RAHOO,RAHOO,RAHOO!!

At last! PB4 has been bolted together from raw flesh and bone and steel in a well used shed in Co.Wicklow. 130 pages of brilliance will be perfect bound and encased in a matt laminate cover and given electrical charges and vodka until it comes pounding into life!

This may be the greatest creation since the wheel (8000 years BC) and the pop up toaster (1567 AD)
Use the 'Buy Now'  above to order before stocks and the sands of time run out of the house and go live in a commune in Zagreb. Prices are €14 for Ireland and €15 for the rest of the world and include postage and packaging and a MIGHTY 12 track CD of music and spoken word.

I'll tell you more about the magazine when my eyeballs stop bleeding and exhaustion turns to euphoria.

Here's a taster! Illustrations from PB4 plus track by Laura Moody plus a few photos of my own.

The bus has 4 days left to make another €519 to meet its target of €1950 at fundit.ie HERE http://www.fundit.ie/project/pb4-issue-4-of-the-poetry-bus-mag if we don't meet the target we get nothing !


SO! Here is an amazing offer/opportunity. The wonderful poet Kona Macphee has kindly donated a voucher for Darina Allen's world famous Ballymalloe cookery school at beautiful Shanagarry in Co.Cork.The voucher is valid for the whole of September and entitles TWO people to a wonderful afternoon that includes lessons at the cookery school PLUS a gorgeous lunch for TWO!

The cookery lessons alone cost €140.Lunch there is very rare and by invitation only so this may be the ONLY chance you might get to have this experience!! It is not possible to put a price on it as there are no prices!!
I'm looking for offers to pledge to the poetry bus.The highest offer over €140 will get the voucher and a copy of PB4!! Please share this and spread the word!

 

Here's a taster from Ballymaloe
 

'When you step through the little wooden side gate­ and into the courtyard of Ballymaloe Cookery School you enter a different world. A world where the whole emphasis is on food - growing it, preparing it, cooking it, eating it and, crucially, enjoying it. A world that feels wonderfully cut-off because it is in the middle of ten acres of organic market gardens'

 

PB4 with 90 perfect bound pages of poetry (Lemn Sissay, Ian Duhig, Noel King, Lyn Lifshin, Alan Jude Moore plus many many more including new and exciting voices!) cutting edge illustration, articles, reviews, cartoons PLUS free audio CD of spoken word and music tracks INCLUDING James Yorkston!!
All this packaged and posted to your door for a pledge of €10! Sure ye'd be mad not to!

Bertie Bassett or Bertold Brecht ?

Or both? Or neither?
Find out as the wonderful Niamh Boyce interviews me on her lovely 'Words A Day' blog with some soul searching questions on life, the internet, poetry, and me book 'Jewel' (Currently SOLD OUT at Amazon UK, but still available direct from Salmon, (hint, hint) HERE http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=259&a=220

IF you have a few moments pop over to Niamh's blog HERE! 
http://niamhboyce.blogspot.ie/2012/07/poetry-is-broad-church-and-everyone-is.html

Rachel Fenton interviews the Eejit!

Alls ya gotta do is clickety
HERE

Jewel is let out

So my book, my first collection of poetry 'Jewel' is back from the printers and out in the post. I should get my copies tomorrow. It's a weird feeling. The real sheer unadulterated joy,the magic,the relief, the release, was when I was offered a book deal. Nothing before or since quite compares to that life changing moment. And it is life changing, not world changing, not a big deal in the great scheme of things, but in the little moments of an ordinary life it's a cosmic shift. Anything else good that happens now is an added bonus. So I'm really looking forward to seeing my book in the flesh. And flesh is the right word here. The catalyst, the tender hurt, the anger , almost half a century of emotion is laid raw here in 68 pages. Some of it is not pretty. Sometimes life is not pretty. And still this is a lovesong for hope and for, well, love. People like me don't often get heard, I was on the verge of oblivion, Jessie Lendennie of Salmon Poetry plucked me from the abyss. I could not be more overjoyed, I could not be more grateful.I could never thank her enough. This was the only party in town. If you'd like a copy, you can order it
HERE

RACHEL FOX'S POETRY MOPED!

How soon is now.

I’m hearing mellow but I’m not feeling it

Yet

And then ? Well then.

So I listen

to now put then away,

another broken piece of yourself.

How much is left,

when every tiny victory in a hill of defeat

Is phyrrhic?

Poets are cracked pots broken in translation.

Now sun streams in the window

as sense goes out.

Pieces of a man.

Pieces of eight.

Put creation in the drawer.

Lock away vulnerability.

Shelter kindness.

Ambition has walked in the door.

