Get your teeth into this...Bram Stoker Dracula Halloween Horror Festival

Love & Pain/Vampire Edvard Munch

Below is taken from http://www.bramstokerdraculahalloweenhorrorfestival.com/

In conjunction with the Stoker Dracula International Halloween Festival of Horror 29th – 31st October 2010, entries are invited for the Stoker Academy Gothic Horror Writing Competition. This is your chance to get that spine chilling ghost story off your chest – and display your writing skills as well!


The competition is open to everyone, everywhere! The scope of the theme field is just about limitless…..ghosts, vampires, banshees, death, blood, haunted houses, spooky graveyards, creepy bell towers, gruesome dungeons, horror castles, scary blood curdling noises, eerie nightmares, macabre happenings….all can be real or imagined!

All entries must be in English and the theme must be gothic/horror with a maximum of 2000 words.

Entries can be in the form of a prose piece, a short story, a poem, a play (drama) or even a song or ballad.

Entries must be typed on A4 size paper (on one side only) with a one inch margin. Your entry must be your own unpublished work and must not have won a prize in a previous competition. You may enter more than once if you wish, but entries cannot be returned.


There is a €10 entry fee per entry – no cash in the post, just cheques or money orders made out to The Stoker Dracula Organisation.


Entries from under 16’s must be signed by a parent/guardian/teacher/community leader.

First Prize €500 and ''The Bram''
2nd Prize €75
3rd Prize €50

Entries will be Judged by Trinity College School of English
Gothic Section

Closing date for entries is 15th October 2010.

All entries/correspondence to:

The Director/C.E.O.
The Stoker Dracula Organisation
32 Howth Road Clontarf
Dublin 3 Ireland

The 12th Francis Ledwidge Poetry Award 2010

First Prize is the Ledwidge plaque inscribed with the winners name.  Cash prizes for second and third and merit certificates for finalists.  The first three poems will be entered in the Forward Prize UK.  Poems must be your own work and not previously published or broadcast.  Poems must not exceed 40 lines.  Entry fee: 4 euro per poem, 3 for 10 euro.  Maximum of 6 poems can be entered (20 euro).  Name, address and telephone number on a separate page.  All entries must be submitted before the 5th November to:

The Francis Ledwidge International Poetry Award 2010,
43 Emmet Crescent,
Inchicore,
Dublin 8.

Previous winners include; Ann Dean, Paul Murray, Colum Clarke, Roderick Forde, Catherine Ann Cullen, Ray Mullen.

Salthill Again

GIRLS BATHING, GALWAY 1965

The swell foams where they float and crawl,
A catherine-wheel of arm and hand.
Each head bobs curtly as a football.
The yelps are faint here on the strand.

No milk-limbed Venus ever rose
Miraculous on this western shore;
A pirate queen in battle clothes
Is our sterner myth. The breakers pour

Themselves into themselves, the years
Shuttle through space invisibly.
Where crests unfurl like creamy beer
The queen's clothes melt into the sea

And generations sighing in
The salt suds where the wave has crashed
Labour in fear of flesh and sin
For the time has been accomplished

As through the shallows in swimsuits,
Brown-legged, smooth-shouldered and bare-backed
They wade ashore with skips and shouts.
So Venus comes, matter-of-fact.

Seamus Heaney

Font Times New Roman, Font size 12, 1.5 Line Spacing, Harvard Referencing System

Another day and I was up at 6.30 doing my course work.  I find it much easier to work in the mornings.  I was only disappointed this morning as it is Sunday that the church bells didn't sound out through the countryside.  The challenge I had today was to stadardise my assignments with the above formula.  It is a time consuming process.

Yesterday I wrote an overview of the childcare sector in Ireland.  Until 1996 there were no regulations governing childcare.   An increase of women in the workforce and a general interest in the quality of early childhood care and education led to these new laws and regulations.  It was most interesting to read about UNICEF and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  It was adopted by the UN in 1990 and ratified by Ireland in 1992.  It is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history.  I was thinking wouldn't it be something  amazing to do voluntary work abroad or to do some human rights work.  At the end of 2000 a ten year plan (The National Children’s Strategy) was outlined to progress the implementation of the Convention. It is a comprehensive national children’s plan which has resulted from the work of the Children’s Rights Alliance (1995 established) and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

In the childcare sector we speak about towards 2012.  This means that by 2012 all preschool leaders will have to have a minimum qualification of fetac level 5 to participate in the ECCE. 

I'm getting really anxious about my assignments and I do hope that I have done enough and that the quality is up to scratch.  I still have to complete my supervision module but I have some days left.

I wonder who came up with the names for the font times new roman?! Ah Wikipedia:  

Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned by the British newspaper The Times in 1931, designed by Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent...

Referencing work is also difficult and I'm sure I haven't done it accurately enough.

Prometheus Bound

On Saturday night I found myself painting the above which I've called Holding the Sun.  Now I know I'm not very good but I found great peace doing it.  I'm working on a poem to go along with it.  I'm interested in the legend of Prometheus.  Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and he was punished by Zeus who had him bound to a mountain where each Eos (dawn) Zeus' eagle would tear at Prometheus' liver.  I think it was Hecules who finally freed Prometheus.  Prometheus' name means forethought!!!

At the moment the poem is proving troublesome.  I think I'm not quite sure what I'm trying to say in it.  Patience!

L'empire des lumieres

I found myself a little fascinated with this painting during the week.  Magritte was a Belgian surrealist painter.  In this painting we are presented with night and day light.  It is strange to see the two images placed together! The Empire of Lights! It is an oil on canvas.

In the thick wood of course work

Taking a break to write in my blog.  I've spent all morning concentrating on Social and Legal Issues in Childcare.  As part of this module (unit 3 Child Protection) I have to fill in a sample form reporting child abuse which led me to investigating who is the principal social worker in navan and who is the public health nurse in the area where I work.  I found telephone numbers but I will have to call on Monday to find out the names.  I've also been reading about the Employment Equality Act 1998 and the Equal Status Act 2000 which come under the section of equality in childcare (unit 4).  Both acts outlaw discrimination on nine distinct grounds:

1) Gender

2) Family status

3) Marital status

4) Age

5) Disability

6) Sexual orientation

7) Religion

8) Race

9) Membership of the traveller community

Task 2 of my assignment will see me investigating my own work place, evaluating it in relation to child protection and equality.  In Task 3 I have to write an overview of the childcare sector and discuss one aspect of social policy.  I will probably write about the E.C.C.E. scheme which came into operation in January of this year.

Then onto the final module, Supervision.  The deadline for submission of my folder is Friday August 6th. 

I've been printing out a lot of useful templates but I'm finding the use of questionnaires a little bitty in gathering information.  I will of course want to read back over all of my work to correct it and make it the best it can be considering the fact that I've not had as much time as I would have liked to have had to spend on it

It is also difficult to sit down and concentrate, focusing on what each assignment is asking me to answer.  I do seem to find that I need to understand each topic as best I can before answering.  Hmm it's back to reading, sifting and organising I think now. 

Off topic I see that Michael Farry has been commended in the iYeats Poetry Competition, well done Michael! and Kate Dempsey will be the featured reader in the Whitehouse Bar, Limerick this Wednesday!  I read a poem in the Whitehouse last year which I had published in Revival poetry journal.  It's a nice spot.  Kate was a featured reader at the Boyne Readings earlier in the year and I reviewed her Good Sherry Trifle Pamphlet in the past.  It would be interesting to hear her read again.  Michael is working on the next issue of Boyne Berries magazine.  The next Boyne Writers meeting will take place on Thursday 5th August.