So after a deluge yesterday in London where I got so wet, I had to wring out my shoes and stick them in the oven, I am leaving the home town and returning to the Bog. I leave scratching my head.

My old colleague and MP in Islington, Jeremy Corbyn is being set up by the media for a fall, it being the silly season. The screaming hysteria that a left wing person could be elected as Leader of the Labour Party following one opinion poll has been absurd. Not just from the press but from Labour MPs and big wigs (or should they be called ear wigs, it’s the invasive scurrying that causes the metaphor). So I have been asked ‘Would he be a good leader?’ ‘Does he have the experience to run a machine?’ Jesus! I would be delighted if Jeremy could corral the Labour Party around the traditional values of equality, fairness and democracy that they are supposed to represent. ‘But will he resign in four years because I don’t think he will get Labour elected?’ I don’t know, I might be very short sighted, strategically limited, politically naive but I would be happy to have a party led by a left winger who is committed to values associated with Labour, and I may be stupid, but if there was a party who stood up for workers, or i/emmigrants and against the hegemony of bankers and Tory values, they might get elected. I don’t want a party that reflects the Tory agenda in order to get power and I prefer to vote for a party than a person. I’ve seen what happens when politics is personalised in Ireland.

So I am with the Telegraph on this one. Everyone should become a Labour ‘supporter’ for only £3 and get a vote for the Labour Party leadership and vote Jeremy Corbyn. Come on you Tories!

So, having watched and heard Harriet Harman suggest that Labour MPs support the Tory welfare cuts, having heard the hysteria of Labour to the very extremely unlikely position of Jeremy Corbyn being elected, and that many police in North West England are convicted ex-criminals, I return to the back arse of nowhere with some relief.

Won’t be there long though…off to the John Hewitt Summer School in Armagh next week.

The photo is of me taking a leap of faith off a precipice when I was young…thought it was the most appropriate. Not sure I have that confidence now.

Exhibit B, the Piccinni creatures and Maum were the most interesting events for me in the rainy, windswept but fabulous few days I spent at the Galway International Arts Festival. On arrival, we went straight to the Black Box to see Exhibit B (created by South African, Brett Bailey) so I was a little unprepared for the exhibition.  The eye to eye contact at Exhibit B was challenging. I stared at the exhibits displaying the savage brutality of colonial Europe and they stared back. Real people. Black people, revolving on pedestals, painted in colonial gear, exhibited as freaks, slaves holding baskets of laytex rubber hands or human skulls. I lowered my eyes to read the information panel which told me of the mutilation, cruelty, and barbarity of the white colonisers and looked back at the exhibit who still stared at me. And I felt guilty. It was an effective and powerful exhibition. I left, sick to the stomach, cowed by the brutality of man and went to have a drink…shame faced.

The cruelty of colonialism and the miscarriage of justice reared its ugly head again in the brilliant production of Maum, written by Sighle Ni Chonaill which was the last event of our stay. It was performed in both Irish and English with the Irish translated in a panel at the top of the theatre. At first it was off putting as you had to watch for the translation rather than watch the characters but as I got to know the characters better, this mattered less. It is not a tactic that I would over use though, and, to be honest, this production didn’t. The play unfolds and reveals and the acting is very good. It’s denoument is excellent and surprisingly unexpected. Once again, I left the theatre feeling shamefaced and guilty (I am English). I was driving home, so I didn’t take to the drink that time.

But in-between all the guilt and shame, high winds and rain. I had a great time. Art is fabulous. It is very easy to forget how art enables us to think, absorb, and reflect. Creating art is so important, whether it be music, performance, visual, or written. |It enables us to appreciate and understand our own lives – both as the creator and as the audience. It creates a relationship between us all and provides us with different perspectives. It expresses our emotions. It is shocking that the arts is so underfunded and that we do not yet appreciate its value. Art should be considered a consumer durable. If you think about all the things that give us joy in our life time, it is usually something to do with art…books, music, painting, performance. Our lives revolve around entertainment (TV) yet art is not sufficiently valued or appreciated by the powers that be unless it is to manipulate it. Odd that. The relationship between power and art. Hum, I’ll need to reflect on that but in the meantime…I’ll just stick with my visit to Galway in the lashing wind and rain.

