We're a little late announcing it here, but Mary O'Donnell's poem "Sea Life in St. Mark's Square" was just yesterday the featured poem on Poetry Daily. You can still find the piece, which is from our current issue, of course, at this link.
It is a great poem from a deserving poet, and one we're proud to have it recognized like this.
"Swan's Home" originally appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Prairie Schooner. Below is an excerpt of the story--the full version can be found here.
For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. -Psalm 88
The call comes at high noon, with the sun bright on the rocks and sage, not in the dark midnight hours like Ferrell Swan always expected. On her cell from his old Ohio home, his ex-wife Rilla asks if he's sitting down.
"You bet," Ferrell says, standing at the porch rail. He looks across the high desert country, knowing the news is about Levon, Rilla's child from her first marriage. Ferrell helped raise the boy preschool to high school, the most strife and turmoil ever seen. Though Levon's now thirty-one, not a whole lot has changed.
"What this time?" he says when she doesn't volunteer the words.
"He crashed his car."
"Bad?"
The quiet on the line puts Ferrell's knees to trembling. He hopes for anything but Levon being dead, anything else but that. He tries to steer his thoughts from the tragic, but that never helps when it comes to a child, whatever the age.
"Real bad." Rilla goes silent again, leaving Ferrell to feel every mile between his beloved Idaho and the charming brick house from his past, where Rilla now huddles alone.
"I'll get a flight," Ferrell says, already planning the eighty-mile drive to the airport in Boise. "I'll try to be there tomorrow."
"Try very hard," Rilla says and hangs up.
Ferrell pockets his own cell phone in disgust, high-tech messenger of bad news. He studies the colossal smoke columns above Oregon, a half million acres, the radio reports, burning out of control. It has been the worst fire season in a century, months of no rain and hundred-degree days, the air itself ready to burst into flames. Over the summer, Ferrell has seen wildfire in every direction from his isolated cabin, nights lit in garish orange and red, the horizon aglow like the fires of hell have broken through. In daylight hours, the smoke pouring from behind the Owyhees seems a sign of distant war, the bombing of far-off cities.
Last night, Ferrell recalls, the full moon had risen so deeply crimson it scared him, a horrible sunset, he imagined, run backward in the smoky haze. Watching the smoldering moon, Ferrell heard his long dead mother quoting Scripture, something about the moon running the color of blood, a signal terrible events were about to begin.
(Learn more about Mitch Wieland's work at his web site.)
in which Prairie Schooner contributors give us a glimpse into their writing spaces and sensibilities.
Micheal O’Siadhail's thirteen collections of poetry include Tongues, Globe, Love Life, The Gossamer Wall: Poems in Witness to the Holocaust, and Poems 1975-1995. He has been awarded an Irish American Cultural Institute Prize and a Toonder Prize, and he was shortlisted for the Wingate Jewish Quarterly Prize. He has been a lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin, and a professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. His poem "Conversation with Goethe" appears in our current issue.
Name three things of particular significance on your writing desk at the moment.
I have on my desk a book which traces the origin of Japanese characters and how pictographs combine in various ways to form complex ideographs. These signs fascinate me and in my latest book Tongues I devoted a whole section to meditating on them.
I also have here a lead pencil and a pencil sharpener. I have written all my books in pencil. I know the playwright Brian Friel wrote all his work with a ‘2B’ pencil. When we exchange postcards, I like to ask him if he is still pushing his 2B!
A third item is a picture of my wife Bríd, who has Parkinson’s disease, and sadly had to go into care early this year. I need to sense her presence here.
Name one classic you've long been wanting to read.
For years I’ve wanted to read Thomas Mann’s great four part novel Joseph und seine Brüder (Joseph and His Brothers). I know that Mann regarded this placing of these great biblical stories against the background of Egyptian history as his best work. I so want to steep myself in it.
Why haven't you read it?
I have tried to put the time aside but have never succeeded.
Is there any particular music or musician that puts you in the mood to write?
I find I can’t listen to music either while working or before I work. Music affects me deeply and could change the dominant mood of the piece I’m working on. Yet music is immensely significant for me. I love classical music and jazz. Looking back on my poetry over the years, I realise how much jazz has been a core metaphor for me.
