presented by the Munster Literature Centre

Éi g s e 2009Hu m o u r , i r o n y & W i t a festival of poetry and prose

Welcome to the 2009 Spring literary festival from the Munster Literature Centre. As with each of the last six years, our festival is arranged around a changing theme. In the past we have dealt with immigration, translation, love, politics and religion. This year the theme is Humour! Irony! Wit!

Not all irony is funny and not all humour induces belly laughter. Humour can be subtly nuanced or it can be in-your -face obvious and is often shaped by cultural considerations. Ridicule - a French arthouse film of some years back, notoriously claimed that the English had no wit but something called humour instead. Arguably one person’s wit is another person’s mere humour. To acknowledge this we have gathered together a disparate motley crew of literary clowns whose origins include America, Britain, Estonia and Japan as well as Ireland. We have poets, novelists, essayists and chancers of many genres.

I’m hopeful that for anyone habitually inclined to pick up a book, this festival will contain something to induce a wry smile or convulse the stomach muscles.

Taking note of the known healing properties of laughter, we have decided, for the first time ever, to distribute one of our festival brochures to Doctors’ waiting rooms. Who knows? There might even be a few prescriptions issued on the basis of the festival.

As medicine you can take your pick from readings, workshops or book launches with complimentary wine or lemonade.

Have fun.

Patrick CotterFestival DirectorMunster Literature Centre

Éigse 2009Humour, Irony & Wit

Andres Ehin appearing Saturday, 21st February 200919.00 Reading with Gerry Murphy &

Yatushiro Yoshimoto

Andres Ehin was born in Tallinn, Estonia on March 13th, 1940. He is a poet, translator, novelist, editor, short story writer, radio play auteur, journalist and essayist. He studied at the University of Tartu at the same time as Jaan Kaplinski. Ehin subsequently found work as a freelance writer, editor and journalist from 1965 to 1974. As a poet, Ehin has published many collections including Spiritual Nostrils (1978), I Sip the Darkness (1988), Full-Moon Midday (1990), Consciousness is Snakeskin (1996) and Subconsciousness Is Always Jolly (2000).

He has received numerous awards, including the Estonian National Prize in 2001 (for Subconsciouness Is Always Jolly), the Looming Prize for best novel of the year and the Estonian Culture Capital Foundation Award.

He has travelled extensively and read his poetry at many interna-tional festivals. His poems have been translated into 30 languages. In 2007, his poetry was published in the collection All Points North (Scottish Poetry Library) containing translations in Norwegian, Finnish, Shetland and Icelandic. He has also translated English-language poets such as T. S. Eliot, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti into Estonian.

His recent works includes the haiku collection, A Chafer Kisses the Moon, which was recently released by the publishing house Shichigatsudo in Tokyo, Japan. His poetry in English is found in the anthology The Echoing Years (2008), with translations by Patrick Cotter.

He lives in Rapla with his wife, the poet Ly Seppel.

Dog Apartment

Imagine an apartment made of dogthree rooms of bark, a bathroom of snoutthe cold tap dribbles, the hot tap slobbersan apartment made of dog with floorswhich howl at ceiling lamps at night as if they were moons

imagine an apartment made of dogwhich detests the very scent of catan apartment made of dogwhose sofa hairs bristleat the sprayings of even distant moggies.

Moose Beetle Swallow

John Hartley Williams

appearing Friday, 20th February 200921.00 Reading with Dennis O’Driscoll

Born in 1942, John Hartley Williams was born in Cheshire (UK) and grew up in London. He studied at Nottingham University and later (postgraduate) at the University of London. He has worked as a teacher in France, Jugoslavija and Cameroon. Since 1976 he has been a teacher at the Free University of Berlin.

He has published nine collections of poetry. The latest volume is a retrospective of work - mainly from the seventies, but also going back to the sixties - entitled The Ship (Salt Publishing, 2007). Two previous collections were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize: Blues (Jonathan Cape, 2004) and Canada (Bloodaxe, 1997). The latter volume was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Bright River Yonder (Bloodaxe 1985) and Blues were both PBS Recommenda-tions. He is also the author of Ignoble Sentiments (Arc, 2005), a prose memoir, and the prose work Mystery in Spiderville (reissued by Vintage, 2003). He is the co-author, with Irish poet Matthew Sweeney, of Teach Yourself Writing Poetry.

Williams’ work has appeared in numerous

anthologies, among which are The New Poetry (Bloodaxe), The Firebox (Picador), and Emergency Kit (Faber). Translations from the Serbo-Croatian appeared in The Scar on the Stone (1998, Bloodaxe). He has also published, together with Hilde Ottschofski, translations from the Rumanian of Marin Sorescu: Censored Poems (2001, Bloodaxe).

His chapbook called Outpost Theater: Berlin Poems 1976 - 2002 will appear from the Bonnefant Press (NL) in time for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Creative Writing

Humbled by the need to earn money,made haughty, I confess, by the dim talent of my pupils,I brought a dead frog to class and bade themconsider it attentively for twenty minutes,preparatory to writing a poem they would call ‘The Dead Frog’.After three minutes of whispering a chair cracked back.Its owner stood tensely, squaring off against me.Then another leapt to his feet in a splendid show of recalcitrance.‘You haven’t seen it yet,’ I told them, and walked around the table,gripped the smaller of the two, kneed him in the backand smashed his head upon the table of polished oak.