Of course, given the weather, I had to get a raincoat. I am acquiring many coats because I never have the right one with me at the time. However, I am delighted with my brand new, half price, swanky raincoat which I am told would give me entry to the horsey crowd at the Galway Races (if I had any money left to go)! So, now I have a coat for all occasions.

Sadly, the wind and the rain put pay to the award winning sky whale which was supposed to swim the skies of the festival , but I loved Patricia Piccinini’s sculptures which we went to see in the Festival Hub. But, they too were very unsettling. She has created half human, half beast mutants whose skin is so life like it is spooky. She uses human hair but the flesh and the eyes of her installations  are totally freaky. They look so real. Ironic really, given the real exhibits of Exhibit B. However, I left this event on a high, delighted by the Art.

I wasn’t as delighted with The Match Box by Frank McGuinness which we went to see on Friday night at the Town Hall. It was a tragedy and delved into the horror of revenge. It was one woman show which went on for one hour forty five minutes and sadly, I didn’t think it had the drama, the stage or the script to make it effective.

But I did enjoy Elizabeth Bourgois’ exhibition of autobiographical line drawings in the Galway Museum. I saw lines of figures and shapes struggling to take shape. I am sure my shape has altered after the cooked breakfasts, delicious chowders, array of hot chocolates, steaks, chips and wine with which we washed down our visit.

Thanks Galway Arts Festival…Galway and all the artists of the world! I had a great time.

Reading A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson is akin to being on a roller coaster except that the highs are peaks of danger, despair and hope (particularly in the cockpit) and the lows are sunk in the sludge of human struggle and misunderstanding. There are many highs (symbolised by the flights of the war planes, Halifaxes and Lancasters and birds, Song Larks) and lows are symbolised by the key characters of Teddy, his daughter Viola, and grandson, Sunny all who trudge blindly through the earthly kingdom of family and misunderstanding.

For me the book is a master of contradiction reflecting the contradiction in terms that life is: for example the heroics of the English speaking pilots when they bomb the German civilians in Nuremberg.

Poor miserable Viola (I keep writing Voila instead…There! in French). Viola is saddled with unadulterated anxst, loneliness, and fear as a child and responds accordingly with self-righteousness, bullishness and grief (and greed). It’s a powerful novel combining acerbic wit (particularly when it comes to the English middle classes) and aesthetic prose.

“Flak, they understood, but this was something more primeval. Occasionally the lightning illuminated malevolent fissures and caverns within the dark mass. The turbulent air currents were random – bucking and bucketing them up or down or sideways…”

Poetry in motion! I also really liked Kate Atkinson’s device which enabled the narrator, author, God to make bracketed asides (usually amusing) which also showed her perspicacity – another sleight of hand in a novel about black and white and the inherent and inherited contradictory forces of life.

A good read.

I really enjoyed reading the latest edition of Stinging Fly. Its theme is ‘London’, my home town until I emigrated to Ireland over twenty years ago. There are some interesting essays and articles, great poems and well-crafted stories. It was a delight to read the names of familiar streets, venues, places I know so well (I was reared in North London and went to school in Kilburn). I love it when stories have references to places I know. It adds an extra dimension and excitement to my reading. And some of the tales were very amusing and enjoyable.

