Sunday 22 February 2015

Louth Navigation Trust epetition - please sign

Louth Navigation Trust need to clarify ownership of the waterway, in order to continue the work of restoration...

1.
Louth Navigation Trust epetition

Louth Navigation Trust to have full access to restore and operate the Louth Canal

Responsible department: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

To allow the Louth Navigation Trust, a registered charity to restore the full length of the Louth canal and bring watercourse back into full operational use. This would encompass renovating or renewing existing locks and associated canal structures including banks together with an operational depth put in place for boats/craft to use as a navigable waterway.


2.
Louth Navigation Trust
The Louth Navigation Trust was formed in 1986 to promote the canal as an amenity, and has established a base in a restored canal warehouse in Louth. A feasibility study for restoring the canal for navigation was commissioned in 2004, and the Trust is hoping that this could be a reality by 2020.

The Louth Navigation Trust was formed in 1986 to promote the canal as an amenity, and has established a base in a restored canal warehouse in Louth. A feasibility study for restoring the canal for navigation was commissioned in 2004, and the Trust is hoping that this could be a reality by 2020.

3.
Louth Navigation




Wednesday 11 February 2015

A gentleman and a poet

A number of times recently I have found myself acting as The Spouse at my wife's formal events.  It is not hard.  I can do it.

At one such event, a young woman came and sat next to me and said, 'Are you the gentleman who is a poet?'

Where to begin?  With John Ball, perhaps, and William Morris:

When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?

http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/dream.html

Is a gentleman simply some man who has stolen our assets?  Or, another introduction to the delicate weave of English culture around that word, Elizabeth Bennett, during that walk in the wilderness, confronts Lady Catherine de Bourgh, on rumours of an engagement:  'He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal.'  Would I, by accepting that word, be claiming equality with Colin Firth?

http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ppv3n56.html

Many times in the day, of course, I am relieved to accept the categorisation.  Recalling, then, Jonathan Miller on that 'unpunctuated motto', 'Gentlemen lift the seat'.  'Is it a sociological description - a definition of a gentleman which I can either take or leave?'

(Kate Bassett, In Two Minds: a Biography of Jonathan Miller, 2014, reminds us that the quote comes from the monologue about trousers lost on London's railways.)

Moving along, to the second part of the question...  It is true that I have written and do write poetry.  For example, I did write an elegant villanelle when I was wooing my wife.  These things are unavoidable.

And it is true that I have published Love Death And Whiskey, a book of my song lyrics.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Death-Whiskey-Patrick-OSullivan/dp/095678240X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

In my own world I make a distinction between my song lyrics and my poems. Simply put, a song lyric is a thing of gaps, gaps for other creative people to fill.  But people have chosen to speak of my song lyrics as 'poetry'.  Terry Jones, on Amazon and on Twitter, said of my book, ' a great book for those nervous of poetry. They are simply wonderful lyrics...'   If we analyse this deeply (everything said by Terry Jones can be analysed deeply...) there seems to be some sort of problem around 'poetry' that my work addresses.

Sometimes people have said to me that they like my 'poems', and I have tried to explain my song/poem distinction - thereby, absurdly, quarrelling with people who like my work.  Some have fought back, gamely, reading out loud my own work to me, in order to prove to me that my song lyrics are 'poems'.  At this point it is clear that I have misunderstood the argument, and should just shut up.

Yet, readers of this blog will know that I am uncomfortable with some of the exercises required of a 'poet' - see below, by way of contrast, my happy encounter with Laurie Lee.

Would I be happy, then, to be called a poet?  I am, I suppose, happy with the word, a doer, a maker, a Makar - as the Scots have it.

And so, after what you might well think was insufficient consideration, I did answer the question.  'Are you the gentleman who is a poet?'  I said, Yes.