I bound him with rope to the chair and instructed the classto consider him attentively for twenty minutespreparatory to writing a poem they would call ‘How the Unconscious Works’.Then I ascended to my room, took pen and paperand knew with thrilling deliberation that soon I would have a poem.Downstairs I could hear voices and the shifting of furniture.As feet began to climb the stairs, I scribbled faster.

Spending Time with Walter

Kevin Higgins was born in London in 1967 but grew up in Galway City, where he still lives. He co-organises the Over The Edge literary events with his wife, Susan Millar DuMars. Kevin also facilitates poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, teaches creative writing at Galway Technical Institute and was recently Writer-in-Residence at Merlin Park Hospital. He is the poetry critic of The Galway Advertiser and was a founding co-editor of The Burning Bush literary magazine. He regularly reviews for Books In Canada: The Canadian Review of Books.

Kevin’s first poetry collection, The Boy With No Face, was published by Salmon in 2005 and was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish Poet. His second collection is Time Gentlemen, Please (Salmon, 2008). His poem ‘My Militant Tendency’ was highly commended by the judges of this year’s Forward Poetry Prize and features in the Forward Book of Poetry 2009. Kevin won the 2003 Cúirt Festival Poetry Grand Slam and was

awarded a bursary by the Arts Council in 2005. A collection of his essays and reviews, Poetry, Politics & Dorothy Gone Horribly Astray, was published by Lapwing in 2006.

Kevin’s work is discussed in poet-critic Justin Quinn’s Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 2008). A recent poem of his, ‘Ourselves Again’, appeared in Best of Irish Poetry 2009. His work will be featured in the forthcoming anthology Identity Parade – The New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010). He has read his work at most of the major literary festivals in Ireland and at a wide variety of venues and festivals in Britain, France and the United States.

Page From The Diary Of An Officially Approved Person

By day, your new blonde hairand state-sponsored smile are twin planks in the Government’s anti-poverty strategy,as you put on your enthusiasm and treat another seminarto an orgy of flip-charts; then play Mayors and Ministers offagainst each other over the much anticipated beef stroganoff.No-one noticing the names being underlined in red in the twilit Politburo of your mind.

By night, you sit alone in a mansion called Equality, and listen to the moans,from some far basement, of those whose nervous hands questionedthis expense account, that clerk’s timely suicide; openly defiedwhole conference-loads of otherwise unanimous applause.

Time Gentlemen, Please

Kevin Higgins appearing Saturday, 21st February 2009

16.00 Reading with Gina Moxley

Dave Lordan was born in Derby, England, in 1975 to Irish parents and grew up in Clonakilty in West Cork. He began writing in his teens and his chapbook -18- was published by the English literature society in UCC in 1994. He graduated from University College Cork with an M.A. in English Literature in 1998 and was awarded an M.Phil. in Creative writing from Trinity College Dublin in 2001. In 2004 he was awarded an Arts Council bursary. In 2005 he won the Patrick Kavanagh Award for poetry, for which he had been the runner-up in 2002. His work has been published widely and has also been translated into Arabic and Serbo-Croat. He is a regular and popular performer of his own work, as well as being an experienced creative writing teacher and workshop leader. His first collection, The Boy in the Ring (Salmon Poetry, 2007) won the 2008 Strong Award for Best First Collection and was shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award 2008.

Tom Barry’s ghost moves to Dublin

Who is there now that can remember Our little intifada?Here in the walled round city of the possible.Here in the pale beyond the ditch of time.In a time that should never have been,In a petty Republic no more than a name.

There is no such thing as children.Mothers and fathers I won’t even mention,Or the old men who used to sing and whistle On the way to work,Or the keeners who are long gone out of a job,For who sees any sadness now in the going the flesh way.

Last week as I wandered round the bogI saw the last telling ruin bulldozed to the ground.Or the doors nailed shut,Or the windows painted black.Nor a well or a tinker’s horse or a sloe- bush to be found.The whole shaggin country’s a golf course.Them and their men made of bronze.

Well I tell you now it’s a sad dayWhen there’s not a sinner left aroundTo haunt with hope.When even the ghosts give upThe gustAnd move to Dublin.

The Boy in the Ring

Dave Lordanappearing Friday, 20th February 2009

19.00 Reading with Alan Titley

Gina Moxleyappearing Saturday, 21st February 2009

16.00 Reading with Kevin Higgins

Gina Moxley is an actor and writer. Her most recent performance was in Pan Pan’s production of The Crumb Trail, which she also wrote. The show premiered in Dusseldorf in November 2008 and was recently seen in New York as part of Under The Radar festival. She has appeared in several other productions. Her film work includes roles in This is My Father, The Butcher Boy, Saltwater, and Snakes and Ladders.