Name a favorite book in your possession: a favorite not just for content but for its actual physical qualities.
One of the great delights of working with my publishers Bloodaxe Books is how they serve their authors so well with eye-catching covers, often with a striking painting suggesting a book’s theme. I took particular pleasure in the beautiful painting Blue Dusk by Christopher Gilvan-Cartwright on the cover of This Great Unknowing: Last Poems by Denise Levertov. This is book where both the visual impact and feel of the book add to those superb poems.
Learn more about Micheal O'Siadhail at his web site.
Nuala Ní Chonchúir, as interviewed by Theodore Wheeler.
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Born in Dublin in 1970, Nuala Ní Chonchúir lives in Galway county. Her début novel You (New Island, 2010) was called ‘a heart-warmer’ by The Irish Times and ‘a gem’ by The Irish Examiner. Her third short story collection Nude (Salt, 2009)) was shortlisted for the UK’s Edge Hill Prize. Her second short story collection To The World of Men, Welcome has just been re-issued by Arlen House in an expanded paperback edition. Nuala’s third full poetry collection The Juno Charm was published by Salmon Poetry in November 2011. Her story "Peach" in the current Prairie Schooner has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
You can find more about Nuala on her web site and her blog.
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“Peach” begins with such a powerful and irresistible hook—“A pregnant woman was getting drunk in the back lounge; I could see her through the hatch, from where I sat at the bar. She was drinking and crying, sitting on the red velveteen couch alone.” Did you have these lines when you started writing, or did they come later?
I had those lines at the start. My stories usually begin with a collision of a first line, a vague feeling about a character or two, and an even vaguer notion of a situation. Originally the story was about stillbirth. That morphed into surrogacy and damaged lovers and, the classic short story theme, loneliness and what it makes people do.
Do you think having the lines at the start made the story easier or more difficult to write? That is, during the process of orchestrating a story, do you feel like strong images like this one can overpower the rest of the setting and tone, or are they instrumental in opening up the rest of the story?
I find all stories difficult to write in the sense that I don’t have a clue what’s going on for a while and I just push on to see. I write, essentially, to tell stories to myself. So I never know what is coming next until it happens. I love that point in the writing when it all becomes clear and I can forge ahead with confidence. Every story I write feels like a complete dud at the start, then some go well and some don’t.
I love a good strong opening sentence as both reader and writer. Too much preamble bores me – I like to get a sense of the characters very early on. The opening is so important – it has to set everything up and give the reader the impetus to continue on. I find openings come to me readily, it’s the rest of it I have to work hard on.
“Peach” seems to be about Dominic’s state of mind more than anything. He’s a character who sees himself as “a slow-walker on ice.” The tone and setting play perfectly into his internal sense of apprehension too. I’m wondering, then, do you think it’s something about the city that makes Dominic this way, or is it just his character, essentially?
There’s a place in Dublin called the North Circular Road – a street of Georgian houses that are mostly converted into flats. When I lived near there I used to see a lot of single men on that road (separated men, ex-prisoners, men estranged from their families) and they just reeked with loneliness. Dominic is one of those men – his wife is gone, he doesn’t have close friends, he doesn’t drink because it messes with his head. There are enclaves in every city, I’m sure, where men are a forgotten tribe.
So Dominic is a combination of circumstances, his own downbeat personality – he says in the story that dread is his ‘default position’ – and the fairly grim place he is living in. He loves Dublin but nowhere is kind if you are lonely.
What external environmental factors influence your work and writing process the most? Are you a person who likes to be out in the world while writing? Is writing more of a pure reflective task? Do you find yourself being more productive in one season more than the others?
Cities influence me; I am crazy about cities: Dublin, London, Berlin, Paris, New York; smaller cities too like Bremen in Germany and Nantes in France. I have a very low boredom threshold so I find the buzz of city life exciting. I love buildings; I love all the people teeming around and the art galleries stuffed with mad and great artworks. I also love trees, the sea, birds.
I like to go out into the world to soak it up but I retreat to my peaceful house in the small market town I live in to write. If there are too many distractions, it’s hard to write, so it suits me to live in a quiet place.
It’s challenging to write when the three kids are off school in the summer – they keep interrupting me, demanding food etc. Autumn is a good time to start a new project – the children back at school gives me that fresh feeling of wanting to begin something.
