Galway Advertiser 2003/2003_07_03/GA_03072003_E1_074.pdf 

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A rve o b o s i e iw f o k n the Ws o Iea d et f rl n
edited b y Kernan A n d r e w s

O n the importance of] literary magazines
THERE IS a public perception that and always underestimated. a bookseller is a publisher, editor, Irish Literary Magazines An Outline and distributor all rolled into one. History and Descriptive Bibliography This expresses itself in various ways written by Tom Clyde and recently from the "I have a friend who has published by Irish Academic Press great talent as a writer but he can't goes a long way to fill this gap. At first find a publisher" to the more direct appearance the book has an austere "I have written a novel that's miles academic look about it and is highly ahead of Ulysses, will you publish priced at 4 5 . Furthermore, the tone of it?" the narrative is often pedantic and I have a lot of sympathy for these slightly dismissive of previous work questions and do try to answer them as done in this rather specialised field. best I can. Even taking personal There is no doubt however of the vanities into consideration, there is a scholarship and knowledge of the great deal of pain in submitting pen to author and the book is a mine of paper, and even if the result is not what information. might be called literature, it is a result. It tells the history of Irish magazine The next huge step is the decision lo publishing from the very beginning place the work in (he public eye. This and would suggest Irish literature, as can be a traumatic experience inviting we know it today, first expressed itself ridicule and rejection. The response to in the late 18th century and has much this gesture needs to be sympathetic, if stronger ties with the English literary not to the work, at least to its creation. tradition than we often care to admit. Unfortunately, for the unpublished The book is divided into roughly writer, there is no easy answer. There three pans. The first part is a series of seems to be an unwritten law that the short chapters which give a general would-be poet or novelist must history of the Irish literary magazine, undergo a number of rejections before the second is a highly descriptive and making it into print. Most of the detailed bibliography, and the third established writers will bounce the comprises a number of indices. Each of work in progress off trusted colleagues these has its own value for the different before submitting it to draft form. The specialists, but for the general punter, unpublished writer has no such the first is probably the more network and their first task would be to interesting. establish critical contacts. Then there is We hear, for example that printing the lonely path to a publisher's door, a came late to Ireland, the first press journey that often ends with weeping being set up in Dublin in 1550. a and gnashing of teeth, not to mention decade after it had arrived in Mexico. the shredded manuscript in the This was due to the fact that this was wastepaper basket and other the period of the dissolution of the expletives. monasteries and there were no Perhaps the more fruitful path for centralised centres of education (As yet the would-be writer is to the door of there was no university here). Another the literary magazine editor. Certainly, crucially determining factor was the in history of modem Irish literature, it fact that the Tudors realised the power is the path by which most of the of the printing press and would not established writers have ground their allow this new propaganda weapon to first teeth and worked their way on to develop outside their control. die bottom rungs of the literary ladder. We also read that the era of Because of their very nature, literary continuous newspaper production magazines tend to be short lived or begins in Ireland with the Flying Post ephemeral, and therefore to the normal (Dublin) in 1699. The first newspapers punter obscure, aloof and to be published outside Dublin were in unapproachable. It can also be said the Cork (the Cork Idler, 1715). Limenck reason why literary magazines are set (the Limerick News Letter. 1716). up in the first place is precisely to Waterford (another Flying Post. 1729). provide a platform for the unpublished and Belfast (the Newsletter. 1737). writer to appear in print. Either way the It was not until the 18th century that important, not to say crucial, role they the literary magazine appeared. At first play in providing that platform, as well this was simply a copy of such English as giving voice to cultural, social, and stalwarts as the Spectator and the political debate is rarely acknowledged Taller with very little Irish content.

