Dear Writer
And yet another month zips by and we are now – incredibly – in mid September and last March, abundant with delightful promises of the months ahead, is a distant memory. Still, we had a great summer, did we not? A summer to remember, all those fabulous days standing at the doorstep watching the soft rain falling, falling, falling …
*****
A confession: I have found it near impossible to tear myself away from Alice Munro. I’m enclosing a few more extracts for your pleasure and to marvel over. Of course, some of you may be of the opinion that she’s a rubbish writer and you are unquestionably entitled to that view. A few years ago, someone we had never met walked into one of our regular Saturday writing sessions @ The Dock and proclaimed in emphatic and outraged tones that Claire Keegan’s writing (I’d read aloud an extract from one of her stories) “is atrocious”. We had quite the discussion, with several of us attempting to defend the great CK, but nothing we could say mellowed his views, indeed, if anything, our vain attempts merely served to magnify his opinion. False memory tells me that atrocious was uttered a dozen times, but that’s just memory playing games; but atrocious was without question the word of the morning, and indeed the next session, such was the strange and unexpected bombshell that had been tossed into our previously solid and stable group. His intervention was the highlight of that season. Sadly, and disappointingly, he never returned, and there was no more talk of atrocious. Wherever he is, dear man, I’m rooting for him and hoping he’s making progress with his own very-definitely-not-atrocious great Irish novel.
*****
I was up in Dublin for a few days and found myself in Hodges Figges, as you do, and at the poetry section, as you do, and picked up a 2017 anthology titled: THE ZOO OF THE NEW, a book of exceptional poems from Sappho to Paul Muldoon. The almost 500 poems were selected by Nick Laird and Don Paterson and are a fabulously eclectic collection. I have this idea of reading a randomly selected poem at my desk first thing every morning and, depending on what arises – intellectually, emotionally – I hope to be sufficiently inspired to write a new poem. It’ll be my new ‘thing’. I’m always coming up with new ‘things’. Some of them work for a while, some of them don’t work at all, and some of them have remained in my writing toolbox for years, to be taken out and used when the mood, or the inspiration, takes me. We’ll see how the ZOO OF THE NEW ‘thing’ works out.
*****
*1st Alice Munro extract [from Floating Bridge]
The girl did have a tender pink skin. Jinny had noticed as well her nearly white lashes and eyebrows, her blond baby-wool hair, and her mouth, which had an oddly naked look, not just the normal look of a mouth without lipstick. A fresh-out-of-the-egg look was what she had, as if there was one layer of skin still missing, and one final growth of coarser grown-up hair. She must be susceptible to rashes and infections, quick to show scrapes and bruises, to get sores around the mouth and sties between her white lashes. Yet she didn’t look frail. Her shoulders were broad, she was lean but large-framed. She didn’t look stupid, either, though she had a head-on expression like a calf’s or a deer’s. Everything must be right at the surface with her, her attention and the whole of her personality coming straight at you, with an innocent and – to Jinny – a disagreeable power.
*****
A few items now that may or may not be of interest to you:
POETRY IRELAND
Lots of interesting things to read about in the latest missive from Poetry Ireland. Definitely worth having a look, there may well be something of interest to you
https://mailchi.mp/poetryireland.ie/november-2023-christmas-gift-ideas-1299414?e=7711f94795
*****
RAGAIRE LITERARY MAGAZINE
Ragaire Literary Magazine is worth considering when you’re looking for somewhere to place your wonderful new poem or story or piece of non fiction.
*****
VOYAGE YA BY UNCHARTED
I may have included info on YA in a previous newsletter. I’ve never submitted to them myself but that’s mainly because I’m crap at submitting (I like writing but I’m a lazy SOB when it comes to submitting – Note to Self: must do better). There is of course a submission fee, but if you want to have your work read by someone you have never met and never will and whose job is to select the best of the very large bunch of submissions, why not give it a go?
*****
THE MOTH NATURE WRITING PRIZE
Mentioned in my August newsletter, this closes in two weeks from now
https://www.themothmagazine.com/a1-page.asp?ID=9311&page=54
*****
THE BRIDPORT PRIZE MEMOIR AWARD
Also mentioned in an earlier newsletter, this, too, closes at the end of the month
*****
IRISH WRITERS CENTRE NOVEL FAIR 2024
Aspiring novelists who have a novel partly or fully written may be interested in this. As with the previous two mentions, this, too, closes at the end of the month.
The Novel Fair mission is to facilitate first encounters between unpublished (and unsigned) novelists and members of the publishing industry. At the Fair, these encounters will take the form of a series of 15-minute meetings with publishers and agents where the 12 winners are given the opportunity to pitch their novels.
*****
*2nd AM extract (from Family Furnishings)
When I had walked for over an hour, I saw a drugstore that was open. I went in and had a cup of coffee. The coffee was reheated, black and bitter – its taste was medicinal, exactly what I needed. I was already feeling relieved, and now I began to feel happy. Such happiness, to be alone. To see the hot late-afternoon light on the sidewalk outside, the branches of a tree just out in leaf, throwing their skimpy shadows. To hear from the back of the shop the sounds of the ball game that the man who had served me was listening to on the radio. I did not think about the story I would make about Alfrida – not of that in particular – but of the work I wanted to do, which seemed more like grabbing something out of the air than constructing stories. The cries of the crowd came to me like big heartbeats, full of sorrows. Lovely formal-sounding waves, with their distant, almost inhuman assent and lamentation.
This was what I wanted, this was what I thought I had to pay attention to, this was how I wanted my life to be.
*****
That’s all I have for you this month, apart from one more Alice Munro extract below. The last few weeks have been busy ones for me, partly to do with writing and partly to do with other interests of mine. Yes, writers are allowed, even encouraged, to have interests other than reading and writing. Some of you know what some of my other interests are but most of you don’t and I won’t bore you by detailing them here. Suffice it to say that at certain times of the year, reading and writing slip down the priority list as other ‘essential matters’ come to the fore. I imagine this reflects your own approach to writing. Personally, I think I would slowly go insane were I to devote my entire life to writing.
As always, take good care of yourself and those you love, read a lot, write when you can, and enjoy your days for they are, every single one, precious; and in case this never occured to you: they will never come again!
Gerry
*****
*3rd AM extract (from Post and Beam)
He talked with his head on one side, usually, his gaze on something slightly beyond Lorna’s head. His voice was light and quick, sometimes squeaky with a kind of nervous exhilaration. He told everything in a slightly astonished way. He told about the office where he worked, in the building behind the Cathedral. The small high Gothic windows and varnished woodwork (to give things a churchy feeling), the hat rack and umbrella stand (which for some reason filled him with deep melancholy), the typist, Janine, and the Editor of Church News, Mrs Penfound. The occasionally appearing, spectral, and distracted Archbishop. There was an unresolved battle over teabags, between Janine, who favoured them, and Mrs Penfound, who did not. Everybody munched on secret eats and never shared. With Janine it was caramels, and Lionel himself favoured sugared almonds. What Mrs Penfound’s secret pleasure was he and Janine had not discovered, because Mrs Penfound did not put the wrappers in the wastepaper basket. But her jaws were always surreptitiously busy.
*The above extracts are all taken from stories in the 2001 collection: Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage.
*****
If you would like me to mention something in a forthcoming newsletter, send me the details and I’ll try to include.