______

THE NEW WAVE OF INNOVATIVE WRITERS IN IRELAND

by Séamas Cain

[as presented to the “IRELAND IN CRISIS” Conference, the 2012 International Conference of ICIS : The International Congress of Irish Studies, meeting on 10 and 11 July 2012 at International House on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley]

( A Preface )

When I was a boy, bhí buachaill ann fadó fadó indeed, all of the literary works of James Joyce were banned in Ireland. He was the devil himself! Or, so it was said. But today, Joyce and all of his works have become an obsession, a veritable cult, and a significant extension of the tourist industry, in Ireland. Thus I am very much drawn to the paramyth aspects of this change of fortune for “James Joyce” … whether as the writer himself or as the legend of self.

Literary critics and literary historians, around the world, and for a number of decades, have said that there have been NO literary descendants of James Joyce, in or out of Ireland. However, one “crisis” of Ireland I have noticed for several years now has been the emergence of a New Wave of INNOVATIVE writers and poets, in Ireland and within the Irish diaspora. Descendants but not imitators of the works of James Joyce, these new wave writers are self-confidently moving in new directions and shaking-up the cultural scene.

1 ( The Precursors )

* Niall Montgomery was an enthusiast for the writings of James Joyce. Indeed, for many years he was perhaps Joyce's greatest champion in Ireland. On 4 July 1953, Montgomery made a recording at Peter Hunt Studios in Dublin of himself reading selections from his own poetry and much larger sections from Joyce's Finnegans Wake. (These three sound tape reels are on deposit in the Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University.)

Then in 1958, Niall Montgomery and Herbert Read staged a “happening” at a surrealist art exhibition at The Building Centre, 17 Lower Baggot Street, in Dublin. Readings of Joycean texts were part of the schedule-of-events. On 5 April 1960, again at Peter Hunt Studios in Dublin, Montgomery made a recording of himself reading selections from his own poetry and then much larger sections from Joyce's works. (Again the recording was sponsored by the Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard.)

On 27 September 1962, again recorded for Harvard University at Peter Hunt Studios, Niall Montgomery discussed the importance of the writings of James Joyce. (These two sound tape reels are on deposit at the Woodberry Poetry Room.) Then in 1967, in Dublin, Montgomery was one of the organizers and major contributors to “The Celtic Master : A Contribution To The First James Joyce Symposium.” (The proceedings of this Symposium were published in 1968 by DOLMEN PRESS in Ireland.)

Gérard Bodinier acknowledged the importance of the literary work(s) of Niall Montgomery, and translated several of his poems into French. See, for example, the article “Irlande : Coïncidences avec le Surréalisme,” on pages 60 to 68 of Issue Number 27 (for February of 1981) of the journal Le Temps parallèle, Paris, France.

Nevertheless, to this day, no publisher in or out of Ireland has brought out a Selected or Collected edition of the poetry of Niall Montgomery. Harvard Library acquired all of his manuscripts. No archive and no library in Ireland protested. And today the manuscripts are ignored by one and all.

2 J.C.C. Mays, of Ballycullen, County Wicklow, in the proceedings of the Third Cork Poetry Conference 2000, said “Or take Niall Montgomery, our only genuine surrealist. It is difficult to think he would have done differently if given six months at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. I trust not. His inspiration as a writer was very close to what inhibited him from publishing : nervously flickering intelligence, disinclination to repeat the obvious, modesty and ambition in self-cancelling embrace.”

* On Friday, September 13th, 1985, in Duluth, Minnesota, I was privileged to introduce Thomas Kinsella at his reading before an audience of 400 people. I enjoyed several days of lengthy conversations with Kinsella. I learned quite a lot from him about the varieties of innovative and not-so- innovative approaches to contemporary poetry. Indeed, it is NOT Seamus Heaney but Thomas Kinsella that I see as the grand old man of contemporary Irish poetry! And certainly, it is Kinsella that is the literary grandfather of the new wave of innovative writers in Ireland north and south!

Indeed, I think that Thomas Kinsella is the greatest Irish poet of his generation. Seamus Heaney is a fine poet. However, Thomas Kinsella is a consumate poet who is not afraid to follow his muse wherever it leads him. His poetry shows levels of experimentation and depth of thematic that Heaney's work does not. Fifty years from now we may see Kinsella as the Yeats of his generation while Heaney will be regarded as but a pale Gogarty in comparison.

The Papers of the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella have gone to the MARBL Library at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Amazingly, the MARBL Library at Emory also holds the Papers of the Irish poets Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Peter Fallon/The Gallery Press Collection, Ted Hughes, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Medbh McGuckian, Charles Montieth, Paul Muldoon, Edna O'Brien, Desmond O'Grady, Frank Ormsby, Tom Paulin, and James Simmons as well as other more or less contemporary Irish poets. Most of these manuscript collections have been purchased by Emory.

Amazing! that the National Library of Ireland would not have acted more decisively to keep these manuscript collections (of literary and

3 historic importance) in Ireland! What a profound crisis for Irish culture. Or, is it not so amazing after all? given the back-of-the-hand treatment to most Irish authors in the past and present.

* Maurice Scully turned for inspiration and interaction to the British avant- garde. He is the author of Humming, published in 2009 by Shearsman Books in Exeter, England; Doing The Same In English : A Sampler, co- published in 2008 by Syracuse University Press in Syracuse, New York and The Dedalus Press in Dublin; From Zulu Dynamite, published in 1997 by Longhouse at Brattleboro, Vermont; Certain Pages, published in 1992 by Form Books (In-Press Printers) at London, England; Five Freedoms Of Movement, published in 1987 by Galloping Dog Press at Newcastle-upon- Tyne in England; and Love Poems And Others, published in 1981 by Raven Arts Press in Dublin.

