http://stopsopaireland.com/breaking-news-sean-sherlock-promises-to-publish-bill-online/

Consultation  with  arts-originators , visual-artists , bloggers ?

In 2011, I wrote a post about an open consultative process here in Ireland to address radical copyright reform, wherein the Minister promised innovation and jobs through radicalising our copyright laws. I submitted, along with countless others, on issues pertinent to copyright and advances in digital technology. My submission was based in requesting the opening out of this consultation to arts organisations and originators of creative works. I am aware today that my submission was ignored and that originators of art-works are treated with disdain by a government which kow-tows to industry. Discussions by actual originators of works in the arts can be studied at this link. (Center for Social-Media discussion on fair-use in the arts.)

The Blacknight release on Stop Sopa Ireland  is here  excerpted :

“Jan 24, 2012 - Irish registrar and hosting company Blacknight (http://www.blacknight.com) urge the Irish Internet community to join them in saying no to a “SOPA” style law being enacted by ministerial order.

The Minister of State at the department of Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation, Sean Sherlock, is introducing a statutory instrument that very closely mirrors SOPA, which was recently defeated in the US. This statute will affect all 3.5 million people in Ireland is about to become law with no vote in the Oireachtas.

An outspoken leader in Irish tech, Blacknight has long been opposed to censorship and restriction of the Internet and is committed to ensuring freedom online. If passed, sites of all sizes from YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to personal sites may be blocked in Ireland. The impact of such a move could be detrimental to Ireland’s digital economy” (from Blacknight release,  24/01/2012)

Article link to McGarr Solicitors, Dublin on the issue of ISP-Blocking .

” However, unlike that US law, people here can’t even expect to have this blocking law debated in their legislature. The Minister has said that he intends to deal with the matter by way of a Ministerial Order. Nor has he published the text of the law. The first we, the people of Ireland, will know about the text of this law will be when it is signed and brought into force.

This is grossly wrong. This is why we were so enthusiastic when Sabrina Dent suggested that we launch a petition website to let other people (a) know what was going to happen and (b) tell the Ministers responsible that they object to the proposal.”   Full article here   The link to the Irish Petition to STOP SOPA is available here.

-

Personal note : Why bother with Irish Political consultations when they are shredded, ignored or limited by decisions already taken?

In what amounts to an ignorant rejection of the consultative process the Minister, Richard Bruton and Seán Sherlock T.D intend to introduce isp-blocking in Ireland. This event follows on quickly from the PP in Spain’s innovation in this area, and the SOPA/PIPA protests of last week in the U.S. I don’t expect much discussion on in it in the Irish media, who often publish press-releases and soundbites , rather than anything approaching contextualisation. I am annoyed that the consultative-process that I participated in amounted to optics , and that our government is basically pushing through aggressive legislation without debate, discussion or reference to the experience of other E.U countries. It looks like FG/Lab will also attempt to tax the internet. How quickly opposition parties dump their principles when they get to play with the big boys.

Stop SOPA-Ireland Petition link: http://stopsopaireland.com/  

Irish Times article of 27/01/2012  http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0127/1224310799439.html#.TyJ-QjbpQfs.twitter  

The Millions, a discussion on U.S SOPA  http://www.themillions.com/2012/01/copyrights-wake-sopa-james-joyce-and-the-future-of-intellectual-property.html

I waited a minute on the wind,
on your roof, outside.

She had been awaiting me in the middle of the day,
having come warm over those seas to find me

high over the little streams and the lakes
she came

and she playing,
and she jumping.
Crying and talking in my ear.

She had carried her warm music over those streams
and over the frail blue flowers that grow on the lakeside.

And you were sleeping soundly.
I left you, I left the city for a little time.

I left the noise of the city, to wait on
the little breeze to bring me news.

and her yellow music caught in the throat of birds

agus a ceol buí a thógail i scornach na h’éanaithe.

© C Murray 

and her yellow music caught in the throat of birds by C Murray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at poethead.wordpress.com.

