On the face of it, you may not think that the simple act of opening a good book and delving into its pages could benefit a recovering addict. The truth is that words are immensely powerful and are precisely the right salve to apply to a wounded soul that is struggling with this disease. Reading can help addicts learn about mindfulness and provide necessary distractions when cravings to use strike.

How can reading aid a recovering addict? Someone who is actively using
drugs and/or alcohol may start off as a casual user. One of the classic excuses that person who is in the cycle of addiction may say to himself as well as friends and family members is that, “I can stop any time that I want to.” Once the addiction becomes firmly embedded this is no longer the case, and the addiction runs the person’s life, rather than the other way around. If an addict enters a 12-step program, the first part of the process is to admit that he or she is powerless over his or her addiction and that they need to turn themselves over to a Higher Power. Luxury drug treatment centers offer opportunity to get help for the addiction away from the distractions of everyday life. Clients can focus entirely on their recovery by attending individual and group therapy sessions, getting regular exercise, and participating in enjoyable recreational activities.

Daily Reflection and Mindfulness for Addiction Treatment

Part of a drug and alcohol treatment program will include some time spent each day on reflection. For clients to break free from their addiction, they need to examine the circumstances and choices they made that brought them to the point where they are now. Learning to be mindful is focusing on what is happening in the present, without bringing in emotional burdens from the past or projecting anxieties or worries onto the future. This process takes practice, and reading books on these subjects can be immensely helpful for people who are going through such an immense life change.

Stories and Books about Addiction

Addiction is common theme in literature, and there is no shortage of stories and books on the subject. Examples include Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat, Go Ask Alice by Anonymous, and Confessions of A Middle Aged Ecstasy Eater by Anonymous. People who are in recovery may find reading about this topic helpful if they take the perspective that they are not the only ones who have dealt with an addiction issue. This may not be beneficial to all recovering addicts, however, and some people may prefer to stay away from the topic entirely in favor
of something more uplifting.

Liked it? Check out some more:  http://www.foundmyself.com/art-news/the-power-of-art-famous-artists-who-used-their-work-as-therapy/28
http://www.allbuyart.com/art-movement-cubism-pablo-ruiz-picasso-short-biography.asp
https://www.thespinsterz.com/health-benefits-of-aerial-arts/

The post Good Books Help Shift Addicts’ Focus in Life-Changing and (Saving) Lives appeared first on DUBLIN BOOK FESTIVAL.

Oh yes……. Dublin Book Festival 2013 is getting back into gear! With that in mind, we would like to receive autumn lists from all publishers wishing to get involved as soon as possible for review for DBF 2013.

Please can you send the lists to julianne@dublinbookfestival.com by 10th March.

The post DBF 2013: Calling all Publishers!! appeared first on DUBLIN BOOK FESTIVAL.

‘poetry for me is the pure formulation of experience and it is so pure that not many people can engage with it at that level but when it is diluted then people get it in the broader sense. You will always find that poetry precedes prose. Poetry is first and then come all the plays and prose.’

Harry Clifton is the current Ireland Chair of Poetry and dropped in to this year’s Dublin Book Festival, together with his wife poet Judith Mok, Michael O’Loughlin, Mary O’Donnell and Moya Cannon to talk about Europe and its inspirational forces upon our tiny little Island.

Born in Dublin in 1952 and educated at University College Dublin, Harry Clifton left Ireland in the nineteen seventies to lecture at a teacher training college in post Civil War Nigeria, and later worked in the Far East administering aid programmes for Indo-Chinese refugees in Thailand. He returned to Ireland in 1982. His collections of poems include ‘The Desert Route; Selected Poems 1973-1988′ and ‘Secular Eden; Paris Notebooks 1994-2004′. His work, which has won numerous awards and distinctions, has been translated into several European languages. He believes the true home of the poet is ‘not in a place, but in the language itself.’

DBF        You are heading into the last year of your professorship as Irish Poetry Chair. How do you feel you time has gone for you during this period?

HC        The event on Saturday will actually be the last public event of the year for me. I’ll be glad to slip back into privacy for a while. I’m coming to the third year of the professorship, which is in UCD. In each year I have to give a public lecture- which has to be a written text and a fully prepared one! It’s gone very well but I was surprised to get it in the first place because I am one of those poets who have lived out of Ireland for a very long time. I’ve been away for about 30 years. When I was offered it though I knew the angle I was going to take and what my contribution was going to be, which was the interface between Ireland and abroad. Ireland is kind of magnetically hooked into all of the land masses.

DBF        You have succeeded many highly respected and esteemed professors in this position- including Michael Longley. Do you feel a responsibility to maintain a certain continuity with regard to the standards that have been set for you?

HC          Not really because every one of us is very different. The thing is organised in such a way that you have three years of public activity which is long enough to make your statement but not long enough to overstay your welcome! There have been four or five professors since this was initiated and I think that it all began quite informally. The first people who did it took quite an anecdotal to it in a way. They talked fairly informally about their own pasts and their own experiences. As it has gone on it has become much more formal and much more a case of trying to make a statement. Michael would have made his statement out of his Belfast experience and Paul Durcan, who preceded Michael, wrote about three poets who were not himself so he deflected attention away from himself. I think I have followed Paul in that respect- I wanted it to be me not telling my own story but I wanted it to be about issues that were involved in contemporary Irish living and not necessarily autobiographical.

DBF      Colm Tóibín wrote a rather thoughtful review of your most recent collection, ‘The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass’ about which he said that you seemed ‘prepared now to allow more feeling in the poems than before’ and to use your talent ‘less gingerly’.  Do you feel that the collection is a more confident one than your previous works?

