Archive for the ‘Creative Writing’ Category
Brave Little Sternums by Matt Broomfield
Fly on the Wall Press £10.99 + p&p
Difficult and defiant are two words that come to mind on thinking about this new book of poems from Matt Broomfield. Recently published by Fly on the Wall Press, the collection deserves to be widely read and promoted. For those familiar with what has happened and is happening in Rojava, these poems will undoubtedly deepen their appreciation of what has been achieved there – and at what cost. For those less aware, this work is a stepping-stone to further engagement.
Resistance and rebellion arise all the time, but its enemies are more ruthless than ever. Take the Arab Spring and the huge hope it was born of and inspired. Think of the aftermath of Syrian uprising – about the vicious war directed against the rebels. Or of those who had the temerity to rise up in Egypt, or Libya or Bahrain. In each case the retribution was fierce.
Perhaps this is why Rojava is so important. Who would have given those who live there a chance against NATO’s second biggest army, Turkey. Against ISIS and its brutal mutations, or against Syria’s cruel Assad regime. Not to mention Russia and the United States waiting in the wings. If it’s true that you are known by your enemies then that must say something highly significant about what Rojava stands for.
Feminism, anarchism, democracy …
To give you a sense of what this is aobut I include here the Wikipedia entry for Rojava:
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region in north-eastern Syria. It consists of self-governing sub-regions in the areas of Afrin, Jazira, Euphrates, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Deir Ez-Zor. The region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 in the context of the ongoing Rojava conflict and the wider Syrian Civil War. While entertaining some foreign relations, the region is not officially recognized as autonomous by the government of Syria or any state except for the Catalan Parliament. The AANES has widespread support for its universal democratic, sustainable, autonomous pluralist, equal, and feminist policies in dialogues with other parties and organizations. North-eastern Syria is polyethnic and home to sizeable ethnic Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian populations, with smaller communities of ethnic Turkmen, Armenians Circassians and Yazidis. Supporters of the region’s administration, state that it is an officially secular polity with direct democratic ambitions based on an anarchistic, feminist, and libertarian socialist ideology promoting decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability, social ecology and pluralistic tolerance for religious, cultural and political diversity, and that these values are mirrored in its constitution, society, and politics, stating it to be a model for a federalized Syria as a whole, rather than outright independence …
Rojava is a living example that another world is possible. Ethnic strife is not inevitable, dictatorship is not inevitable, patriarchy is not evitable. There are other ways to live and all credit to the people and political forces in Rojava who have carved out a different way to living based around the practices of real (participatory) democracy.
It is into this world that Matt Broomfield arrived in 2018. Rojava had held back ISIS and then played a key part in eliminating its presence in the north Syria region. But Turkey was only waiting to strike, invading in 2018 and again in 2019. All the time, while fighting these wars of self-preservation against its many enemies, Rojava continued to build a new type of society. The price has been high and if Brave Little Sternums speaks of anything then it is of these losses and the gains that were made. Matt Broomfield summarises the situation at one point:
“The revolution is living, ugly, beautiful, writhing, self-contradictory, hopelessly compromised, and utterly worth fighting for.”
Matt Bloomfield was interviewed by MedyaNews about Brave Little Sternums. Towards the end of the interview he reads and discusses a number of poems from the book.
ghazal: 80km from Shengak City [is at 15 minutes in the MedyaNews podcast.] Using the word heval – Kurdish for comrade – the sweep of this rhythmic poem is broken repeatedly by its jarring declarations. Coffins are carried down the Tel Kocker road/ no matter how heavy, heval/ mothers will reach and wail for the coffins/ no matter how empty, heval.
for Hevrin Khalef [at 20 minutes] I recall reading about the brutal roadside slaying of Hevrin Khalef in 2019. A Kurdish journalist and activist, her car was ambushed by a Turkish army backed paramilitary group. She was dragged from the vehicle and beaten before being murdered. This bleak poem which opens with powerful lines – The temptation is to elide/ normalise or over-indulge/ and not to inhabit – succeeds in personalising this activist’s death, extracting it from those accounts that have appeared online and testifying to her bravery. The truth is not the sum of abrasion but the abrasions attest to the truth.
For Anna Campbell (Helin Qerechox) [at 29.30 minutes] is another powerful poem managing to capture the impossibility of not acting in certain circumstances. Moral courage is everything and of course Anna Campbell had this. She travelled to Rojava and fought with the YPG, losing her life in a missile attack by Turkey in 2019. Her family have fought a long battle to have her body brought home but have (at the time of writing) not been successful. The poem conjures a difficult angst, each section building up to, but never quite reaching its point. As in Above all, we would also/ in our thousands we would also/ believe us, heval/ at any cost we would also
Containing over forty poems, background material on Rojava, some photos and and observations by the author we are indebted to Fly On The Wall Press for publishing this collection. Do cconsidering buying this book – as both the author and the publisher need support in today’s difficult bookmarket. And of course Rojava needs as much attention at it can get. Despite all that’s been achieved it survives on a knife edge today.
