Begorrathon 2017: Go Raibh Maith Agaibh agus Slán!

April 2, 2017 by Frances Macaulay Forde

There goes the next couple of hours. 🙂

And just like that … the Begorrathon is over for another year

Thank you to all the bloggers who took part. Cathy and I had a grand old time reading all the wonderful posts.

ireland-month-17

With over 100 posts on everything from James Joyce to Glenn Patterson, Elizabeth Bowen to Molly Keane, and Ireland’s patron saint, Patrick to Ireland’s other patron saint, Van Morrison, there was something for everyone.

Here are links to all the participant blogs (apologies if I missed any by mistake)

The Good People- Hannah Kent

https://bookgeeksanonymous.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/book-review-pygmalion/

https://fictionophile.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/series-i-started-that-i-would-love-to-finish-part-4-erin-hart/

A visit to Yeats Country

Thursday Quotables – The Ghost of the Rath

Begorrathon 2017: A Date for Mad Mary

What Richard Did

https://shereadsnovels.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/the-good-people-by-hannah-kent/

https://efsunland.com/2017/03/04/review-gullivers-travels/

https://fictionophile.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/gracelin-omalley-by-ann-moore/

https://fictionophile.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/shadows-on-our-skin-by-jennifer-johnston/

https://fictionophile.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/little-girl-lost-by-brian-mcgilloway/

‘The Maker of Swans’ by Paraic O’Donnell

#IrishWritersWed ‘Sam Blake’s Writing Places’ @samblakebooks

http://wellreadpiratequeen.blogspot.ie/2017/03/erin-harts-haunted-ground.html

Archive Reviews: Tana French

Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Begorrathon 2017: Grattan and Me

Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent

Review: Rockadoon…

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Picture Book-Storybook Hybrid? YES, Please!

March 31, 2017 by Frances Macaulay Forde

Thanks for this…

WRITERS' RUMPUS

You say you love picture books, but you’re ready to venture into chapter books? Look no further! Princess Cora and the Crocodile, a picture book-storybook hybrid, just arrived and features the best of both worlds. The reader will not be disappointed by the Newbery/Caldecott winning pair of Laura Amy Schlitz and Brian Floca.

cora

My first grade students love to read and find new books. As with every class, some children are revved up more easily than others. I chose to read Princess Cora and the Crocodile aloud to my students, as I would with any picture book. Knowing that this story was structured in chapters, I was pleasantly surprised when one particular student begged for more upon each stopping place. Beyond that, he requested it at every transition.

“Are you going to read more of that crocodile book now?”

He couldn’t get enough! In fact, when I promised him…

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The Lego Batman Movie

March 29, 2017 by Frances Macaulay Forde

OK – you’ve converted me. Although it’s not my usual – I’ll have to go see this now… 🙂

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Begorrathon 2017: Week Four

March 27, 2017 by Frances Macaulay Forde

Congratulations on the ‘modest bow’ for both last year and this year, Niall.

The Fluff Is Raging

So here we, round the bend and the final leg, the finish line in sight.

With only a few days left in March, it’s time to get those Reading Ireland posts in.

Some housekeeping announcements:

The Hennessy Literary Awards take place tomorrow evening in Dublin. Congratulations and best of luck to all the shortlisted writers, including friend of the Begorrathon, Clare O’Dea. I attended last year’s ceremony as I was on the shortlist [modest bow] and it’s a lovely evening.

I had planned to go this year as well, but alas I won’t be attending as my invitation appears to have been lost in the post.

IMG_20170326_150240

The lovely people at Banshee are launching their new issue later this week in Dublin. It just so happens I have a story in it [another modest bow] and the issue, which also features work by Stephanie Conn,

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Coots

March 25, 2017 by Frances Macaulay Forde

Coots

Lakeside, I watch

the Coots bouncing

on top of the water.

They throw their heads

with intention and abandon.

Plunging – immersing themselves.

I want to bounce,

immerse myself.

Plunge into you…

*Coots: small black waterbird related to Moorhens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coot

(1st Pub. ‘Hidden Capacity ~ a poet’s journey’, Ireland, 2003.)

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Dame Vera Lynn – 100 today.

March 20, 2017 by Frances Macaulay Forde

Happy 100th Birthday to Dame Vera Lynn: ‘I JUST WANTED TO DO MY BIT.’

Dame Vera Lynn turns 100 and opens up on singing during the Battle of Britain and beating Ed Sheeran to No. 1

Forces’ sweetheart Dame Vera reflects on her time singing for troops and the poignancy of her hit ‘We’ll Meet Again’ as she celebrates landmark birthday.

EXCLUSIVE By Simon Cosyns 20th March 2017, 12:25 am

#WWIISweetheart #BlueBirdsOver #WhiteCliffsOfDover

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Shelf Awareness — Norman Jorgensen

March 20, 2017 by Frances Macaulay Forde

Wonderful writer, interesting man. Been a Norm fan for quite a while now…

MAUREEN EPPEN -- WRITER

Children’s author Norman Jorgensen has been writing stories since he was in primary school, and his latest story, The Smuggler’s Curse (Fremantle Press), details the rollicking adventures of young Red Read, whose mother “sells him to an infamous smuggler, plying his trade off the north-west coast of Australia in the closing days of the 19th century”.

Norman’s first picture book, In Flanders Fields (with illustrations by Brian Harrison-Lever), set in World War One, tells of a homesick young soldier who risks his life to rescue a robin caught in the barbed wire of no man’s land. In Flanders Fields won the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Picture Book of the Year Award in 2003 — the first of many awards for Norman. He has since written a dozen books for children and young people.

Born in Broome, in Western Australia’s tropical north, he now lives in a…

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Begorrathon 2017: My Ireland …

March 20, 2017 by Frances Macaulay Forde

Wonderful, stirring stuff!

The Fluff Is Raging

Stephen James Smith

Poet Stephen James Smith was commissioned by the St Patrick’s Festival Festival to write a poem in response to the theme of this year’s festival.

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“Mr Bojangles”

March 16, 2017 by Frances Macaulay Forde

MR BOJANGLES

Like Mr Bo…

my heart jangles

when your smile

misses your eyes.

The face of a clown

soft shoe shuffling

through my soul.

White hands clasped.

The generous frill

framing your mask,

flutters like a wing

across the circus tent

of my broken heart.

Funny shoes walk strong,

confidently skirting around

landmines of feeling

clothed in bright colours.

Poem written to the artwork of Jessica McCallum for her exhibition ‘All The Pretty Ones Are…” State Theatre Centre, Perth, West. Australia. 2011.

#JessicaMcCallum #MrBojangles #Poetry

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Christy Moore, Jack B Yeats – Posts for St Patrick 2

March 15, 2017 by Frances Macaulay Forde

Loved this! Thanks.

The Immortal Jukebox

The Home Place.

Never more real and vivid than when recollected in the imagination.

We are our memories.

And, our memories, particularly those which carry the most emotional charge, are constantly being selected, edited and recast.

The stream of memory is never stilled.

The genesis of a song, a poem, a story or a painting begins in an insistent whisper from the memory.

A whisper which cannot be ignored.

Such a whisper was heard in the 1930s by Jack McAuliffe from Lixnaw in County Kerry as he sat sat in a cottage near Dooneen Point.

In response he wrote a poem that became the ballad, ‘The Cliffs of Dooneen’.

The key duty of an creative artist is to closely attend to those whispers and make them real in words on the page, notes in the air or brush marks on the canvas.

And, the truth of the song or the…

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