Tuesday 11 August 2009

Dublin Poetry Workshops with Alan Jude Moore

In September The Irish Writers' Centre will be holding a series of Poetry Workshops hosted by poet Alan Jude Moore. The workshops will take place every Thursday for 10 weeks from the 24th of September. Early booking is advised as workshop places are limited. You can secure your place by paying online at the Irish Writers Centre.

Alan read some of his work at the Moloch showcase last year, and appeared in the second issue of the journal. You can read his poems, Alphavile and Drift online.


Alan Jude Moore was born in Dublin. His two collections of poetry, Black State Cars (2004) and Lost Republics (2008), are published by Salmon Poetry. A third collection, Strasbourg, will be published by Salmon in 2010.


His work is widely published in journals and magazines, including Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Salzburg Review, Iota (UK) and Kestrel (USA). His poetry has also been published in Italian and Russian. He has been short-listed twice for the Hennessy Literary Award for New Irish Writing for his short stories.


He holds a degree in political science from Trinity College Dublin and his first publication was in the TCD literary magazine Icarus. He has since been published across Europe and North America and has given readings in Ireland, Italy, Russia and the USA. In 2007 he was a featured poet at the Riflessidiversi cultural festival in Umbria.


American poet and critic Michael S. Begnal discusses Moore's work in the context of contemporary Irish literature in his essay The Ancients Have Returned Among Us: Polaroid of 21st Century Irish Poetry (Avant-Post, Litteraria Pragensia 2006, ed. Louis Armand). Alan's work has been included in the anthologies Salmon: a Journey in Poetry (Salmon Poetry, 2007) and Jacobs Ladder II (Six Gallery Press, 2003). He lives in Dublin.


"What is necessary is to seek new forms and new language to express new ideas and experience. Moore is doing so, and that is what makes Black State Cars an important and essential collection."


- Michael S. Begnal in Poetry Ireland Review, issue 82.

A political undercurrent is always simmering, and when it is aligned with longing, Moore enacts a kind of magic: “remember to melt down your ring for me; / let all our promises be one last bullet” (Zapad). Paradoxically, it’s not the exoticism of Lost Republics which appeals so much, but its familiarity. An accomplished and intriguing book.


- Paul Perry, The Irish Times, Saturday 28th March 2009

This superb second collection finds Moore’s distinctive voice, established in 2004’s Black State Cars, resonating with a new clarity and confidence. Influenced by the neo-modernist tendency but not necessarily of it, Moore avoids the languid, lyrical tonalities striven for and sometimes reached by the majority of his contemporaries. Yet his work could by no means be described as prosaic. His is a robust, sinewy music that once adjusted to has a strangely entrancing charm.

- Billy Ramsell in
The Stinging Fly, Issue 12 / volume two, Spring 2009.




19 Parnell Square Dublin 1
Tel: +353 1 8721302
Fax: +353 1 8726282
www.writerscentre.ie

Saturday 8 August 2009

Wrong way birds, taxidermy, and morally bankrupt leprechauns.

It was my blood and the language

That has been spoken into my blood.

 

I decided to explore

This wild place.

 

from Disappeared Language by Duane Locke 

A new issue of Moloch is now available to view online: http://www.moloch.ie/html/issue3/cover.html.


For the last few months we have been plagued by constant repetition of the 'R' word on the airwaves, and scandal after scandal surfacing. You can't turn on the radio or take a taxi without hearing about the abuse by the Israelis, the US army, the Iranian government, and the British army, innocent people going to prison, politicians on the take, horrendous murders, about all the bankers who dragged us into a whole lot of mess, about the builders being bailed out and the regular people who have lost their homes.  Around the corner there is always another ism to deal with.


Moloch was a mythical figure to whom people sacrificed newborn children in the hope of wealth and success.  Nothing could seem more horrifying to most of us today, and yet every radio station and newspaper tells us that the future generations have been sacrificed for transient treasures to a modern-day Moloch. It is an endless wave that can become an obsession and at times make you feel completely and utterly powerless.   It is in times like these that language becomes at once threatened and vital. 


Moloch is an eclectic journal of the eccentric and the conventional, the politician and the romantic, the psychiatrist and the mentally deranged.  It does not adhere to one style or voice but grabs sounds and colours from all walks of life. 


This issue of Moloch deals with progress, with all the dirty dealings of modern society,  offering a contrast between the natural world of bogs and beaches and that of aeroplanes,  televisions, and petty theft.  It deals with the beautiful and the lighthearted, with some of the more pleasant things in life.  It is true, as the cliché goes, that art holds up a mirror to society; but it's also a wonderful way to flip it off its feet, to stick red potatoes in our ears, dive into pink water, scream and create something a little more interesting, and a little less repetitive.


My tune is a chain saw symphony with crickets, with fish,

with wrong way birds that can’t read music,

all of this is home for me now.  Like rain

that doesn’t rain.  They make mattresses specially

for rooms at the centers of houses, to protect from

 

flying glass.  From tornados.  I sleep on a

mattress like that.

 

from Crazy by L. Ward Abel

 

Moloch is an Irish based e-journal of art and writing edited by Ailbhe Darcy and Clodagh Moynan. Tying different art forms together in new and refreshing ways, Moloch aspires to allow artists and writers to find inspiration in each other and, in doing so, add new dimensions to each others’ work.


The current issue contains writing by L. Ward Abel, Claire Askew, Patricia Byrne,  Niamh Campbell, William Doreski, Noel Harrington, Alan King,  David Kowalczyt, Duane Locke, Geraldine Mitchell, Jackie Morrisey, Kenneth Pobo, Sean Ryan and Peter Schwartz


Artists include Oisín Byrne, Conor Callan, Nessa Darcy, Carol Eakins, Derek Fitzpatrick, Gareth Humphreys, Laura Knowles, Sarah Quigley and Damien O'Reilly.