Letter for You…from Louis MacNeice

July 21st, 2010 § 1 Comment

Bird and FlowerIn the week that the world’s biggest bookseller announced they are selling more Ebooks than hardbacks, it seems apposite to hearken to the message below, written with us in mind by Ulster poet Louis MacNeice.

This dates from just over half a century ago and the time to consider the poem’s meaning has surely come.

Happily our generation comes out of this interrogation rather well, as the English language, whatever the platform, is livelier and more playful than ever. But I leave it to you to decide–after all, the piece is addressed…

        To Posterity

        When books have all seized up like the books in graveyards
        And reading and even speaking have been replaced
        By other, less difficult, media, we wonder if you
        Will find in flowers and fruit the same colour and taste
        They held for us for whom they were framed in words,
        And will your grass be green, your sky be blue,
        Or will your birds be always wingless birds?

        -Louis MacNeice (1957)

From Selected Poems

Flickr Image by ‘Quick, like a mule’ (CC Licensed)

How to Build a Great Kids’ Library

May 30th, 2010 § 2 Comments

BrowsingOur kids have great books in their bedrooms, most of which they have read or we have read to them. Here’s how to accumulate books your kids will be grateful for:

1: Never buy a book by a celebrity
2: Never buy a book that is a numbered part of a series
3: Never buy a book that is tied-in to a movie or TV product
4: Let your kids buy (or borrow) whatever they want.

No celebrities, no series, no cameras: remember these rules of thumb and you will have yourself a powerful tool to help you when next you are standing in the bookstore, facing the 90% garbage that most booksellers offer our children. (Is any other group of consumers treated so badly?)

With these rules, you can quickly gather a pile of quality books to choose from: books that got onto that bookshelf largely on their own merits.

An objection could be made that most kids’ classics, The Jungle Book, say, or the Harry Potter novels, all had movies made of them. But, caveat emptor: the books under these names in stores today are often a shabby mixture of movie screenshots and insipid ‘retellings’. And look out for ‘abridged versions’: more grown-up stupidity dressed up as concern for children, the poor dears. The best place to find the original classics is in the library or by reference to the publisher: Puffin Books is one imprint I trust for editorial commonsense.

Rule #4 is vital of course: if they are doing the choosing, children should always be allowed to choose what they like, without any comment from parents.

Rules are made to be broken so, for instance, I would make an exception to #2 for the likes of Tintin and to #4 for material that is patently unsuitable and likely to disturb e.g. adult horror stories.

flickr image by mwoodard

The Four Colour Pen

May 28th, 2010 § 1 Comment

DrawingHere’s an original story I told at an Open Mic in the Linenhall the other night. The standard was really high among poets, storytellers, and songwriters.

If there is an Open Mic event near you, I urge you to go: you never know what you will discover.

Keegan – The Four Colour Pen

flickr image by ianus

Last of the Vegas Magicians

May 17th, 2010 § Comments Off

Last of the Vegas MagiciansIf you are in or near Las Vegas in early June, I hope you can make it to the production of my new play Last of the Vegas Magicians, directed by Ruth Pe Palileo, and produced by Butcher Block Productions.

The protagonist, a retired conjuror called Victor Goodbody, is living out his last days in a Las Vegas Valley hospice. Having been relatively unsuccessful in life and love, he has come to delude himself that he is in fact a real magician:

By the power of magic alone I raised not only the City of Las Vegas–but also the Volta Hotel and Casino–eighth wonder of the world and eclipser of the first pyramids of Old Vegas. With only words from the Lore Books and the force of my Will I raised a Stratosphere and a Forum. Volcanoes rose and fell at my command…even statues moved.

For Victor, electricity and digital lifestyles are an abomination, and he raves and rages against modern Las Vegas with wild (and, I hope, entertaining) abandon. As his illness progresses, his Doctor and Nurse play out the roles of figures from his past, allowing Victor to come to some sort of terms with the loss of his mother and his lover.

Here’s the schedule, with all performances taking place at the Las Vegas Little Theatre:

  • Friday June 4th at 8:30pm
  • Thursday June 10th at 6:30pm
  • Saturday June 12th at 6:30pm
  • Sunday June 13th at 4:30pm and 6pm

Go to Las Vegas Fringe Festival to purchase tickets. Wish I could see you there…

Cut to the Quick With Occam’s Razor

May 9th, 2010 § 1 Comment

Video of the talk I gave the other night in Westport, at Ignite the West. Great fun, great people, and a really good forum to hatch new ideas. Thanks to the organizers, Steve and Dermot, for a great opportunity.

For One Night Only… Sing, Hibernia!

April 12th, 2010 § Comments Off

Play StillIf you are in Leinster this week, check out my short play Sing Hibernia, appearing on Tuesday as part of a BIFE Director’s show in Bray. The piece was originally produced by Painted Filly Theatre in Temple Bar a few years back and I am delighted to be able to see it again.