However, as I progressed through the pages, I found myself getting a little distressed. London, the city of my childhood, the place of my adolescence, where I gathered my political and work experience, where I first had sex, fell in love, married, gave birth to my children was suddenly being portrayed as a second class experience, not one that was truly valued. London was nothing but a vehicle for change, a safe house, an escape, an excuse. Rightly, the book expressed the Irish emigrants’ experience. It didn’t intend to do anything else. But, of course, for me there is more. The cobbled back alleyways, the Heath, the pubs, the swings, the may blossom, the markets, the down and outs, the river, the theatres, the Northern Line, the trains, the railings, the people, the Asian corner shops, the council estates, the local newspapers, The Queen even, John Steed in his bowler hat, the Saturday morning pictures, the Co-op, Sainsbury’s, most of this was missing.

Of course I totally relate to the grief of emigration described by the writers. I experience it myself now but I didn’t believe, and I think I still don’t, that the ‘grief’ belongs to a physical environment yet somehow, London, in all these stories was absorbing all the sadness that goes with home sickness. Just like the grief of the death of a loved burrows inside one, so lives the grief of emigration. My English up-bringing and experience formed a part of me. It is a part of me, a healthy part, just as my Dublin and Cavan life changed me and are now part of me. I am proud of them all.

So the book unsettled me. I began to feel defensive and protective of London. I felt it was being used and abused, borrowed and not appreciated, though of course I know that’s not true. Many Irish writers still live there. Many still love London. I think my defensive, rather irritated reaction probably reflects just how much I love and am proud of my city. I have to say, it did catch me unawares. It’s mad, and  strange how strong and irrational such feelings are when one doesn’t live in the country one grew up in.

Nationalism…a strange and ‘terrible beauty’ but having said that

Yea! Go Greeks Go!

I woke up into grey silence this morning. It was sliding through the gap in my curtains. I felt particularly cosy. My duvet, light but warm, was wrapped between my legs. My face nestled in my down pillows. Not a black bird whistled. How lovely, I thought, and stretched out my legs. I turned on my side. I don’t have to do anything immediately, I’ll go back to sleep. A thought inveigled its way through.

‘You haven’t written for weeks.’

I write a poem every week,  I counteracted, slipping my hand under my pillow. And I have my mother staying, and I’m busy running a workshop (I must bring them that character description by Karl Ove Knausgaard today and bake biscuits for them today). And AT The Edge, Cavan went well last night. I was tired. And today I have to take the car to the garage and do a shop, walk the dog, swim…

‘You are supposed to be a writer’, I interrupted. ‘You tell your workshop participants to write every day and you’ve stopped. A poem a week doesn’t cut it.’

I turned over. What will I write about?

‘Just write’.

So I opened my eyes, dragged myself up the pillow into a sitting position. I fumbled for my glasses, dragged my notebook from my bed table, turned on the light. Do you know how hard it is just to write!

Good morning, everyone.

Ok, I’ll write my blog. And then I’ll start revising the collection of short stories that I thought I had finished but it turns out I haven’t. While walking yesterday, I decided to totally revamp them. You know writing is a very messy business. At least I find it so, I never know what I am doing which is a tad unsettling. And I don’t know if I’m rewriting it because it needs changing or I’m rewriting because I don’t know what else to do with it. Or if I’m rewriting so I don’t have to write something else! I just have to go with it, I guess, because I know it’s not right as it is.

Karl Knausgaard captures the difficulties of writing perfectly in his new book, A Man in Love. He deals with the writing by writing about his everyday life (hum, am I copying him now?)  and emotions as a writer and a lover. He describes the prevarications of the body and soul. He writes about his experience of falling in love and having his first child. He writes and describes everything in such detail: his flights of fancy, his drunken bouts, his attitudes to people, his shame, his lack of shame, his love, his anger. He took pages to describe the detail of a children’s birthday party: the tensions between the children, the strain between the adult parents, the almost violent undercurrents that existed in the kitchen (where the parents were) and the marauding children in the rest of the flat. But it was an ordinary everyday children’s birthday party. It was perfect. I wish I could write as well.