* Gabriel Rosenstock is the author of Uttering Her Name, published in 2009 by Salmon Poetry of Knockeven at the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland; Haiku Enlightenment and Haiku : The Gentle Art Of Disappearing, both published in 2009 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing at Newcastle- upon-Tyne in England; Rogha Dánta : Selected Poems, published in 2005 by Cló Iar-Chonnachta at Indreabhán in Conamara; Cold Moon : The Erotic Haiku Of Gabriel Rosenstock, published in 1993 by Brandon Book Publishers at Dingle in County Kerry; Dánta Duitse! : Scothvéarsaí Do Dhaoine Óga, published in 1988 by Cló Iar-Chonnachta at Béal an Daingin in Conamara; and Susanne Sa Seomra Folchta, published in 1973 by Clodhanna in Dublin.

In a letter to me dated 16 July 1975, from the town of An Charraig Dhubh in County Dublin, Gabriel Rosenstock, describing a previous “new wave” of poetry in the Irish-language, wrote “The new literature can be considered as a reaction against cliché, as an attempt to break free from that sheltering torpor which either refused or was unable to deal directly with modern life on its own terms … Though no one trend can be isolated from this flux and given predominance, there does seem to be a shared refusal to mourn, with its own rituals and its own Weltanschauung. The influences that have gone into the making of this poetry are multifarious … What has emerged — or should we say exploded — over the last six or seven years, and partly evident in the three editions of the magazine

4 INNTI, is a poetry less fraught with traumas of exile, neurosis, and the estranged new world. The voice of the ‘tragic generation,’ with its pained awareness of both the present and the past and the dignified rhythms inseparable from such pain, is being replaced by a new vision which ‘sings the body-mind electric,’ so to speak.”

( The New Wave )

* Ben Allen lives in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Ben in his youth was drawn into the FLUXUS arts movement. He became a skilled practitioner of Mail Art and Visual Poetry. His Xerolage 15 chapbook may be obtained from the Xexoxial Editions & Media of “mIEKAL aND” in La Farge, Wisconsin …

http://xexoxial.org/is/xerolage15/by/ben_allen

* Aifric Mac Aodha is the author of Gabháil Syrinx, published in 2012 by An Sagart in County Kerry. In an e-mail to me dated 29 May 2012, responding to questions for this report, Mac Aodha wrote “Some of the questions facing a poet in Irish are the same as those which confront any poet : what is the point of doing it at all? There is no money in it, and very little glory. Shelley might have been able to claim that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world, but Shelley was writing before the proliferation of television and the widespread availability of the Internet to working writers.”

Then Aifric Mac Aodha concluded : “And if poets writing in English can feel aggrieved that the clout they have enjoyed historically has been usurped by boy bands and bloggers, the fall in status of the Irish-language poet has been dramatically greater … The verse forms that comprise such a huge part of the Irish bardic tradition were developed in a context where poets were professional, extremely important, and technically accomplished. Very few poets working in the Irish language today could claim to be any of these things, and in fairness very few would presume to make any such claim.”

5 Gabháil Syrinx is available from An Sagart at … http://www.ansagart.ie

* Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin is the author of Púca Gan Dealramh / The Good-For- Nothing Pooka, published in 2010 by Coiscéim; and An Teorainn Bheo / The Shifting Boundary, published in 2007 by Coiscéim. She is also the author of Port na Mammies / The Mammies' Tune, a drama commissioned and produced by the theatre company AnnÓg, Lab na Mainistreach in Dingle, County Kerry.

[email protected] [email protected]

Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin is a sound-artist and film-maker. She combines written word — in the Irish Language, often pieces of poetry written by herself — with film / video and sound to create dimensional imagery as Art Installations. She is the creator artist of Cathair / City, commissioned in 2012 by the IMRAM Festival. (This exhibition will take place in Dublin during November of 2012.) Also, Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin created Cosán / Path, a solo exhibition commissioned and produced by the IMRAM Festival in 2011; and Béalscaoilteacht / Loose-talk, a shared exhibition with Áine Uí Dhubhshláine, commissioned and produced in 2010 by Féile na Bealtaine on the Dingle Peninsula.

In an e-mail to me dated 1 June 2012, responding to several questions for this report, Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin wrote “Passion for life drives my writing while the senses and emotions interpret that passion and try to find the truth and soul of the moment. Celtic and pre-Celtic mythology frequently influence my work, as does local and national Irish folklore and history (occasionally a foreign myth or folktale will be referenced in a poem). Amongst the themes in my poems I deal with the childless woman, the foster mother, love, loss, our heritage and how we receive it / access it. I write only in the Irish language.”

* Liam Carson grew up in the disjunct of Belfast during the Civil War of the 1970s and 1980s. There, in the red-brown streets, in the midst of hieratic cycles of a very human disregard, Liam was drawn into the crazy punk-rock scene (many people do not realize that Belfast was an

6 international point-of-call for the punk-rockers of the time). Later then, in London as well as Belfast, endlessly dischordant, Liam explored the life of “squats” and communes. He is the author of Call Mother A Lonely Field, published in 2010 by the Hag's Head Press in Dublin, Ireland. This memoir, in syncopation, uniquely blends lyricism and the punk-rock postmodern rhythms. And, in a subtle yet moving dialectic, Liam's description of his mother's Alzheimer's disease and eventual death are marked with clarity and an almost unbearable tenderness.

