I will finally manage to launch my new novel, Be Do Go Have in the coming weeks. In fact, I am doing a kind of mini book tour (very mini - it consists of two counties!), reading in two bookshops in the north-west and also in the special place that is the Yeats Building in Sligo.
This may seem like overkill, but for an independent publisher, it is one of the only ways to sell books and engage with readers. When your marketing and promotion budget is minimal, and you don't have time to be on Twitter all day promoting your book, face to face encounters with people who might actually buy the book are invaluable.
So there will be three launches for the price of one. The first will be in Liber bookshop, the last bookshop standing in Sligo that sells new books (the second-hand Bookmart is still going too). I sold a good few copies of my first novel, A Year in Lisbon, in Liber, so the place has been good to me. This is on Wednesday, February the 20th, at 6.00pm.
The second event will be in my friend Orlagh's bookshop, The Reading Room, in Carrick-on-Shannon. This is the next day, on Thursday the 21st, at 6.30pm. The Reading Room is small but is packed with things that you would like to read, and is a great place to find interesting stuff.
Finally, the week after, I will return to the Yeats Building in Sligo, on Thursday the 28th, at 7.30pm. I launched my first novel here, so it has good associations for me. It is a beautiful, historic building, and a perfect setting to finish my tiny book tour.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Friday, January 4, 2019
DARK TILL MARCH: POEM.
It
is dark;
the
next time we see the light
it
will be nearly Paddy’s Day.
The
cave of winter
is
solid and without cracks;
the
dark has a physical substance
that
you can almost hold;
I
feel sure that I could go outside
with
a bottle and put some in,
ready
to take to a far off place
that
needs a little darkness,
somewhere
baking under
oppressive
sunlight.
The
dark is a blanket that covers,
it
is a barrier that keeps stuff out,
a
lid that closes us in.
Light
is the thing that exists -
in waves and particles and
rays and shafts -
and darkness is just light’s
absence,
but sometimes,
deep
in the cavern that is the Irish winter,
the
dark is the only thing that really is.
Light
is the aberration and its
opposite
is
the natural order of things.
The
dark does not care about us;
it
is vast, like the ocean,
and
just as full of contempt for
all
of our mess and hassle and
lack
of light. The dark is a
creature
that does not eat and does
not
breathe, but which occupies space like
a
malevolent gas. The dark has
no
tentacles, but it feels like it
does.
The dark covers and hides
and
blankets the world in negative space,
like anti-matter, a creeping vacuum.
The dark is a negation,
an
absence, a nothingness that
sucks
the vibrant hope from the
world.
The dark does not hate
us;
it is worse, it does not care if
we exist.
Our wounds and cravings
and
loss do not matter to
its
fixed, merciless expanse.
I
hang on, and wait
for
March.
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