In March last year, the DLR Lexicon Library hosted a series of free writing workshops. From this emerged the Lexicon’s first writers’ group. We style ourselves The Scribes of March. United by the shared craft of writing, our group of 16 is about to launch its debut collection of poetry, prose and short fiction, Times & Tides. Broadcaster Pat Kenny will launch it in the Lexicon’s library next Tuesday, November 26th. All welcome.
It’s often said that things don’t happen by magic, except that working together to create something out of thin air is a sort of real, live magic. Writing, unlike any team or group activity you care to mention, tends to be a solitary occupation. The very activity that fosters joy and total absorption can also bring isolation. Often this is the happy, engrossed solitude of creating and crafting a piece, and then the pleasure of redrafting. Have you said what you mean? Why this phrase or that word? Is a sentence calling too much attention to itself?
The joy of sports for many people is that they can play and socialise at the same time. Before we hear their pleasing harmonies, choirs have rehearsed together for many long hours. Once in Prague on Charles Bridge some years ago, I stood in the snow, listening to a choir belting out Coldplay’s Viva la Vida. It was a spellbinding moment and I can still conjure up their sweet, clear voices and flawless harmonies, see the delight in their faces, feel the cold and the moody winter backdrop in my bones.
But such magical collaborative moments don’t necessarily come with writing by itself. It’s easy to spend hours, even days, writing, utterly by oneself. Not always a good thing. As psychologist Mihali Csikszentmihali suggested in his great book Creativity, writers are often both introverts and extroverts. We work alone but we also love hanging out with friends and families, or just loitering in the midst of humanity. We need to be in the world. It’s our scrap box. Being in a writers’ group brings helpful feedback from our peers. And we can safely curse the semicolon or sing its praises, depending on viewpoint! Camaraderie and support bring us together to share our work in progress. It’s an enriching experience. Someone’s poem provokes reflection, or a memoir piece triggers powerful memories.
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It’s not about capturing the zeitgeist. Because the zeitgeist has an awfully funny habit of changing suddenly and without warning, and contrary to what the polls may have been indicating. So here’s to the hundreds of writing groups around Ireland and to the camaraderie and support they bring. For sure, each group will have its own ways. But there’s no need to wear a tie or pay a large fee. On the contrary, being in a writing group brings fun and laughter and learning and so much more. Above all there is the endlessly fascinating and infuriating craft of writing.
Ansel Adrift by Mary Hosty
‘Powetreh!’ he says out loud. ‘Poetraay!’ It sounds no better. A soft breeze muffles his voice.
Ansel is walking the narrow laneway. Trees overhang and darken one side; splotched-white stone wall flanks the other. Further beyond, a field of reeds framed by more walls, and beyond that a vast rolling pasture, a lush prairie, with swarthy, fleshy cattle scattered about. The air is clear. A young thrush is calling out. It’s spring and a blue-sky day and half-hidden primrose clumps flash from ditches.
There is a certain way to pronounce the word poetry if only he can be bothered to get it right. It might even make the difference. They seem to mind that sort of thing in WOTWAS. And even though he’s a playwright and not a poet, a broader literary learnedness is no burden at all, when applying for entry into the prestigious Writers of The Wild Atlantic Seaboard. Cinnibar is helping him to prepare for the interview.
The cow is still there. Centre field. An ungainly black swelling in the dewy grass. A faint waft of decay. He thinks about reporting it. Been there almost a week. Ought to be gone by now. It’s rarely wise to interfere, though. Better to simply change the walking route. He can’t afford to move now. He and Ruth always planned to retire to a little seaside place. Somewhere on the flat. With a fish shack and a trad bar and a long empty beach for George.
‘Oh! just be done with it and move Ansel. Why don’t you? Pas difficile! You don’t like it! You change it!’ Cinnibar always said. Still says. Cinnibar, who lives in a mansion right beside the sea, with various fleeting men and her vast collection of peonies. Also with a Great Dane, until fairly recently.
