OK – you’ve converted me. Although it’s not my usual – I’ll have to go see this now… 🙂
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Congratulations on the ‘modest bow’ for both last year and this year, Niall.
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.
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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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…
Frances Macaulay Forde © 2001
*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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Happy 100th Birthday to Dame Vera Lynn: ‘I JUST WANTED TO DO MY BIT.’
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.
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Wonderful writer, interesting man. Been a Norm fan for quite a while now…
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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Wonderful, stirring stuff!
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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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.
Frances Macaulay Forde © 2011
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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Loved this! Thanks.
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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And now, for something completely different…
Jonathan Adams (right) with crew on the set of Rough Stuff.
Director Jonathan Adams joins Cinema Australia to discuss his new film, Rough Stuff.
Interview by Matthew Eeles
This is the most fun I’ve had watching an Australian adventure film in years. Was it just as fun to shoot?
Thats a fantastic thing to hear. I suppose shooting a movie is fun in the way that running a marathon is fun, or maybe climbing Mount Everest or something. Its exhausting and it pushes you far beyond your comfort zone. But its also thrilling and enormously gratifying. I look back on the shoot and I kind of smile about the sheer swashbuckling nature of it, even though I know at the time it was really just like climbing a…
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Thanks for this, Niall. I’ll be looking out…
Some might think it a bit of stretch to include a film on a Canadian topic in the Begorrathon, but Aisling Walsh’s Maudie is an Irish-Canadian co-production, and much of the talent behind the camera is from Ireland.
The film tells the true story of folk artist Maud Lewis, brilliantly played by Sally Hawkins, and her fish peddler husband, Everett (a grunting Ethan Hawke).
Maudie made its Irish premiere last month at the Audi Dublin Film Festival. It will go on general release later this year, and when it does, be sure to see it, and bring tissues.
My Film Ireland review of the film is here.
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