PENFEST, CARLOW 2013

Join Kevin Barry, Christy Neary, Dave Lordan, Theo Dorgan, Niamh O'Connor, Ruby Barnes and myself at Penfest, Carlow, in mid-September, for workshops (mine is the short story for beginners), talks and readings. All events are free but you need to book.

For bookings and more see their Facebook page or their website.

24 Little Hours in Clonmel

This sounds great. Innovative:

Clonmel Junction Festival presents '24 Little Hours', A 24 hour participatory poetry and prose programme with Grace Wells, Mark Roper, Dave Lordan & Mia Gallagher.

Grace, Mark, Dave and Mia, four leading writers from Ireland's contemporary literary scene, will be in Clonmel for 24 hours. During their stay in the town, they will share their skills & experience with emerging writers and poetry enthusiasts, perform their work at set readings, and walk and explore the streets of Clonmel with workshop participants, giving insights into how a writer goes about their work, and develops their skills of observation and composition.

With workshop sessions taking place in locations throughout the town and over the 24 hours, the participants will see the urban landscape as it changes colour from busy shopping streets through the hubbub of Saturday night and into the quiet of Sunday morning.

On Sunday afternoon there will be an open-mic session at which the participants will have the opportunity to share some of the work they created during the twenty-four little hours.

It costs €35 to be part of 24 Little Hours and you can fill out an application form here.

24 Little Hours timetable:

Saturday July 6th
1.30pm : Gathering and Introductions
2.00- 4.00pm: Walking, Talking and Writing with Grace or Mark
4.30-5.30pm : Selected readings by Grace and Mark
5.30 onwards: Dinner at the Junction Festival Catering tent
7.30-8.30pm : Selected readings by Mia and Dave
9.00- 11.00pm: Walking,Talking and Writing  with Mia or Dave

Sunday July 7th
11.00am-1.00pm: Walking, Talking and Writing with Grace, Mark, Mia or Dave
2.30pm: “What a Difference a day makes” Open-mic with Grace, Mark, Mia, Dave and the programme participants.
Purchase tickets online here.

DAVE LORDAN GUEST EDITS PENDULINE

Dave Lordan, as guest editor of Penduline, features, as you might guess, a lot of performance/spoken word poets.

He also put the following question to seven writers, including myself: Which Irish writer, alive or dead, do you think is most unjustly unread? Why should we read them now? Our answers - mine on the wonderful Síofra O'Donovan - are here in a piece called 'Ireland Unread'.

Dave's editorial interview is also worth a read. He says, 'It isn’t really a good time to be anything in Ireland except a crooked politician, banker or businessman or one of their arselickers. It’s the time of the wolf in Ireland. And this is true in the arts as well as everything else. You need to be very thick-skinned, very determined, perhaps even a little bit vicious, as well as very talented, to be able to stick at professional arts practice in Ireland now if you are coming from outside the establishment. '

On James Joyce: 
'Dubliners is the Ur-text of the last century of Irish melancholy naturalism, which is our default/dominant expressive mode in long and short fiction; Dubliners has been rewritten dozens and dozens of times and is being rewritten all over Ireland right now no doubt and often by people who have never read it. They don’t have to read it to have been influenced by it since its influence is so general.'

More about Joyce from me, come the weekend :)