March 17, 2021 at 10:29 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Memoirs, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, COVID Reading, Ireland, memories, Northern Ireland, poetry, Tyrone Guthrie Centre
Because it is Saint Patrick’s Day, the poet is from NI: Csilla Toldy came over from Hungary, when there was still a Wall. We met in 2014, at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig. The picture is of the lake.
Csilla was kind enough to allow me to post the whole poem. It’s from her collection Red Roots – Orange Sky (Belfast: Lapwing Publications, 2013)
Love in Paris
Arriving late at the wrong address
a stranger in the street,
Ali, offered her a bed. He lovingly
treated her wounded knee —
that she had fallen on
when searching the sky for the guiding star
at the green borders to Italy.
Her nerves frazzled
by the long march through the Alps
on pills of caffeine and amphetamine,
taken by the echoes of her throbbing heart
when face-searched
and feeling so lucky for not looking like any
one of the Red Brigade.
So grateful for a clean sheet
after a week in ditches with crows and crickets,
yet fearing horror dreams of her misconceptions
she fell into a black hole
to be woken up by sunlight
glinting on a tray of golden croissants
brought up by Ali.
Recently, Csilla has been focusing on films.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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February 21, 2020 at 1:43 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Paris, poetry, Tyrone Guthrie Centre
Self met Csilla at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, which has introduced her to so many wonderful voices.
From the collection Red Roots — Orange Sky (Belfast: Lapwing Publications, 2013)
A FRAGMENT
In Parc de Luxembourg,
hiding under fallen leaves —
A fountain — messenger
from a sea of amber — Verdigris.
Its well-stone, formerly
Neptune’s set of teeth, now
water-pouring standstill
tossing threat for dragons.
In its far angle a more
Humanoid structure,
a spun-into-form world-element.
It longs, broods and hovers —
above all that is left.
Csilla Toldy was born in Hungary. She escaped from the socialist bloc through the green borders at the age of eighteen in 1981. She now lives in northern Ireland.
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April 6, 2019 at 4:38 pm (Books, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Northern Ireland, novel, politics, reading lists, Saturday
As for da, I remember third brother’s urgency and my own in asking for him, in pleading for him to be there, to be a man among men, doing normal men things, as he did manage to do years later when searching with the others for Somebody McSomebody’s brother’s head.
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April 6, 2019 at 4:03 pm (Books, Conversations, Publishers, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Chinese writers, literary awards, Northern Ireland, novel, poetry, Saturday
Mammy! The heads! They took the heads! Where are the heads? Where’s Lassie, mammy? Where’s daddy? Have the brothers found Lassie? Where’s daddy? Where’s Lassie?
This novel, which won the Man Booker, fully deserved to win.
Graywolf Press has now given self two books that absolutely shattered her: this one, and the translation of Liu Xia’s poetry collection, Empty Chairs.
That is all.
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April 1, 2019 at 6:59 pm (Books, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Mondays, Northern Ireland, novel, politics, reading lists
Annaghmakerrig: November, 2018
The narrator, 18, runs. The milkman starts following her on her runs. He is much older, and seems to know her schedule: he knows where she reports to work, he knows that she likes to read. During one of their encounters, a bush to the narrator’s left emits a distinct “click.” The milkman then abruptly walks off.
Hey hey hey, Anna Burns: you are brilliant.
He doesn’t touch her, doesn’t address anything overtly sexual to her, but for a whole week, she doesn’t run. When she starts again, she asks her “third brother-in-law” to accompany her:
Should he take exception to brother-in-law accompanying me, he’d encounter not only the opprobium of the entire local community, but his reputation in it as one of our highranking, prestigious dissidents would plummet to the point where he’d be put outside any and all safe houses, into the path of any and of all passing military patrol vehicles, exactly as if he wasn’t one of our major influential heroes, but instead just some enemy state policeman, some enemy soldier from across the water, or even one of the enemy state-defending paramilitaries from over the way.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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October 28, 2018 at 5:48 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Links, plans, Recommended, Sayings, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, discoveries, Northern Ireland, poetry, Tyrone Guthrie Centre
Self really likes that the cottage is full of poetry books. Every time she comes, she discovers someone new.
