Poems of hope competition

A competition here for short poems of hope. Prize is a trip to South Africa with spending money, second and third prizes of cash, anda reading at a literature festival in Berlin.

The shortlisted poems are whittled down by public vote on the website, and entries are made through creative commons. So your poem will be out there once entered, which might not be to everyone's taste. But if you have something short on the theme of good hope, this could be nice? I mean it's a trip to South Africa, after all ...

The competition opened at the beginning of July, and closes at the end of August.

Not procrastinating, but waiting

I went to hear Claire Keegan reading in Achill tonight. She was just great! The hall was small, and laid out like an aeroplane – three seats on one side of the aisle, two on the other. It’s an old hall from the famine times, thick white walls and high windows.

She read just one story, not in the European edition of Walk the Blue Fields but in the American, and set in the Heinrich Boll cottage just up the road. In the story, a writer in the third person arrives late on Achill to take up a residence in the cottage, and is intruded on by a German professor of literature. She spends so much time the first day pinned by her appointment with the GermanIt’s a perfect picture of writing, not getting down to writing, but procrastinating, otherwise known as taking the time to walk, and read and think, and describe.

I was struck in her stories that I’ve read how about a third of the way through or more, something is revealed about the central character which is pivotal, and I asked what I had been wondering in reading them – did she know from the beginning the arc of the story, or did she just start writing blind, not knowing where she was going? The latter, she said, and she described the struggle to fully imagine what it is that’s waiting to be written, the need to read and walk and do nothing to let it out. It was really encouraging to hear. I’m glad to have gone.

Climbing the book

On Saturday I climbed Croagh Patrick with my teenage son. It was just great. We left home about 9.30 or so, and were on the summit by lunchtime - two hours and ten minutes of climbing, including lots of stops. I felt so unfit – having to stop every couple of hundred yards and slump on a rock to rest my legs. Then I’d look back and see that in that few hundred yards, we’d gained a lot of height. It’s climbing, not hillwalking.

I think writing a book is a lot like climbing Croagh Patrick. So many people do it – older people, students, big overweight farmers, children – people who look miles fitter than you, and people who look way less so. People wearing unsuitable shoes, or no shoes. People who are clearly not prepared. People walking dogs, for god’s sake! So many people that you think it must be easy. And it’s not! It’s bloody hard and dogged work, a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, and at the crunch at the end, where it rises more than 45 degrees of loose stones, of carefully navigating, keeping going when you reach that point just short of the summit when you’re tired of constantly climbing uphill into the mist, when you begin to think “actually forget this – I don’t need to reach the summit, this is high enough for me, I don’t need the validation.” Which is rubbish, cause you do, actually. And you have that weird mix of solidarity and competitiveness with your fellow climbers. I found myself thinking petty, spiteful thoughts about the woman who was doing it barefoot, and talked about the pain in the balls of her feet to anyone in her climbing range. I was pleased enough about doing it in a big pair of hiking boots – she seemed to be just upstaging us all! I realised even as I thought these thoughts how petty they were, but still they came! And yet we encouraged each other – offering oranges, admitting to each other how hard it was, delighted to find people had made it, people on the way down telling the ones still going up they were nearly there.

And we got to the summit, and realised that yes, there is a destination in climbing a mountain. It’s not the same to climb up half way, and stop there. Getting to the top, hanging out there awhile, having climbed, that’s different to just going up a little and almost doing it.

Downhill is different again, calling in a whole set of muscles that haven’t been used in years. On our way up, we met people who told us downhill was harder, but it’s not. It’s just tricky, but it doesn’t make you sweat, and anyway, you have no choice but to descend, so the whole self-doubt thing isn’t there. Maybe, to extend the cheesy metaphor, climbing downhill is like publishing. I wouldn’t really know. I’m still there, just short of the summit, tired of climbing uphill, weary of all this progress, playing mindgames to stop myself from finishing.

Hook

Do you know what I love? Fishing, that’s what. Stringing up the rods, fustaring around for bait, being rank amateurs and digging up worms under the compost bin, sticking bits of bacon on hooks and heading down to the harbour to cast and reel and taunt the little rock gobys, and stray pollock, and hope to reel something in. We only catch salt water, but we all love it.

And today, we especially did. The kids were settled around the inner harbour, fishing with floats and spinners, dangling earthworms in front of crabholes, hoping for a nibble. I went out on the sea wall with my €30 rod and line, the weight too light, casting and spinning too close to shore.

A small boat took off from the harbour behind me, so I held in the line for a while to let it past. And as it passed, the red-jacketed fisherman called to me
“Have you got anything yet?”
“Not a chance. Not even a cold!”
“Well here’s one to get you started.”
And he tossed me a mackerel, gleaming and silver, and it landed stiff at my feet on the concrete, and we grinned at each other, me and the fisherman as he moved out to sea cause we both knew there were no live fish to be caught in this harbour, and it’s times like that I love this island, and fishing, and what you might catch if you’re lucky, what you might catch that will reel you in to this island life.

wet

Today is wet. The meadow is wet, the road is wet, the clothes I hung on the line last night are dripping onto the wet stones. The sky is full of wet water, and the island is empty, since everyone is gone to the Connaught Final, where I guess the two teams are kicking around a wet ball, making half the people happy, and half of them wet and miserable.

On days like this I wonder if maybe the rain is only falling on this hill, and that beyond the mist-line, it might not be clear and dry, or even merely damp. Thoughts like that make me want to get out, drive down to the shore, find out if there are happy times being had by more outgoing people on the beach.

And the other half of me looks out at the weather and says no – light a fire, make endless cups of tea, channel your inner curmudgeon and stay home, muttering and blogging and reading stories about Africa. Where the rain is organised, and comes in buckets. Often just at night.

rain

Rain finally arrived this evening, and I can’t take my eyes off the sea. I’ve never seen grey look so beautiful. From here you look down from a height and see the swirling currents like rivers in the dark surface. Close in to shore it’s stippled, like threatening armour, and out on the horizon it’s shining like a blade. The sky is full of dark clouds, and the late light is reflecting from them, making the bog green too green, picking out seagulls like scraps of paper floating up and up.

I’ve finished my book, I think. Finished. Now I need to learn about publishing, agents, all that.

I’ve no idea where to start …

Maybe I'll wander over to Emerging Writer - she's usually got lots of good advice