You will, if you write every day…

There, that’s a good way to end.  I’ll go and get a cup of tea, then, of course, I’ll have to feed the animals….I can start my revisions tomorrow before I go to Galway. Actually, I’ll just have a little read now. Reading…it’s a part of writing,  it’s one of the perks of the job. Totally justified!

It was good to see the sun shining through the cracks in my curtain when I opened my eyes this morning and to hear the birds sing. I stretched, revelled and tingled in the sun’s glow and my soft bedsheets as I wondered and anticipated my day. I love that feeling.

I was particularly pleased as I plan to stroll down to the old bog to examine the budding bracken. I want to write a poem about it. Have you ever noticed the bracken/fern in bud? It is the most extraordinary transformation from tiny green and brown spring coiled bud to fully fledged fern! It seems impossible that so much green could be contained is such a small bud and even more bizarre that the unfurling happens so slowly. The bud seems so full of tension, like a spring. I attach a picture, along with the wild spring flowers in my garden from last year (its only buttercups at the moment).

Also, sunshine is good for the sale of the house. Granted, it may reflect on the glorious strands of colour weaved in webs by those thin legged industrious spiders who spin as fast as I can hoover, but it also transforms Drumbriste House into spectacular. Yes, our home is looking particularly lovely at the moment. The attic filled one skip last weekend. The out houses filled another last month. I once wrote a poem about filling a skip with my self-doubt, my self-pity, my arrogance, and my jealousy. It was much less physically demanding, I can tell you. Anyway, so our home is looking good. The garden is de-weeded (though weeds are as industrious as spiders), the place is painted, and lo and behold, as we sit back and sip our birthday cocktails last weekend, admiring our handiwork, we wonder should we stay! We rang the auctioneer there and then before we changed our mind.

So, I hope the summer stays sunny, and the auctioneer doesn’t open the presses when he comes. They ‘hide a multitude of sins’ which haven’t been tackled yet. And if you want to buy a nine bedroomed, two kitchen beautiful house on the edge of old bog in the lovelyl lake lands of Cavan, with five delightfully clean outhouses and a steam sheet ironing machine thrown in, let me know. We also have a welly boot dryer.

Isn’t it odd however much one knows it will be different, one is always surprised at weather change? I couldn’t believe how cold the wind and rain was in Ireland after my sojourn in the sunny warmth of Istanbul. Always expect the unexpected, people say, and I never do. I certainly didn’t expect Istanbul to be like it was either.

It is an eclectic city, full of mosques, mosaics, carpets, teas, spices, Turkish delight, sweetmeats, flowers, trees, sea and sun with a delicious assortment of nationalities.

I loved the mosques: white stone, beautiful domes, minarets to be found on practically every street corner. The Blue Mosque was particularly mesmerising. It was how I imagine space to be in daylight. A vast central dome tiled in exquisite tiny blue tiles. A beautiful natural light made to sparkle with a low cast iron chandelier. A red carpet. Light and space and nothing else.

The Aye Sofia was also breath taking. It is a wonderful creation of shapes…so many shapes. Squares in circles, triangles in squares, ovals in triangles, squares shaped into ovals. A glorious conglomeration of Islamic and Christian shifting shapes.

I also loved the ‘Call to Prayer’. The first was at 5.15am, then 10.15am, 1.15pm, 5.15pm, 10.15pm. The wailing of the imam set off a rhythmic roll across the city that made me feel a part of place despite the hundreds of different nationalities.

That was something else I enjoyed. There were so many different tourists: Chinese, Asian, Egyptian, English, French, American, Australian. No one nationality prevailed. What did prevail was the use of selfie sticks. People walked around, arm held out in front, staring at themselves in the camera rather than the detail of the glorious antiquities. Mad. The Turks themselves I found very friendly. They walked with me inquiring after my nationality and family, telling me of wonderful places to go before dragging me into their emporiums to drink glasses of apple teas while trying to sell me carpet after carpet of wonderful colour and design. I know it’s their culture and very nice it is too. Actually, I quite liked the hustle. In fact, if you want my attention you can call me ‘Beautiful Lady’ or ‘Lady in Pink’. It seems I respond to both, particularly if fresh fish and Turkish wine are involved!