Liam Carson has said that it was not the journalists or the politicians but the poets who truly understood and described “The Troubles” in vivid, intelligent, and powerful writing! And the same could be said about Liam's own memoir! In an e-mail to me dated 30 April 2012, responding to a number of questions for this report, he wrote “I think the writer is a magpie, a thief, a borrower, an observer. I don't sit down and write in a linear fashion. I'll scribble down notes, lines, paragraphs in little black Muji notebooks. Frequently I'll find that I've written four or five versions of the same paragraph. Once I sense that there's something emerging, I'll start typing up these notes and sketches. They are rewritten and edited in the process of being typed up. I then go back and cut, cut, cut. I read a lot — memoirs, fiction, essays, poetry. But if I look at my bookshelves I find most of my books are poetry collections. So if I do aim for anything, although I'm not a poet, it's the concision, precision, the condensing of language that one gets in poetry. Less is often more. Song lyrics also exist as a sub-strata in my work, they constantly run through my head — everything from Irish traditional songs to Dylan, Patti Smith, Jackie Leven and punk.”

http://www.hagsheadpress.com/callmother.html

* Dairena Ní Chinnéide is the author of Bleachtaire na Seirce, published in 2011 by Coiscéim; Máthair an Fhiaigh / The Raven's Mother, published in 2008 by Cló Iar Chonnachta; An tEachtrannach / Das Fremde / The Stranger, published in 2008 by Púca Press; Poll na mBabies, published in 2008 by Coiscéim; and An Trodaí Agus Dánta Eile / The Warrior And Other Poems, published in 2006 by Cló Iar Chonnachta.

In an e-mail to me dated 6 June 2012, responding to several questions

7 for this report, Dairena Ní Chinnéide wrote “My urge to write poetry in the Irish language comes from a primal interrogation of personal experience using the vast landscape of words and entangled meanings the language bestows. Rooted in the landscape of my native Dingle Peninsula, I write bathed in the luminosity of the landscape and its mythology creating a kind of modern hybrid of expression. The result is part rock chick, part pagan goddess. On a day to day basis, I feel the works emerge in a kind of creative therapy; dedicated cycles of work such as my meditation poems are more structured with a clear sense of place and philosophy; my adaptation to West Kerry Irish of the works of the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva take up to 3 or 4 hours each day. I write as a woman, a single mother, a recurrent sufferer of the anguish of mental ill health, to weave the words of truth and healing in the hope of empowering the reader and the creator on the journey of poetry.”

Dairena Ní Chinnéide continued : “My poetry is quite performance driven, very often involving multidisciplinary collaborations with different musical genres, such as traditional, classical, jazz and blues, installations and visual projections. I have performed extensively throughout Ireland at events such as the Franco-Irish Literary Festival, West Cork Literary Festival, Strokestown Poetry Festival, IMRAM 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012. I participated in Cuairt na mBard, a Scots Gaelic / Irish Gaelic tour of Scotland and the Outer Hebrides; Words Unbound, a poetry tour of Ireland, England, France and Belgium; the 30th Anniversary of Poetry Ireland in the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris; the Villenica International Poetry Festival in Slovenia; and have lectured in creative writing and literary translation at the American University in Washington, D.C.”

Dairena Ní Chinnéide concluded : “Má tá aon cheist agat nó aon rud eile a d'fhéadfainn a dhéanamh, ná bíodh leisce ort ceist a chur.”

http://www.cic.ie http://www.pucapress.com [email protected]

* Caitríona Ní Chléirchín is from Gortmoney, Emyvale in County Monaghan. She is the author of Crithloinnir [Bright Tremor], published in 2010 by Coiscéim in Dublin. She writes with a kind of swirling free-flowing

8 liquescence. Her poems are a fine weave, indirect, subtle, free, in graceful tectonics, scattered but very familiar. Indeed, these poems are almost a multi-referential [or, multi-reverential] ontology. She usually gives voice to the feminine speaking subject in her poetry.

In an e-mail to me dated 3 May 2012, responding to several questions for this report, Caitríona Ní Chléirchín wrote “For me writing, that is to say poetry, is the journey of the soul and the emotions into language. I write from the body, my own body inseparable as it is from the psyche, and it is somewhere in the psyche of the body that poetry comes from for me. I chose to write in Irish because I fell in love with the music of the language and I feel that its rhythms are closer to the body and the emotions. Writing poetry for me is the expression of longing, restlessness and desire in language, the same longing often never to be fulfilled in real life. My method is extremely free — free association, instinct, flow, listening to words, wordplay, imagining, letting go to an inner voice or voices, working on idiom, phrase and exploring different layers of meaning of a word or phrase and Irish is very suited to this as each word has multiple meanings.”

Ní Chléirchín continued: “The difficult choice for me was between Irish and French not Irish and English. I was very influenced by French écriture feminine and the poststructuralist distrust of language itself, which Lacan referred to as the gap in language … but Irish is a language of echoes and waves or ondulations … For this reason I have found it much easier to be lyrical in Irish, closer perhaps than English to the earth, the body and to the emotions.”

[email protected] http://www.litriocht.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=6240

* Micheál Ó Conghaile is the author of novels, short stories, plays, and poetry. In 1997 the Irish American Cultural Institute awarded him The Butler Literary Award; and in 1998 he was elected to Aosdána for his “outstanding contribution to the Arts in Ireland.”

Micheál Ó Conghaile is the author of An Fear nach nDéanann Gáire : The Man who Never Laughs, published in 2003; Seachrán Jeaic Sheáin

9 Johnny, published in 2002; Ualach an Uaignis : The Lonesome West, published in 2002; Sách Sean : Old Enough, published in 2002; Banríon Álainn an Líonáin : The Beauty Queen of Leenane, published in 2000; the convention and cliché shattering novel Sna Fir : Among Men, published in 1999; Fourfront, a collection of short stories published in 1998; An Fear a Phléasc : The Man Who Exploded, published in 1997; Gnéithe d'Amhráin Chonamara ár Linne, published in 1993; Mac an tSagairt, published in 1986; and many other books.