HC         I didn’t read that review. I don’t know that I would entirely agree with that in a way.  I was always excited about writing and different things excited me at different times. When I was a student in Dublin in the 1970’s I was tremendously excited by Americans initially and by European philosophy and bringing them together. To me it was a discovery of the world and a discovery that I could make something of this amalgamation. But then I lived away from Dublin for many years and became very excited by the relationship between polis or world politics and individuals, or erotic experience as private experience against what was happening politically.  I always felt excited by the page.  I never felt that I was postponing feelings until I got back to Ireland- which is what I think is what Colm is mainly suggesting. What happened was that after so long away when I came back to Ireland I underwent a kind of crisis of re-entry. For the next six or seven years I felt that I was confronted by many things that I’d sort of left behind – things connected with family life and my relationship to where I came from historically – all those things that I had run away from.  I think what Colm may have seen in these poems was an excitement in an egocentric crisis and trying to deal with things that were very close to my heart.  Identifications were there that may not have been there before I left.

DBF        Perhaps it’s because I am Irish and I am talking to another Irish person about Irish poetry but there does seem to be an ‘Irish’ question hanging over Irish writing- almost a self-conscious awareness of an attraction toward or indeed repulsion away from this ‘Irish’ identity. Is this something that you feel is present in your own work?

HC            I personally feel that ‘Irishness’ is something that needs to be gotten past. I think the world ‘Ireland’ has always stood in the way between a person and their experience oddly enough and I would go a bit further and I would say that although we are near the 100 years of independence, we still think of ourselves as a struggling young country forging our identity in the middle of this firestorm of other countries around us. We therefore have this defensive attitude and the way it manifests itself is our endless looking backwards at our supposedly folk past, which is supposed to be the root of our Irishness. I feel that it is really overplayed. If you leave the country as a poet you are regarded as disloyal in some way and with some suspicion- you’re ‘not one of us’, you know? We could still be living in the 1930’s. Because of this precarious relationship with Europe, it’s an atmosphere that is always been revisited. With Europe falling apart around us and us we as a young struggling nation are desperately trying to hold onto our precious Irishness. For someone like me then this is an identity which is very ill-fitting.

DBF         How do you feel about Ireland’s relationship then with Europe today?

HC             Well it comes back to what I said about the 1930’s. I feel that there has always been a tension in Ireland between those who want to draw a magic circle with the filthy modern time at their gates and those like myself who feels that the filthy modern times is actually the way forward. We feel that we were born into a time that was too narrow. Ireland always tends to rely on the lyrical qualities. What Ireland tends to be suspicious of are thinking qualities, colder qualities and intellectual qualities. If you look at the writers that we really rate in Ireland like Joyce or Beckett in their later years you’ll find that they were the colder ones. They turn out to be the very writers who gave Ireland its identity. I lived in France for ten years and I felt that I was living very much in a thinking community, whereas coming back to Ireland there seemed to be all this pulling at the heartstrings mentality. It’s all very lovely and all very seductive and it’s what brings Germans and French to this country but it really is a diminution and a lessening of humanity just to rely on the lyric-that soft-centred thing that we have here.

DBF         You once said that the true home of the poet is not place, but in language itself. You have also travelled a lot and lived in many places. How true is this, given that so many places evoke such specific languages? Dante’s Commedia, for instance is suffused with Florence, ‘Florentineness’, and being without just as Seamus Heaney leans heavily on his own childhood landscapes.

HC           Yes I think that probably depends on each person’s experiences. Some people I know including my wife grew up in a very specific place. Most people who grew up in Ireland grew up in intermediate zones, say between the country and the city and you could say that they grew up in places. The suburbs for example where most of my intermediate generation grew up- they were people who maybe had lived in the country in the fifties and sixties in Ireland who had moved into the city because there was work in the city. They have become the generation that camped on the outskirts so they belonged nowhere in a sense. For many of those people and I would be one of that generation. It was hard to feel loyal to a housing estate. That was the loss but also part of the liberation because it meant that wherever you went you weren’t ‘rooted’. I travelled a lot. I lived in Africa and Asia but I never felt ‘unrooted’. I very rapidly came to feel that the language I grew up with was the nearest thing to a protective shell. It’s more than linguistics. It’s a spiritual thing. 

DBF         Jerome McGann has written a lot about what separates poetry from other forms of literature and writing- saying that it is a ‘language that calls attention to itself, that it takes its own textual activities as its ground subject’. How do you feel about this implied distinction?

HC            It’s like the pill of reality I suppose, but can you swallow it without a glass of water? Once you drop it into the glass of water, it becomes the novel or play or essay. It dilutes. 

DBF         Poetry has always had a somewhat difficult relationship with a wide readership- certainly in relation to fiction. You have written both. What is it that makes, say novels more ‘accessible’ than poetry collections?

HC            I think that Eugenio Montale said there is writing you do for yourself and there is writing that you do for other people. Poetry for me is writing you do for yourself – you are really trying to resolve something that’s important to you. It’s not your primary concern to connect with other people. I believe that prose is essentially a social format. If you write prose you are self-consciously deciding that you are going to talk to other people whereas I don’t think that’s the case with poetry. I think that poetry is something that’s overheard by people. It’s almost like religious life in that it’s almost sacred to people.  I’ll put it to you in a rather strange way: if you understand the difference between pure mathematics and applied mathematics, you’ll understand the difference between poetry and novels. Supposing you’re on an aeroplane- you’re up there and you see lots of landscape around you and somebody is serving you a meal mid-flight. It’s all very pleasant but you don’t know how you got up there you know? But you look down and you see an airport, and way off in the airport is a little room which contains four or five people who are talking about something abstruse- an aeronautical equation or something like that. It’s very hard for you up there with all this landscape and noise to understand those people. But they are actually the source of your being. Poetry for me is the pure formulation of experience and it is so pure that not many people can engage with it at that level but when it is diluted then people get it in the broader sense. You will always find that poetry precedes prose. Poetry is first and then come all the plays and prose.

DBF      Who has inspired you the most in your career?

HC         I’ll put it this way. I was incredibly excited by Dostoyevsky’s novels because they were for me the first discovery of. Later on as a student as I said American poetry and European philosophy coalesced and gave me the chance to try and write my own poems. I got very excited later on by poems that were attempting to look backwards like Wordsworth’s Prelude which is an epic poem about growing up in a very rural place and then engaging in the revolution and politics. It goes through many confusions and then comes back in a circular movement- the innocence and then the experience. What interests me very much now are things not so much that have ‘form’ but in language itself.  What I like now is to just immerse myself in pure language. For instance I love Shakespeare because it’s the richest moment in the English language. So I just immerse myself in Shakespeare without bothering about the facts. You’re just drinking from the purest well of the English language.