The most unproductive time is when a new book comes out because I spend so much time tearing up and down the country doing promotional stuff. It’s fun but maddening too because my desk calls to me.
Also, as a multi-form author, do you find that outside factors influence your poetry different than your prose? Is there a difference in how you process information between your long- and short-form prose too? Do you find that you experience life with a different mind when writing in one form or the other, or is it all just writing/creating in the end?
Like all writers I have my obsessions so I tend to cover a lot of the same ground in poetry, novels and short stories: sex, the breakdown of love, art, strong women, troubled children. I’m a feminist and that will always come through too.
I’ve written both poems and stories on the exact same topics – Joan of Arc, for example; and also pregnancy loss and fertility issues; marriage breakdown. My poetry tends to be more personal while the fiction is generally not based on my life but on situations that interest me.
I love the long haul of the novel because it takes over your head and you start to process the world through the eyes of the novel, if that makes sense. Because you spend a long time writing it (in my case about a year per novel) it soaks into your life and your life also soaks into it. It’s a very joyous thing, to be in the thick of a long piece of work.
What is one book written in the past five years that you wish you had written? Why?
Julius Winsome by Gerard Donovan. It is a fabulous, understated, strange story of revenge, beautifully written. It’s set in Maine in winter and I felt perished reading it. Honestly – this is top notch literary fiction by an under-praised Irish writer, so if you haven’t read it, do!
Who are some of the young talented writers in Ireland that most people haven’t heard of yet? Who is an older writer that doesn’t get enough recognition for their body of work?
There’s a young writer called Eimear Ryan who is winning lots of literary prizes and whom I published in Horizon Review when I was fiction editor there. Eimear has it: she is not only talented, she has oomph.
I am also a big fan of Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, who writes wonderful short fiction. She is recognised here, to an extent, but she is on a par with any of our so-called top writers and I don’t understand why everyone is not raving about her work.
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Nuala Ní Chonchúir will be on campus in Lincoln on February 9 & 10, 2012, for a public performance of her work at the Sheldon Museum of Art, among other events promoting the launch of our current Ireland themed issue. More specific information will be posted on this blog as it becomes available.
in which Prairie Schooner contributors give us a glimpse into their writing spaces and sensibilities.
Mary O’Donnell has published six collections of poetry, most recently The Ark Builders (Arc Publications). She has also written three novels and two short-story collections, has won prizes in the V.S. Pritchett Competition and was the overall winner of the 2010 Fish International Short Story Competition. She is guest poet in the National University of Ireland-Maynooth in the creative writing program. Her poems "Sea Life in St. Mark's Square" and "Baby Boy, Quaryat al Beri" appear in the forthcoming Winter 2011 issue of Prairie Schooner, aka the Ireland Issue. (Subscribers should see the issue in their mailboxes soon!)
Name three things on your writing desk at the moment.
Right now? "On Love and Barley - Haiku of Basho", Penguin Classics; the second thing is an emery board (nail-file); finally, a CD of "The Best of Rachmaninov".
Name one classic you've long been wanting to read.
Tolstoi's "War and Peace".
Why haven't you read it?
Basic laziness about its length. Perhaps if I had an edition in four separate volumes (I believe they exist), I'd read it. I just hate handling very thick and heavy literature.
Is there any particular music or musician that puts you in the mood to write?
Schubert used to, but not any more. Mostly now, the music of Hildegard von Bingen would do it, insofar as such spiritual music opens an aperture into the stream of reflection and meditation needed for making new writing. I suppose I'm talking about detachment.
Name a favorite book in your possession: a favorite not just for content but for its actual physical qualities.
"The Land of Spices" by Kate O'Brien ranks among my favourite books for several reasons: 1. the story, which is set in a convent boarding school, and which features nuns as major characters, is all about the need for love and freedom. 2. It questions heterosexuality through the use of one, simple sentence which at the time of original publication (1941) got this novel banned. 3. it was published by Arlen House, prefaced by the wonderful Irish academic Lorna Reynolds. Arlen was an adventurous publishing house in Ireland during the nineteen eighties which brought to light near-forgotten but important writings by women. But I also love this book also because it is signed and dated by me - 1983 - an important year for me as a writer, when I was just beginning to exercise my writing wings and feathers, win a competition here and there, have bits and pieces published. It was an exciting time. Importantly, I read this work very closely and its slightly battered appearance is a testimony to my need to gobble up the brilliant and the beautiful in language and literature - a need that has never deserted me but always sustained me. Incidentally, although that Arlen House is now defunct, a new and exciting Arlen, run by Alan Hayes, is now publishing both poetry and fiction from men and women in Ireland, so the logo has survived as one of quality.