Patrick O'Sullivan
February 2015

Monday 2 February 2015

O'Sullivan, Mercier, Notes

This is really, maybe, a 'Libraries Prequel...' I wrote these notes last month to answer some of the queries I get about my piece on Mercier's The Irish Comic Tradition...

http://www.mediafire.com/view/pdv44q6atlon2tw/2004%2C%20O'Sullivan%2C%20On%20First%20Looking%20into%20Mercier's%20The%20Irish%20Comic%20Tradition.pdf



January 2015 
Some notes on 
Article (OSulliv2004First) 
O'Sullivan, P. 
On First Looking into Mercier's The Irish Comic Tradition 
New Hibernia Review, 2004, 8, 152-157 

1. 
John Bayley
I have just heard the news of the death of John Bayley, who is mentioned in my piece. Where his name is spelt 'John Bailey'. I do not know how that happened. Might even be the Curse of Autocorrect, as the text was passed from hand to hand. For such a small piece this article needed a lot of negotiation with editors. Witness the correct academic American English usage in 'an homage'... 

 John Bayley, who was a kind and good teacher, is mentioned in my article as, perhaps, denotative of a certain approach to texts, involving close, sensitive reading. He was a decent man. 

Here is The Guardian's Obituary...



2. 
Kensington Library, Liverpool
is the little local library remembered with gratitude. When I was writing the piece I looked around for some pictures of the building, partly to prompt memory. I was writing for an austere academic journal - so no pictures could be used. At one point in the writing of the piece there was a danger that it would become a study of the libraries rather than of the book. Finding pictures has become much easier with the passage of time. It was, and still is, a very fine little building. There is a note about the building by Reg Towner, and a very nice drawing at 


Reg Towner also directs us to a photograph... 


Designed by Thomas Shelmerdine for Liverpool City Council, funded by Andrew Carnegie, of course. Built 1890, modified 1897 - with the addition of that bigger wing. Which I like - I like the off balance look of the building. 

The Victorian Society has a useful leaflet at 

And a web search for Thomas Shelmerdine will find more odds and ends. The Everton Public Library, Liverpool - also designed by Shelmerdine - is used by Alistair Black for some general pontification. Which I do not object to...


Everton Public Library 
Alistair Black 
Victorian Review Volume 39, Number 1, Spring 2013 pp. 40-44 

He summarises some of the discussion about these buildings, and these resources. All under threat, now. 

It was there, when we needed it, where we needed it... 

3.
Picton Reading Room, Liverpool, and Bodleian Library, Oxford

It is easy enough to find pictures of these places online. 

The Picton Reading Room and the surrounding buildings have recently, 2010-13, been given a make-over... 



Hard to judge from photographs - but have they done something to the floor levels within the Picton Reading Room? 

When I gave up being a probation officer I went to the Bodleian Library - to repair my prose style. There I did the reading and the research to write 

Incollection (OSullivan1989literary) 
O'Sullivan, P. 
Swift, R. & Gilley, S. (Eds.) A literary difficulty in explaining Ireland: Tom Moore and Captain Rock, 1824 
The Irish in Britain: 1815-1939, Pinter, 1989, 239-74 

Which was given that daft title by our esteemed editors. People keep asking me what that title means - I have no idea what it means. 

The point of places like the Picton Reading Room or the Bodleian Library is that any thought, any thought, can be followed into the research record. 

4.
Do note that the two chapters from The Irish World Wide, which are mentioned in my Mercier piece, are available on that free MediaFire.

That is, Barry Coldrey on the Christian Brothers, and my own chapter, 
'The Irish joke'... 
O'Sullivan, P. 
O'Sullivan, P. (Ed.) The Irish joke 
The Creative Migrant, Leicester University Press, 1994, 3, 57-82


Patrick O'Sullivan 

Monday 26 January 2015

Armenians and Libraries

Some things I have been writing recently have made me think about libraries...

And I found myself sharing notes with Khachig Tölölyan, historian of the Armenian Diaspora, founder and editor of the journal DIASPORA...