I wonder how the Bosphorus can be so blue when it is teeming with ferries, cargo ships, Cruisers, fishing boats, trawlers and even a Destroyer limbering up the river. Frenetic activity everywhere – going here, travelling there. Istanbul is a city of light and motion, voice, art, sunshine, decay and modernity inhabited by a people who seem clever, ambitious, wry and very family orientated – just like the rest of us. That is what struck me most while I meandered through days peopled by men and women of different hues and cultures: how each and every one of us are so similar. We really are all the same.

It has taken me the weekend to come to terms with the British General Election results. I haven’t been so shocked and disappointed since the election in 1992 and I was surprised by the strength of my feelings.

Despite living in Ireland for 21+ years, I still retain an interest in political matters at home. Last week the potential results in terms of seats had been poured over here, and exchanged between family members in England and Scotland, paddy power bets had been placed. Being a foreigner, I cannot get as immersed in Irish politics. It seems I simply don’t appreciate its nuances! A British General Election is always exciting and doubly so because of the First Past the Post System (yes, it has to go, but I will miss it). I’ve loved British elections since I was a child when I was carried off to election parties, ate crisps, nuts, and played, unsupervised, until all hours of the night while my parents and their friends drank, argued and shouted at the political commentators on TV.

Last Thursday, it all ended with the BBC exit poll. I missed that (I was celebrating national poetry day at 10pm in a most unpoetic manner) but listening to RTE on the way home, I realised something was wrong. I stayed up anyway until 4pm watching the results (there were sausage rolls, pizza, nuts, crisps and cake from the poetry party to be eaten). I was unable to believe what was happening and feeling increasingly upset and hurt.

Friday morning I woke up depressed. I don’t even live in the UK and I felt truly miserable. Why? Was it because the votes cast for the Tories were votes of fear and that in itself raises questions about my now emigrant’s romantic view of England as a civilised society that is well organised, practical and not prey to emotional upheavals. I think so. The longer I am away from England, the more attached I have become to an image of the English that is probably not wholly accurate and indeed is one I have created in my imagination. It is a place of organised structure, civilisation, institutional wisdom, fairness. The English can be relied on. Voting Conservative undermines this sentimental perception.  Such sentiment belongs to the Irish abroad. It’s an emigrant thing. So, I guess I can officially be called an emigrant!

Of course, I am saddened that the English have another five years of Tory rule and the austerity and am worried about what the cuts will mean for ordinary people. But, hey, why did they vote for them? Voting out of fear is simply not English! I make fun of myself.

So, it started today. Today, I was upset to learn that within the first 100 days the Tory Government will repeal the Human Rights Act. My father worked all his life in Human Rights: for the United Nations Association, for NCCL (now Liberty), Amnesty International. He worked hard to get the UN Rights of the Child charter adopted. He set up International Alert and Article 19. All of these were dedicated to the Human Rights. I remember feeling a glow of contentment and relief when the Human Rights legislation was signed into the British Parliament earlier this century, feeling proud of Dad’s involvement. Now, it is to be repealed. That is wrong. We fight for beliefs, we campaign, we come together to make gains, gains that we think will stay for ever because society is about improving our lives. I mean who wants to dis improve lives? It seems Mr Cameron and the Tory party does. Below is a poem I drafted to Mr Cameron while out walking this morning. I dedicate it to my father.

Dear Mr Cameron

You plan to repeal the Human Rights Act

I find myself in tears. I am severely upset.

My stomach is gutted.

Dear Mr Cameron,

you won the election

not the right to desecrate our civilisation:

to deny us the right to a home where we wish,

to free education, to air freely our thoughts

access the law, and more…To be English.

Mr Cameron, I was reared in London

in an age that was open.