 DBF         If you could absorb any one element from an artist, be they painter, poet, writer or musician, what would it be?

 HC            I think the answer for me would by Yeats. What I would love to get from Yeats is his capacity for growth. Right up until the end of his life he was still developing. So many good artists and poets, they have ten good years and then they start to repeat themselves. They’re not developing. They’re not changing and nothing new is happening. It’s the capacity to keep going and to keep finding new ways of saying something. Yeats had that.

You can read some of Harry’s poetry by visiting the site for The Ireland Chair at http://irelandchairofpoetry.org/h_clifton.php

The post Ireland and the European Muse: Meet Harry Clifton appeared first on DUBLIN BOOK FESTIVAL.

”You get the sense from the best short story writers that they almost weigh the words, or that they let them alight and rest on the tongue or the heart, to taste them or test them, before finally settling on them.’

Mary Costello has been compared with the likes of every Irish literary giant from John McGahern to John Banville and with her debut collection of short stories having been nominated for the Sunday Independent Newcomer of The Year Award at the Irish Book Awards and the Guardian First Book Award, it seems that after years of chipping away at literary success, Mary is now well on her way. She took time out of what has become an increasingly busy schedule to talk to the DBF about what inspired The China Factory and what it means to be an ‘Irish’ writer.

DBF      First of all, congratulations on being longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. Does this recognition make the success of your first collection all the sweeter?

MC       Thank you, and yes, it was a lovely surprise and a great thrill to get that news. Recognition is important for writers and getting the collection published by Stinging Fly Press in the first place was a big deal. And now this, yes, it’s very sweet!

DBF      Speaking of the Guardian, Anne Enright wrote a very considered and thoughtful review of the collection in the Guardian in June where she noted that your sentences have a ‘country cadence’. You are originally from Galway, although you now live in Dublin. How much of your identity is rooted in place? Do you think Enright‘s comment is fair?

MC       Yes, Anne’s comment is very fair. She did give the collection a very close and considered read and also tuned in to the suburban setting and atmosphere of many of the stories. There’s no doubt that the cadence and the inflections – the speech and tempo and rhythms – everything that has seeped into and infused a writer from childhood will permeate their work. Landscape, too. I grew up in rural Galway so many of the stories have a rural setting. ‘Place’ is never the starting point for me – character is. Though the characters are usually already rooted in a place when I come upon them. Even if that place is their own minds.

DBF       Do you think that there is such a thing as a recognizably ‘Irish’ voice when it comes to fiction writing?

MC         It’s inevitable that the language and customs, the landscape, the history – as well as the social, cultural and political vagaries of society will be variously woven into our writing –how could they not? It’s where we live and work and have our being. But it is, also, pure accident, pure chance – this is where we happened to land on earth. Most of us read our favourite writers, not because of their nationality or the setting of their stories, but because of what they say to us about the human condition or the way they illuminate some moral or psychological paradox. When I read my favourite Irish writers I am not looking for our national character to be expressed in their stories, any more than I want my favourite American or Canadian writers to express theirs. So, while there is, of course, a whole host of national or collective influences and images imprinted and embedded in our psyches, it is, I think, the writer’s own inner landscape that primarily shapes his/her writing and imbues it with a particular voice.

DBF       You have been compared by other writers and reviewers to the likes of John McGahern, Alice Munro and Thomas Hardy- a heady cocktail to say the least. How do you feel about such comparisons and are there any other writers with whom you would identify yourself?

MC      It is an enormous compliment to be compared to those writers – beyond my wildest dreams to have Alice Munro in that list. Personally I feel I can still only aspire to the quality and grace of those writers’ work. Alice Munro has always been my literary touchstone. She is the one I keep returning to – well, no, I never leave her, so how can I return? She’s always with me.

I love the stories of our own Claire Keegan and Anne Enright, Sean O’Reilly, Kevin Barry, many others – McGahern, Edna, Maeve Brennan – and they are all different. I don’t know about identifying with any one writer. I think a writer’s own voice is aligned to his/her identify and everyone’s is different. I think we share common concerns, and explore and mine similar seams and themes, so in that sense I think I identify with several contemporary Irish short story writers.

DBF       The China Factory is your first collection of short stories to be published. What is it about this form that holds your interest? Why not a novel?

MC         Starting off I found the short story to be the shortest quickest way in to the stories in my head. I like the concentrated feel of a short story, the tautness, the intensity, the way it gives me brief access to the hidden corners of a character’s life. I like that few words have to convey so much. You get the sense from the best short story writers that they almost weigh the words, or that they let them alight and rest on the tongue or the heart, to taste them or test them, before finally settling on them.

I’m working a novel at the moment. The early stages of the process are not all that different to writing a short story insofar as early drafts are awful things anyway – unbearably awful – no matter the genre. More patience is required, I suppose, for the novel. We’ll see! But I have more stories that I want to write so I don’t see myself abandoning the form anytime soon.

DBF       The collection has received great recognition so far; however, it has not always been so for you as a writer in terms of stumbling blocks. You have been nominated for several literary awards, including one for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award while you have also suffered knockbacks from the publishing world. This can be both frustrating and damaging to a writer’s confidence. How do you get over these kinds of obstacles in order to keep going?

MC        I had a little early success with a couple of stories years ago in my twenties, and then, after a few rejections, I stopped sending work out. So I can’t really say I suffered knockbacks or obstacles nor can I blame the publishing world because, in truth, I myself did not persevere. There’s no doubt that being published gives a writer confidence and validation, which are very important because a writer is full of doubts. I continued to write privately for years without being part of any writing community. I didn’t really have any expectation of publishing the stories – and had moved on to try a novel. I cannot say what kept me going, really. Half the time it felt like a burden. I’d give it up, but then I’d drift back again… It was a kind of love-hate relationship. Until I gave in.