Background to the TBB2 (Revival)

“For those who might not know, the original Burning Bush was published from 1999 to 2004 in Galway, Ireland. It was edited by the poets Michael S. Begnal and Kevin Higgins (until 2000 when Higgins left and Begnal became the sole editor). There’s a piece here on Mike’s blog which gives the background and history of the original magazine. I’m pleased to report that, fittingly, Kevin and Mike have both contributed to The Burning Bush 2. They are among a number of past contributors to the Burning Bush included in these virtual pages.” ( by Alan Jude Moore , editorial issue 1)

The Poets in issue #1 of Burning Bush Revival

“As we mentioned in an earlier post, in the first issue we wanted to include as many poets as we could who had published in the original Burning Bush. Several former contributors answered the call, including Kevin Higgins, Patrick Chapman, Todd Swift, JT Menesini and Nuala Ní Chonchúir.” (by Alan Jude Moore)  Here’s the complete list of poets in the first issue of Burning Bush Revival. There is also a Facebook appreciation and info page available at this link.

About  the poem,  and her yellow music caught in the throat of birds

I wrote a small poem in Barcelona which is there at the very end of the poets’ list. I lately again found the notebooks where I had initially written the Irish version (in an old craftsman’s handbook, which I had tied with elastic at the time). The poem and two others were filed in a folder relating to a set of images I had been working on called Archivum. The folder was in a small group of other folders that I had been meaning to search through, and last week just after the funeral of a dear friend I recovered them while looking for his letters. I wrote it in bad Irish and thought it better to send a translation instead. (luckily)

The full list of poets in the Burning Bush 2 Revival Online Meeting 

Michael S. Begnal, Kevin Higgins , Maurice Scully,  John Thomas Menesini ,  Patrick Chapman,  Nuala Ní Chonchúir,  Keith Gaustad, David Wheatley,  David Stone, John W. Sexton , Todd Swift , Emily Cullen , Dave Lordan ,  Paul Perry, Annemarie Ní Chuireann, John MacKenna , Stephanie Conn,  Gerard Smyth Shannon ,  Ward Miceál Kearney, Sarah Maria Griffin,  Jean Kavanagh ,  Peadar O’Donoghue , Kerrie O’Brien ,JP Dancing Bear,  Gerard Beirne , C. Murray

The Burning Bush 2 can be found at this internet address.

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.

“You might not realise your predictability
but when you caught my eye on Shop Street, at the demo,
I could see the thoughtless words forming in your brain
so before you shout them at me pass-remarkably
let me just stop you there for once, and in the gap between
now and when those words make it from your mouth
into the air between us, let me tell you something;
because I have wrestled with a pitchfork the same size as I was
and shovelled unknown tons of horse manure from sheds
before your mother brought you breakfast toast and tea
on school mornings before your leaving cert.

And when you daydreamed out the window of maths class
from an overheated room into the driving rain
I was lifting bales of sodden hay through the mud and bitter wind
to the bottom field where the old cow died in spring
and because I had small hands I woke a hundred early mornings
to turn unborn lambs around inside their mothers. While you were
filling college application forms and when you were accepted,
bringing weekend washing home on student discount busses
I was pitting my eight stone against half a ton of pulling racehorse
and couldn’t feel my fingers or open my eyes with the rushing wind

You then, qualified and interviewing in your shirt and tie and nerves,
while I was taking sweating tourists on foot through humid rainforests
carrying longhouse chief’s heavy gifts of pineapples nine hours back to base
in a country you don’t have the breath of mind to even imagine,
and nearer home when you guffawed into your pint glass and refused to leave
Taylor’s bar on Sunday early closings I washed your glass, swept the floor
and woke before the county to spend frozen hours putting
rubber bands on live lobster claws in a concrete tank in Bearna

And then I bet you were promoted for your clever corporate antics,
while I did three years mortgage-paying on the night shift
with bleary day time TV addicts and stoners manufacturing,
things you might one day have inserted after too many business lunches
then later on when I decided I needed education and you sat,
with popcorn consuming the latest Hollywood blockbuster
you couldn’t see me upstairs splicing your next bit of entertainment.
You have no idea how long a day is invigilating young accountants
in tedium and silence in dusty exam halls with the smell of fast food fat
still clinging to my clothes from my night time cash in hand gig.

You won’t realise that I have the streets of Galway imprinted on my brain
from delivering pesto and goats cheese pizza to your Knocknacarra sofa
or that I’m an expert on late night radio, and all night petrol stations;
secondary benefits of an un-free education, and now and here,
when I‘ve finally got myself some work I think has merit, and
I chose to use this day off, working to defend the rights of others
don’t be surprised at all at how quickly I abandon my principles of non-violence
and use this placard on you, as a weapon, if you say what you are thinking.”

© Sarah Clancy

Thanks to Sarah Clancy  for the poem,  Hippy Get a Job, which is taken from Thanks for Nothing Hippies , which will be launched in April 2012, by Salmon Poetry. I have featured Phrase Books Never Equip You For The Answers , here.

“on the morning of the fifteenth time we went through
our sleep-with-your-ex routine, I had the usual optimism
thing about mistakes is to not keep repeating the same ones
I said disregarding the government health warning
on the cigarettes I was sucking, crossing the road without
stopping speaking or looking, ignoring the red man pulsing
on the lights at the junction, I was wired direct and I said;
I know, I’ll write you the definitive user manual for me.
You said I was arrogant that we should make it up as we go,
and I said; well could I do a mind map then? With
here be dragons marked clearly in red, so we won’t flounder
like last time end up washed up dehydrated and drained
well I was, fairly wired, I said ‘in each shipwreck we’re lessened
embittered, come on, let me at least try to fix it, I can write us
a blueprint for the new improved version, and you laughed
and said well damn you for a head-wreck, go on then and do it.

So I wrote, but it came out all stilted, like a work in translation
see when I say, let me fix that or give it here and I’ll do it
it means I need you, and if I tell you for example how
I’ll re-arrange the universe to your liking it doesn’t mean
I’m superior in fact, translated it’s about the same as the last one-
‘can you not see, how I need you? And when I come out with all those
‘you-shoulds’ that drive you demented, there’s no disrespect in ‘em
verbatim they’re whispering I’d be desolated without you
and when you call me control freak, the tendencies you’re describing
are inherently rooted in my fear of you leaving and how I’ll react.

Less-wired more hopeful I brought you my phrase book
on our very next meeting but you kissed my cheek and said
let me stop you a minute and then those awful words that never
signify good outcomes, listen I’ve been thinking… I know
we’ve got this weird cyclical attraction thing going and I’m sorry
for my part in it but really I can’t see it working, the problem
for me is how you just don’t need anything and my phrase book
had nothing listed under that heading.”

© Sarah Clancy

Thanks to Sarah Clancy  for the poem,  Phrase Books Never Equip you for the Answers , which is taken from Thanks for Nothing Hippies , which will be launched in April 2012, by Salmon Poetry. Hippy Get a Job , by Sarah Clancy, is here.

It really should not be a case of codifying domestic laws that one appears opposed to on the international stage, nor are the media discussing the possible ramifications of censorships on innovators. As is usual there appears to be an inability to examine the issues.

The  Wordpress excerpt follows :

• In the U.S. our legal system maintains that the burden of proof is on the accuser, and that people are innocent until proven guilty. This tenet seems to be on the chopping block when it comes to the web if these bills pass, as companies could shut down sites based on accusation alone.
• Laws are not like lines of PHP ; they are not easily reverted if someone wakes up and realizes there is a better way to do things. We should not be so quick to codify something this far-reaching.
• The people writing these laws are not the people writing the independent web, and they are not out to protect it. We have to stand up for it ourselves.

Blogging is a form of activism. You can be an agent of change. Some people will tell you that taking action is useless, that online petitions, phone calls to representatives, and other actions won’t change a single mind, especially one that’s been convinced of something by lobbyist dollars. To those people, I repeat the words of Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

We are not a small group. More than 60 million people use WordPress — it’s said to power about 15% of the web. We can make an impact, and you can be an agent of change. Go to Stop American Censorship for more information and a bunch of ways you can take action quickly, easily, and painlessly. The Senate votes in two weeks, and we need to help at least 41 more senators see reason before then. Please. Make your voice heard.

And what a night it was.

The event was bi-partite in structure, with readings by three poets and story-tellers to begin, a brief interval filled with music was quickly followed by three more readings by three more women writers. The first half was decidedly poetic, with readings in English and Irish by Celia de Fréine, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Eilis Ní Dhuibhne.

Celia De Fréine read In Relation to Each Other, Dearbhail , Celia Óg , and Ophelia. Dearbhail was indeed heart-breaking, the tale of the murder of Dearhbail by jealous women.

Eilis Ní Dhuibhne read two tales , The Man Who Had No Story and The Blind. 

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill read from a few collections, Including from my favourite Pharaoh’s Daughter, with translations by Paul Muldoon,  Michael  Hartnett,  and Dr. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin.  Poems read included , The Language, Dán do Melissa, and Closure.

Music flowed along with wine  as Jane Hughes on cello & Ellen Cranitch on flute played a selection from Carolan and Tchaikovsky, including the much giggled upon Fanny Power.

Interval over, the business of literature reared it’s head in the shape of Mary O Donnell ,who read from a WIP about Northern Ireland , alongside two  poems which were tremendous and indicate a wonderful talent in two quite distinct areas of writerly discipline.

Sarah Clancy charmed the crowd with her Argument Poems , which included Ringing in Sick  To Go Mermaid-Hunting,  Cinderella Backwards , and Riot Act. 

Mia Gallagher topped the evening off with some reading from her upcoming book.

This should not have been a unique evening in the calendar. There  are hints of more such evenings being planned, the audience was mixed  between the sexes and they were always interested. It was utterly charming, eclectic and beautifully balanced. I expect that people who wish more detail on the music and books can contact the Irish Writer’s Centre directly. Kudos to the board, volunteers and organisers for a great evening.

]]> http://poethead.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/an-evening-of-womens-literature-at-the-irish-writers-centre-06012012/feed/ 2 poethead IWC http://poethead.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/song-by-edith-sitwell/ http://poethead.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/song-by-edith-sitwell/#comments Sat, 07 Jan 2012 10:32:44 +0000 C Murray http://poethead.wordpress.com/?p=13539 ]]> ‘Said the Bee to the Lion
‘ My life is a gold prayer-’
Said the laughing Sun
‘My life is the gold air’
.
Said the Lion to the Bee
‘My life is that of the sun ; in hot gold, I rage through
the gold air’
.
But I who have known the weight of the August air
And the gold heat in the heart
.
Am like a bright small star in a starry sky
Bright to myself only.’

by Edith Sitwell.

This poem is from the 1962 edition of The Outcasts, Macmillan and Company Limited. I am adding here the Poetry Foundation link to Edith  Sitwell’s  archive and bibliography. There is a short note linked on this blog about Transcribing Edith Sitwell, from the Women Writers, Women Books site.

Unlike Rita Dove,  Helen Vendler,  and Alice Oswald , Carol Ann Duffy has (this time) escaped the pariah-like status conferred on women poets by a media more interested in looking for gossip than adequately reviewing their books. The recent rows between Dove and Vendler, have, I believe , been generated by a bored media that needs to play fire with the writers rather than examine the middle-ground in what has become a race-row. Very few editors looked at the Dove/Vendler row in it’s proper context; anthologies nearly always involve controversial choices. Nope ! far better to  have a bit of mud-wrestling between two women editors of great merit , than to question the limits on  their editorship, or why indeed so few women attain the level of literary acceptance to achieve an editorship in the first place.  It is all about the row between the women , and not the relative merit of two women’s work and what they both have contributed to literary-America.

Alice Oswald had the temerity to withdraw from the T.S Eliot prize, and for this acres of column were devoted to examining the finances of poets and the perceived silliness of her principles. The issue of her withdrawal even made it into a paragraph in the Loose Leaves column of the Irish Times. The book itself, Memorial, has not achieved a critique within some of the very papers that reported her  withdrawal from the T.S Eliot prize. Memorial apparently has no merit for the poet-critic,  but the row is highly important to the people who collate the gossip-inches.

Is this is what it is about ?

Women’s poetry becomes a reductio ad absurdum in terms of what editors consider to be marketable variety, whilst also ignoring the books, the work and their devotion to their medium?  Where is the discussion on the Iliad, the discussion on the merit of editors like both Vendler and Dove ? I am only glad that commissioning editors in these cases actually mentioned the books, I’ll do my own reviews and reading rather than be lead by low gossip-mongers and silly headlines.

The question of the visibility of women writers raised by Boland in God’s Make their Own Importance can indeed be qualified with ‘maybe sometime they will actually review the books  of those authors that they so casually traduce in their (er) newspapers‘.

Edit January 20/01/2012: More incisive critique in the London independent today by Boyd-Tonkin , using a stock-image of Alice Oswald, and of course reminding the reader that T.S Eliot was a banker (as the Telegraph did in December 2011)

Women Poets from the Blog (page) 

Cutting the cloth to fit the wearer, recent press about women-poets. by C Murray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.