Publishing

Interesting piece here from ÙK online publication, 3:AM Magazine, a while ago about self publishing.

Spring Courses at the Irish Writers' Centre

The Irish Writers' Centre has announced details of its workshops and courses for the new year. I will be giving a creative writing workshop for beginners over ten weeks from 21st January. There are also courses available in poetry, fiction and drama. Full details are available from the Irish Writers' Centre.

Cyphers Magazine # 68 & Website

The new issue of Cyphers, in which I'm happy to be making up the numbers, was launched recently in Dublin at the Ranelagh Arts Centre, Dublin 6 by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanaín and Macdara Woods. They also launched a new website for the magazine, http://www.cyphers.ie/.

Since the time of Galileo people have known.....

In Ireland, however, a group of opportunists can still convince thousands of people to stand in a field and stare at the sun in the hope of seeing a woman dance in the sky. There's a report from the Guardian back in November here and the piece from The Irish Times today is here. You just know someone is making money out of it.

And let's not get started on the magic tree stump a few months ago.

Salmon Poetry Web Site Revamped

Salmon Poetry's site has been overhauled and now has more links to authors work, readings and clips. It's at the same place and is, as ever, worth checking out.

Wurmfest in Dublin

The people at Wurm im Apfel are organising a new poetry festival in Dublin. Their web site is http://www.wurmfest.com/ and has all the details so no point in repeating them here. Click the link.

California

I got back to Dublin last Tuesday from California and now that I've rested up, I want to say thanks to all the people who helped make it such a good trip. So, Doug and Rafael thanks for organising the reading at Stories Bookstore in Hollywood. Thanks to all the people who helped organise, do the paperwork or just attended the reading in Loyola Marymount University and especially to John Meneghan for doing such a good job setting it up.

One of the highlights of my time in California was sitting in on Maria Garcia Teutsch's class at Hartnell College in Salinas. The students were great and I really enjoyed my time there. The reading afterwards was good as well. The next stop was Santa Cruz where, despite some initial confusion, the Felix Kulpa Gallery (thanks to Robbie for staying open and Jim for rustling up a crowd from somewhere), hosted a reading among the nudes and the guitars. In case anyone should find themselves with time to kill in Santa Cruz, there's a great little record shop - Streetlight Records, I think - on the corner of Elm Street just up from the Felix Kulpa. While there, I also got to meet JP Dancing Bear, who is also published by Salmon Poetry. A fine poet and a gentleman. But then as Jessie at Salmon will tell you, she only publishes good people. Thanks to Bear for recording the reading at the Felix Kulpa.

The Henry Miller Library in Big Sur was the final stop on the mini tour of SoCal & NoCal. The drive up to Big Sur is grand sweeping beautiful scenery. The Henry Miller Library is famous in those parts and they put on a great launch party for the literary journal Ping Pong and staged a reading for Kim Addonizio and myself. Magnus from Sweden with his after dinner guitar even made me like a Fleet Foxes song and other compositions I could hardly stand before. Fleet Foxes fans said they liked him better than they did the Fleet Fox. He's a good guy and say hello to him if you ever go up there. Especially if you're from Sweden.

The Library has the best book shop you're ever likely to find in a cabin, tucked away in the woods, halfway up a mountain. Far better than Borders. And Eric, who works in the book shop, made me laugh with the story of how as a nice Californian kid on holiday in Ireland, he got dragged to "a meat market called Copperface Jacks" by some native ladies. Eric, nearly every guy in Dublin has been dragged either in or out of that place at least once (and if they were lucky it was only once). You could say you had a unique cultural experience. Kind of like the Irish equivalent of eating a sheep's eyeball.

A great deal of gratitude also to Mr. Joel "Soul Junky" Whitcomb. I still can't believe how right you were about that Pabst beer. The Newcastle Brown was a far bettter choice. Give it a few months, all the Hollywood hipsters will be hanging out with their bottles of Newkie Brown, playing a few legs of darts and going topless at all sporting events no matter what the weather.

Thank you to the Teutsch family (Thorsten, Maria, River and the dog) for putting up with me in Santa Cruz. I hope River believes me when I say that I honestly do not know any swear words in Irish. When they start cussing on TG4 I'll let him know. Thanks also to Kim and Elizabeth for the lift to Monterrey.

Last but not least, my thanks to Culture Ireland for their support without which the whole endeavour would have been a lot more difficult.

So there it was, a good trip and a great many open interesting people along the way. If anyone reading this attended one of the talks or readings, I hope you enjoyed it, thanks for coming and I hope we'll get the chance to do it again sometime. Adios amigos.