DBF       Creativity is as elusive as it is fickle- for some more than others. Many artists compare the creative process to giving birth while others like Duke Ellington once said that he ‘merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues’. Tell me, which camp do you fall into?

MC        I don’t think I fit into either! Writing has become a compulsion now, but I trust it more these days. No writing is ever easy, but some days are easier. Those times when you forget you’re writing at all. You’re just yourself, with a pen attached. You keep at it because it feels right, and you can’t not do it. If you dodge or try to evade it – as I did often and for years – it won’t leave you alone and it will haunt you and plague you with guilt. And even when you’re at it, you fear failure, paralysis, stalemate – every time you start something new, you’re terrified you won’t pull it off. But you have to risk it, because it’s the only thing that fixes something, cures some pang. Temporarily anyway.

DBF       If you could absorb any one thing- be it talent, skill, ability or wardrobe item of any other writer or creative artist, what would it be and why?

MC        Only one thing? Can I not absorb, or borrow or steal, on a rota basis? … I’d like Keith Jarrett’s musical ability – or any musical ability. I’d like Alice Munro’s poise and grace, both in person and in print. I’d like Lana Del Rey’s D.O.B. I’d like to climb inside John Coetzee’s head and see the world through those beautiful sensitive eyes of his. I’d like James Salter’s longevity – and maybe his house too!

DBF       What are you reading at the moment?

MC         I just finished John Banville’s Ancient Light. Now reading Edna O’Brien’s memoir Country Girl.

DBF      Who has inspired you the most in your career?

MC        A few people I know or have known closely. Also, writers – some I’ve already mentioned. Poets too. And lately, Camus … to die so young, so beautiful. His essays make me weep.

Mary will be talking to Madeleine Keane, along with the other nominees of this year’s Irish Book Award Newcomer of The Year Award on Friday, 16 November at 8pm  in the Main Theatre. For more info, check out the programme page http://www.dublinbookfestival.com/category/programme/prog-by-day/friday-16th/ 

The post ‘Half the time it felt like a burden. I’d give it up, but then I’d drift back again… It was a kind of love-hate relationship. Until I gave in.’ Meet Mary Costello! appeared first on DUBLIN BOOK FESTIVAL.

I started a new job in September and it was a steep and rewarding learning curve. Because of new job, I found myself neglecting my writing. I was working on two different projects, and my brain was just too busy to do them justice. I tried to write and read over and edit them at weekends, but weekends have a way of flying by in a series of delicious breakfasts and all of a sudden it was Halloween and I had a new idea and I missed writing every day, because even when it’s hard it makes me feel fulfilled and pleased in a way I get from very little else.  So I decided to do Nanowrimo.

Ideas come thick and fast when you are writing a book. They mostly grow out of other ideas. I usually start with characters, and the plot comes from the way they interact and cope with what life throws at them. But this time, I have a properly worked out plot, with a twist at the end. This makes me feel very capable in one way (“Look at me, having a plot like some sort of dashing crime novelist!”) but it means that the surprises with this book are coming from my character. I feel like I am getting to know her as I write her. Her name is Madeline and she is shy and ambitious and loyal and easily frustrated with herself and other people. I’m really enjoying spending time with her. Hopefully, once November is over, I’ll have most of a workable first draft of a thing, and  my writerly discipline will have returned, allowing me to finish my half-finished things and then tweak them until they’re good enough to show people. If nothing else, it will have been a fantastic antidote for procrastination and a pleasant alternative to stupid things that suck up writing time. Like cooking and laundry. There will be a lot of sandwiches made and outfits compiled from what was left in the wardrobe by the end of the month. But it will have been worth it. Nanowrimo!!!

You can catch Deirdre telling spooky tales on Saturday, 17 November. For more information, check out our programme page-http://www.dublinbookfestival.com/category/programme/prog-by-day/saturday-17th/

The post “Look at me, having a plot like some sort of dashing crime novelist!” Deirdre Sullivan talks Nanowrimo! appeared first on DUBLIN BOOK FESTIVAL.

Fionnuala Fallon, horticulturist, writer and garden designer, is a weekly contributor to The Irish Times. A longstanding contributor to The Irish Garden, she has written on a range of subjects. A frequent collaborator with her husband, photographer Richard Johnston, this is their first joint publication. She talked to us at the DBF about typical and a-typical Irish Gardens, her own garden, which she describes as a ‘work in progress’ and how people are becoming more and more interested in cultivating green  and creative spaces!

DBF   Your recent book ‘From the Ground Up’ is your first joint venture with your husband. How did that go? Were there any domestics?

FF   Not that I can’t remember! While this is our first book, we’re pretty used to working together on various collaborative projects for magazines or newspapers, and we both enjoy it. It might get a bit narky at the end of a very long day, but nothing more than that. That said, Richard (my husband) is a very patient man.

DBF    The book details 16 gardens, including Trevor Sargent’s. This process must have been quite a laborious one- particularly as you had two babies on board with you. How did you juggle so many tasks?

FF    There were times when it was difficult, more so than either of us had anticipated when we began  the project. In fact I used to jokingly refer to it as our own horticultural version of Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road” because we spent so much time just driving. For example the round trip we made to Brown Envelope Seeds in County Cork was over four hundred miles. Then we’d spend anything from 1-2 days in each garden, interviewing each owner and waiting for the right light conditions to take the best  photographs. But while it was laborious, it was a labour of love, as well as a privilege.  Our twin sons were only nine-months-old when we started, so they came with us on nearly every one of the trips. Luckily, they were very good babies (or at least I like to think so). And like any parents of young children, we both got pretty expert at changing a dirty nappy by the side of the road.

DBF   You once mentioned in an interview with quickcrop.ie that there are several key differences in garden due to varying climatic conditions. Would you say though that there is such a thing as a typically ‘Irish’ kind of garden, as opposed to a French, English or Italian one?

