Bad Day in Blackrock by Kevin Power

A few years ago a group of teenage boys kicked another boy to death outside Annabel's nightclub in Dublin. It was a controversial affair that sparked much debate in the media and, of course, in people’s everyday lives. The boys were mainly from well connected families and there were many accusations and murmurs that there punishment may have been more severe had they been from a different background. There have been quite a few incidents like this where kids from wealthy influential families manage to get away with horrendous crimes and many where rugby, the gentleman's sport, leads to very violent off pitch activities.

Bad Day in Blackrock is a fictional tale by Kevin Power influenced by that tragic night in South Dublin. While I have yet to read this novel and, as Ailbhe points out in her blog, there is always a chance of being exploitative when using real events in fiction, I have no doubt that this book will be a page-turner. Though it is yet to hit the shelves it has already caused sparks as you can see in the article in the Independent and the Irish Times.

Kevin Power was shortlisted in 2007 for RTE's Francis McManus Award and his story The American Girl is currently shortlisted for the Hennessy Award. I can say without doubt that Kevin is destined to dazzle us all with many books in his lifetime, and if you wish to buy the first (and I really think you should) Bad Day in Blackrock goes on sale on the 15th of October.

Kevin Higgins Book Launch

Salmon Poetry, in association with Poetry Ireland, presents the Dublin launch of three collections of poetry this Wednesday.  Kevin Higgins, who recently read at the Moloch showcase and whose poetry has appeared in Moloch, will launch his book Time Gentlemen, Please.   Do go along and buy a copy, it is a brilliant book!

Big Pink Umbrella
by Susan Millar DuMars
(speaker Enda Coyle Green)

Torching the Brown River 
by Lorna Shaughnessy
(speaker Noel Monahan)

Time Gentlemen, Please

by Kevin Higgins
(speaker Dave Lordan)

Venue: The UNITARIAN CHURCH, 
112 ST. STEPHEN'S GREEN WEST, 
DUBLIN 2
Date: Wednesday, September 3rd 
Time: 6.30 pm
RSVP: jessie@salmonpoetry.com
www.salmonpoetry.com/

London: Wolf & Howler Double Launch

THE WOLF MAGAZINE & THE HOWLER

A DOUBLE LAUNCH

(The Wolf 18 & Howler CD)
Featuring Poetry and Poets Who Play Music

TUESDAY 12TH AUGUST, 7.30pm

@ RADA Foyer Bar, Malet Street, W1, London.

ALVIN PANG

(One-off Reading from Leading Singapore Poet)

CHICKEN OF THE WOODS

(Christopher Twigg & Full Band)

NIALL MCDEVITT

(Commemorating Blake’s Death Day)

CL DALLAT

(Irish Poet & Musician)

INFINITE JUSTICE

(M.X.L. Waterhouse & Composer Omid Khorremy)

AILBHE DARCY

(Last reading before I go to America!)

Entry £5 (includes a free copy of The Wolf)

Hosts: James Byrne, Editor of The Wolf & Lee Scrivner, Producer of The Howler

To reserve seating email: thewolfpoetry@hotmail.com

Moloch on Facebook

You can join the Moloch group on Facebook here.

Spring at The Cortland Review

Spring brings the following from The Cortland Review editor Ginger Murchison:

Dear Reader,

As we turn the corner into April, The Cortland Review, rather than simply giving you more poetry, wants to honor the relationship of poetry to all the arts, particularly its relationship to its 'sister art' of painting, a link that began with Horace's phrase "ut pictura poesis" in "Ars Poetica"—"as in poetry, so in painting." Aptly, Debra Allbery begins her essay on ekphrasis with a definition:

. . . the word comes from the Greek rhetorical figure, ekphrassein, originally meaning "to speak forth" or "to tell in full"—is generally the term given to a verbal representation of a visual representation.

It's not only inspiration but instruction that poets take from the visual arts, and the poets Allbery mentions that invoke the work of Joseph Cornell are among your favorites, and she builds a case, as well, for how inspirational and instructional their work was to Cornell, enlightening us all as to the far reach of poetry. How can we better honor the art, then, for National Poetry Month?

For your own inspiration and instruction, we include three of Allbery's own ekphrastic poems and ten more from poets giving a nod, not only to the visual arts, but to music, photography, film, and one charming nod at (uh oh) body art.

