June ruminations.

Hard to believe that we are almost halfway through the year already. It still feels like spring, artistically speaking. Having said that, I have been very busy. My book of stories, The Scattering, was shortlisted for the 2014 Edge Hill Prize - results in July - and I have to say it is an enormous kick to me to be on the same shortlist as John Burnside, a writer I've long admired, ever since I read his short story, The Lime Kiln, in an edition of Granta. His poetry is also some of my favourite written work ever - so I am pretty thrilled to be on the shortlist for this award:

http://www.bookbrunch.co.uk/pid/event/edge_hill_short_story_prize_2014

I also had the good fortune to have been asked to be the flagship writer for the first READ/WRITE/PERFORM festival at Clapham's beautiful Omnibus Arts Centre. I really enjoyed working there. I loved the warm reception to my reading event 'Afternoon Tea with Jaki McCarrick' and the reading of my new play THE NATURALISTS was also excellent, thanks to solid direction from Robyn Winfield-Smith and strong performances from Ruairi Conaghan, Martha Barnett and Dylan Kennedy. I'm really looking forward to working on the final draft of that piece and to seeing it staged soon.

In a couple of weeks I am joining Colin Barrett, Claire Keegan and Mary Costello for a talk at the London Short Story Festival where I'll also be reading from The Scattering earlier that day. So if you are in London on Saturday, June 21st - please do come along to Waterstone's Piccadilly and join us for this event.

http://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/events/view/what-is-it-about-the-irish

My next project is a redrafting of BELFAST GIRLS for the play's run in Chicago next year. I am really looking forward to this. And I remain in the world of the BELFAST GIRLS for my screenplay adaptation for which I've already written the treatment etc.

And all the while I am STILL trying to complete my novel, though I think I'm close. My thoughts lately have been on art vs. craft in writing - and I'm quite determined that what I create is art or else what's the point?

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The Folly

A new poem from me in response to the proposal to build on 98 acres of land surrounding Cuchulainn's Castle, Dundalk. It is written from the point of view of Laeg, Cuchulainn's companion and charioteer. The Folly Out from Tara, the widest road leads to a mount from where the sea can be seen beneath Mournes and Cooleys, at the edge of Ulster. This is Delga. Cú is needed for a battle today. Something about a bull and a mad queen from the West – who it seems is a friend of Ferdia. Láeg is here to deliver this troubling news. He sits in the centre of the mount, waiting for Cú to come from his shave and wash, thinks about which horses to take, for one is lame, when he is possessed by a strange fit. It is so black and dense, he thinks even a warp-spasm, the Ríastrad, could not unloose it. He sees the future: a conquest that causes his people to hide in the earth like moles, the building of a fortress around this place. The image burns in his mind the...

Sweeney as a Girl: New Poetry Collection

My debut collection of poems, "Sweeney as a Girl", was published last year by Dedalus Press. Due to a cycling accident, in which I managed to break my wrist, I have really only been able to promote the collection more recently. I read at the Cork International Poetry Fesival last year and have just read at the Strokestown International Poetry Festival, both great events. Now fully recovered and lifting weights (thank God!) I am hoping to read in the UK later this year, too. While the book is a "debut collection", it includes work written over the past decade or so, and includes a few poems that have won awards or were shortlisted or nominated for them. The medieval Irish myth Bhuile Suibhne, about Suibhne mac Colmáin, king of the Dál nAraidi, or King Sweeney, who was banished and changed into a bird then travelled all over Ireland, has inspired many writers, from Flann O’Brien to Seamus Heaney. The story begins in County Down and in Heaney’s Sweeney Astray ...

Belfast Girls tours Ireland!

Since I last posted here about my play Belfast Girls, it has been staged in Germany, in New York twice, in Australia again and in Ireland! It returned to Ireland this Autumn and is currently touring. Presented again by Quintessance Theate, the play has a new cast and a new director in Rhiann Jeffrey. It is also a different production, and seems ready-made for its need now to be a portable, touring entity. The play previewed in Drogheda last week and is currently on in An Grianan Theatre in Letterkenny. I will get to see it a few times during its 24-show tour and I'm looking forward to it. There are a few production shots of the Irish show below. Some of the reviews the play received in New York were wonderful. Such as: "Skillfully structured ... Five wonderful actors" New Yorker ★★★★ Front Row ★★★★ NY Stage Review ★★★★ Total Theater "One of the most ... considered portraits of the harm Ireland has done to women ... that I have ever seen" Irish Central ...

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