FF   What struck me about each of the different gardens featured in ‘From The Ground Up’ was how much the local climatic conditions shaped each garden’s design and the crops grown, whether it was the salty southwest gales that the British garden writer Joy Larkcom must do constant battle with in her West Cork garden, the seasonal extremes of temperature that are a feature of Tanguy de Toulgoet’s Laois potager at Dunmore Country School, or the very high rainfall that Klaus Laitenberger has to cope with in his Leitrim kitchen garden on Milkwood Farm. But while there’s certainly a typically ‘Irish’ ornamental garden- one that’s wild, romantic, Robinsonian- I’m not so sure that there is a typically ‘Irish’ kitchen garden.. What I did notice is that people are becoming far more interested in making their kitchen gardens both productive and lovely to look at. Potatoes growing next to brightly-coloured cosmos, cabbages next to a wigwam of sweet pea. It’s such a joyful thing to see.

DBF   Cultivating your own garden can be a highly individual and creative thing. To what extent in your experience, do the gardens that you have profiled reflect the personality of their owner?

FF   The best gardens are always a reflection of their owner’s interests, life experiences, talents and skills and I think that’s true of every one of the gardens featured in ‘From The Ground Up’. For example the collaboration between the Michelin-starred chef Martijn Kajuiter of Cliff House and St Raphael’s in County Waterford has resulted in a kitchen garden project where the focus is on producing seasonal, locally grown, incredibly flavoursome food- a reflection of Kajuiter’s passionately-held beliefs that this should be the bedrock of any great restaurant. Tanguy de Tougoet’s Laois garden reflects his strongly-held beliefs about the importance of gardening organically, using biointensive methods. As for the Donegal community garden ‘Glor Na Mara’ which also features in my book, the two Mercy Sisters that championed its establishment wanted to create an educational, productive garden that would forge strong community bonds while providing a place of quiet retreat. They’ve managed to make a garden that’s remarkably rich in atmosphere- tranquil, beautiful to look at, and very special- and which I think reflects the kind of women they are.

DBF   If you could sum up your own garden in just three words, what would they be?

FF     Work in progress!

DBF    Is it fair to say that there is a bit of a stigma around gardening in that it seems like an activity or hobby mainly suited to an older generation? How involved are younger generations in this pursuit?

FF    I think that things have changed a lot in that regard and that image of gardening as the pursuit of pensioners is outdated. More and more younger people are interested, whether from an environmental/ ecological point of view, as a way of reconnecting with the natural world  or simply because they get a huge kick out of it. There’s also a far greater emphasis on the importance of school gardens, and a growing tide of support for community gardens where people of all age groups can come together. Look also at the growing interest in guerilla gardening (there was a huge exhibition in London recently on this subject), the Nama to Nature group and even the recent feature in ‘Gardens Illustrated’ on Steve Wheen, the young Australian-born ‘pothole gardener’ who has been described as the ‘Banksy of guerilla gardening’ and who creates these witty, temporary, miniature gardens in the potholes of London streets. There are lots of different ways to garden.

DBF    You have talked a lot about community gardens. They are certainly on the increase- especially given that people are becoming ever more conscious about what they eat. Do you think that this increase has paralleled a growing need for community? How has the economic climate affected this consciousness if at all?

FF    I think the rise of community gardens is a reflection of many things- peole’s growing ecological concerns, the need for green,open spaces, for fresh, organic, affordable, locally grown food as well as an opportunity to foster social interraction, social inclusion a greater sense of community. The recession has certainly accelerated this – food poverty, for example, is a real concern- but even without it, I think the interest would still be there.

DBF    In terms of growing your own food there would seem to be obvious practical difficulties for those with jobs that take up a lot of their time. How easy is it to do this- particularly in an urbanised environment when many people would end up buying the easier way out from the likes of Aldi and Lidl?

FF    When I was researching/choosing which gardeners to feature in ‘From The Ground Up’, it was really important to me that many of them  should live in urban or suburban areas and still manage to grow some of their own food. So the book features a young professional  couple, Adam and Susan Bermingham, who live and garden in a Dublin city apartment where their only access to outdoor space is a tiny, windy balcony and all the plants must be grown in containers. Despite the lack of a ‘proper’ garden, the restrictions of space and their very busy careers, they manage to grow an astonishing diversity of fruit and vegetables. At the end of the chapter on their city balcony garden, I give plenty of useful tips on how to grow food in even the smallest of places.

‘From The Ground Up’ also features an interesting selection of other ‘urban farmers’- the politician Trevor Sargent, the journalist Mark Keenan, the teachers and pupils of Holy Trinity School- all of whom have come up with ingenious ways to make the most out of their gardens and who prove that the smallest of city plots can be astonishingly productive, even when you have to juggle it with the demands of home and work.

DBF    You also mentioned that writing the book wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as the physical experience of ‘doing’ the book- visiting the various gardens and talking with their owners. How do you find writing about such a physically-based thing when one seems so different an activity to the other?

FF     Ideally, good garden writing should be both informative but entertaining, but trying to get that balance isn’t easy- sometimes I’d far prefer to plant a potato myself than describe how to plant it! With ‘From The Ground Up’, the reason that I chose each of the sixteen gardens featured is because they are so very different to each other and  I knew that I’d learn an awful lot from each one of their owners, whether that was the young pupils of Holy Trinity School in Dublin, the giant-pumpkin- growing Byrne twins in County Louth, or the County Clare based organic market-gardener Jim Cronin. It was fascinating to see each garden and to meet their owners, but then the onus was on me to bring that experience to life for the reader, while also passing on all the useful information/skills/ tips that I’d learnt. I’m quite used to doing that in 800-1200 word articles,  but a book is hugely different. I was so surprised by how exhausting it was. When it was finally finished, I’m slightly ashamed to say that I felt this huge sense of liberation.

DBF    If you could absorb or appropriate any one element from another writer- be it style, mannerism or talent, what would it be?

FF       I have a great regard for Joy Larkcom’s great thoroughness and her scrupulous attention to detail and fact-checking, I admire the sensuous nature of Nigel Slater’s books and I’ve always enjoyed the late Christopher Lloyd’s spiky wit. Like a lot of gardeners, I’m also a fan of Jane Grigson’s writing style- she’s very engaging.