The ability and willingness to find, and to interpret, new themes in an emerging Gaeltacht gives a truly liberating force to the writings of Micheál Ó Conghaile!

http://www.cic.ie [email protected]

* CORACLE PRESS : http://www.coracle. ie

* Jimmy Cummins is the author of Origins Of Process, a poetry chapbook published in 2011 by Wild Honey Press in Bray, Ireland.

http://www.wildhoneypress.com http://runamokpress.blogspot.com

* DOGHOUSE BOOKS : http://www.doghousebooks.ie/doghouse

* Simon Ó Faoláin is an Irish-language poet and playwright, and his Irish is very much immersed in the speech of Corca Dhuibhne. Indeed, many of his poems are driven by strong rhythms and rhymes. Ó Faoláin sees the act of writing poetry as like that of the archaeologist imagining or re- creating a lost or forgotten world. He uses the language of digging and probing, scrutinising and examining, to investigate both the making of an individual and the world in which that individual lives.

Ó Faoláin is a philosopher poet. In an e-mail to me dated 3 May 2012,

10 responding to questions for this report, he wrote “My philosophy of writing involves a high degree of dependence on the unconscious for initiation of writing, with a belief in allowing moments of inspiration to ‘incubate’ in the mind for a period of time [up to years] where the possibilities, associations and personal meaning may tease themselves out without interference from the conscious mind. The eventual physical process of writing is then, as Ted Hughes once described it, alike to drawing on the thread of the original inspiration to see what follows. This approach fits very much into the idea that undertaking a poem is absolutely pointless unless the muse has already visited. My style of writing tends to be informed by my academic background in archaeology, with critics often comparing it to a form of excavation of the mind.”

Simon Ó Faoláin is the author of As Gaineamh, published in 2011 by Coiscéim in Dublin, Ireland; and Anam Mhadra, published in 2008 by Coiscéim. These books are available at …

http://www.cnagsiopa.com/index.php? main_page=product_info&cPath=0&products_id=2857 http://www.litriocht.com/shop/product_reviews.php?products_id=6453 [email protected]

* Kit Fryatt is the author of nine translations of poems included in The Penguin Book Of Irish Poetry, published in 2010 by Penguin in London, England. Also, Fryatt is the author of Rain Down Can, published in 2012 by Shearsman Books in Bristol, England; and Crude Black Strap, the second edition, “a byproduct, with kinks, and illustrations,” published in May 2011 by Wurm Press in Dublin. In section “iv,” on page six of Crude Black Strap, Fryatt wrote “rather sell the leathers issued to each of the brothers upon entry & carried usually than deliver a hiding kid from fleering wither. The skeletons fill and drain the ghastcat's tits furcate and feed her kits …”

In an e-mail to me dated 30 April 2012, responding to a number of questions for this report, Kit Fryatt wrote “I don't know that I have a philosophy that I could outline without sounding like a bit of a fraud. I suppose what I like about writing poetry is the interface between mental/verbal dexterity and something physical, fleshy, kinetic. As to method, I think up a line and try to write other lines to link it to. I can't

11 really do line 2 until line 1 is done (they're not necessarily, though actually very often, in that order). I don't slap down a careless draft and then put manners on it.”

http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Fryatt%20poems.htm http://www.wurmimapfel.net/wurmpress http://qarrtsiluni.com/tag/kit-fryatt

* Doireann Ní Ghríofa is the author of Dúlasair, published in 2012 by Coiscéim; and Résheoid, published in 2011 by Coiscéim. Ní Ghríofa, who grew up in County Clare, was among the prize-winners in the emerging writer category at the Oireachtas literary awards in 2010, and was shortlisted in Comórtas Uí Néill, both in 2011 and 2012, and in Siarscéal in 2012. Alan Titley, reviewing Ní Ghríofa's debut collection Résheoid, wrote “The poet has fostered a delicate, fluent, fluid style that bears poems rich with wonderment, enchantment and dread.”

The Arts Council of Ireland has awarded Doireann Ní Ghríofa a literature bursary, and she was selected for the prestigious Poetry Ireland Introductions Series for 2012. Her poetry has been published in Feasta, Comhar, Prairie Schooner, in its Contemporary Irish Writing issue, Causeway, Cyphers, Ropes Anthology, Revival, An tUltach, Crannóg, The Stony Thursday Book, and An Gael.

In an e-mail to me dated 27 May 2012, Doireann Ní Ghríofa wrote “Writing poetry is like creating a window through which I can observe the world as only I see it. The poetic practice of creating both the window and the world beyond it is a process that I find both enthralling and exhilarating. I cannot imagine that I differ from other writers in that I share many characteristics with the magpie. I collect nuggets, snippets, experiences, syllables, half-dreamt phrases and any other strange fragments that catch my eye. When I can steal some time to write, I gather these elements and mould them into a nest of sorts.”

http://www.litriocht.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=6459 http://www.coisceim.ie/resheoid.html [email protected]

12 * HAG'S HEAD PRESS : http://www.hagsheadpress.com

* hardPRESSED POETRY : http://gofree.indigo.ie/~hpp/frame.html

* Randolph Healy is the author of Rattling The Bars, published in 2009 by the Oystercatcher Press at Old Hunstanton in Norfolk, England; Green 532 : Selected Poems, published in 2002 by Salt Publishing in Cambridge, England; Daylight Saving Sex, published in 2001 by Wild Honey Press at Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland; and Ludo, published in 1998 by Form Books in London, England.

http://www.wildhoneypress.com

* THE IMRAM FESTIVAL : http://www.imram.ie

* IRISH PAGES : http://www.irishpages.org

* Trevor Joyce is the author of Courts Of Air And Earth, published in 2008 by Shearsman Books in Exeter, England; What's In Store : Poems, published in 2007 by New Writers' Press in Dublin, Ireland; Take Over, published in 2003 by The Gig at Willowdale, Ontario, Canada; and With The First Dream Of Fire They Hunt The Cold, published in 2001 by New Writers' Press in Dublin.

