In addition to the publication of my piece IF.WHAT. in the latest anthology from The Aleph, some of the contributors, myself included, recorded short extracts of our work, which was broadcast on No Bounds Radio shortly before Christmas.
You can listen to the show here
I’ve yet to see it in the flesh, though I can’t wait to do so, but I’ve a piece IF.WHAT. in the latest anthology from the people at The Aleph
The anthology, with all the wonderful contributors as listed in the image of the cover, is available to pre-order here:
https://thealeph.limitedrun.com/products/748637
The anthology will be printed in a very limited run, so the sooner you place your order the better….
I was delighted to learn I’ve been longlisted for the An Post writing.ie Short Story of the Year Award 2023
While I’m not looking past the longlist, it’s always hugely pleasing to have your work recognised in any way at all.
My short piece “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” is now available on The Stinging Fly website:
Enjoy……
I was extremely proud to be asked to contribute to this anthology.
“Vigilantia: what happens when artists and writers pay attention to Mogwai”, published by Chroma Editions.
Having loved the music of Mogwai for many, many years, this was a project I was extremely eager to be involved in, and my piece “Hugh Dallas” is now included, alongside some utterly brilliant work by other writers and artists.
Everyone participating did so free of charge, and all profits from the anthology will go to the Glasgow refugee charity Refuweegee.
Available to order here:
A thousand is not a large number.
A thousand steps didn’t get me very far from where I started today. How many thousand steps have brought me to this park, not many at all.
If I picked a thousand blades of grass from the lawn in front of me no one would even know.
If I cut a thousand leaves from the trees in front of me now, here in the full flush of summer, it would barely be noticeable.
A thousand breaths are very few, on average it takes a little over an hour to do that each day, but a thousand days ago she took her last.
If I picked a thousand pebbles from the gravel path in front of me it wouldn’t make a single bit of a difference. I could walk out of this park now with a bag of stones and no one would stop me.
Did I say a thousand words today, I doubt it, I doubt it very much.
A thousand words is no story at all. If I write a thousand words I have barely started, I have scarcely cleared my throat.
A thousand blue skies hang above me.
If I travel a thousand kilometres straight up, I have hardly travelled anywhere at all.
She had a thousand smiles, but I wear two of them on me today.
A thousand lines is just beginning.
A thousand lines is a punishment for a child.
A thousand lines is a nothing penance.
A thousand litres of water are pumped through the fountain in no time at all.
A thousand litres is a cube measuring one metre by one metre by one metre, in the grand scheme of things it is barely a drop.
A thousand thoughts a day, but she is always among them.
How long did it take me to pass a thousand people today, not very long.
Are there a thousand people in this park now, possibly not. But by the end of the day how many will have passed through its gates?
A thousand benches are occupied today. A thousand places to sit in the sunshine.
How many thousands of kilometres have people travelled to be here today, how far have they come, and why?
If I had taken a thousand of the cancer cells that killed her, would it have made any difference at all?
I can blink approximately a thousand times an hour. Yet a thousand days ago she closed her eyes for the last time.
How many thousands of kilometres did she travel in her short life, how many more should have lain out in front of her?
If money could have fixed everything, how many thousands of Euros extra would it have taken, and ultimately how little would it have cost, to cure her?
If there were pictures of our ancestors from a thousand years ago, wouldn’t we recognise them, doesn’t little change in that time?
On average more than a thousand people die in the world every ten minutes, so many lives ending. In a world of billions these deaths are barely noticeable, until they are the most important deaths of all.
If I held a thousand of her cancer cells in my hand, could I even see them, would I even know?
A thousand nerve endings cover a thousandth of the surface of your lips. When we last kissed a thousand nerve endings covered barely anything.
A thousand sunny days like today. I know she preferred the turning colours of autumn, but she would have loved today.
A thousand regrets.
A thousand calories is a single meal, just one. What was the last meal we shared?
A thousand beats per minute sounds like an alarm clock, initially, but becomes strangely relaxing and meditative after only a few minutes, like a drone.
If I took a thousand of her cancer cells and spread them on a piece of bread and ate them, would I taste anything, anything at all?
Where I sit now in this park, my home is less than a thousand metres away as the crow flies.
Two men are talking about football as they pass, more than a thousand goals were scored in the English Premier League last season, yet it now feels largely forgettable, and everything resets to zero and begins again in a matter of weeks.
I could pick a thousand daisies from the grass, no one would notice.
I could rip the petals off a thousand flowers. It would achieve nothing.
If I took a thousand bricks from the buildings surrounding the park how many would collapse around me? It would do nothing to have helped her I know, I know, but.
A thousand days is nothing.
It takes a little over three hours for a heart to pump a thousand litres of blood. You just sit around and it happens. A thousand days ago her little heart could do no more.
Would a thousand extra tests involving any of the thousands of prospective treatments or drugs out there have achieved anything in time to help her?
A thousand seconds is a little over a quarter of an hour. A thousand seconds ago I was still in this park.
A thousand minutes is over sixteen hours. A thousand minutes ago I was doing very little, sitting at home, reading a book.
