Cork World Book Fest

The Cork World Book Fest was especially sprightly on account of the Dalkey Archive event, where Susana Medina and Tõnu Õnnepalu read from their contributions to Best European Fiction 2014. I learnt from Tonu that Estonian is a genderless language and from Susana all kind of contemplative thoughts on objects and of the ability the wearer of a cochlear implant has to turn it off. Revelations that appealed to me.

The weather in Cork was windy to start followed by a bit of rain and mostly sunshine. The buildings I had long forgotten about since I haven’t been to Cork for nearly 20 years. It’s a city that has maintained itself well when contemplated beside Dublin. The signage in Cork is fun. I took some photos and will upload them. Cork people are very warm. I long to return.

Plenty to think about in Cork. It’s a city with a thriving cultural scene. The city council seem committed to sustaining this. I was very impressed with the library where I taught a workshop on the 23rd of April. A lively and diverse group of 20+ people turned up and were very enthusiastic and engaged by what I offered them. This was invigorating. Thank you to them all and to the library who organized the workshop.

Clinamen

Isn’t this a hopeful form or structure for a novel it occurred to me as I read this definition seconds ago.

“Clinamen (pronounced /klaɪˈneɪmɛn/, plural clinamina, derived from clīnāre, to incline) is the Latin name Lucretius gave to the unpredictable swerve of atoms, in order to defend the atomistic doctrine of Epicurus.
According to Lucretius, the unpredictable swerve occurs ‘at no fixed place or time'”

Cork World Book Festival 2014

I am on my way to appear at the Cork World Book Fest on Tuesday evening at 7pm in the City Library. The event is free. I will be reading with Nicole Kelby and our event will open the festival.

I will also be teaching a workshop at the library on Wednesday.

All details of the festival programme can be found here. I encourage all Corkonians to check it out as there’s a focus on translation at this festival and many invigorating sounding events like the Bolano, Robert McCrum, Lara Marlowe, Stefan Tobler and the Artists Book event.

The Cork World Book Fest is celebrating 10 years. I am thrilled to be included.  Thank you to Ann Luttrell and the team of people who put this festival together. I love that the scope of it includes works in translation. So important in every discussion about literature.

Cúirt agus Mayo

I had a truly wonderful time at the Cúirt Festival in Galway last week/weekend. Go raibh mile maith agaibh go gach einne. Bhi sé iontach mhaith agus craic mhor leis Donal.

I had an absolute blast and a half appearing with the lovely Donal Ryan, who I hope to do more events with in this lifetime. We share common ground in our work, language and sense of humour. I was so delighted Donal told me Our Woman in Malarky reminded him of his mam and we’d a great exchange and laugh before our event started.

Thank you so much to our extraordinarily warm and welcoming audience and the good people of Galway and Cúirt for having me. I have such strong associations with that festival historically as a reader, that to appear as a writer was a remarkable, life affirming moment. Also, my mother was able to see me read for the first time.

It was rousing to catch up with friends, including writers I have met previously on the road or at other festivals during the past 2 years.

I will also never forget the massive pot of tea that the Corrib House guesthouse presented me with on arrival. I was so exhausted and sick from the travel, yet I must have drunk 80 cups of tea and then felt rejuvenated and headed off to see Hugo Hamilton’s event with Roddy Doyle at the Town Hall Theatre. I was happy to find a second wind as there was plenty to contemplate in Hugo’s new work.

On Tuesday evening I did an event at the Ballina Library, where a couple of scenes from Malarky take place. It was a great group with engaging questions and much discussion. It is quite remarkable to be able to talk about the book within a specific geography and to have fun puzzling out which building I mighta been imagining for certain moments. The recession has, of course, closed quite a few businesses locally. I was sad to see Padraic’s Restaurant for sale, since three generations or is it four generations of my family have eaten there since the 1970’s.

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And now for the weather report — abridged. The weather in Galway was pure sun the first days, which only gave way to a bit of rain. The weather in Mayo has been the usual rhapsody that kept me concentrating. Strangely reassuring to hear the wind again. Also some sun. The quota of rain. “All seasons, all leanings …” as Our Woman would say.  Mayo weather is very Shostakovich. Today however was belly warmer weather. Birdsong, still, overcast and put on a belly-warmer. By the time we reached Strokestown on the road, it was belly warmer, cardigan tighter and chin to the chest weather. I was amazed to learn that yesterday was gardening weather in Dublin, while in the West it was far from that.  I am receiving many updates on the winter storms that the country has endured here and naturally pelting questions at the reporters. I don’t feel imaginatively I have quite a clear enough vision and understanding of what took place. It’s a lack in my weather archive.

Tillman virus

“I’m only experimental to people who would only read a certain kind of novel,” Lynne Tillman

“Books are not mirrors, and life does not go onto the page like life, but like writing”.

I’m feverishly sad to have missed the two new narrative reading events at Western Front this weekend , but am consoling myself feverishly with lectures on virus’s by a rockstar virologist at Columbia, while running a high fever, with my feet twitching like a penguin. I can’t read because my eyes are out to sea. Everyone should learn about virus’s. If you are reading this you likely have 12 of them at any given time.

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Feng – wind – 风

“In chinese there is a peculiar association between wind and post- streptococcal-reactive-disease:

Feng = wind. 
Fengbao = storm. 
Fengbi = rheumatism. 
Fengshi = rheumatism. 
Fengshibing = rheumatism. 
Fengshixing = rheumatic. 
Fengshixing guanjieyan = rheumatic arthritis.”

 

Source: Letter to the British Medical Journal 16 May 2003 from Friedrich Flachsbart,

Interior where the weather is signed

I’m just back from doing some readings from Malarky in the BC Interior, specifically in Salmon Arm and Vernon.

I have never ventured to the Interior before and it was certainly, weather-wise, an extraordinary adventure. Not since Iceland, have I travelled through, what felt to be, all the seasons in an hour or so. I was most struck by the volume of weather-related signage all along the road from here to Vernon. I’ve never seen any road decorated with weather signage before. Examples included: This road is subject to DENSE FOG. Warning mountain road weather can change rapidly. Specific dates Oct-April (I don’t recall the numbers) where one must travel with chains in your car or truck. It was a lovely sense to imagine the roads and all the transport on them under the direction/ directed by and instructed on how to behave in advance by the weather!

To be continued ….

Exhaustion chez Georges

At the risk of exhausting an object: I am intrigued as to the purpose of these many stainless steel bowls on the mantlepiece behind Monsieur Perec’s head during this interview. 

Suggestions?

The indoor lamp post, je comprends.

Snohomish Landslide

The terrible, ongoing situation with the mudslide in Snohomish County, Washington (a couple of hours South of us) is very worrying. There seem to be 176 people unaccounted for. How terrifying for the people trapped in it and their relatives. Not to mention the people who are confirmed killed by it, a number that will sadly rise the longer it takes to rescue people.

Here is some coverage: The Seattle Times

Also here’s a link explaining how to report someone missing and/or what you can do to help. 

Communicable disease continuity

The communicable disease episode is now entering Day 5. Vancouver Coastal Health Authority helpfully tweeted me a link to a list of Norovirus outbreaks in hospitals and Senior Homes. Lionsgate Hospital had an outbreak recently. Anyway a heads up to prevent a head down: this door handle clutcher of a virus is whipping through the city and flattening folk. VCH do not record any data on outbreaks outside hospitals etc. This is a pity since people could be alerted if it was in their neighbourhood. It was also curious to learn that there’s a vaccine for Rotovirus (for kids) and that Rotovirus kills more than 453,000 children under 5 each year.

What made it all bearable was Saturday evening’s splendid wind event. A wind warning was issued for 70- 90 k/pr hr was issued early in the day. (I hope I have my days right it was either Saturday or Sunday they rather meld into one when you’re under viral overload.) This is the first time we managed to track the system from Vancouver Island until it landed her in YVR. It was helped by a fella on Twitter “I was born to forecast the weather in Nanaimo” is his tag line tweeted me the wind speed he had recorded on his wind speed meter. When do you think it will land here? I asked. Anytime now, came back and hark seconds til I heard the first howl, or bellow. Another person on Tweeter PatWong3 had earlier declared that wind speeds of 40 kt (knots) had hit her area in Tsawwassen. Very exciting to have weather nerds in the vicinity who, er, actually know something about meteorological science rather than my speculative and affectionate interest in weather.