For more music, enjoy McFadyen-Ketchum's conversation with Ed Pavlic on the subject of Pavlić's latest book: "Winners Have Yet to Be Annonced: A Song for Donny Hathaway," that he describes as

my attempt to articulate, to translate, what I hear in Donny's music and to imagine its origins, its contradictions and the way it fits and doesn't fit into a world . . . beyond the stage.

Carolyne Wright, in "A Change of Maps," pays homage of her own, as David Rigsbee points out in his book review. Her collection is

. . . less a concession to the spell of technique . . . than a kind of knowledge about poetry's secret sway and coterie wisdom and therefore of abiding interest to poetry's serious readers.

For all poetry is on the page, it continues to tap into and feed all of the cultural arts in an ever-widening way, enriching to all of us, a good argument, perhaps, that every month is really poetry month.

Ginger Murchison
Editor

The Cortland Review Spring Issue is here.

The Wolf launches Issue 17 tonight

Issue 17 of The Wolf launches on Monday 7th April, 8pm sharp. Limited seating!
Venue is The Poetry Studio, 22 Betterton Street, Covent Garden, London.

Readers on the night will be Andrea Brady, Jonathan Morley, James Womack, Siddhartha Bose, Kate Potts with poet/translator Stephen Watts and Ziba Karbassi reading poems and translations from Persian.

This is a FREE event and will mark the unveiling of an all-new look to The Wolf. Do come and celebrate with us.

best,
James Byrne

Editor, The Wolf

www.wolfmagazine.co.uk

The Wolf acknowledges the support of the Arts Council England

Happy Birthday Wolf

The Wolf - a rather splendid London poetry mag - is celebrating its 5th birthday this month. If you're in the area, you might want to pop by the party:

5 Years of The Wolf & Launch of Issue 15
Monday 23rd July, 8pm
Poetry Studio, 22, Betterton Street (near Covent Garden)
FREE Entrance.

Couplet reviewed

Couplet by James Browning Kepple and Kim Görannson (Pretend Genius Press, 2007)

Couplet is an ingenious object: two poets’ respective collections printed back to back. Each poem is faced, not with a blank page, but with the other poet’s upside-down poem. Hey, it saves paper.
This being Pretend Genius Press, the style is - for want of a more sensible word - experimental. The influence of those dead white men, the Beats, is obvious. A ruddy disregard for traditional forms, syntax and sometimes even spelling makes it challenging but, on the whole, refreshing reading.

James Browning Kepple’s work is open about its angry politics from the start, with pieces about a war veteran seeking forgiveness, the Cuban national baseball team, and the uncomfortably blunt ‘jesus is a walmart’. Another blunt instrument, ‘thunderstorms over virgin galactic’ is frankly judgemental, peering down its nose at the “motley of used money” that can afford to holiday in space. And it’s surprising to find such a modern style turned to conservative nostalgia, as in ‘Gone were the sad daisy’.

But Kepple also achieves moments of serious yum, as in ‘Transient Baltimore Ship Builder’, ‘Jon benet’ or morsels like a "child’s crayon remarks2 ('for a war veteran seeking rose'). Flip the book over and there are further tasty nibbles from Kim Göransson, like the ideas that “hitchcock themselves / under the skin” (‘note found in a notebook on a park bench in a park’).

Göransson’s poetry is more intimate and less punch drunk. Best of anything here is ‘Brigitte Bardot swam in the pool the day my grandmother died’, which juxtaposes the two characters of the title in a truly original way, gorgeously and movingly:

In her last months, she wrote
letters to an American friend, Ethel.
I think it was, Minneapolis.
Nipples darker than dead suns, cutting
through everything. An exchange student,
back in the 40s, those were the days. She
recalls. Slim against a body without shame,
dragging against a bottom of
polished stone.

Kepple credits Dr Polysceni Indya Tzimourtas and Olesya Mishechkina with helping to edit his work. Hm. The book as a whole might have done with a more substantial editor: the torrent of words is overwhelming and it is impossible to get any sense of it as a self-contained unity (or even two self-contained unities). Conversely, if there was never going to be any unifying logic to the collection, it is a shame not to see in Göransson’s roll call ‘the pope is dying and i can’t stop eating’, a poem for which we at Moloch are bound to feel a special fondness, having once been proud to put it into print.

- Ailbhe