CloudNine

''On or about December 1910 human character changed,'' Virginia Woolf once observed. Relations between ''masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and children'' shifted, she wrote, ''and when human relations change there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics and literature.'' 1910 is often sited as the year Modernism begins. The first Post-Impressionist Art Exhibition came to London in May of that year and it caused a great deal of controversy. Woolf saw this exhibition as the turning point in culture - and therefore (being Woolf), in society. Three years later Nijinksy's The Rite of Spring is staged in Paris and is similarly controversial. I wonder if 2010 will bring us such curios. We'll all need to be as perceptive as Woolf to see it coming though. Have a brilliant and perceptive 2010!

As you might have noticed I have been away. Nowhere too salubrious – mostly my bed - and occasionally my study. Why? Because I’ve had a dreadful flu – probably the porcine variety – and man, it laid me up. If there is a good thing about being ill it’s that it gives you time to think, to get new pictures in your head. (I always remember Brendan Kennelly telling us creative writing students at Trinity that ‘daydreaming’ is vitally important to writers.)  I managed to get a lot of play ideas straightened out in my thoughts, and changed my mind about the direction I thought I was going in (as regards plays). I had a few ideas for some serious political dramas – but in the last week of my flu I decided on a whole new direction (I won’t say what). So now I see the rather odd benefits of the past three weeks of sniffling, coughing my guts up - and all that thinking/daydreaming. Was it a good year for you? I began my 2009 trudging through the snow and ice of New York looking for th...

I have a new poem in the new issue of Southword: http://www.munsterlit.ie/Southword/Issues/17/contents.html Some lovely work from Geraldine Mitchell and Theo Dorgan, amongst others. Enjoy.

Christmas books A peep down the rabbit-hole that is the literary blogosphere and one notes that there are many wonderful recommendations from the great and the good as to the best reads of the year.  My favourite reads of the year (and not all were published in 2009) are: The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds The Wolf (novella) by Joseph Smith Stepping Stones by Dennis O'Driscoll Nigh-No-Place by Jen Hadfield (Poetry - winner of the 2008 TS Eliot Award) Birds of America (short stories by Lorrie Moore - from 1998) I am posting here the recommendations/best reads of the year as published in the Guardian on the weekend - for those of you who missed this feature. Julian Barnes is a big fan of the Adam Foulds work, while Sebastian Barry is on the money with his selection of the Colum McCann novel. I most want in my xmas stocking the Paris Review Interviews. Hint, hint. Christmas books. Photograph: Graeme Robertson Julian Barnes Laura Cumming's A Face ...