My sister Miriam directs :)

See her blog for the details

Grand Theft NAMA

August 11th, 2009 § 4 Comments

Grand Theft NAMAI just sent the following letter to my public representatives here in Ireland on the subject of the madness that is NAMA; if you’re in the same sinking ship I encourage you to do the same: you can find the addresses you need here. Those of you outside of Ireland should pause for a moment and consider the progress of a country determined to not only undo its achievements but also put paid to any future ambitions.

I am writing to you to express my deep concern as an Irish citizen about the establishment of NAMA and, in particular, the unorthodox methods being used to establish the value of properties concerned.

Perhaps all concerned are acting in good faith–but there is a great danger that the present and future treasure of our country, of our children and our grandchildren, will be squandered: all in a vain attempt to mitigate the losses of a reckless element.

The thinking of course is that those losses, when realized, represent a systemic risk. That may be so. But the creation of NAMA, like so many responses in this crisis, is ill-conceived and burdensome.

  • For one thing, why are stakeholders in our banks not absorbing the losses first?
  • For another, why are values being determined as though they will not fall further?
  • And, to stop only at three points where a dozen could be made: how immune is NAMA to the “stroke-pulling” that seems endemic to our public life?

I would appreciate you redoubling your efforts to stop NAMA; if you are in support of it, I beg you to reconsider.

Across the Twitterverse

July 12th, 2009 § Comments Off

On the Bedside Table

Roberto Bolano

  • Reading The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano. Like retracing in detail a long forgotten dream. What is it about? God knows.

RIP Robert McNamara

  • RIP Robert McNamara: a life of moral learning, latterly concerned with our morbid ‘nuclearism’. Pity the lessons were so costly.

Dictatorship of the Bacteriat

  • Dang ‘flu! You know you’re delirious when you see the face of Karl Marx in the clouds from your bedroom window…

Weather

  • Studying an ink-soaked cloud over Westport, a cloud so pregnant with intent it looks like a pantomime villain

Image courtesy of 3ammagazine

Golden Age of Reading

July 9th, 2009 § Comments Off

One of the great things about having children is that it gives you the opportunity to return to childhood classics–and also read the books you’d like to read now if you were an 8-year-old. There’s many more we got through at bedtime than these of course, but these are stand-outs:

Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner. Revisiting a favourite from my childhood. [AmazonUK] [US]

Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. Wonderfully funny–and witty too. [AmazonUK] [US]

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night by Allan and Janet Ahlberg. Cervantes for the under-10 set. [AmazonUK] [US]

Just William by Richmal Crompton. Misadventures of spirited boy prone to scrapes: a masterclass in comic writing. [AmazonUK] [US]

Stig of the Dump by Clive King. Again, revisiting a favourite from my childhood with the alibi that I am reading to the kids. [AmazonUK] [US]

The Unlucky Day by Richard Scarry. Disaster comedy puts credit crunch in perspective: imagine cold pickles for dinner in flooded home! [AmazonUK] [US]

Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. A young boy finds friendship with mysterious children in the garden, a place transformed when night falls and midnight strikes… [AmazonUK] [US]

Twitter Exhibit

July 5th, 2009 § Comments Off

Material World

  • Strange how coffee tastes differently when you think you are drinking tea.
  • Every second day I seem to find myself explaining the miracle-in-waiting that is Print On Demand. Perhaps this short video demonstration might do it: Meet your future bookstore.

Spiritual World

  • Fielding questions from my 5-year-old, e.g.: “Do angels have childhoods?” (This led to some lively discussion on Facebook).
  • Disease is a dark consequence of sexual desire; organized religion dark consequence of spiritual desire. (After De Motherlant: this was the product of some lively discussion on Twitter).

Television

    Flickr Image by by moominsean
  • Documentary on David Hockney (BBC). Restless heart, restless mind, restless eye.
  • ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ (Anderson). Formal delights, gentle humour, choice tunes: an enjoyable foray into the world of my in-laws :)

Tennis

  • watching men’s final, unnerved by ‘Wimbledon Effect’ of unchanged court livery that I am back in the 70s, watching as a boy.
  • Difference between being a kid and a grown-up: a kids thinks “Yeah, I could take Federer…”

Ireland

  • Amazing how little fuss Loyalist decommissioning innire is causing in Irish/UK media but, if you remember the bad old days, it’s “momentous”. The first day I set foot in Northern Ireland, the headline on a local paper quoted a loyalist promising “One Catholic, One Bullet”. Beyond even the images of the Chuckle Brothers, Paisley and McGuinness, the shift in thinking in Loyalism is a profound barometer of political progress.
  • Could we airlift the Bernie Madoff judge and jury over to Ireland please? The American Justice System gave him 150 years. Wrongdoers with juice in these parts not only tend to go unpunished they often emerge with a golden handhake and a generous pension.
  • Problem with Green Party in Ireland is that they are powered by ideology. What is Fianna Fail’s ideology? Power.

Joys of Self-Employment, Ch. LXXXIV

  • Impromptu flashmob with the kids, dancing to ‘Funkytown’ by Lipps, Inc.

Flickr Image by by moominsean

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