The poems and ballads of John B Keane

THE STREET, a revised collection of the poems a n d ballads of John B Keane, is I would love to be combing her hair. suffused with the wit and insight familiar To lay the strands over my hands. to his readers. 1 would spy with the stealth of a stoat Much of the book was published in 1961 The pulse of her pandurate wrist. And admire the sweet shape of her throat although Jonathan Swift was to be as The Street and Other Poems, but the And the grand and languinous lands involved with two of them. It was not updated collection, launched on Monday as Of her legs and her ankles and twist however until the end of the century, part of Listowel Writers' Week, brings The necks of the feckless that dare with its charged political climate, that a together Keane's songs as well as the poetry which he penned sporadically throughout his To dishonour her name when she's specific Irish and somewhat subversive life. missed. element began to emerge. Keane's poetry, like his prose and drama, The nationalistic or subversive Of course humour has always played a nature of these magazines was not is founded on a keen sense of humour and an obvious delight in the many facets of part in Keane's writings, and his caustic wit limited to politics. The Parlour permeates such poems as 'To A Girl of Window, a weekly, which ran for seven human existence, from love of place and people to the bite of disappointment and the Eighteen in a Cocktail Lounge Which is w e e k s in 1795, stated in its first Filled With Old Women'. The true talent of editorial: "Female Authors have so torment of loneliness. His love of place, which forms a major theme throughout his his humour lies in his ability to satirise many discouragements to encounter, it work, finds its voice in the many poems and without bitterness, to poke fun without is no wonder they so rarely appear in ballads devoted to Listowel town and the causing offence to his subjects, as evidenced Print; the general opinion is against in i f I Was The Rose of Tralee': them; People of Contracted Minds natural beauty of the s u r r o u n d i n g countryside. judge hardly of them; and consider that The other great love of John B Keane's If I was the Rose of Tralee, every drop of Ink that Hows from the life was his wife Mary, who provided him What a wonderful night it would be. Pen of a Woman, as so many blots on I would walk like a queen her character. As writers they labour with the inspiration for his many love poems. It is no great surprise that such I would talk like a queen under many disadvantages, which But I know that it never can be. instead of procuring indulgence, rather poems are featured in a collection which has I'm just a plain Jane, but I'm hoping in provoke censure, and their Writings are been selected and edited by his daughter, vain discovered to have many defects which Joanna Keane O'Flynn, who has included That they'll see something special in me. are often overlooked in those of the such works as 'Two Lips', 'Two E y e s ' , 'Tryst', and 'Delight' in this book. One of other sex." the most striking love poems in the book is The Street is now available in most The writer continues on into the 19th 'Honour', in which he conveys sentiments and 20th centuries and while 1 would bookshops, and costs 9.95. UNA SINNOTT take issue with him in describing The of love and honour in a rich, lilting assonance: Nation as a literary magazine and in claiming it had a circulation of 10,000 per issue (With regards to the former, one could also call The Irish Times a literary magazine, to the latter, this experiences with cancer in 'Fifties Sterility'; figure was given by Charles Gavan ANDY JOHNSON is a man from whom Duffy a founder of The Nation and the l a n g u a g e spills o u t in poetic p h r a s e s , "sand wheels the churchyard, Blows through first believer of his own hype.), the r e l e n t l e s s r h y t h m s , a n d clever q u i p s . broken crosses, into the coffins/Of men slain Small wonder he is poet. Although better out at sea and eats their bones;" book is entertaining and informative. He toys with words, unable to resist, He is at his best as he approaches his known for his political activism, the pen own period. Speaking of The Bell, he and the poetry book a r e never far from juxtaposing, and finding strange meaning like "the passage-rites of life are scrambled" says, "(it) marks the start of a new his reach. He uses the same keen perception, that he and "For all they proved a mastery of the chapter in Irish culture, the rejection of the tum-of-the-century definitions of has with his involvement in politics, in his arts." Andy explained it comes from his national literature and politics after the poetry. However, the activism is never far growing up in Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo. "I love playing with words," he says. "It's long hangover of such values through from his mind. While this volume of poetry the 1920s and 1930s, and an attempt to is filled with ordinary simple things, he coming from a country life and hearing people around me having the craic with come to terms with a country which promises more rebellious verse in the future. language. The language spoken by a small was increasingly urbanised and "This is the silk glove, the mailed fist is farmer is as rich as Shakespeare." beginning to see itself not as the bearer coming." He takes the mundane, a cat wanting to be Most of the work is written in iambic of a unique destiny but simply as stroked, a flock of university graduates pentameter, so beloved of Shakespeare. "I another small European state." have a weakness for rhythm," he admits. Isn't it a curious accident of history waiting the conferring of theri degrees, a "Rhythms have been coming up in my mind that exactly one month to the day after well-loved film. He paints their picture since I was a teenager, well before I started the first issue of The Bell, in November lovingly, sometimes caustically but with an to write poetry. Like a musician the rhythm 1940, Des and Maureen Kenny, my accuracy that tells of a familiarity with parents, opened the doors of Kenny's image and language. But while he writes inspires the first piece and it starts to crystallise in my mind. Then form takes Bookshop and Art Gallery for the first about visual things there is emotion attached. time? Now. I simply couldn't resist He s p e a k s of " l o v e ' s larks and j o y o u s over." foibles" and "This garden and this house The Spirit's Too Much With Us is finishing on that note. published by Poetry Monthly Press and Des Kenny we're anchored in. AIso's our anchor in the whirling world." Rather than shying away can be found in Charlie Byrne's book from the intimate and the personal. Johnston shop priced 2 . fully e m b r a c e s it. describing his own . MicheleViney

Andy Johnson's poetic spirit