* Slávek Kwi was born in the Czech Republic but he has lived so long in Ireland that he has forgotten how to speak the Czech language. He is a sound-artist and a sound-poet. (Mairéad Byrne performed a few of his grammarless non-language “word”-poems at a SOUNDEYE Festival in Cork several years ago.) Slávek Kwi's work has been commissioned and funded by the County Meath Arts Council and the IMRAM Festival in Dublin. He has collaborated in a number of Art Installations, CDs, and DVDs with

13 word-artists such as Helen Blackhurst and Séamas Cain.

http://www.artificialmemorytrace.com

* Gearóid Mac Lochlainn was born in Belfast in 1966. He came of age during the time of The Troubles. He has been a writer-in-residence at the University of Ulster and Queen’s University Belfast, and a fellow with the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences (at the University of Massachusetts, Boston). Gearóid Mac Lochlainn is the author of Criss-Cross : Mo Chara, published in 2011 and 2012 by Cló Iar- Chonnachta at Indreabhán in Conamara, Ireland; and Sruth Teangacha : Stream of Tongues, published in 2002 by Cló Iar-Chonnachta.

Mac Lochlainn writes in a kind of creole, a rhythmic mixture of Irish and English. In an e-mail to me dated 27 April 2012, responding to a number of questions for this report, Gearóid wrote “I use what some call a ‘macaronic’ approach — it is a fusion of languages and translations that stems from old Gaelic poetry and song. It allows me to mix languages / styles / voices / registers / codes, in a sort of cubist collage form of poetry that plays with two literary traditions, the ideas of translation, and the relations between two cultures / two languages. I then try to contextualize the work into the melting pot of cultures that exists in modern Ireland.”

http://www.cic.ie/en/item.aspx?id=80 http://www.cic.ie/en/item.aspx?id=1965

* Dave Lordan is the author of Invitation to a Sacrifice, published in 2010 by Salmon Poetry of Knockeven at the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland; and The Boy in the Ring, published in 2007 by Salmon Poetry. In an e-mail to me dated 30 April 2012, responding to a number of questions for this report, Dave Lordan wrote “I have no settled philosophy of writing, except that I may write as a way of getting away from settled things, of unsettling myself and perhaps others who might come into contact with my work. I use various methods — lyric, monologue, dialogue, prophecy, hexing, conceptual and found, etc., and am committed to none. Most of my seed lines come to me while I am walking Dublin, a city in slow-motion collapse, or in the Wicklow Hills, which are full of ghosts and missing. I

14 suppose I am a kinetic poet above all else, and my writing is a form of energetic friction with the world, simultaneously embracing and assaulting it.”

http://www.irishleftreview.org/2011/06/27/soft-underbelly-dave-lordan http://www.wurmimapfel.net

* Michael J. Maguire was born, bred, and still lives in Dundalk, County Louth. He has a professional background in Engineering, Theatre, and Multimedia. He is a full member of the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild. He is exploring new technologically enabled forms of digital and electronic writing — interactive fiction, transmedia, and digital text. Maguire is the All-Ireland representative of the D.D.D.L., the European Digital Network of 17 countries, and the founder of the Irish Electronic Literature Community. Also, he is a member of the MIT-based Electronic Literature Organisation.

In an e-mail to me dated 28 April 2012, responding to a number of questions for this report, Michael J. Maguire wrote “Writing alone is a gift, an art, a spiritual conduit and a learned craft, the communicative expression of the meanings of our human condition. Language continues to evolve within previously unknown and highly sophisticated environments; writing and the various expressions, methods and techniques of literacy must also evolve to continue to reflect human imaginative agency. As writers and creative artists we must continue to seek mastery within such technologically advanced and networked environments.”

Michael J. Maguire is the author of Promise, published on-line by the New River Journal …

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/journals/newriver/08Fall/index.html and Bob Casio's Dead Cameraman …

http://www.clevercelt.com/Bob.html

15 * Christodoulos Makris is based in north County Dublin and works for the public library service of Fingal County Council. Makris is the author of Spitting Out The Mother Tongue, published in 2011 by Wurm Press in Dublin, Ireland; and Round The Clock, also published by Wurm Press, in 2009. S.J. Fowler, in 3:AM Magazine, wrote “A scrupulous and gifted writer, Christodoulos Makris is a poet of language over territory, a poet of semblance over culture.” His books are available from Wurm Press at …

http://www.wurmimapfel.net

* Oscar McLennan is a performance-artist and surrealist poet. He has taught performance-art at the University of Limerick. Fluent in Spanish, he is the author of two “novels,” The Kiss Of The Chicken King, published in 2011 by Livewire Publications in Dublin, Ireland; and El bastardo tranquilo, published in 2005 by Pepitas de Calabaza in Madrid, Spain. Oscar has toured a number of times in Argentina and other South American countries, performing long soliloquys drawn from his poetic novels.

http://www.amazon.co.uk http://www.pepitas.net

* Billy Mills is the author of Lares / Manes : Collected Poems, published in 2009 by Shearsman Books at Exeter, England; Seven Paper Places, one folded strip, published in 2006 by Longhouse at Green River, Vermont; Five Easy Pieces, published in 1997 by Shearsman Books in Plymouth, England; and Five Horace Traductions, published in 1997 by Levraut de Poche (Form Books) in London, England.

http://gofree.indigo.ie/~hpp/frame.html

* Paul Murphy was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1965. He studied at the University of Warwick, gaining a B.A. in Film and Literature. From there he went to Queen’s University in Belfast to study for an M.A. on T.S. Eliot and the French philosopher Jacques Lacan. Murphy has been writer- in-residence at the Albert-Ludwig Universitat, Freiburg im Breisgau in Baden-Wurtemburg, Germany. He also writes philosophy and enjoys

16 working on the interface between poetry and philosophy.