Gina’s first play Danti-Dan was commissioned and produced by Rough Magic Theatre. She went on to write Dog House for the National Theatre, London, Toupees and Snare Drums for CoisCeim /Abbey Theatre, and Tea Set for Fishamble. She co-wrote and performed in A Heart of Cork, commissioned by Cork 2005, European Capital of Culture. Her radio plays include The Candi-date, Swan’s Cross, Bottom Rung, Physical Geography and Marrying Dad. Gina has also written comedy sketches for radio and TV. Recently she has had short stories published in the anthologies Facing White and Stinging Fly’s Let’s Be Alone Together. Gina was one of the contributors to Yeats is Dead, a novel by fifteen Irish writers in aid of Amnesty International.

Margo False Memory

Wait til I tell you where I was now. I was giving people the pip left, right and centre, apparently cause I was so friendly and happy. Mam and John Jo made me drop up to Dr Caulfield over it. And now I’m on tablets to stabilize me. She - Dr Caulfield, lady doctor, very classy - says I’m suffering from a rare but debilitating condition called pronoia- the opposite of paranoia - where you think every one likes you. I’m under intense and irrational delusions of popularity it seems. So she referred me to - we’ll call him Dr X- a head man, lovely fella very friendly, and up on the couch with me. He asks me if there was anything in my childhood that would have caused me anxiety. God says I and I started remembering, things I never thought of before...my father, sorry now this is a bit upsetting... Daddy wallpapering and refusing a drink, doing the delph and dragging in coal. And Mr. Keane next door calling me aside when Mam was out and warning me not to tell anyone about it and to close my eyes and see what God’d give me and he’d slip something into my pocket and duck away. Sometimes it’d be a Trigger bar or a packet of Charms wrapped up in a pound note. How could I have forgotten that? Or the beautiful tights Mam crocheted me for my communion. I used think she took my communion money to pay off some man Daddy crashed into his but now I remember she invested it and it’s making me fortunes. And as for Charlie Watts out of the Rolling Stones, now that’s not something that’d slip your mind easily.

Gerry Murphyappearing Saturday, 21st February 2009

19.00 Reading with Andres Ehin & Yatushiro Yoshimoto

Gerry Murphy was born in Cork in 1952. In the early 1970s he spent some years working in London and living in an Israeli Kibbutz before returning to Cork where he has remained ever since. He began publishing his books in the mid-80s containing poems so far removed from the Irish tradition that many doubted they were poems at all. Undaunted and with his usual irreverence, Murphy once insisted on using a singularly detracting review alongside the more praising ones as a blurb for one of his books. Amusingly this had the effect of silencing and defusing many of his critics.

His poetry collections include A Small Fat Boy Walking Backwards (1985, 1992) and five previous collections from Dedalus, Rio de la Plata and All That (1993), The Empty Quarter (1995), Extracts from the Lost Log-Book of Christopher Columbus (1999), Torso of an Ex-

Girlfriend (2002) and End of Part One: New and Selected Poems (2006). His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, Pocket Apocalypse (2005), his translations of the Polish poet Katarzyna Borun-Jagodzinska, is from Southword Editions.

A political poet who also writes daring love poems, or a love poet whose portraits and parodies constitute a necessary clearing of space—whether in a small city or on a larger, global stage—either way Gerry Murphy is a particular case in Irish poetry, at once provocative and hugely entertaining, serious even in his most apparently throw-away gesture.

Although running counterpoint to literary tradition, Murphy’s work is highly, self-consciously literary and his vision is very much preoccupied with the political and historical pressures of the last century; politics and war impinge on everything in Murphy’s world, even love.

Existential Café for Tony O’Connor

“Essence before existence!”declared the waitress,throwing a handful of flourand a few raisins onto the table.

“I ordered two scones,”said Jean-Paul.

End of Part One: New and Selected Poems

Julie O’Callaghanappearing Saturday, 21st February 2009

21.00 Reading with Dan Rhodes

Born in Chicago in 1954, Julie O’Callaghan has lived in Ireland since 1974. Her collections of poetry include Edible Anecdotes (Dolmen, 1983), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; What’s What (Bloodaxe, 1991), a Poetry Book Society Choice; No Can Do (Bloodaxe, 2000), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; and the U.S.-published chapbook, Problems (Pressed Wafer, 2005). Her latest book is Tell Me This Is Normal: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2008). She has published poetry in many newspapers and journals, including The Observer, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review and New Statesman.

Her poems for older children have appeared in numerous anthologies in the U.K. (including the New Oxford Book of Children’s Verse, The Oxford Book of Children’s Poetry and The New Faber Book of Children’s Verse) and in school texts in Ireland, England,

America and Canada. Her poems for chil-dren are collected in Bright Lights Blaze Out (Oxford University Press, 1986), Cambridge Contemporary Poets 2 (Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1992) and in three full-length collections, Taking My Pen for a Walk (Orchard, 1988), Two Barks (Bloodaxe Books, 1998) and The Book of Whispers (Faber & Faber, 2006).

She was awarded Irish Arts Council Bursaries in 1985, 1990 and 1998. She received the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award in 2001 and is a member of the Irish academy of arts, Aosdána.