A thousand hours is over forty-one days. A thousand hours ago I was wishing my godson a happy birthday.
A thousand days. I know exactly how long that is. I know exactly when a thousand days ago was. I know exactly what I was doing a thousand days ago. A thousand days ago I was waiting for a message, I was waiting for a call, an email, I was waiting for anything from her to tell me how she was feeling, to tell me how much pain she was in, to tell me she was still alive. A thousand days ago I heard nothing.
A thousand days is nothing.
[Note: in case anyone is wondering, there are no arrangements to publish this book at this time]
First, some context.
In the latter months of 2020 I was driven to write something, particularly, to describe a moment. In this case a short period of time spent sitting outside a cottage on a summer evening with someone who meant everything to me. In and of itself there was little particularly noteworthy about that moment. Yes, we were together, and yes, given the pandemic, moments like this were rare, and with no end in sight could have remained rarer still.
No, apart from the simple enjoyment of that moment, and being in her company, the most important factor was that, within a little over three weeks of that evening, she would be dead from, then undiagnosed, Ovarian Cancer.
Whatever the loss of her has done to me as a person, it has completely overwhelmed my writing (everything I’ve written since then can attest to that).
Having described a simple moment together that evening I found myself driven to return to it. So, once per week for a little over a year afterwards, I sat down and described that moment outside the cottage, and whatever else came to mind as I was writing. My only real criteria, my only Oulipo-esque constraint if you will, was that I never re-read any of the previous descriptions. I left myself open to the moment, just sat, typed, and went through the moment again. Upon completion the only real alterations I made to the text were to add footnotes (some of which are attached to this extract).
I became interested to see what would happen. Would, after a year, my memory have altered, would my thoughts have changed, would I have achieved “closure”. Well, my experience was that none of these things happened. Apart from slight variations in my memory (some small details I’m sure changing from the earlier to the later entries), I felt the same. I also felt that continuing would change nothing, even if I were to continue to today.
I have offered the work as a meditation, in a sense I suppose that is what I was doing, repeating a moment the way someone meditating might repeat a mantra. I have also, elsewhere, called the work a keen, or a drone (possibly it being no coincidence that since September 2020, my interest in what is often described as ‘drone music’ has greatly increased). In writing I found myself in that moment in the same way I have found myself in other memories of that time.
I’m reminded constantly, when considering this work, of the lines from Chris Marker’s La Jetée…
With what I can only describe as an act of writer’s ego I put these pieces together and called them a book. Having no plot, as such, no narrative, no progression, or no real resolution, it may not really count as a book at all, but it is what it is. I have tried submitting it to a few places, with no success, and may ultimately resort to self-publishing in some form (a future more likely to await all my longer works I begin to suspect).
But, in the meantime, the good people at Osmosis Press have been very kind to publish an extract on their website:
And, as for the title, [Untitled] wasn’t chosen as some sort of holding text, maybe, in a sense, because this is a non-book it deserves a non-book title, though I also felt an affinity with this, the last track from The Cure’s 1989 album, Disintegration:
I recorded a short piece, which I called “Tensile Testing”, and which I was very happy to hear broadcast on RTE Radio 1 last night on the Keywords show.
The show is now available to listen to online here;
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22203769/
It’s also available as a podcast here;
https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/22203769-threads/
If you can, please listen to the other shows in the series too.
It may not look like it, if looking at my most recent posts, but it really is rare for me to have anything published (certainly in relation to the number of submissions I make). But, like busses, you wait long enough and a line of them show up all at once.
I’ve been a huge fan of gorse since the first issue, and consider it one of my greatest accomplishments to have been published in it before, something I now get to add to with the publication of my short story “Butterfly” in the latest issue (#11).
The current issue is presented as a tête-bêche, with two covers (as above), one representing North, one South, aligning with the consideration of borders being the theme of the issue (far better explained via the link below).
Anyone familiar with gorse will know it’s a worthwhile read, and I encourage anyone who can to get their hands on a copy.
I’ve never thought of myself as an essayist. When this was accepted, I made the comment to someone that it was my first attempt at an essay proper since my Leaving Certificate (not today or yesterday…), essays, or more strictly, academic essays, never really forming a large part of a civil engineering degree.
I’ve read many essays, and essay collections over the years, admiring the learning and technique, and also recall proofreading materials for a friend teaching English for Academic Purposes, explaining the structure and content of academic essays to students for whom English would not be a first language.
All this probably helps explain why I have never properly attempted an essay, until now.
Inspired, as I explain in the essay, by my chancing upon a piece of art created by Fred Tomaselli, I wrote an essay, and am delighted that the good people at The Tangerine have decided to publish it.
Through the essay I explore memory and grief, and how they both influence, and sometimes overwrite the ability to appreciate another’s narrative.
I’m especially happy that the editors of The Tangerine were able to secure permission to use an image of the creation of Fred Tomaselli; Mar 16 2020, which forms the backbone of the essay.
Anyone wanting to buy a copy of the journal can do so at:
https://thetangerinemagazine.com/issues/issue-12
I’m extremely happy with how the essay has turned out, and how it has been produced in the journal.
A Stain on Silence 