Paul Murphy suffered trauma in the brain during the time of The Troubles in Belfast. And thus he has been drawn to consider the life and literary work of the German poet Heinrich von Kleist, Antonin Artaud, and other “insane” or traumatized authors. Paul is the author of Alone In The Back Café, published in 2011 by Survivors' Poetry (and funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation) in London, England; The Sun Rises Over Arsenal, North London, published in 2009 by Original Plus in Maryport, England; T.S. Eliot's Postmodernist Complaint, published in 2003 by Postpressed in Flaxton, Queensland, Australia; In The Luxembourg Gardens, published in 1997 by Poetry Salzburg in Salzburg, Austria; and The New Life, published in 1992 by Lapwing in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

http://www.survivorspoetry.org/bookshop http://www.poetrysalzburg.com http://www.postpressed.com.au

* Irene Plazewska has been a face-to-face friend of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Lamantia, one of the five original “beat” poets, and Nancy Joyce Peters, long-time editor of CITY LIGHTS BOOKS. Plazewska's mother was born in Ireland and her father, a sailor, was born in Poland. Irene herself, as a precociously creative child, lived for some years in Illinois. Then she returned to Ireland where she has lived for many years in her mother's old cottage near Gorey in County Wexford.

In recent years, Irene Plazewska has worked on visual-and-sound projects in Dublin with Slávek Kwi and other innovators. For comparison with older work, see her poem “Newton's Descent” on page 440 of Surrealist Women : An International Anthology, edited by Penelope Rosemont and published in 1998 by the University of Texas Press at Austin, Texas. Also, Plazewska is the author of Purchased Moon (1995), Plumed Tunafish (1991), and Ironed Wood : Poems And Drawings (1985), three artist chapbooks self-published at Gorey. Consult the Bancroft Poetry Library Archive on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, California for additional information about Ironed Wood.

In a letter to me dated 20 January 1983, from Gorey in County

17 Wexford, Ireland, Irene Plazewska wrote “Greetings from the Celtic mists, smogs and slimes! … Poetry is flowing through us like smooth stones and bird flight.”

* THE RED FOX PRESS : http://www.redfoxpress.com

* THE RED JASPER PRESS, based in Dublin, a writers' cooperative on the Scandinavian model, has published works by Collin Tholl, Rónán Ó Dochartaigh, and Séamas Cain. Dr. Kit Fryatt is the curator of the RJP for 2012-2014.

[email protected] http://www.freewebs.com/seamascain

* J.B. Rehnstrom, an Irish Swede in Dublin, is one of the authors of Dublin : Ten Journeys, One Destination — a book of short stories published by the Irish Writers' Exchange in December of 2010. The IWE is a small group of immigrant writers, “very diverse as far as writing styles go,” who are engaging in a series of collaborative publishing projects. The IWE won a Mama Award for this book of short stories in the autumn of 2011.

In an e-mail to me dated 3 May 2012, responding to questions for this report, J.B. Rehnstrom wrote “For me writing is very much about discovery and learning to come at things from alternative angles. Thus, the start of a piece is always automatic, it is never set out ahead of time, even if a topic has been suggested. The writing can be helped along by stimuli from all the senses, or alongside the senses, e.g. drawing, but a lot of the time it is from silence that it derives. As far as experimenting goes, I have always been keen to discover further ways of enhancing the process, but I think so far the busiest time with these sorts of experiments was when I was working more closely with Johannes Bergmark and the Stockholm Surrealist group. Presently, writing is a fairly solitary exercise. I think writing/creative output does its best when it encourages a person to the same effort, for further discovery and development. However, I must point out that I am not against reworking and editing, and this also forms a big part of my lilfe in writing.”

18 J.B. Rehnstrom continued “My piece in Dublin : Ten Journeys, One Destination is called ‘A Silver-Toothed Grin : Four Seasons.’ It is a short story divided up into four separate narratives building to a complex whole.” The book is available at …

http://www.irishwritersexchange.com/index.html

* RUNAMOK PRESS : http://runamokpress.blogspot.com

* THE SHOp : http://www.theshop-poetry-magazine.ie

* THE SOUNDEYE FESTIVAL : http://www.soundeye.org

* Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin won the All-Ireland Poetry SLAM for 2012. In an e-mail to me dated 14 May 2012, responding to questions for this report, Séamus Barra wrote “spending time listening to REAL people outside of the academic centres — old fuckers in pubs, people with ideas that conflict with mine while travelling on the street (i started as a busker) but also spending time listening to equally REAL people in academic centres such as lecture halls, reading books srl. i do really believe that the writer isnt the true creator of a work, we are merely mediums through which that mad creative energy flows from an unknown source of influence, tobar gan tóin, and often pain — tis important to tweak our ability to be an effective medium, but the main stuff is what comes thru us from the cosmos / Dia — you cant force the writin progress, just live and fight and love and the subject matter will come by itself.”

Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin continued : “not many im a spoken word really — minority language, i want people to hear me even if they arent literate — im happy to perform to all animals, and do believe even if no one can understand, there is a deeper sense of natural universal connection with everything thru any expressed form.”

http://www.munsterlit.ie/Southword/swhome.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a410a6At5Ks http://www.facebook.com/sbosuilleabhain

19 * WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY PRESS have published a number of important books by Thomas Kinsella and Ciarán Carson. Carson has been a fine poet for many years, but with his recent works he has turned in more innovative directions for the exploration of life and thought.

http://wfupress.wfu.edu/irish.php

* Catherine Walsh is the author of Optic Verve : A Commentary, published in 2009 by Shearsman Books at Exeter, England; City West, published in 2005 by Shearsman; Pomepleat One, published in 2002 by hardPressed Poetry at Annacotty, County Limerick, Ireland; Idir Eatortha; And, Making Tents, published in 1996 by Invisible Books in London, England; Pitch, published in 1994 by Pig in Durham, England; and Short Stories, published in 1989 by North And South in Twickenham, England.