A web search will find much stuff, including a video of a conversation with Robin Cohen...

http://vimeo.com/25020401

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/diaspora_a_journal_of_transnational_studies/

When we shared notes, Khachig was in Venice.  And I remarked that I must be one of the few people in the world who has visited both the library at San Lazzaro degli Armeni, in the lagoon of Venice, AND the Matenadaran in Yerevan, Armenia.  Maybe the only non-Armenian...?

Khachig emailed back, 'Colour me impressed...'

San Lazzaro degli Armeni has its own Wikipedia entry...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Lazzaro_degli_Armeni

In 1717 the Republic of Venice gave the island to the Catholic Armenian Mechitarist religious order - the monks had fled westwards after the Ottoman invasion of the Morea (the Peleponnese).  The most famous visitor to the island was most probably Byron - though the present day monks seem a little puzzled that fewer and fewer people have heard of Byron.  I was especially interested in the place of Venice, and the island, in the development of Armenian printed books.  All in all, a fascinating example of the vagaries of diaspora, and struggle for the survival of culture and knowledge...

This is the Wikipedia entry for the Matenadaran...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matenadaran

As all the world knows, I am not a happy traveller.  But whenever I do travel, and wherever I travel, I make pilgrimage to the libraries...

As a further example...  A long time ago I was travelling in the Scottish Borders. And I came across a sign, pointing sharply up a minor road:  Library.  And so, in that bleak upland place, I found the Leadhills Miners' Library...
http://www.leadhillslibrary.co.uk/

The Leadhills Miners Reading Society was founded in 1741, and is the oldest subscription library in the British Isles.  The miners bought books with their own money - the rules of the society are really worth reading.  Working class self-organisation.  Again, poignant, significant, the struggle for knowledge...

Patrick O'Sullivan
January 2015


Wednesday 14 January 2015

Song: Autobiography of a Navvy

The lyric of this song can be found in my song lyric book, Love Death and Whiskey...
See, for example...
I made it my contribution to TradConnect's Songwriter Showcase with Christy Moore...

http://tradconnect.com/profiles/blogs/songs-61-65-songwriter-showcase-with-christy-moore
I wanted to show support for TradConnect and Tony Lawless - this was a nice, straightforward project, clearly meant to be a service to TradConnect's members, making no attempt to exploit us.
My lyric seemed to fit within the rules of the Songwriter Showcase, as they were at the beginning of the project, or as I understood them.  We were required to put a sung version of the song on Soundcloud.  So, I did.  But I also persuaded Stephanie Hladowski to put an austere version of the song out there...
The lyric connects with various projects to do with my development of Irish Diaspora Studies.
The title of the song is a kind of homage to Patrick MacGill (1889-1963), 'The Navvy Poet'. There is a hint, too, of the grimmer songs of work and diaspora, like An Spailpin Fanach.  It is a grim lyric
The lyric also connects with a small research project conducted by the charity, Leeds Irish Health and Homes, which looked at precisely where in Ireland the Leeds Irish come from. Mostly the Irish of Leeds come from Mayo, and have well-established links and networks.
But the charity also found a number of elderly men, from many different parts of Ireland, living isolated lives in bedsits in Leeds. These were the navvies, still living where they happened to be when the last contract ended, and when the body could no longer do the work.
My lyric uses some 1970s navvy words, like 'lump' and 'subby'.
The lyric will go to the tune that in Ireland is known as 'The Croppy Boy', and in England is known as 'Lord Franklin' - and is very like the tune used by Bob Dylan in 'Bob Dylan's Dream'. But the lyric has a very simple, strong structure, and could be set in any number of ways.
Tony Lawless's and TradConnect's Songwriter Showcase has now closed...
Patrick O'Sullivan
January 2015

Monday 8 December 2014

Patrick O'Sullivan, ed., The Irish World Wide - 4000 downloads


At the beginning of this year, 2014, I made available the texts of...

The Irish World Wide, History, Heritage, Identity,
6 Volumes,  Edited by Patrick O'Sullivan

on this free MediaFire web storage site...