Touring the Museum of You

Our first display is the Little Orphan Annie stampdiscovered beside his bedwhere the dog is saying ARFin a bubble over its head.Then we come to the brightly knitted hatused in a long winter of chemotherapy.Several microscopic skin cellsare embedded in the wool.The last known photograph he tookis of an old Illinois barnoutside Galena in July 1996.Please don’t lean on the glass.Domestic archaeologyhas unearthed a perfect crescenttoenail clipping.Here we have a gallon of teardropslovingly bottled.This used tube of bronzerwas how he maskedthe harsh truth from the world.

Feel free to roam around.

Tell Me This Is Normal: New & Selected Poems

Born in Thurles, Co Tipperary in 1954, his eight books of poetry include Weather Permitting (Anvil Press, 1999), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Prize, Exemplary Damages (Anvil Press, 2002) and New and Selected Poems (Anvil Press, 2004), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. His work appears in The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry 1 (Wake Forest UP, 2005). His latest collection of poems is Reality Check (Anvil Press [UK], 2007; Copper Canyon Press [USA], 2008), shortlisted for the Irish Times / Poetry Now Prize 2008. A selection of his essays and reviews, Troubled Thoughts, Majestic Dreams (Gallery Press), was published in 2001. He is editor of the Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations (2006) and its American counterpart, Quote Poet Unquote (Copper Canyon Press, 2008). His book, Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber; Farrar, Straus and Giroux), was published in 2008. He received a Lannan Literary Award in 1999, the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005 and the O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry from the Center for Irish Studies (Minnesota) in 2006. He is a member of Aosdána and an Honorary Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy.

To a Love Poet

I

Fortysomething did you say? Or more? By now, no one could care less either way. When you swoop into a room, no heads turn, no cheeks burn, no knowing glances are exchanged,

no eye contact is made. You are no longer a meaningful contender in the passion stakes. But a love poet must somehow make love, if only to language, fondling its contours,

dressing it in slinky tropes, caressing its letters with the tongue, glimpsing it darkly as though through a crackling black stocking or diaphanous blouse, arousing its interest,

varying the rhythm, playing speech against stanza like leather against skin, stroking words wistfully, chatting them up, curling fingers around the long flowing tresses of sentences.

II

Never again, though, will a living Muse choose you from the crowd in some romantic city — Paris, Prague — singling you out, her pouting lips a fountain where you resuscitate your art.

Not with you in view will she hold court to her mir-ror, matching this halterneck with that skirt, changing her mind, testing other options, hovering between a cashmere and velvet combination or plain t-shirt and jeans,

watching the clock, listening for the intercom or phone. Not for your eyes her foam bath, hot wax, hook-snapped lace, her face creams, moisturisers, streaks and highlights. Not for your ears the excited shriek of her zip.

Look to the dictionary as a sex manual. Tease beauty’s features into words that will assuage the pain, converting you — in this hour of need — to someone slim and lithe and young and eligible for love again.

Dennis O’Driscollappearing Friday, 20th February 200921.00 Reading with John Hartley Williams

Fiona Pitt-Kethleyappearing Thursday, 19th February 2009

21.00 Reading with Neil Rollinson

Fiona Pitt-Kethley was born in 1954. She studied at the Chelsea School of Art where she obtained a BA hons. before going on to become a full-time writer. As a student she ushered at the Old Vic and National Theatre. While writing she sometimes worked as a film extra. She married the chess grandmaster and former Britrish chess champion, James Plaskett, in 1995, with whom she has a son, Alexander. In 2002 they moved to Spain. At first they lived in an ex-pat area until driven out by tyre-slashing English and Irish pensioners. They are now much happier living amongst the Spanish in Cartagena. Since moving to Spain Fiona acquired new hobbies. She practices Kyokushin karate and goes rock-hunting and hill-walking in the Sierra Minera, an area she is currently writing a book on. She also enjoys fishing for her dinner, listening to local Flamenco concerts and snorkels for several months of the year.

Dirty Old Men

Old men, the dirty kind, come in two sorts ¾the nice ones and the nasty. They’re much likethose who pass by a fruit stall. Some just think how nice an apple would have been if they’dhad teeth. Others without the wherewithalto buy or eat, must sink their grimy thumbsinto the nectarines.

On Charing Cross an English wino said:‘You’ve got charisma . . . just like me.’ Elsewhere,a Polish drunk, stretched happy on a bench,called me ‘A real lady’ when I passedhim back the cherry wine he’d dropped. I’d say these were both nice ones of the dirty type.Likewise an English master I once knew ¾I was to play Titania at his school.He wished to have the fairies in the showall starkers, me too, and painted silver.The governors refused, he settled for transparent lamé catsuits, Mary Quant.I had a most uncomfortable time ¾Cobweb and Co made me a fakir’s bedwith pints. (The sight of me, laddered intoindecency, getting a leg overpoor Bottom made the local vicar blanch ¾I was a leading light in his church choir.)This teacher had a wall at home, filled upwith codpieces he’d made ¾ just for the play.And most were much too big, for Puck kept allhis Strepsils down his and we heard them roll with every cartwheel and each somersault.

The other sort ¾ made asses by their ownillusions in the winter of their years,not hooked on Shakespeare or the bottle’s joys,are not content with dreams, must pry and poke,place their corpse-withered lips upon your cheek,their grave-claws on your shoulders. Like old goats,they chumble and spoil everything they touch,blaming some Circe for their beastliness.Decrepit parasites ¾ they’d suck our youth’s blood to prolong their own.