http://gofree.indigo.ie/~hpp/frame.html

* WILD HONEY PRESS : http://www.wildhoneypress.com

* WURM PRESS : http://www.wurmimapfel.net

( The Irish Diaspora )

* Gary Barwin is the author of Franzlations : the Imaginary Kafka Parables, published in 2011 by New Star in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; The Obvious Flap, published in 2011 by Book Thug in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; The Porcupinity of the Stars, published in 2010 by the Coach House Press in Toronto; Doctor Weep and Other Strange Teeth, published in 2004 by The Mercury Press in Toronto; and many other books. In an e-mail to me dated 28 April 2012, responding to questions for this report, Gary Barwin wrote “Interesting to think about what constitutes Irishness, and diaspora, and identity/identification. I think about this quite a bit. I grew up outside Belfast, the son of South African Jews, themselves

20 the children of Lithuanian Jews. And then we moved to Canada … So, how does ‘Irishness’ affect me, how has it affected my writing, my sense of place, land, language, otherness, memory? I think it has in many very significant ways.”

Then in an e-mail to me dated 30 April 2012, responding to questions for this report, Gary Barwin wrote “Writing for me is multidisciplinary. It encompasses the visual, the audible, the oral, the scribal, the improvised and the composed. I work in visual poetry, music, sound poetry, video, book creation, written poetry and fiction, and in forms ranging from the single letter to the novel. I imagine my writing as a microorganism without cell walls, or as whatever isn’t dark matter. And also, dark matter. I try to work without preconceptions about form, exploring what forms are necessary, while at the same time, exploring what is possible in a form.”

http://www.chbooks.com http://www.garybarwin.com http://www.apollinaires.com/store

* Mez Breeze — Mary Anne Breeze — an Internet artist, is an Irish Australian. In the 1990s she developed “mezangelle,” a poetic-artistic language. It is widely recognized as a central contribution to Codework, Code Poetry, and Internet Art. Indeed, in my opinion, not since the work of James Joyce has any one person so creatively explored layers upon layers of dimensional linguistic meaning as the writer/artist Mez Breeze. She is the author of Human Readable Messages, a 323-page book of Code Poetry, published in 2011 by Traumawien in Vienna, Austria.

As well as creating poetic literary texts using mezangelle, Mez Breeze also creates multi-disciplinary multimedia works online, and participates in online happenings that blur the old demarcations between on-line and off- line behaviour. In an e-mail to me dated 29 April 2012, responding to a number of questions for this report, Mez Breeze wrote “My polysemic language system termed mezangelle initially evolved from immersion in email exchanges, computer programming languages and chat-oriented software [ie y-talk, webchat, and irc]. To mezangelle means to take poetic phrases and alter them in such a way as to extend and enhance meaning beyond the predicted or the expected. It is similar to making “plain” text

21 hypertextual via the arrangement and expansion of words via the insertion of symbolic/actual computer code. Mezangelle attempts to rewrite traditional poetry conventions through layered meanings that are both structurally and symbolically embedded in each work. Mezangelle has at its core a social commentary function; it is largely reactive to [and evolves alongside] online information streams.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezangelle http://traumawien.at/bohumanreadablemessages.php http://www.lulu.com/shop/mez-breeze/human-readable- messages/paperback/product-18830666.html;jsessionid= 8C5B4B986AEA9EA0E0A6FB4CFC092BEA

* Mairéad Byrne is an Irish poet who emigrated to the United States in 1994. She earned a Ph.D. in English Literature from Purdue University in 2001 and teaches poetry at Rhode Island School of Design.

Mairéad Byrne is the author of The Best Of (What's Left Of) Heaven, a book published in 2010 by Publishing Genius in Baltimore, Maryland; Talk Poetry, a book published in 2007 by Miami University Press in Oxford, Ohio; The Russian Week, a broadside published in 2007 by State Of The Art Gallery in Ithaca, New York; Nelson & The Huruburu Bird, published in 2003 by Wild Honey Press in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland; and Joyce : — A Clew, published in 1981 by Bluett in Dublin, Ireland.

* Mark Leahy, an Irish emigrant living in England, is a writer, artist and curator operating among textual practices and performance. He works with the body as sensing and as affected, using language, models of perception, and objects of everyday use. Including spoken word, song, task-based actions, found and procedural modes of text generation, his performances address the male body as desired and as desiring, and the body itself as a site of inscription by others and by self.

Leahy is the author of a number of publications : hand in glove : sinister hand vested sable lozengy couped; as published in Open Letter, 14th series, Number 8; Negotiating the Social Bond of Poetics, as guest- edited by Nancy Gillespie and Peter Jaeger in Spring of 2012, ISSN 0048- 1939 on pages 74 through 82; Excerpt from Pursuing Pursuit (I am bound

22 to follow) with Jack, John, Rock and Hard, 2012; The ties that bind …, exhibition and installation, Exeter Phoenix, published by Library of Independent Exchange in January of 2012; and the little magnetic atoms turn and set themselves in orderly lines, as published in ‘odes’, Freaklung : nineerrors poetry zine, unpaginated, in June of 2010; Guaranteed Insurance, text to accompany online animation project by Mocksim, September 2009, at : http://www.mocksim.org/GI.htm, also published in tiktoc 6, unpaginated, in Summer 2010, ISSN 2040-0012; and Swatches : a sequence, published by Acts of Language, Dartington, England, in December of 2009, ISBN 978-0-9561844-3-6.