After the war, the Brits forged ahead

pursuing good health, equality, jobs

Yes, we still struggled with colony

and class but society was strong

human rights underpinned.

I was proud to be English.

Now I am ashamed

because in your first hundred days

you plan to repeal Human Rights legislation.

Mr Cameron, I come from a generation of aspiration,

hope, and determination.

We lobbied, campaigned, marched for our rights.

We politicked, debated, talked into the night.

We created a Britain of which you say you are proud

based on the principles of human rights.

Yet now you are to undo the stitching

of our life long beliefs and English traditions:

our right to life, to be free from slavery

have justice, be entitled to privacy

to say what we feel

choose how we protest, and who we can marry,

to education, and  free elections.

Not be put to death for our aberrations.

Why, Mr Cameron? Why do you do this?

so you can deport, imprison,

make people homeless?

So you can judge, rule without impediment?

I don’t understand, Mr Cameron.

the world is unsure and divided

I’m sure you’d agree argument is healthy

but only if the rights of people are safeguarded.

Mr Cameron,

I believe your majority was incited by fear.

People are frightened and scared of the future

As a leader, it is your job to protect and inspire,

frame a society, equal and fair …for all.

Mr Cameron, how will you do that by repealing these laws?

I have been practicing my baking skills in preparation for A Word in Your Ear, A Poetry Party I am organising in Cavan to celebrate National Poetry Day this Thursday 7 May.

This bank holiday weekend I baked a delicious banana and fruit loaf…I hope I can repeat the feat later in the week to go with the ginger cake ,flour-less  chocolate cake, orange curd buns and ginger biscuits planned. Cakes are a good party piece, but there will also be hundreds of poems for people to peruse and take away. I have downloaded and photocopied poems from Poetry Ireland. I have poems from the Poem for Ireland shortlist, and a selection from Poems That Make Grown Men Cry. I also have adorable postcard poems for people. All I have to do now is to choose which of my poems I will read (and of course do the baking). So come along Thursday 7 May at 6.30pm to the Front Room in the Cavan Town Hall for Cavan’s first poetry party! Bring a cushion,your own poem, if you wish,  more cakes, wine…what every you’re having yourself. Hope to see you there!

Aside from baking, I’ve enjoyed a  quiet Mayday weekend  writing, watching Madeline on Netflix, and stashing huge logs on the fire. For the past few weeks I have been intertwining Ann Tyler, The Accidental Tourist and The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgarov….two very different writers writing on similar subjects. Ann Tyler writes on the dysfunctional family, and  Bulgarov about dysfunctional society. ‘The Master’ is flamboyant,  colourful, and mad. It’s a magical look at squalor, immorality, decay, portraying the Devil with flare and sensitivity in contrast to the indignity of human behaviour. Ann Tyler’s books are filled with awkward reality. They complemented each other well, but suddenly, I felt in need of something different. But what?

Then it occurred to me. What has happened to the Man Booker Prize? Isn’t this the time of year that I peruse the short list and choose which authors I will read? So I go online to check, and yea, it is is the time of year! I go down the list and don’t recognise any of the authors. They are all south or central American, African, Lebanese, one North American. Maybe this is why I haven’t heard. I start searching Amazon for the three women on the short list I have chosen to read, Hoda Barakat, Marlene Van Niekerk and Maryse Conde, but they are not available, or at least, not the English translations of the books mentioned. I will order them from my bookshop. I did download ‘Victoire’ by Maryse Conde. It is a biography on her grandmother raised in Guatemala. I am enjoying it. Guatemala is not a region I know much about. I wondered if the lack of a European/Irish/English presence on the list had led to the silence that has surrounded the Man Booker. If it that is the reason, it is a sad reflection on the Irish and English reviewers. I am looking forward to discovering more about these authors.

Anyway, after two days of rain, the sun is shining in Cavan. So I must arise and shift this dog, Poppins from the end of my bed, and get her out for a walk. Happy May Day celebrations.