Dan Rhodesappearing Saturday, 21st February 200921.00 Reading with Julie O’Callaghan

Born in 1972, Dan Rhodes is the author of five books: Anthropology (2000), Don’t Tell Me The Truth About Love (2001), Timoleon Vieta Come Home (2003), The Little White Car (2004) and Gold (2007).

Anthropology was shortlisted for the Macmillan Silver Pen award, losing out at the final hurdle to The Hill Bachelors by William Trevor. If you’re going to lose a short story competition to anyone, it might as well be William Trevor. At a break in proceedings, Rhodes had a dramatic tussle over a bottle of wine with someone he later found out was Harold Pinter.

Timoleon Vieta Come Home won the QPB New Voices Award in 2004. This was Rhodes’ first prize, and although he was mildly disappointed that he could no longer refer to himself as an award-losing author, he was, on balance, delighted to have won. He celebrated by going on the water dodgems at Coney Island, fatally damaging his brand new watch in the process. He had thrown away the receipt.

Timoleon Vieta Come Home also won the Authors’ Club First Novel Award in 2004. Prior to the ceremony Rhodes had been living the writer’s life and hadn’t been home for a few weeks, so he hadn’t read the formal invitation. Consequently he turned up dressed

in his idea of smart clothing (i.e. not at all smart) while all the other men were dressed in tuxes.

Timoleon Vieta Come Home was also shortlisted for the Prince Maurice Prize and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. It was included in Barnes and Noble’s Discover New Writers programme, for which Rhodes was presented with a Mont Blanc pen. He swiftly lost the cap, thereby rendering it useless.

Noises

My girlfriend had been unemployed for ages, but eventually she found some work in an office. Although I couldn’t find the courage to say anything, I was worried that her new role in life would come between us. She’s been there some time now, and although she spends most of her working day furtively ringing me up to make kissing noises, I can’t help feeling as though she’s slipping away from me. The slurps from the other end of the line don’t seem as passionate as they could be. It’s almost as if her lips had other things on their mind.

Pieces

They kidnapped my girlfriend, and asked for an awful lot of money before they would even think about giving her back. I was grateful for the peace and quiet, so I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to settle up. After a while they started posting me little pieces of her, starting with an ear in a soap dish. For some reason they aren’t lowering the ransom. It doesn’t make sense. They seem to think I’d pay as much for a girlfriend with no thumbs, ears, nose or nipples as I would for one with all her bits still there.

Special

My beautiful girlfriend and I are so at ease with our relationship that we feel perfectly happy to hold hands and kiss in public. When we see a person who looks a little lonely, we’ll walk past them with our arms around each other, gazing contentedly into each other’s eyes. If they don’t notice us at first, we’ll go back and stand directly in front of them, kissing passionately, sighing, and touching each other’s bodies in the way only lovers can. It’s so important for these people to see just how perfect life can be once you’ve found that special someone.

Neil Rollinsonappearing Thursday, 19th February 200921.00 Reading with Fiona Pitt-Kethley

Neil Rollinson was born in Yorkshire in 1960. He has published three collections of poetry: A Spillage of Mercury (1996), Spanish Fly (2001) and Demolition (2007), all published by Jonathan Cape, and P.B.S. recommendations. In 1997 he won the British National Poetry Competition..

With the frank, subversive, and very funny poems in his first two books, Neil Rollinson established himself as a deft cartographer of the sensual world. While a rich and tactile eroticism still courses through Demolition, there is a new seriousness here, as mortality starts to throw its long shadow. These poems occupy a more rueful, reflective space —provisional, mercurial and fragile - a darker place where disintegration and loss are the only certainties, and memory is the only solid ground. Central to this is the death of the father— whether the poet’s own, or the lost fathers of Borges or Vallejo—and the theme is broadened through a number of moving examinations of the erosion of time and youth. Against this gathering dark-ness, Rollinson sets a spirited defence, blending the lyric and vernacular voice in a muscular celebration of food, sex, sport and the natural world that is unusually refreshing, and sophisticated enough to allow both humour and profundity. The poems in

Demolition never give up hope; they exhibit a tenacious optimism - or at least a steely pragmatism - that says: we have what we are given, there is no alternative, and we all must find what joy we can in life, and in its living.

Skeleton

A skeleton propped in a chair with a party hatset comically on the top of its skill, a pairof green pants, a brandy glass between thumb and forefinger. It was hot. The bailiffs drew back the curtains and opened the windows,wafting their hands in front of their faces.After they’d checked upstairs and foundno one, they came back down to the sitting room.Frank opened the drinks cabinet and poureda brandy. A Christmas tree stood in the corner, fairy-lights blazing, its white syntheticneedles a parody of snow and ice this hotJune day. He picked up the TV Times, three years old, and read through the Christmas films.His nostrils twitched, he could just detectthe faint, thin sweetness of meat in the air,the hint of a nearby butchers caught on the breeze.Bob turned off the fire.It’s a canny skeleton though, he said,I’ll take that home for the bairns. Frank shook his head,he’d noticed the yellow moons of toenails balanced on each toe, the glint of a filling inside the jaw. He felt a ripple of goose-fleshroll up his back. He finished his drink and took a closer look. He fingered the skill.buttery, yellow, he sniffed the jointsat the shoulder-blades: that smell again,a trace of meat, a sweetness of fat.He stared through the ribs, a cage, he thought,with its bird missing. He wondered where all the blood had gone, its colourfor instance. He made a cross on his T-Shirtand sat in the arm-chair, feeling his heartbeat,feeling the sweat pour out of him, wondering if he wasn’t too old for this kind of work any more.