Also, Mark Leahy is the author of a number of performance-art scripts : muster page habit : flat-head self-tapping, presented as part of ‘Plinths’ at PW12, Performance Writing Weekend, at Arnolfini, Bristol, England, 5 May 2012; hand in glove : sinister hand vested sable lozengy couped, presented at Tempting Failure, curated by Thomas J. Bacon, at the ]performance space[ of Hackney Wick in London, England on 4 March 2012; Voice Recognition : A Play after Gertrude Stein, William Shakespeare, and Rolf Harris, presented as part of Electronic Voice Phenomena at the Bluecoat, Liverpool, England on 16 October 2011; and also at BLOP — Bristol Live Open Platform — at Arnolfini, Bristol on 25 February 2012; what remains and is to come, a collaboration with choreographers Katrina Brown and Rosanna Irvine, performed at Harberton Parish Hall, Devon, England on 16 December 2011; after Durer after Mantegna, installed text and image for Window Work Project, DxDx Studios, Regent Street, Plymouth, England, from 3 to 17 August 2011; figure and ground : Plymouth, a two-day durational performance as part of Performance Market, The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow, at Plymouth Arts Centre, 22 – 23 January 2010; glossing Speakers : bookmaking for amateurs (strikethrough), a performance presentation at Writing Encounters conference at York St. John University, York, England, in September 2008; and the little magnetic atoms turn and set themselves in orderly lines, a performance at Whippit Four, Elevator Gallery, Hackney Wick, in London, 1 August 2008; barbed gadlyngs, a durational performance and action at Live Art Falmouth, in Cornwall, 6 June 2008; and figure and ground, a durational performance and action, at Alytus Bienial Two, Alytus, Lithuania, in August 2007.

http://markleahy.net/information/publications http://markleahy.net/performance

23 http://www.mocksim.org/GI.htm

* Nicholas O’Brien is a writer, an artist, a curator, and a researcher focused on the ways in which nature continues to hold relevance in digital representation as well as the influence of language upon the development and use of network technology. His work has been published and exhibited internationally at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Xth Biennale de Lyon in France, the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, and at the Copenhagen Space in London, England. O'Brien has curated shows at 319 Scholes in Brooklyn, Kunsthalle New in Chicago, and The Future Gallery in Berlin. As a regular contributor to online publications Bad at Sports and ilikethisart.net his work has also been featured on ARTINFO, Art Fag City, The Creators Project, and Rhizome.

Nicholas O'Brien is a first generation American. His father, who is a writer himself, is from Wexford/Waterford and then also Monkstown in Dublin. In an e-mail to me dated 19 June 2012, Nicholas O'Brien wrote “I am very happy to notify you of the release of my Turbulence.org 2011 commission funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The work is entitled A Temporary Memorial Project for Jobbers' Canyon Built with ConAgra Products. It has been a piece that I have been working on and developing for over a year now, and I am so thrilled that it has all come together and is now online.”

http://turbulence.org/Works/jobberscanyon

A Temporary Memorial Project for Jobbers’ Canyon Built with ConAgra Products pays homage to lost architectural treasures. In 1989 ConAgra, the second largest agricultural distributor in the United States, began building its new corporate headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. In the process, twenty-four buildings, over six city blocks, were demolished. The district, known as Jobbers’ Canyon, was listed in the National Registry of Historic Places and is considered the largest lost site on record. Using preserved records and architectural drawings Nicholas O'Brien has “rebuilt” ten of the buildings, substituting the original construction materials with products distributed by ConAgra.

A Temporary Memorial Project for Jobbers’ Canyon Built with ConAgra

24 Products is a 2012 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence website. It was made possible with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

http://doubleunderscore.net http://turbulence.org/Works/jobberscanyon

* Sheila E. Murphy, who carries an Irish passport, and whose Ireland-born grandfather was a profound influence on the singing as well as the speaking cadence of her poetry, is the author of Continuations Two (with Douglas Barbour), published in 2012 by The University of Alberta Press; Noun That I've Been Watching, published in 2012 by White Sky Books; Toccatas In The Key Of D, published in 2010 by Blue Lion Books; Circumsanct, published in 2009 by Chalk Editions; Parsings, published in 2008 by the Arrum Press of Finland; The Case Of The Lost Objective Case, published in 2007 by Otoliths Press; Incessant Seeds, published in 2005 by the Pavement Saw Press; Proof Of Silhouettes, published in 2004 by Stride Press of England; Concentricity, published in 2004 by the Pleasure Boat Studio; and many other books.

http://msupress.msu.edu/bookTemplate.php?bookID=4326 http://library.osu.edu/finding-aids/rarebooks/murphy.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy

In an e-mail to me dated 27 April 2012, responding to questions for this report, Sheila E. Murphy wrote “First there was the metronome, with uniform gaps between the tones. Then the binary trap of this, not this in mathematics. Later, the infinitessimal difference between rich absence, and space filled with presence, barely perciptible, until each turns friend. Finally, those of us who emit sound or recover from imposed silence may reveal a preference for one or the other. They become the same.”

Many years ago, William Butler Yeats was counted up as one among the Modernists — even though he did not experiment greatly with structure, form, etc. Yeats, however, was reluctant to move too far away from the human voice, or the music of the speaking voice. Thus, even when he struggled with “difficult” or “complex” ideas there was an impression (from the music of the voice alone) that he was accessible in

25 his inaccessibility.

Sheila E. Murphy does not hesitate to plunge into one wild experiment after another with content and form and structure, etc. However, like Yeats, and almost always, she expresses herself through her writings in the music of the speaking voice, the human voice. Thus, even when she is inaccessible she does not seem to be so.

( The future ? )

^ > : ^ > : ^ > : ^ > : ^ > : ^ > : ^ > :

( Yes, the future ! )

Innovation in Ireland will be creative, or it will not be at all !!!

Beannacht,

Séamas Cain http://alazanto.org/seamascain http://www.saorsainn.net

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Copyright © 2012 by Séamas Cain and ICIS

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