Ropes and Crannog Seek Submission

Get your work ready in the immediate for submission to Ropes (Review of postgraduate english studies at NUIG).  The theme this year is Links.  I had a short prose piece published in the 2010 issue.  Details to be found at http://ropesgalway2012.wordpress.com/ and email submission to ropes.submissions@gmail.com by the 9th of December.

Crannog are also looking for submissions.   I have had poems in Crannog 20, 23 and 26.  They seem to like my spring poems and I love Crannog and Galway.  These are both great Galway publications.  Submission period for Crannog ends 01st January I think.  http://www.crannogmagazine.com/submissions.htm

ROPES Launched

Julian Gough

I'm really happy to be in ROPES this year and the journal is a lovely production.  Proceeds from ROPES are donated to Cystic Fibrosis Ireland.  It was launched by Julian Gough.  Julian Gough's novel Jude: Level 1 was shortlisted for the 2008 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.  In April 2007, Julian won the biggest prize in the world for a single short story, the BBC National Short Story Award, for "The Orphan and the Mob".  He studied Philosophy and English at N.U.I.G. and while a student there formed a band called Toasted Heretic.

Julian spoke about the need for writers to challenge society and break the mould.  He thought it is a very exciting time to be a young writer now as we emerge from the chaos left by the Celtic Tiger and try to understand the recent past.

There are some well known names included in the journal inlcuding Rita Ann Higgins, Nuala Ni Choncuir, Martin Dyar and Kevin Higgins.  Martin Dyar has won the Strokestown Poetry Prize, the Raftery Award and the Patrick Kavanagh Award, wow!  Ceara Conway and Ken Bruen read on the night alongside Dyar, Rita Ann Higgins and Kevin Higgins. 

Martin Dyar

Congratulations to the students of the MA in Literature and Publishing and to Dr. Daniel Carey and  Dr. Julia Carlson of the English Department, N.U.I. Galway.

ROPES 18 and the 2010 Cuirt Festival of Literature

On Thursday evening I hope to attend the launch of ROPES 2010, Issue 18 in the Skeffington Arms, Eyre Square, Galway.  I have a piece of flash fiction in it about a weekend I spent in Gleann Colm Cille last year.

The Cuirt International Festival of Literature is celebrating its 25th year and is running from the 20th to the 25th of April.  The writers of the Gallery Press are reading  at 2.30 on Saturday in the Town Hall Theatre.  The Gallery Press is itself turning 40 this year.  And I have just seen that on Sunday there will be a performance about The Wilder Wisdom of Auld Ones...Stories, Legends and Poetry inspired by the Cailleach in the Nun's Island Theatre.  This is very interesting!  Jennifer Johnston and Michael Longley are appearing at the festival too.  I admire them both as writers and I met Johnston once and she signed a copy of The Invisible Worm for me.  On the inside of this book Blake's poem is quoted:

O Rose, thou art sick!

The Invisible worm,

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,



Has found out thy bed

Of Crimson joy;

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

The full programme of events can be found on http://www.cuirt.ie/