The Book is Launched

Steve Wickham on fiddle, Phillipe Carbonell on guitar, Anna Houston on cello and Eddie Lee on double bass: the Sligo-based quartet No Crows playing at the launch of Staircase Poems at the Dock on Sunday. A rapt young Mohillian listens.

What 10,000 Books of Poetry Looks Like (one version)

Packing 10,000 poetry books into envelopes in the sunshine on Friday

So this is the plan: on Monday morning, a leaftlet distribution gang from Dublin arrive to take 7800 (of the 10,000) books. They'll distribute them in the towns and villages that surround The Dock. They only do clustered settlements, i.e., those areas within 50 km speed zones. So that leaves the so-called "one-off" rural houses for myself and other folk to cover (and any friends and neighbours who'd like to volunteer distributing books down their local roads--get in touch with Siobhán at The Dock 071-9621694). A big thank you and respect to all those folk who are helping out stuffing books into envelopes. It is an education in quantity.

Meet Staircase Poems

Books and Envelopes

The A5-sized (C5?) envelopes the books fit into. Coming soon through your letterbox if you live near Carrick-on-Shannon.

Launch of Staircase Poems

Sunday, September 24th at 2 pm
The Dock
Carrick-on Shannon

launch of Staircase Poems

there will be some music, some food and a reading/performance of
the twelve poems that comprise the project

All welcome

In which there is a pause for an intake of breath before the last leg of the project and in which I explain about the brain hemorrhage

I've spent the last month working on the design of the book that will document this project: Staircase Poems. Linda Shevlin & Padraig Cunningham, two painters who have a graphic design company called Pure Design have gone to great lengths to appease my persnickety and perfectionistic tendencies during the design process. They've been saints really. The book is now in the hands of the printers, so there is time for a large intake of breath before the next and final job of figuring out how to post the thing out to 10,000 households in this area. An Post may or may not be helping us with this...more on that later.
But I mentioned the matter of a subarachnoid brain hemorrhage in a post back in June and have yet to explain. I had one. On February 2, 2006. I'll let the tone be set here by the medical website writer because, as for me, I still can't quite find the way to talk about this. Yet. But I hope to. A film-poem (a couple of them) are in the works on the subject. So here's what happened me as explained by www.shands.org/health:

A small percentage of subarachnoid hemorrhages have a nonaneurysmal pattern to them. They occur spontaneously and are usually localized ot the area of the brain called the perimesencephalic cistern. The prognosis for this type of hemorrhage is excellent. Unlike the majority of hemorrhages that are caused by arterial ruptures, this type is thought to be a venous or a capillary rupture.

I spent a week in Beaumont Hospital's neurological ward and got the finest of care in every way. Thank you one and all.

Rattlebag

Caoimhín Corrigan (The Dock's managing director and Arts Officer for Leitrim) and I talked to Vincent Woods (a poet and playwright who is from Leitrim) on RTÉ' radio's arts programme

Rattlebag<


I read three poems and the text of those poems can be found on this site:

Things I Didn't Know I Loved (February archive)
Memorandum in Winter (January archive)
How Blow-ins Become Locals (August archive)

By the way, the people who do programming at RTÉ radio made a very lily-livered decision in cutting John Kelly's music show Mystery Train and axeing Rattlebag. Well, they say they've moved their arts programming to another slot: eleven o'clock AT NIGHT! Long-distance truckers with an interest in the arts are rejoicing. The rest of us are disgusted. It can only be seen as a cynical response from an organization that has the nerve to play their motto "RTÉ Supporting The Arts". The good news: John Kelly is moving himself and his ample collection of musical recordings to Lyric FM (around 97 on your dial) from 2:30 to 4:30 pm, weekdays, starting in October. Switch. And keep telling RTÉ that they've made a serious mistake.