Sunday 16th: Donald Hall on what he has learned from a lifetime of poetry readings.
Monday 17th: Theo Dorgan and the World Irish Community - with a message to the extended Irish community for the holiday season:
Tuesday 18th: Umit Singh Dhuga announced his policy on FB courtesy for The Battersea Review:
From The Battersea Review:
Please forgive me, as publisher and
managing editor, to note (as though such a simple thing should need noting)
that The Battersea Review neither engages in nor has much tolerance for myopia
of any sort: if any writer out there feels resentment, then one ought to
consider one's reasons intrinsic not extrinsic. That is my polite manner of
imploring putative writers to visit a therapist before visiting and sullying
the Facebook walls of others. Berate me all you wish, please, which I say with
no degree of flippancy; but do not please turn your not quite risible derision nor
acrimony upon my contributors. Now, why should I make such a statement as this?
English phlegm customarily brings me a shrug of the shoulders and silence.
However. Recent slanders against several of our authors worry me. I have put my
money where my mouth is, to be perfectly blunt, in offering a magazine which
costs my readers not one penny. The late Frederick Morgan of The Hudson Review,
where I wrote a quarterly Music Chronical for several years, did well to teach
me the value of loyalty and editorial honour. (If words such as loyalty and
honour catalyse your allergens, then please think back on so simple a word as
manners.) We at TBR strive to offer--again, gratis--the best poetry and the
best critical prose which we can gather. Please do not abuse the gratis
platform which I have hoped to offer as a means for unfettered ad hominem
attacks. If you have something denigrating to say about our rosters, our works,
our identity, what have you--please say so to me, and do not deface the
faceboook walls and email boxes of contributors with vitriol. If your character
has proclivity toward abuse, then by all means hurl your abuse toward me. Leave
alone the generous writers who have made my vision for this magazine possible:
viz., a vision which entails after my overhead no payment from readers and no
payment for writers. Please refrain from abusing such a system as this which
deemphasises the commodification of letters, broadly construed. And again,
please do feel free to litter my mailbox with abuse: but leave alone the
thoughtful writers who have helped me to actualise the idea of a literary
quarterly which operates on trust, honour, and intelligent respect. If those
terms strike you as unfashionable, then you have only me to blame. It is
nonsense to think that we are entering the year 2013 and I am finding
anti-Semitic sputterings so wantonly scattered.
Sincerely, USD
Wednesday 19th: A sample of one of the many interesting ezines functioning today:
Thursday 20th: John W. Sexton opened a debate on the role of Poetry Ireland Review - which we hope will eventually provide more light than heat.
John W. Sexton:
As a reader and subscriber to Poetry
Ireland Review I find that in all good conscience I cannot possibly promote it.
The current issue is far too full of reprints and this is a trend continued by
the current editor since his tenure began. As a poet who spends the little he
has on new collections and journals I simply do not appreciate opening a new
issue of a journal to discover poetry I have already seen and own. Reprinting
poetry is the remit of the anthologies and is not the duty of a so-called
“journal of record”. The duty of a journal of record is to record the poetries
and approaches currently unpublished.
I am an avid reader of poetry in
translation, but I make the same demands of it as I would of poetry in my first
language. There are far too many pages of translated drivel in this issue. It
takes space away from Irish poets who need this journal as a recording agency
of the work currently done in Irish poetry. Many of the translations here do
not earn their place.
The work in this current issue, sadly,
is all of one register and fairly poor. It does not represent the multiplicity
of approaches to poetry currently undertaken in this island. I know this
because I’m reading widely in Irish poetry.
Many Irish poets, myself included, are
receiving rejections to our submissions more or less on the same day. If I
would to be cynical I’d say this is the “office day”. I have become cynical.
The truth is, and this is irrefutable on the obvious evidence of the current
editor’s four issues, that our submissions cannot possibly compete for space
with reprints and already commissioned work. If there is no space for our work
then do the honourable thing and close the submissions. You must get your house
in order. Poetry Ireland Review does not represent the work carried out in
poetry in this island. Do not think for one moment that it does. And, lest I am
accused of being a poor poet, other Irish journals of quality have no problem
taking my work, no matter how left-field I may currently be.
My subscription runs out with this
issue. I will be renewing it sometime in the New Year because I believe in
supporting my craft with my meagre pocket. But I sincerely hope this journal
opens up and widens its remit. If not, it will choke Irish poetry and render it
irrelevant. Most of the current issue is irrelevant.
Friday 21st: Neil Patrick Doherty sent us information on this new translation of A Long Day's Evening by Turkish Modernist, Bilge Karasu. 'This remarkable book considers agonizing internal struggles of faith among eighth-century Byzantine monks through the refracted, internalized prose of Joyce and Proust, giving them startlingly raw existential urgency.'
With an introduction and excerpt from the novel.
Saturday 22nd: Poet John Ashberry: reading some of his work:
Sunday 23rd: The poet Linda Ibbotson sent us this:
