25th Ezra Pound International Conference

Sheets_of_toilet_paper_on_which_Pound_started_The_Pisan_Cantos“The conference’s main host will be Trinity College Dublin, Ireland’s oldest university institution, founded in 1592 and located in the city centre. Our second host and other conference site on Thursday, July 11, will be Mater Dei Institute, the college close to what was Leopold Bloom’s residence at 7 Eccles Street.
 
The 2013 EPIC will open at Trinity College Dublin on 10 July with a Welcoming Address by the Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. Individual plenary talks by distinguished scholars throughout the week will be on such topics as Pound and Irish Poetry, Pound and other writers (Beckett, Coleridge, Joyce, and Yeats), The Cantos Project, New Translations of Pound’s poetry into German and Italian, the Drafts & Fragments Notebooks, and Doing Justice to Pound. There will also be four days of paper sessions and discussions on a wide range of topics related to Pound’s works, life, and influence.”

 

A poem by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill to celebrate International Women’s Day 2012

Happy International Women’s Day 2012. The following poem is by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill , there is a translation and attribution notice published separately to An Mhurúch san Ospidéal. 

An Mhurúch san Ospidéal

‘ Dhúisigh sí
agus ní raibh a heireaball éisc ann
níos mó
ach istigh sa leaba léi
bhí an dá rud fada fuar seo.
Ba dhóigh leat gur gaid mhara iad
nó slaimicí feola.

‘Mar mhagadh atá siad
ní foláir,
Oíche na Coda Móire.
Tá leath na foirne as a meabhair
le deoch
is an leath eile acu
róthugtha do jokeanna.
Mar sin féin is leor an méid seo,’
is do chaith sí an dá rud
amach as an seomra.

Ach seo í an chuid
ná tuigeann sí —
conas a thit sí féin ina ndiaidh
‘cocs-um-bo-head’.
Cén bhaint a bhí
ag an dá rud léi
nó cén bhaint a bhí aici
leosan?

An bhanaltra a thug an nod di
is a chuir í i dtreo an eolais —
‘Cos í seo atá ceangailte díot
agus ceann eile acu anseo thíos fút.
Cos, cos eile,
a haon, a dó.

Caithfidh tú foghlaim
conas siúl leo.’

Ins na míosa fada
a lean
n’fheadar ar thit a croí
de réir mar a thit
trácht na coise uirthi,
a háirsí?’

© by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, all rights reserved. from The Fifty Minute Mermaid (Gallery Books, 2007)

Thank you to Gallery Press for allowing me to use this poem to celebrate Irish Women’s Poetry and translation on International Women’s Day 2012. The English translation of the poem is here.

Clonfert Cathedral mermaid by Andreas F. Borchert

‘The Willow’s Whisper, A Transatlantic Compilation of Poetry from Ireland and Native America.

Thank you to Julianne Ní Chonchobhair, who has facilitated this short post with information and articles on the poets.


A note about the editors of  ’The Willow’s Whisper’

Jill M.O’Mahony is a Lecturer in The Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland. She has previously studied English Literature and Sociology in  The National University of Ireland, Maynooth and The University of  Manchester. She is working on a doctoral research project which focuses  on performance, liminality and event in Native American Poetry. She  lectures in the Sociology of Consumption, Modern Ireland, Narrative  Identities and Communications. Her research interests include Political  Anthropology and Transcultural Literature.

Dr. Mícheál Ó hAodha currently works at the University of Limerick  where he lectures in the Department of History, School of Languages,  Literature, Culture and Communication, UL, Ireland. He has published  widely on many aspects of Irish migration, diaspora, social geography and  oral history – including American“Outsider”: Stories from the Irish  Traveller Diaspora. (2007) (with T.J. Vernon); The Stranger in Ourselves:  Ireland’s “Others” (eds. M.Ó hAodha, University of Limerick; D.  O’Donnell, University of Limerick and C. Power (Centre for Ethnicity and  Health, University of Central Lancashire, UK) (2007). Screening Difference:  Visual Culture and the Nomadic “Other” (with A. Huether and D. Waldron) (2009), Migrancy, Memory and Repossession: Women on the  Historical Margins (2010); His most recent book is “The Turn of the  Hand”: A Memoir from the Irish Margins (with Mary Ward) (2010). Between 2006 and 2008 he was an AHRC scholar in the School of Arts,  Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester. He has also written  fiction and poetry in collaboration with other Irish writers including Colum McCann and Gabriel Rosenstock. His next book is due out shortly  as part of the Re-imagining Ireland series – Peter Lang, Oxford.

I am adding here some release notes for the anthology will be released on the 16th of February 2012.

There is a Nomadics category in this blog, which looks at dispossession, migrancy, rootlessness, outsider poetry and diaspora. I asked Julianne Ní Chonchobhair if I could feature a poem or two from the compilation on this blog,  and she very kindly agreed. In keeping with the theme of the Saturday Woman Poet idea, I have decided to feature poet Allison Adelle Hedgecoke , with thanks to Julianne Ní Chonchobhair. Info about Allison Adelle Hedgecoke is available via the Poetry Foundation website.

The following is an excerpt from The Willow’s Whisper , a poem by Allison Adelle Hedgecoke.

Crossing Sky Vault Worlds

for Vaughan

” Corn, Sunflower raise their faces toward Sun as she slides into
place among blue heavens.
Squash send floral swirls orange-red up into ground fog mist.

-
An ant angles his way watching constantly for morsels along the
path.
Violet morning glories stream upward reaching with their petals
wide open for bursting light.

-
Rays split seams of blue casting hopeful yellow-white strokes
beaming brightly. Seasons later,
Red Sioux Quartzite speckled white by snow and fully ice-crusted,
holds firm hallowed Sioux Falls grounds nearby.

-
Glass flows, creating prisms in century-aged windows across this
room. Rainbows flourish here. Long ago,
Black Dog spoke to his master, foretold the coming world flood in
time for a raft to be built sparing Real People.

-
Children in Quebec, before encroachment, pleaded for maple
sweets each fall. Were pumpkin lanterns lighted?
In my Huron grandmother’s midwifing beaded bag, the entire
universe gleams at me through pointed stars in dreams.”

-

© Allison Adelle Hedgecoke

A full list of the poets featured in the forthcoming  The Willow’s Whisper are included here , N. Scott Momaday, Allison Adelle HedgeCoke, Luke Warm Water,  Sherwin Butsui , Esther Belin , Joy Harjo , Nila Northsun,  Joseph Bruchac, Donna Beyer (nee McCorrister),  Travis Hedge Coke , Adrian C. Louis , Venaya Yazzie, Richard Van Camp , Odi Gonzales , Lee Maracle , Karenne Wood, Jules Arita Koostachin, Joan Kane,  Fred Bigjim.

A Turn at Tara , August 28th 2011.

 

FEIS TEAMHRA: A TURN AT TARA 

“The fourth annual Feis Teamhra: A Turn at Tara, which features readings and performances by internationally recognized Irish writers and musicians, will be held between 3 and 5 o’clock on Sunday August 28 2011 on the Hill of Tara itself. Those taking part this year are Aidan Brennan, Peter Fallon, Laoise Kelly, Susan McKeown, Paul Murray and a surprise musical guest who just happens to be one of Ireland’s greatest singer-songwriters. The MC for the event is Paul Muldoon. Admission is free.

While the Hill of Tara has in recent years become a contested spot, symbolizing less the sacred site where ancient Ireland crowned its kings than the desecrated site where modern Ireland gave in to crass consumerism and, as it were, drowned in things, the note the organizers hope to strike is not one of confrontation but celebration. Feis Teamhra: A Turn at Tara is a celebration of the continuity of the linked traditions of Irish writing and music, traditions that have almost certainly flourished here since at least 2000 BC.

We’re delighted to welcome Paul Murray, the Dublin-based author of An Evening of Long Goodbyes (2003), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, and Skippy Dies (2010), a book quite accurately described by the New York Times as “extravagantly entertaining.” The New Yorker, meanwhile, praised its “remarkable dialogue, which captures the free-associative, sex-obsessed energy of teenage conversation in all its coarse, riffing brilliance.” Skippy Dies, a book that’s reminiscent of A Portrait on Peyote, was shortlisted for the Costa Prize, the National Book Critics’ Circle Prize and the Irish Book Award.

We also extend a particular welcome to the Meath-based poet and publisher Peter Fallon, who is celebrated for the unfussy but nonetheless fusillading nature of his poems. They speak softly but carry a big stick, one cut from a local hedge. Some of Peter Fallon’s best work is to be found in News of the World: Selected and New Poems (1998) and his translations of The Georgics of Virgil (2004/2006). A member of Aosdana, Peter Fallon received the 1993 O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award from the Irish American Cultural Institute.