Learn more about Mary O'Donnell at her web site.
This poem, by Kelli Russell Agodon, appeared in the Winter 2006 issue of Prairie Schooner.
How Like a Winter
She spent the days of December reading
Shakespeare's sonnets. Sleepy icicles dripped
from her eyelashes, but she kept reading.
Her family decorated the tree
while she sat in the leather chair reading,
opening Vendler's book when ideas failed.
She wore a discolored sweatshirt that read
Shakespeare's Muse, carried a Mont Blanc pen
behind her ear. You could see her reading
in midnight mass near the back of the church.
While the believers knelt and prayed, she read
and worried about forgetting to shop.
The city was Christmas ghosts, lights of red.
She was buried in the snow of sonnets.
(You can learn more about the work of Kelli Russell Agodon at her web site.)
If you didn't notice it today, Linda Pastan's "Counting Sheep" is the featured poem on Poetry Daily! The poem is from our current issue.
It's a fine poem--one you should check out online if you didn't read it in our issue first.
So the Best American Series released their 2011 versions last month, and there are several Prairie Schooner connections to note.
-Eric Barnes' story "Something Pretty, Something Beautiful" (Winter 2010) was anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories. Way to go, Eric!
-Floyd Skloot's essay "Something to Marvel At" (Fall 2010, read it here) was a notable in Best American Nonrequired Reading.
-Katie Chase's "The Sea that Leads to All Seas" (Winter 2010, read it here) and R.T. Smith's "The Red Jar" (Spring 2010, read it here) were notables in Best American Short Stories.
-Janet Abbott Dutton's "Old Enough" (Winter 2010), Josip Novakovich's "Cat Named Sobaka" (Spring 2010), and Tracy Seeley's "Cartographies of Change" (Summer 2010) were notables in Best American Essays.
It was a pretty good year for us, we thought. This bears this feeling out to a degree, I suppose.
In addition, congrats to some other UNL/Prairie Schooner connected folks, namely, Carrie Shipers ("Ghost Traffic", from Zone 3), Joy Castro ("Grip", from Fourth Genre), and Sarah Fawn Montgomery ("Ekphrasis: What My Grandfather Saw", from Fugue) for earning notable status in Best American Essays. Excellent work all around!
in which Prairie Schooner contributors give us a glimpse into their writing spaces and sensibilities.
(Called "disturbing, edgy and provocative" by Book Magazine, Terese Svoboda’s work is often the surreal poetry of a nightmare yet is written with such wit, verve and passion that she can address the direst subject. A "fabulous fabulist" according to Publisher’s Weekly; Vogue lauded her first novel, Cannibal, as a female “Heart of Darkness.” Of Bohemian Girl –excerpted in PS’s Summer 2010 issue -- Kurt Andersen wrote, “She will, of course, compared to Willa Cather -- and deservedly so.”)
(3 things on your writing desk at the moment)
Something more interesting than a file folder? A scarlet feather signed by Jonathan Keats, writer and conceptual artist, a full-sized harp that I haven't played since my teacher died, and a "Friends for Peace" sign I put in my window every election period.
(A classic you've long been wanting to read)
The Gift by Nabokov
(Why haven't you read it?)
I am, I am, but The Girls of Riyadh and The Quiet American are getting in the way. Both research, mind you. Nabokov is just for pleasure.
(Music that puts you in the mood to write)
Music puts me in the mood to listen to music. I can't write even thinking about music. All those great lyrics!
(A favorite book in your possession: a favorite not just for content but for its actual physical qualities)
I've sublet my NYC apartment so I'm not surrounded by my possessions. At hand I am currently very happy to have Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Noya translated by Katherine Silver. A New Directions book, it features lovely French flaps and a driven narrator who is by turns amusing and terrifying with regard to his work editing a book about atrocities.
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