A Spillage of Mercury

Matthew SweeneySaturday, 21st February 2009

10.00 Humour in Poetry Workshop

Matthew Sweeney was born in Donegal, Ireland in 1952. He moved to London in 1973 and studied at the Polytechnic of North London and the University of Freiburg. His poetry collections include A Dream of Maps (1981), A Round House (1983), Blue Shoes (1989), Cacti (1992), The Bridal Suite (1997) and A Smell of Fish (2000). Selected Poems, representing the best of 10 books and 20 years’ work, was published in 2002. A selection of his work appears in Penguin Modern Poets 12 (London, Penguin, 1997). His poetry collections for children include The Flying Spring Onion (1992), Fatso in the Red Suit (1995) and Up on the Roof: New and Selected Poems (2001). His novels for children include The Snow Vulture (1992) and a new book, Fox (2002).

Full-length books of his work are available in Dutch, Czech, Spanish, Romanian; and German, including Rosa Milch (Berlin Verlag, 2008), translated into German by Jan Wagner.

His awards include the Prudence Farmer Prize (1984); Cholmondely Award (1987); and the Henfield Writing Fellowship (1986). In 1999, he received an Arts Council of England Writers Award, and in 2001, an Arts Council of Ireland Writers’ Bursary.

Matthew Sweeney has held residencies at the University of East Anglia and the South Bank Centre in London, and was Poet in Residence at the National Library for the Blind as part of the ‘Poetry Places’ scheme run by the Poetry Society in London.

His latest poetry collections are Sanctuary (2004) and Black Moon (2007), the latter shortlisted for the 2007 T. S. Eliot Prize. He is a member of Aosdána.

Do Not Throw Stones at This Sign

Do not throw stones at this signwhich stands here, in a stony fielda stone’s throw from the seawhose beach is a mess of pebblessince the sand was stolen for building,and the few people who dawdle there,rods in hand, catch nothing,not even a shoe - might as wellbombard the waves with golfballs,or wade in and hold their breath,or bend, as they do, and grab a handfulof pebbles to throw at the sign, and each time they hit it they cheer and chalk up another beer, especiallythe man who thought up the sign,who got his paintbrush and wrote“Do Not Throw Stones At This Sign”on a piece of driftwood which he stuck in this useless field, then, laughing,danced his way to the house of beer.

Rosa Milch

Alan Titleyappearing Friday, 20th February 2009

19.00 Reading with Dave Lordan

Alan Titley is a novelist, short story writer, playwright and scholar. Born in Cork in 1947, he was educated at Coláiste Chríost Rí (Cork), St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra and University College Dublin. He studied Irish, Philosophy and English. He was a lecturer of Education and History in Mount Carmel College of Education in Nigeria from 1967 to 1969 and taught in The School for Deaf Boys in Cabra from 1969 to 1974. He was head of the Irish Department in St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra from 1981 until being appointed Professor of Modern Irish in University College Cork in 2006.

His novels and short story collections include Méirscrí na Treibhe (1978), Stiall Fhial Feola (1980), Eiriceachtaí agus Scéalta Eile (1987), An Fear Dána (1993), Fabhalscéalta (1995), Leabhar Nóra Ní Anluain (1998), and Amach (2003), which won the 2004 Bistro Prize. His works of fiction have been widely translated. A play, Tagann Godot, a sequel to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, was produced in the Abbey/Peacock in 1990. He has had radio plays produced both by BBC and RTÉ and has written documentary films.

His awards include Oireachtas prizes for works in the Irish language, the Butler Prize of the Irish-American Cultural Institute, the Pater Prize for International Radio Drama, the Stewart Parker award for drama, and the Eilis Dillon Award for Children’s Literature. He has also won prizes in the Listowel Writers’ Week and Francis McManus literary competitions. He has also served as an adjudicator for The Irish Times Literary Prize, chairman of the Irish Language Award, and Gaelic Editor of Books Ireland.

The joker was dying. He had spent his life joking and jeering and mocking and taking the piss and sending up the dour doughnuts of humanity. In truth, he had often thrown the facile water of levity on deep-down serious subjects. Some of those subjects were so serious that they could not be broached without searing pain and soul-raking angst.

His relations gathered around his death-bed, and even his friends (at least some of them), and his acquaintances, and those who had a grin on their chins and a glint in their eyes even though they did their best to hide it.

If he thought that life was a joke, that was not what life thought about him. That was why Death was sent and hovered over his bed.

His friends and relations were dressed in clothes as black as Mrs. Kennedy’s, and so was Death. You would hardly recognise one rather than the other. Some were weeping, and some were keening, and some were mashing their teeth.