I listened to Gil Scott Heron's song on Rachel's blog and wrote this at the same time. Great to be back in the saddle! Well done Rachel!

 

Take a look here and join in! HERE

Miracles do happen

So here it is. Well almost! This is the front cover of the book itself that I will be shamelessly and relentlessly promoting til everybody in the world is beaten into submission and buys it or runs screaming to hide away in a remote cave in the Outer Hebrides.

It can by the magic of the interwebbyweave be pre-ordered
HERE

Lord knows what people will make of it. This is all very exciting but nothing will match the sheer almost overwhelming emotionally charged joy I felt when Jessie Lendennie asked if I'd like to publish a book with Salmon. It was like the whole waste of my life suddenly dropped into place and was no longer a waste after all. It had meant something and led to something. In this regard I think Jessie saved my life. In that moment I was no different yet I was changed, changed utterly, there's no doubt of that.
At 49 years of age I had been nowhere and was still heading nowhere slow.Clearly miracles don't always come in a lightning strike, sometimes they take a lifetime!

Me Book!!!

HERE

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY!

Patrick was a humble cobbler born in County Roscommon in 1942. He rose to fame and indeed sainthood by ridding Ireland of a terrible scourge,The snake of Knowledge. This snake was the deadliest, ugliest, most feared snake in all Ireland. It was the fastest snake in Ireland.It was the cleverest snake in Ireland. It was the richest snake in Ireland.It was the longest snake in Ireland.It was the shortest snake in Ireland.It was the slowest snake in Ireland. It was the stupidest snake in Ireland. It was the ONLY feckin snake in Ireland.
It had been left behind by invading Vikings in the early 1920's and was really pissed off as it hadn't had a shag in 20 years. This made it grumpy and unapproachable hence its fearsome reputation. Myth also had it that the snake contained all knowledge and if anyone were to eat its flesh they would know everything, a bit like Stephen Fry.

Anyways in the 1960's Jimmi Hendrix was on tour with Joe Dolan and they were to play a big concert at Boyle Castle supported by Big Tom and The Mainliners. Disaster struck just hours before the gig when Jimmi's snakeskin boots went missing, presumed stolen. Panic broke out as Jimmi broke down in tears wailing that he could not go on stage without his lucky boots. The whole town went mad searching for the missing boots in hope that they could be found and the gig go ahead.

Patrick was finishing up in his shed when he heard the news. Taking a quick look around he heard a frantic hissing in the haggard and there among the clamps of turf was the mighty snake being amorous with jimmi Hendrix's boots.Patrick leapt into action with a long handled beet fork and taking the pre-occupied snake by surprize killed it stone dead.You could say It came and went all in one go.
Patrick picked up the boots but they were in tatters, shagged out. Thinking on his feet Patrick whipped up the dead snake and deftly skinned it with a penknife to patch up the boots good as new.

The concert went ahead and Patrick was hailed as a hero, famous the length and breadth of the world, even as far as Ballyfermot. A week later his head exploded when he cooked and ate the snake.The myth had been true the snake did inded contain all knowledge. The vikings had in fact come bearing gifts but had been fucked off out of it by local dairy farmers who didn't think it funny that they had horns on their funny hats.

10 years after his death someone got out of purgatory 10 mnnutes early after strangely praying a novena to the dead cobbler for the help of his wisdom.The Pope at the time, Pope Pontius Pilates Eurythmics, heard of this story and declared 'E musta truly be a saint innit peeps' and so it came to be.

It was the best of times it was the worst, it's all poo and nuts but hope too.

So, the first proofs of me life's work 'Jewel' to be published by the lovely people at Salmon poetry have arrived. This is exciting and terrifying.Exciting because someone is going to put my poems into a real book that will be in bookshops and terrifying because someone is going to put my poems into a real book that will be in bookshops.

I mean when you write the things, you're slamming words together in drunken abandon not giving a flying fuck about anything because nobody's ever going to actually see the bloody things except yourself, the dog, and possibly the wife.It's just like having a poo, nothing much to look at but you're glad you've done it. But now that poo isn't going to be discreetly flushed away, oh no, people (admittedly probably very few , but still) will be looking at my poo and possibly dissecting it to see what's in it or what it means about its creator.A poetic kind of Gillian McKeefe could tell an awful lot from a single stool/poem. I'm laying my nuts on the line here and people might kick them or worse drive a train over them. Now that's going to hurt, big time!

But looking on the brighter side
I'm hoping that someone somewhere might be kind to my poo and find a sweetness in it that they like, Im hoping that maybe at least one single person somewhere will be moved by my movements, that's gotta be good enough?Make it all worthwhile? Right? I'm right? Aren't I?