Ansel carries on practising his diction in a low voice, preparing for what is sure to be a bothersome session with her. From time to time, he casts a distracted eye to the phone screen where Uncle Conleth’s mortal remains are being shuffled off in a low-key ceremony above in St Michael’s Church, Dún Laoghaire. The dog snaffles into furrows and hummocks, heedless and content.
There’s been little rain this past week. The rutted lane is rough and dusty, potholes dry and parched already, though it’s been a soft winter and barely April.
‘Peoehtray!’
He curses, swipes his stick at a thistle that has shot up early in the mild, damp days. A breeze skirls through the reeds with a whisper. ‘I am here. I am always here.’ It might be Ruth, he thinks. He wishes. Or the wind? Most likely the wind. Of course the wind.
‘Payeotry! Powettry! Fuck’s sake! I know nothing about poetry anyhow.’ Ansel hears his peevish voice carry on the light breeze. And after all, he loves poetry. He just can’t talk about it. He catches another whiff of rotting carcass. Then he quickly increases the volume on his earphones, as though funeral noise will block out the stench. After that he clears his throat and repeats in a low voice:
' … and may perpetual light shine upon him.’
Uncle Conleth ran a small printing business in Navan, sold it as a going concern, divorced the wife of four decades and moved to Spain where he lived close to a beach for some years, with a prickly Jack Russell and his collection of Seventies progressive rock albums. Played to his Andalusian neighbours at top volume. Came home for a daughter’s wedding. Died of a neglected ear infection in a state of angry astonishment. Ansel does his best to pay respects, while he also carries on mustering literary thoughts and fine diction for the practice interview with Cinnibar. In fairness, she’s doing him a favour for once. Though Ruth always said she was a bit obvious. It was the ultimate put-down from Ruth.
He and the dog amble back up the dusty lane. He waves to Timmy and Aoife who are planting summer bulbs in the garden.
‘Hello there,’ he says to them brightly and scurries past at speed. Might be Timmy and Siofra. Definitely ends in an ‘a’. He ought to know by now.
‘Through the mercy of God may he rest in peace. Amen.’ Ansel murmurs with the small online congregation as he clambers over the worn stile in the rear garden wall. All the while he keeps half an eye on the priest and on Uncle Conleth’s coffin, parked before the altar, a bit off kilter, like an abandoned shopping trolley.
The garden is a mini paradise, half wild, crafted from cuttings both snatched and donated, end-of-season bargains and such. All Ruth’s work, this half an acre bounded by scrappy hedges on both sides and stone wall at the back. It’s just a few miles from the ocean, the closest they would ever afford.
He deadheads the withered white petals of a large bushy plant.
‘Weeds or flowers?’ He wonders aloud. ‘I dunno, George. Do you?’
George Cluny is the dog’s full name. He picked George after George Orwell, champion of the common man. Ruth picked Cluny on account of being a Cluny convent girl. One of many negotiations over a 30-year union, and a small testament to compromise and life’s intrinsic and agreeable absurdity.
He carries on deadheading, flicking spent blossoms into the hedge.
Only now when he glances at the little screen, does he notice Conleth’s ex-wife in the front row, looking moderately bereft. A single webcam is pointed down from the gallery and from this vantage point, she is mostly wide brimmed hat and dignified, bereft shoulders.
Ansel shoves Conleth’s funeral into his pocket and considers briefly how shoulders can be both bereft and dignified, as he heads for the house and dips into the kitchen. He rummages in a pile up of dishes and locates the Hopper lighthouse mug, its colour fading and the base chipped. Ruth bought it on Cape Cod. When the handle came off, he searched for the exact fixing glue and spent an afternoon at its careful repair. Kintsugi style. Part of their history and how they embraced each other’s flaws and blemishes. Now he runs a cursory dribble of cold water over the stained mug and fills it with reheated coffee. Then he takes mug, laptop and notebook, and settles outside at the picnic bench. It’s half rotting and the cheap yellow paint has blistered and flaked. Still it’s in a grand sunny spot, and well shielded from sharp winds that whip up from the lake sometimes.
He sets up the phone against an old soup can, thickly encrusted with the spent wax of candles. He unfurls the wire back notebook and plies open his laptop.
‘Receive his soul and present him to God most high,’ he repeats after the priest.
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