‘Holy shit,’ he said, ‘what’s up with you?’ It looked as if he was getting peeved with them despite the glint in his own eye. ‘You look like a shower of moaning mollies and weeping willies. Faces as long as a dark wet night in Two Mile Boris without a bottle of whiskey. You’d think you’d think that the likes of me would never be here again. Cheer up, for God’s sake!’

from Heresies

Yasuhiro Yoshimotoappearing Saturday, 21st February 200919.00 Reading with Andres Ehin & Gerry Murphy

Yasuhiro Yotsumoto was born in Osaka, Japan in 1959 and grew up mostly in Hiroshima. He started writing poetry in his late teens and published his first collection of poetry, A Laughing Bug, in 1991. Since then 7 collections of his poetry were published including Muddy Calender (co-authored with Inuo Taguchi, 2008), Starboard of My Wife (2006), Golden Hour (2004). He won several awards such as Hagiwara Sakutaro Award and his poems have been translated into more than 10 languages.

In addition to poetry, Yasuhiro writes essays, literary criticism, and translates poetry from English or German to Japanese. His latest book of translation will be Kid by Simon Armitage to be published in Japan later this year.

He is also active in editorial works: since 2006, Yasuhiro has been National Editor of Poetry International Web – Japan, introducing the contemporary Japanese poetry through English translations (japan.poetryinternational.org) and recently took part in the launch of a new poetry magazine Beagle in Japan as an editor.

Yasuhiro is an avid street photographer, whose works can be seen in the following web gallery: http://web.mac.com/yyotsumoto/iWeb/Site/Bosnia.html

The Family Room

The father doesn’t know that the son is smoking Marlboro at a forest clear-ingsolemnly and ceremoniouslyas if in a ritual among the native Americans.

The son doesn’t know that the sister has been standing for more than an hourin front of the bathroom mirrorlike a princess who got turned into a spider by magic.The sister doesn’t knowwhat Sancho the cat felt other than painwhen he was run over and his brilliant pink in-testineshowed on the pavement.

The cat doesn’t know what the ash tree in the garden was trying to sayto the cloud which had drifted away over the roofby shaking out its leaves frantically.

But the cloud does knowthat a white alligator is growing slowly and stead-ilydeep inside the body and soul ofthe mother.

how her sullen face looksin the eyes of the husbandand what prophecy it gives him.

In the name of great grandfather’s love letters, laws of Mendel and salted salmon,a family is constituted. Its members gatherin a living room scattered with fish bones and bird feathersand momentarily attain immortality with laughter and quarrels.

Sancho the cat, now resurrected and sharpening his clawsis watching it go by.

Leanne O’Sullivanappearing Wednesday, 18th February 2009

19.30 Launch of Cailleach: Hag of BearaThe launch of Cailleach: The Hag of Beara published by Bloodaxe Books, England. An Cailleach Bhéarra, or the Hag of Beara, is a wise woman figure embedded in the physical and mental landscape of western Ireland and Scotland, particularly in the Beara Peninsula in West Cork. The Cailleach’s roots lie in pre-Christian Ireland, and stories of her relationship with that rugged landscape and culture still abound. Central to these

narratives is the story of her love affair with a sea god. A large stone resting on the ridge overlooking Ballycrovane Harbour is said to be the petrified body of the Cailleach; she has had several lives, beginning each life with a birth from her stony form – and returning to stone at the end.

Born in 1983, Leanne O’Sullivan comes from the Beara Peninsula. She received an MA in English from University College Cork in 2006. Winner of several of Ireland’s poetry competitions, including the Seacat, Davoren Hanna and RTE Rattlebag Poetry Slam, she has published two collections, Waiting for My Clothes (Bloodaxe, 2004) and Cailleach: The Hag of Beara (Bloodaxe ,2009). Her work appears in various anthologies, including Selina Guinness’s The New Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2004) and Billy Collins’s Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry (Random House, 2003).

The Munster Literature Centre is proud to present new publications by two Cork poets and an American poet from a Cork publisher. Although not part of the festival

theme, they are significant Cork literary events.

Book Launches on the Festival Fringe

Rosemary Canavanappearing Saturday, 21st February 2009

14.00 Launch of Trucker’s Moll

Jenny Minniti-Shippeyappearing Thursday, 19th February 2009

Winner of the 2008 Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition

Done Dating DJs by Jenny Minniti-Shippey is the 2009 winner of the Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition published by Southword Editions, Cork. Minniti-Shippey’s Done Dating DJs contains poems with precursors as varied as William Carlos Williams and Rita Ann Higgins. A wry sophisticated humour is invested in these crisp confident poems by a young poet who has found her voice.

If Sex and the City were aimed at a higher brow level and written in verse, this could be it.

Jenny Minniti-Shippey studied Creative Writing at Randolph-Macon Women’s College, and is a graduate of the MFA program at San Diego State University. Her work has appeared in Tar River Poetry, Web Del Sol Review of Books, and her chapbook, Less Whiskey, was published through Poetry International’s New Poets of America Series. She grew up in Oregon, and since then has lived happily in the southern United States, Spain, and Ireland. She now lives in San Diego, California where she teaches creative writing and horseback riding, although not at the same time.