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ooj5btdttc9y4/Documents

In fact, working out where to put the texts, and how to display them, was a little 2013 New Year Eve project - before joining the family downstairs to welcome the New Year in...

So, the simple download counter supplied with the free version of MediaFire began counting on December 31 2013.  And since December 31 2013 it has - as of today, December 7 2014 - counted exactly 4000 downloads.

Since that start, on New Year's Eve, nearly a year ago, I have added other pieces of writing to that MediaFire site, as they became available.  So, it is not only The Irish World Wide that has been downloaded.  So far I have put there only my Irish Diaspora Studies works - interpreting that label a little vaguely.  For example, you will find there my song lyric book, Love Death and Whiskey - it does contain much 'Irish Diaspora' material, and it reminds me to get more song lyrics finished.

There is on MediaFire a little cluster of items which first appeared in Irish Studies Review, from 1992 onwards.  There are a number of names perhaps over-represented in the early issues of Irish Studies Review.  The Founding Editors were, in those years, still finding their way - seeing quite where to pitch the journal - and a number of us were supportive, and did what the Editors asked us to do.  For example, the Editors decided to publish a short story of mine, 'The Fiddler's Apprentice' - the text, as published, complete with errors, is on that MediaFire web site.

I am told that the Editors were later to bitterly regret publishing that short story - for, they say, they were thereafter swamped by unsolicited short stories.  What can I say?  Not my fault, not my fault...

That story, 'The Fiddler's Apprentice' was picked up by BBC Radio - I have put the audio file of the very good BBC version on MediaFire...
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/lckrf8paym1n9/Music_%26_Audio

Later Irish Studies Review was to morph into a standard academic journal...

There are a few other Irish Diaspora Studies bits and pieces still out there, which I might hunt down.  I have decided that, for the moment, I should put only Irish Diaspora material there, on the MediaFire site.  And, for the moment, I am happy enough with the level of visibility.  There is evidence that a number of teachers and courses have bookmarked my MediaFire files - we get sudden spurts of downloads at the beginning of academic terms.  So...  4000, and counting...

Patrick O'Sullivan
December 2014


PS
March 2015
On March 1 2015 the download counter at MediaFire clicked over 8000...
Now, 8000 and...  I think I will stop counting...
P.O'S.

PPS
April 2015
I might stop counting, but the download counter sticks to its task.  As the end of April 2015 approaches, it lists 10,005 downloads...

June 19 2015 11,000 downloads

Wednesday 5 November 2014

Stephanie Hladowski sings The Sailor’s Dream

Fans of Stephanie Hladowski's lovely singing voice can hear her, singing, on the new Simogo game, The Sailor’s Dream - the game is released tomorrow...

Simogo, Simon Flesser and Magnus “Gordon” Gardebäck, are based in Malmo, Sweden - they make computer games and 'game-like things'.  Things that do not involve killing real or imaginary creatures...

Some links and comments below...

http://simogo.com/about/



'That trailer gives me chills. Again, Simogo has been coy in regards to any solid details about the game itself, but their latest blog post does hint towards how important music and sound will be to the experience. There are a few new screens at their blog, but my recommendation is to not read any previews or reviews until you've been able to play the game for yourself. Simogo's talent is to surprise, delight, unnerve, and make you feel a whole range of real feelings while you experience their games. Ruining any of that would be doing a disservice to yourself, so mark a big red X on your calendar for November 6th when you'll be able to experience The Sailor's Dream firsthand.'


"We want to tackle a more philanthropic story, and instead of creating a feeling of suspense, we want to communicate something that feels warmer, yet melancholic," the developer wrote. "We're throwing out some more traditional game challenge-elements; in fact, The Sailor's Dream won't feature any puzzles at all. That doesn't mean you won't find playful things in the game, though — there are plenty of things to touch, play and tinker with.
"It's a fractured story told in different ways, from different perspectives. When it comes to telling the story, we're drawing inspirations from both books, radio plays and even musicals."