DBF    Who has inspired you the most?

FF       Probably my parents. Both are writers, had successful careers as working journalists and also love to garden, which has certainly been an influence. But the daughter/parent relationship aside,  I admire them both as people.

DBF        Are you reading anything at the moment?

FFI used to be a voracious reader but with young children, it’s harder to find the time. At the moment I’m dipping in and out of Tom Moggach’s book, ‘The Urban Kitchen Gardener’ which I think is excellent, while I’m rereading Georgette Heyer’s ‘Sylvester’ for the umpteenth time- she’s great. I’m also enjoying reading my seven-year-old son the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis as his bedtime story. Some books never grow old.

The post ‘The best gardens are always a reflection of their owner’s interests’ : Meet Fionnuala Fallon! appeared first on DUBLIN BOOK FESTIVAL.

THEME: DIGITAL DIVIDENDS

Details for the DBF Trade Day event have been finalised under the theme of Digital Dividends and will take place on Friday, 16 November at 10.30am in the Main Theatre. Speakers will include Interactive Media expert Zoe Faulder , Social Net Solutions, Barry O’Neill (StoryToys.com) and Kemberlee Shortland (Tirgearr Publishing). This event is aimed at providing practical advice and provocative contributions to people working in the publishing and related professions. A brief programme is outlined below and there will be additional contributors on the day, a more detailed briefing document will be circulated before the event.

10.30 – 11.30 The Seven Steps to Going Digital 
Practical steps on developing a digital strategy from
rights, through production, conversion, formats to distribution and marketing
Zoe Faulder
Zoe Faulder has an MSc in Interactive Digital Media from Trinity College and
has been working in Publishing since 2008. While working in Blackhall
Publishing she helped design and implement the eBook strategy

Tea/coffee

11.45 – 12.45 Social Media Is a Component – not an Add On
It’s about communities not customers
How Social Media Can Drive Sales, Discover Content and even Source Staff
Led by Social Net Solutions (SocialNetworkingSolutions.com)

2.30 – 4.15   E is Essential – So Embrace It
Digital Opportunities and Obstacles
Practitioners and Experts Share their Experiences, Practical Insights and Other Advice.
Contributors will include Barry O’Neill, StoryToys.com, Chenile Keogh,
Publisher, Y Books,Mads Haar, Lecturer in Interactive Media and founder of Haunted Planet.com and Kemberlee Shortland of Tirgearr Publishing www.Tirgearrpublishing.com

€10 per event, or €20 for the day, per company irrespective of the number of delegates to help defray some of the costs. If you would like to attend any or all of these events, please contact stephanie@publishingireland.com

The post Dublin Book Festival Trade Day, Friday 16 November appeared first on DUBLIN BOOK FESTIVAL.

DBF    There are quite a few of you from the West of Ireland at the DBF- tell me, where are you living at the moment?

DS    I’m Dublin based, I’m currently living and working in Ranelagh. I go back to Galway a lot, though- to visit family and friends.

DBF    A lot of writers identify a lot with where they are from. Is this true for you? Do you think there is such a thing as a distinctive ‘Irish’ voice when it comes to fiction writing?

DS    Yes and no. I  tend to feel more linked to people than to places, and that impacts on my writing, in that I tend to start with character and then sketch in place, not quite as an afterthought,  but almost. I have a lot of admiration for people who start with place and shade it in vividly and with accuracy, it’s something I need to work on. In terms of a distinctive Irish voice, I think you can’t help but be influenced by the character and quirks of where you come from, and we are certainly a nation of storytellers. I don’t think being Irish makes you a better writer than anywhere else, but it might make you more prone to writing and to sharing stories with other people. Possibly to help them forget about the rain.

DBF    Your first book, Prim Improper (fantastic name by the way!) received a lot of praise. By the likes of the Irish Times and Siobhan Parkinson. Did you find that it added pressure to your next project?

DS    Thank you. My next book is actually a sequel to Prim Improper, so it probably helped it! When I started Prim Improper, I didn’t really believe that I could finish it. But I had a lot of support and encouragement from Siobhán, which is a brilliant motivational tool to keep me typing. So the pressure of wanting to live up to the lovely things she was saying to me was helpful. Pressure can be helpful, especially when it is gentle, supportive pressure applied by a writer you admire enormously. Once I had finished one book, I kind of knew I could write another one, and have actually written two other novels in between Prim Improper and its sequel.  I’m currently working on a Nanowrimo book. So I have gone from not believing I could finish a book at all, to challenging myself to write one in a month. It’s been a lovely journey.

DBF    You also contributed two books to the Nightmare Club Series. Can you introduce them for us and tell us what attracted you to them?

DS    Well, I always enjoyed horror as a child, and I think most children do. I was talking about a scary story I had told to some children (I am a teacher, I was not accosting children on the street in order to storyteller) to Siobhán on a train, and out of that conversation the seed of the Nightmare Club was born. Little Island, or as I like to call them the most awesome publishers in the world, gathered together a band of people who were willing to invest time and energy into scaring children and there are now six lovely Nightmare Club books, two of which I wrote!The first one is called “Help! My Brother is a Zombie!” and I kind of tried to write it as a metaphor for adolescence that swiftly veers into Zombies. I have a brother, but he isn’t a zombie. Guinea Pig Killer is the other book, and I did lose a guinea-pig to pneumonia the year I wrote it. Sisyphus was a brave and stalwart small mammal and I like to think that guinea-pig killer is the kind of book he would have liked to read, if guinea pigs were literate. It is about a guinea pig who exacts terrible revenge on a small boy.

DBF    I  love the fact that both you and the series is not afraid to be dark in your writing- Annie Graves, for instance is an orphan, as is your own Primrose Leary. Between Primrose and Annie, they both reminded me a little of Lemony Snicket (who also has orphans as his protagonists) and his grown-up children’s dark wit. Do you think this is a fair comparison?

