer and journalist, Nuala O’Faolain, succumbed to her cancer just prior to midnight last night. I remember her from the time she worked for RTE. She was a brilliant and insightful journalist, and an excellent writer - though I have yet to savour her writing. For the past few years we have had a hardback copy of her novel My Dream of You on our bookshelves, thanks to Ana who purchased it. I’ve been meaning to read it but somehow never got round to it, and the book ended up hidden from view on the very top shelf of our living room library. When Nuala announced recently that she had terminal cancer and that she was refusing treatment for it, I made a mental note to start reading the book while she was still alive. Sadly, she has passed on and I still haven’t started it. Now that I have finally got it down from its lofty hiding place, I will read it in memory of her.

I was absolutely delighted when I heard the announcement yesterday that Doris Lessing had won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature. I’ve been a fan of Lessing since my late teens when I discovered her wonderful Sci-Fi Canopus in Argos Archives series. That lead me to read her short story collections - The Grass is Singing and To Room 19. Thence I proceeded to the masterful Golden Notebook every page of which I lived.

Each year for many years I awaited the announcement of the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature to be disappointed that it wasn’t Doris Lessing. I had resigned myself to an appalling injustice being perpetrated on Doris Lessing as was the case with another literary giant in the personage of Jorge Luis Borges who died without getting the prize he deserved. Happily, I’ve been proved wrong!

I’m thinking of my next collection - I have 3 new poems which are the start. There are some older unfinished pieces which are very strong but need finishing. One of them begins “The tide is felt to form the swell” and goes on for 3 verses before coming to an abrupt halt in the 4th. I’ve been working on this in the past few days as the poem won’t leave me alone - the verses keep resounding in my mind. It’s in the form of a pantoum.
The pantoum form fascinates me, as the line repetitions from one quatrain to the subsequent quatrain are recontextualised and can change in meaning. As such it offers a significant technical challenge. I can’t wait to complete my first! Once finished, it will go into the new collection.

As for a title for the collection - I’m torn between “Garden of Intangibles” (which is currently the title of the 2nd unpublished collection) and “The Core”.

Last night, Wednesday 26 September 2007, my partner and I attended the weekly White House Poetry event in Limerick. We were treated to an interesting reading of his poetry by Anatoly Kudryavitsky. He read from his first poetry collection Shadow of Time and then treated us to some wonderful haiku from his second collection Morning at Mount Ring published in July of this year. Anatoly also played a selection of Tibetan and Nepalese instruments (bells, wind chimes and singing bowls) which was a real treat. He used the singing bowl and bells to great effect in his haiku reading.

As always, the guest reader was preceded by a number of other poets who took advantage of the Open Mike session. I performed two poems on this occasion as follows:

• Ordeal
• Facets

I had planned to do some haiku also, but decided to stop after Facets, as I suffered a nerve-racking memory lapse in the middle of Facets which threw me a bit. That is the danger of performing rather than reading poetry from a book or manuscript. Personally though, I feel obliged to always perform if at all possible and dispense with the written word.

A poem deserves complete attention both from the audience and the “reader”. The best way for me to give the poem its due is to perform it from memory. The danger implicit in doing this gives the performance an extra edge and bite - the poem sings itself through the poet when performed properly, and the audience is enrapt.

I finally took up Barnie Sheehan’s invitation to ‘read’ at the weekly Whitehouse Poets event (I’m slide no 5) in Limerick last Wednesday night, 5th August 2007. There were a lot of other poets doing their stuff too - 10 in all I think. I ‘read’ fifth in line. When I say ‘read’ I really mean recited (though I’m not entirely comfortable with this word either) hence the single quotes. It was the first time I used a microphone and I found it quite off-putting as my voice sounded distant and disembodied, and I had little idea of what it actually sounded like to anybody else. In any case, I ‘read’ three poems in the following order - Dog Burial, Samhain, and Resurrection. All went well until I forgot the 1st line of the second verse in Resurrection and had to start again. This interrupted the flow of the poem and I botched a couple of other lines also and ended up having to refer to my sheaf of paper which I always have on hand as comfort. Very annoying! In any case I’m glad to have done it, and will do it again soon.

I found it very interesting and stimulating to hear the other poets read some of their stuff. The variety was amazing.

The main event was a reading by Catherine Ann Cullen from her first collection entitled A Bone in My Throat. I really liked her poetry, and especially liked the last two poems she did, which will form part of her next collection. I purchased a copy of her collection which she autographed. You can see the reading on YouTube for yourself. Before beginning her reading she remarked that performance poets made her uneasy and nervous as she could never recite her poetry from memory. I took the remark to refer to me, since I was the only one on the night to do without recourse to the written word.

I heard on the radio news this morning that Kurt Vonnegut had passed away during the night at the age of 84. While his name is known to me as a Science Fiction writer - I can even name two of his works: Slaughterhouse Five and Cats Cradle - I have never read anything by him, so I cannot comment any further.

Given that I was a voracious reader in my teens and right through my 20s, how is it I missed Vonnegut? The sheer volume of good literature and the sheer expanse of my taste in reading are to blame. I was a big SciFi fan, and read extensively in that genre, my favourites being Doris Lessing’s masterful Canopus in Argos Archives, anything by Frank Herbert, some Robert Heinlein, Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant series (which is still not complete), to name but a few. But Kurt Vonnegut I somehow missed. Now that he is dead, I might get around to some of his stuff if it pops up in front of me.