She found a book called Landscape of Self (Belfast: Lapwing Publications, 2015) by Aine MacAodha.
Here’s the first half of a poem called
To My Children When I’m Gone
Some mountains are higher than others
Winter can cause frost bite.
Without a bit of darkness
We may not appreciate the light afterwards.
Remember the good in the world
The take your breath smiles
The smile from a stranger in a strange place
The beauty in a daisy chain
The elegance in a buttercup
The wonder of a webbing spider
The warmth of a heart
When another’s fiery arrow hits it
Love and goodness costs nothing
Hatred causes illness
Treat the nature around you with respect
Treat your spirit with kindness others too
Manners are easily carried.
Aine MacAodha kindly agreed to an interview, so WATCH THIS SPACE.
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October 15, 2018 at 8:05 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Publishers, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: causes, environment, Mondays, Northern Ireland, poetry
First Tree: Great Beech, Fagus Sylvatica, Non native, Seeded around 1860
Writer: Olive Broderick
- There is no going back. She is so deeply rooted here it’s hard to tell her from Oak and Ash in this delayed-spring grove.
The Trees of Kilbroney Park is a publication of Light 2000. A copy was mailed to self in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig by her friend, poet Csilla Toldy, who edited the book.
Stay tuned.
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December 13, 2017 at 10:03 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Publishers, Recommended, short story collections, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: Dublin, Ireland, mysteries, Northern Ireland, novel, reading lists, short story collections, Tana French
Self is closing out 2017 with Tana French, and she is also reading Kelly Creighton’s Bank Hurricane Holiday, a super short story collection set in Northern Ireland.
Place is everything in the writing of these two women. She isn’t finished yet with Creighton’s book (just out from Doire Press) but she finished her first Tana French, earlier today: Broken Harbor. And she’s just started reading The Trespasser.
She’s very late in coming to Tana French, but why. She’s been coming to Ireland for years, if she’d had enough sense, she would have read Ms. French years ago.
Self loves mysteries. She especially loves the mysteries of: Henning Mankell, Morag Joss (only one book), Ruth Rendell, and Karin Fossum.
She thinks her love of mysteries in foreign landscapes began with Peter Hoeg’s mesmerizing Smilla’s Sense of Snow. (And now she writes dystopian fantasy set in snowy landscapes, what a coincidence)
p. 4, The Trespasser:
- Murder works out of the grounds of Dublin Castle, smack in the heart of town, but our building is tucked away a few corners from the fancy stuff the tourists come to see, and our walls are thick; even the early morning traffic out on Dame Street only makes it through to us as a soft, undemanding hum.
Who doesn’t know Dublin Castle. Tourist mecca. Now, in her mind, Dublin Castle is the home of the Dublin Murder Squad. Love.
On to p. 5.
Stay tuned.
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January 29, 2017 at 6:09 pm (destinations, Links, Places, postaday, Sundays, Traveling)
Tags: British authors, fantasy, London, Northern Ireland, postaday, postaweek, Rostrevor, Wordpress
For this challenge, show us something . . . put to new use.
— Krista, The Daily Post
Shoreditch, London: Jack the Ripper was here!
Welcome to Narnia: Rostrevor, Northern Ireland
Twigs Am I: On the Narnia Trail in Rostrevor, Northern Ireland
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 18, 2016 at 9:56 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Conversations, postaday, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, destinations, discoveries, Fridays, Irish writers, memories, Northern Ireland, postaday, postaweek, Rostrevor, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Wordpress
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is DANCE.
And it just so happens that self was having a conversation with a member of her writer’s group, about Diary of a Wimpy Kid and other childhood classics, which led her to remember:
Rostrevor, July 2015.
She was a guest of Csilla Toldy, a poet she met in Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig. On her first day in Rostrevor, Csilla took self walking along The Narnia Trail, which led through a magical wood. At intervals along the trail were these strange twig creatures, each caught in the middle of doing a silent dance:
Aren’t they fabulous?
C. S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He would have loved this trail.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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