DS    It’s a lovely comparison- Lemony Snicket is wonderful, but I think he has the whole sense of place thing going on more than I do, his settings are every bit as vivid as his characters. Also, my books (well, the Prim two anyway) are contemporary, and quite grounded in the real world, for all the daft things she gets up to. So, feel free to compare me to Lemony Snicket, but I will probably blush and feel a bit like I have conned you in some way!

DBF    The young adult age group can be a tough one to write for- on the one hand, you have to find a voice that is both relevant and not patronising, while on the other, you can’t go too dark. How do you maintain the balance between serious, frightening issues that affect us and a lighter, non-threatening wit?

DS    I just assume kids can take it all. They usually can. There are certain images in Prim Improper that are quite, not graphic, but not overly child-friendly either, like punching a baby in the face. She does not actually do this in the book, because it is wrong. But the image is there, in the context of a joke. There is no actual baby-punching in Prim Improper. I want to emphasise how little actual baby-punching there is, in my life and in my work. Maybe I’m still a big child, and that’s why I just write what I like, with hardly any filter and it comes out young adult?

DBF    What other authors have inspired you in your books?

DS    I read EVERYTHING. I’ve been keeping a list of books read this year, and so far I’m at 185. I read a lot of YA, a lot of regency romance, horror, sci-fi, fairy-tales, fiction, non-fiction. Other things too. I don’t think any authors specifically inspired me in my books, apart from Siobhán Parkinson (who writes for adults too: if you are an adult and you are reading this you should read Painted Ladies, you will not be disappointed- I have bought it for about five people and lent it to many more. So good.). Siobhán inspired me to write a book by telling me that I could do it, as opposed to with her (admittedly rather inspiring) body of work. Authors I really like include Angela Carter, Emma Donoghue, Sarra Manning, Maureen Johnson, Louise Renninson, Margo Lanagan,  D.E Stevenson and Jessica Mitford. I could go on, but I don’t know if I’d be able to stop.

DBF    What was the first book you ever read that made a real impression on you?

DS    When I was a little girl, my mother read me some WB Yeats poems, and I remember loving them, There was The Stolen Child and there was another one about a mother who had crushed her baby  which I might be imagining because I just googled “WB Yeats Crushed Baby” and nothing came up- but I was about five or six and I remember asking her for more poems, and she came home with a book of poems by and about the Care Bears and it was dreadful and not as nice as Yeats at all. I was a very discerning child, and as I grew, I kind of got less so. I’d probably be delighted with the Care Bears now.

DBF    If you could absorb any one element from another artist, writer or musician- be it fashion sense, creative style or bank balance, what would it be?

DS    That’s a really hard question. I have a friend, Sarah Griffin, who is a poet, and she’s the kind of person people instantly warm to, because she is so genuinely lovely and completely herself with everyone she meets. I would like a little bit of that. And Virginia Woolf’s brain, but only for a while, because I don’t think I could handle it in there for too long. Maybe I could lease it?

DBF    What are you reading at the moment?

DS    Two books: Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan and Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight by Sharon Heller, PhD

DBF    Any more books in the works?

Hopefully I’ll have one written by the end of November! It will need a lot of tweaking though. At the moment, it is called Perfectly Preventable Deaths and it is a supernatural young adult book about twins who move to a castle made of bits of castles and discover dark secrets therein.

You can catch Deirdre telling spooky tales on Saturday, 17 November. For more information, check out our programme page- http://www.dublinbookfestival.com/category/programme/prog-by-day/saturday-17th/

The post ‘Feel free to compare me to Lemony Snicket, but I will probably blush and feel a bit like I have conned you in some way! ‘ Meet Deirdre Sullivan appeared first on DUBLIN BOOK FESTIVAL.

By Afric McGlinchey

The main character in this collection is Ian, who in some stories is married to Sandra, in others, having an affair — or encounters — with Ellen. Or Denise. Or Deborah. Or Amy. He reminds me of the protagonist in Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, the wind blowing him this way and that. He often appears to be compelled, in spite of himself, to accept invitations from random strangers, curious to see what will happen.

The stories gather to build on the reader’s sense of him, fragments that grow into a collage, giving both a geographical and psychological context. What’s interesting is the randomness of what’s included, the mystery of the unexplained, although hints appear in the stories about his childhood: ‘A Day like Today’, where his hero-worship of an uncle is evident, but the uncle lets him down; the beating he gets from his Da in ‘Jimi’. In fact, men in general let him down: in one story, he gets a lift from a truck driver, who expects him to masturbate him while he drives, as a form of thanks. The narrator feels he has no option but to comply.

Music is the young Ian’s passion. Inspired by his uncle, who plays in a band, he learns the guitar. He meets a stranger on a bus, who turns out to be a jazz musician, and whom he later meets again, along with their two girlfriends, for a strange and alcoholic evening full of innuendo (‘The Trumpet in the Towel’).

In ‘New Year’s Day’, a hitch-hiker gets a lift from a drunk driver. The drunk driver is Ian, but the protagonist in this case is the hitch-hiker, called Till. This is an interesting view, as we see Ian from a stranger’s perspective, a 23-year-old who comes from a different class. Ian is clearly older, and trusting, allowing the stranger to drive his car while he sleeps in the back. When they arrive in Galway after a long trip from the North, he offers Till a bed. But in this story, as in all of them, the contact ultimately fails.

In ‘Yesterday’s News’, the staccato noise of a rock breaking machine, the bins being emptied outside, penetrate a conversation that itself slips and slides, never gains a grip. It’s the everyday things that cause complications, that get the protagonist in a muddle, ‘tangled up again.’ This story most tangibly reveals the flawed nature of Ian’s attempts to manage his life. Until the final story, which loops back to the beginning, with a surprising dénouement and burst of energy, in a new geographical location. The chance of a leap in a different direction.

A subtle, gentle collection that leaves the reader thinking.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, August 25, 2012.

You can catch John Walsh with Celeste Augé and Freya McClements on Thursday, 15 November. For more information about our events, check out our programme- http://www.dublinbookfestival.com/category/programme/prog-by-day/thursday-15th/

The post Mystery of unexplained: Review of John Walsh’s Borderlines appeared first on DUBLIN BOOK FESTIVAL.