Trucker’s Moll (Salmon, 2009), Rosemary Canavan’s second collection, continues her preoccupation with identity, landscape and change. She reveals the power of land to transform, to hold secrets, to heal and to destroy.

Rosemary Canavan was born in Scotland, and brought up in County Antrim. Her first collection The Island (2004) was published by

Story Line Press, and was short-listed for the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize. In 2001 she was Writer-in-Residence for Co. Kerry, and from 2006-2007 she was Poetry Editor for Southword. Her two children’s books, Lios Chaitríona and Caitriona agus an tÉan Oir, were published by An Gúm, and she has read at a number of festivals including the Cheltenham Literary Festival.

She has worked as a graphic designer, and a teacher in varied locations including Belfast, and Spike Island and Cork Prisons. She has also worked with digital media, exhibiting an internet site in Triskel Arts Centre’s ‘Intermedia 2000’ and has exhibited at the Droichead Arts Centre and the Boole Library in University College, Cork. At present she teaches Creative Writing in County Cork.

MUNSTER LITERATURE CENTRE SPRING 2009 NEW RELEASES

AVAILABLE from wholesalers or direct

for fur ther deta i l s and purchases v is i t www.munsterl i t . ie or phone (021) 431 2955

best of irish poetry 2009 €10.00

ISBN 978-1-905002-29-0

richesses(hardback ed.) €12.00

ISBN 978-1-905002-30-6

southword no. 15 €7.99

ISBN 978-1-905002-31-3

southword back issuesNos. 1 - 14

€7.99

Presented by The Munster Literature Centre

funded by Cork City Council in association with the Irish Times

Wednesday, 18th February

EVENT INFORMATION(All events take place at the Triskel Arts Centre and are free. Sole exception is workshop.)

Éigse 2009Humour, Irony & Wit

presented by the Munster Literature Centre

Book Launch: Cailleach: The Hag of Beara by Leanne O’SullivanThe launch of Leanne O’Sullivan’s second poetry collection Cailleach: The Hag of Beara, published by Bloodaxe Books, England. The book takes its title from An Cailleach Bhéarra, or the Hag of Beara, who is a wise woman fig-ure embedded in the physical and mental landscape of western Ireland and Scotland, particularly in the Beara Peninsula in West Cork.Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street. Time: 7.30 pm. Complimentary wine reception.

Book Launch: Done Dating DJs by Jenny Minniti-ShippeyMunster Literature Centre is proud to present the winning chapbook of the 2008 Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition. Published by Southword Editions.Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street. Time: 7.00 pm.

Readings: Humour and IronyA quickfire, varied reading by a selection of mostly Cork-resident poets known for their sense of humour and irony. Featuring John Corless, Billy Ramsell, Liz O’Donoghue, Ian Wild, Matthew Sweeney and Cliff Wedgebury.Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street. Time: 8.00 pm.

Readings: Neil Rollison & Fiona Pitt KethleyA reading by two British poets renowned for mixing the humorous and the erotic. Neil Rollinson & Fiona Pitt-Kethley.Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street. Time: 9.00 pm.

Thursday, 19th February

Friday, 20th February

Readings: Dave Lordan & Alan TitleyA reading by two Cork expatriates who have made their family homes in Dublin each is noted for their biting satire. Dave Lordan (poet) & Alan Titley (poet, novelist who works in Irish and English)Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street. Time: 7.00 pm.

Saturday, 21st February

Readings: Dennis O’Driscoll & John Hartley WilliamsTwo distinguished poets, one Irish the other British whose work is dis-tinguished by their European sensibilities. Dennis O’Driscoll and John Hartley Williams.Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street. Time: 9.00 pm.

Humour in Poetry Workshop with Matthew SweeneyA workshop focusing on humour in poetry with poet Matthew Sweeney.Munster Literature Centre, Douglas Street. Time: 2.00 pm. Fee: €30. Limited to ten individuals.

Readings: Gina Moxley & Kevin HigginsA reading by two Irish writers who have established reputations as dramat-ic readers of their own work.Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street. Time: 4.00 pm.

Readings: Paddy Estonian, Paddy Irishman & Paddy Japanese ManThree absurdists not only from different corners of the globe, arguably from different corners of the universe. Andres Ehin, Gerry Murphy and Yatushiro Yoshimoto.Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street. Time: 7.00 pm.

Readings: Julie O’Callaghan & Dan RhodesA reading by American-Irish poet Julie O’Callaghan and British novelist Dan Rhodes.Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street. Time: 9.00 pm.

The Munster Literature CentreFrank O’Connor House, 84 Douglas Street, Cork, Ireland.

Tel: (021) 4312955Email munsterlit@eircom.net

www.munsterlit.ie

Further Information

Reservations

Reservations are only necessary for the workshop. Places at other events are on a first come, first served basis. Events will start on time. To reserve a workshop space please phone the Munster Literature Centre on 021-4312955. Further information is also available at www.munsterlit.ie.

Venues

The workshop will be held at the Munster Literature Centre, Frank O’Connor House, 84 Douglas Street, Cork.

All other events are at the Triskel Arts Centre on Tobin Street, off South Main Street and Grand Parade, Cork.