The musical component of Feis Teamhra: A Turn at Tara is curated by Susan McKeown, the Dublin-born, New York-based, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter. Susan McKeown released her seventh solo album, Singing in the Dark, in October 2010. In addition to her career as a solo artist, Susan McKeown’s heart-felt, heart-breaking singing has led her to work with, among others, Natalie Merchant, Linda Thompson, Pete Seeger, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Billy Bragg, Arlo Guthrie, and the Klezmatics.

Among the other musicians featured this year are Aidan Brennan and Laoise Kelly. Aidan Brennan is an inspired guitarist who has worked not only with Susan McKeown (Sweet Liberty, 2004), but Kevin Burke (Kevin Burke in Concert, 1999) and Loreena McKennitt (Book of Secrets, 1997, and Midwinter Night’s Dream, 2008). Born in Dublin, Aidan Brennan now lives in Laois.

Laoise Kelly, generally considered to be the foremost Irish harper, lives in her native Mayo. The Irish Times has described her as “a young harpist with the disposition of an iconoclast and the talent and technique of a virtuoso.” In addition to her own CD (Just Harp, 2000), Laoise Kelly has worked with Sharon Shannon, The Chieftains, Natalie MacMaster, Sinead O’Connor and Kate Bush. 

The image is from the first ever Turn at Tara

How far ‘outside’ is the poetry of diaspora ?

I often wonder at the definition of Outsider Poetry just a little bit, and have made allusions to the poetry of diaspora before now on this blog. Of course the poetry of  alienation/diaspora, be it in the wake of cataclysm , war or economic circumstance is more than just that. The exilic condition  forms a thread in world literature that we recognise historically here in the poems of the dispossessed, that are so beautifully edited and collected in  An Duanaire , for instance.

Blogs dedicated to the dissemination of the poetry of nomadics, meanderings and exile are (and have been) online for a while, even if the form  often comprises a  marginalia . The PENs , Arvon, and  UBUWEB  amongst others consistently and brilliantly bring forward the voice of the diasporist. For instance, there are manifestos dedicated to the art of poetics grounded in the experience of  the writer/artist available on multiple sites, and of course on the International PEN site, (TLRC)

My first experience of reading a diasporist manifesto was in 1995 , when I bought The First Diasporist Manifesto by RB Kitaj, I was intrigued by his approach to his art and by the manifesto which  served as the invisible architecture that underpinned his Tate retrospective . I thought to excerpt a short paragraph here to illustrate the condition , from the artist’s  point of view.

‘Nationalism seems awful; it’s track record stinks, but patriotism doesn’t seem half bad. ————On the other hand, if people want their homelands, why not? Partitioned homelands seem better to me than killing each other. My own homeland, America , and my little one , England, offer such strong appearances of peace and freedom that the really odd and peaceful practice of painting spins out my own Diasporic days and years until I can’t sense any other way to go.’  ( By RB Kitaj)

The subject is evidently too great for this blog, thus I have decided to divide the topic into two, (possibly) three sections. I am not going to look at alienation yet, as the issue is highly complex and comprises just one element of outsider art. The fact that alienation is oft met with physical violence further complicates any advance on the problem. The danger for the reader is always to associate diasporism with alienation, when it is but one cause of dispossession and it’s related consequences for the narrative arts, including the translator’s art.

The subtext of this post is how far do we think outsider art is from our experience of reading books of poetics, I believe that the area dedicated to the translation and rights of the poets is no longer a marginalia. I see this on blogs and in debate, unfortunately this is not reflected in what publishers are producing, save in speciality areas such as the poetry societies. The fact that authors have noted that translation merits little in prize-awards , as recently mentioned in relation to the Booker Prize, suggests that the marginalisation occurs at the budgeting level, rather than at the level of popularity displayed by submissions to contests and online anthologies.

We are familiar, as mentioned above, with the poetry of exile – the exilic condition , from sources like An Duanaire, or even Ulysses , that novel is an exile’s song, a recreation of Dublin city in its minutiae by James Joyce, its quite an example of  alienation poetry also !

I  am adding in here an excerpt from Notes Towards a Nomadics Poetics, Pierre Joris blog:

The days of anything static – form, content, state – are over. The past century has shown that anything not involved in continuous transformation hardens and dies. All revolutions have done just that: those that tried to deal with the state as much as those that tried to deal with the state of poetry.

Related Article  links