 From the Ground Up is just, well, a beautiful book. I never thought I’d say that as a non-gardener about a gardening book, but this is much more than just a gardening book- it is about a way of life. From its market garden cover in vivid fresh colours and a healthy strong looking plough horse on the back, to the fabulous photography throughout by Richard Johnston the author’s husband – snuffling pig’s snouts, bulging pumpkins and packed seed heads, this book is just choc full of wholesomeness. And that is before you even start reading.

Based on the success of her weekly grow-your-own gardening column ‘Urban Farmer’ in The Irish Times Fionnuala Fallon has gathered together sixteen grow-your-own (or GYO in gardening parlance) gardeners’ stories from throughout Ireland. There are garden bloggers, school gardens, journalists and allotment gardeners. There is a community garden, a politician’s garden, an organic seed business and a Michelin-starred chef. Yes, they’re all here passing on their experiences of the successes and failures, joys and heartaches of grow-you- own gardening.
The interest in grow-your-own has grown extraordinarily in Ireland as elsewhere and is increasing day by day. Our concern with pesticides and GM crops, demand for organic produce and more specifically locally produced food to avoid air miles is not going away and food producers have had to move with consumer demands. Complete self-sufficiency is still pretty extreme and rare, but certainly not viewed as comically as Barbara and Tom’s ‘Good Life’ was in the 70s.
Even though this is a practical book in that the interviews reveal the gardeners’ successes and failures, the tools they prefer, their top gardening tips and other information that they’ve found useful, it is also a good read. It is a book gardeners will keep on their bedside table with a notebook and pen, scribbling down tips as they read and telling their friends “Did you know that…?”. Every personal story is usefully summarised in question and answer format, where we find out amongst other information, their favourite websites, gardening books and seed suppliers.

Klaus Laitenberger of Co. Leitrim tells us how he coaxed ”a harvest out of a rush-infested bog” and Peggy Murray in Co. Cork proudly talks of “remembering how real food tastes.” Green politician Trevor Sargent calls gardening “a healthy pursuit for mind, body and spirit.” The lack of connection with nature of his pupils and some of his teachers led Jerry Grogan of Holy Trinity Senior National School in north Dublin to develop a school garden calling it “a legacy for the future.” A page on resources for schools makes this book useful for any principal looking to venture into the school garden idea.

Joy Larkcom, horticulturalist, has her own publishing history in vegetable gardening. Moving to West Cork she has had seed research trips from France to China and has what she calls “a crazy abundance of plants.” Adam Bermingham who has just eight square metres on a windy Dublin city apartment balcony has flowers to attract pollinators and recorded on his blog that the most significant benefit of trying to grow broccoli was gaining the ability to spell it! Michael Kelly, journalist and founder of GIY (Grow It Yourself) Ireland cites hisown epiphany as buying a garlic bulb in Waterford costing 42cent and imported from China. With ducks, pigs and hens plus a hen house looking architect designed, his message is of wanting “people to try growing some of their own food” and to “bring some common sense back into the food chain.” The Glor na Mara community garden in Co. Donegal overlooks the Atlantic Ocean and is said by its gardeners to restore people’s connection to nature both mentally and spiritually.
 
Madeleine McKeever, founder of Brown Envelope Seeds in West Cork cites her ‘eureka’ moment as a visit to Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine, USA, where she saw the importance of crop diversity and the role commercial seed companies were playing in limiting it. The photos of the process of preparing the seeds are mind boggling, carried out by hand in seed box sieves – patience and dedication indeed. Former Sunday Times journalist Mark Keenan has a garden plot and an allotment in south Dublin. “Growing stuff” since a boy he has found successes and failures all to be worthwhile whilst pointing out that demand for allotments far exceeds supply with most waiting lists closed to further applicants. Ashtowne Demesne in the Phoenix Park, Dublin has an 150 year old walled kitchen garden that lay derelict for years. Restoration commenced in 2003 and with a year spent just clearing weeds it was opened to the public in 2008.

Michael and Oisin Byrne, teenage twins grow comically huge pumpkins in Co. Louth, which are lifted by JCB to be entered in the Virginia Pumpkin Festival in Co. Cavan. French gardeners Tanguy and Isabelle de Toulgoet in Co. Laois have a fruit and vegetable potager, restoring land that has been over cultivated. At their Dunmore Country School (seen on the beautiful cover photograph) they give gardening and cookery classes. Martin Kajuiter, chef at The Cliff House Hotel in Waterford came to Ireland in 2007; by 2009 he had written a cookbook and got a Michelin star.To get the best ingredients he wanted to grow and harvest the vegetables himself, but he also tells of how he gets peace as well out of his busy world from visiting the garden. Jim Cronin of Co. Clare works the land with horses and an Amish-made iron harrow as well as keeping livestock; there are healthy looking photographs of young pigs lying in straw and a rather idyllic-looking Dutch-designed farmhouse. The final story comes from Michael Vigney in Co.Mayo who has reported in his weekly columns in The Irish Times for 34 years ofhis family’s journey from Dublin to a new self-sufficient life in Co. Mayo. His column ‘Another Life influenced many to try their hand at a more nature-led gardening approach.

This is a book of inspiration, many stories about gardening against all odds, about individual battles – in fact it’s an uplifting collection of stories of what people can do when they put their minds to it. Every different scenario is addressed here, from the tiniest balcony to a Victorian demesne and anyone interested in gardening in any way will find great ideas, information and uplifting tales of how gardeners have got not just vegetables and flowers from their gardens, but also a valuable addition to their lives.

Fionnuala Fallon is speaking at in the Dublin Book Festival in Smock Alley Theatre on Saturday 17th November at 12 noon with Michael Kelly and Trevor Sargent. www.dublinbookfestival.ie
Published by The Collins Press www.collinspress.ie

The post Book Review: From The Ground Up by Fionnuala Fallon appeared first on DUBLIN BOOK FESTIVAL.