Buy the book directly from Fly on the Wall Press here £10.99 + p&p
More Links
Brave Little Sternums, poems from Rojava by Matt Broomfield – Medya News
Journalist Banned From 26 European Countries
Rojava – Revolution Between a Rock and a Hard Place (WSM, Ireland)
Socialist whodunnits, the Catholic Church and being ‘left in the lurch’.
Occupy march, Cork 2011
Q: To Keep A Bird Singing begins during the Crash in 2010. Noelie and Hannah, two of the main characters in the story, are keeping their heads above water. We meet Noelie for the first time in a charity shop. Was there a specific reason why you chose that time period for the story?
A: The Crash here in Ireland felt like a reckoning, the past catching up with us and exacting revenge. There had been so much hot air around the Celtic Tiger and that it had heralded a new dawn in Irish history – we were a country that people were immigrating into rather than emigrating from for a change. Then, that ended. Austerity, cuts, unemployment, mass emigration all over again. A time of reckoning is a time when you look more closely at what’s going on around you; maybe it’s a bit late in the day but you do it anyway. I think that’s some of the backdrop to the story.
Q: And Noelie and Hannah?
A: They are ‘stayers’. What I mean is that when the Crash hit, people left in droves once more. It’s national affliction 😉 ‘Oh there’a problem here, right I’ll be off so.’ However Noelie is older, in his late forties when the story gets underway. He’s been made unemployed, as many were, and he feels less able for emigration. He has to stay and that means he is more prepared to ask questions about the Ireland he is stuck in. Which is what gets him into trouble.
Q: It isn’t clear at first what Noelie has stumbled in to. In the beginning the story is light-hearted. He finds his missing punk records collection. It seems like a lucky break. Then matters rapidly descend into danger.
Bell & Howell Home Movie Camera c. 1960
A: What do you do when the cops are the criminals? It’s a problem, right? The normal avenues of complaint aren’t open to you. In To Keep A Bird Singing, Noelie and Hannah learn about the plight of a local man, Jim Dalton who has gone missing. It soon becomes clear that the cops, Special Branch that is, are probably involved. That’s how the story gets going and that’s when things really start to get difficult for them.
Q: So the cops are not heroes?
A: There is one very good cop in the book but he’s dead. Another more minor character, a police woman, is also portrayed in a positive light. So they are not all bad. Far from it. But the story in a way is about those elements of the police involved in the secret state.
Q: Which means what?
A: The activities of Special Branch and others elements inside the state security apparatus who are a law onto themselves. In the UK you have had the likes of Mark Kennedy and his involvement in deep infiltration, targeting left-wing groups, trade union activists and environmentalists. Absolutely corrupt, disgraceful activity sanctioned high up inside the police force. In Northern Ireland too all sorts of criminal activities were engaged in by RUC Special Branch. Collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries in conjunction with M15. Sectarian killings were orchestrated to stoke up sectarian hatred. There was state involvement with death squads. And we shouldn’t forget what happened at Kincora House in Belfast where elements in state security knowingly looked the other way when informed that child abuse was taking place.
Memorial at St Patrick’s School for Boys [Upton, Co. Cork]
Q: Pretty ugly.
A: It doesn’t get much uglier.
Q: The book has been described as a socialist whodunit. Is this because of the focus on this secret state?
A: Ellie O’Byrne in the Irish Examiner called it that. I guess it is the issues that arise in the story but I think it is also a description that emerges from the characters in the story. The Crash has hit and both Noelie and Hannah are feeling the pinch. However both of them have activism in their background – of the grassroots kind, I mean. Noelie in particular was stuck in a campaign against the Council’s decision to privatise rubbish collection and so on. The anti-austerity protests are also in the air as the novel opens, and Noelie’s thinking of getting involved. The key characters are lefties.
Q: They cross swords with powerful people. The shadow of the Catholic church is there. The business community is also close to hand. What sort of Ireland is this?
A: Things are changing in Ireland – as evidenced by recent victory in the repeal of the 8th Amendment here [which banned abortions in the Republic.] However the Catholic Church is still a powerful force in terms of its wealth, influence and its connections. It still commands in sectors of the health service and in education. So the power of the Catholic Church is also the backdrop to the story.
Q: Noelie and Hannah could walk away from the trouble they see but they don’t?
A: They live in an Ireland where a lot of things have been swept under the carpet. The story is set in 2010 but in terms of the book, a year earlier a ground-breaking report had come out about the industrial school network in Ireland – the Ryan Report. This set out for all to see how brutal and vicious the systematic punishment of poor families and children had been in Ireland at the hands to the state and the Catholic Church. Another report in the air as the story gets underway has to do with the Catholic Church’s role in child abuse and in protecting clerical child abusers in the Dublin Archdiocese. Noelie and Hannah are living in an Ireland where it’s getting hard to look the other way.
Q: Although some people remain good at that. 
A: Indeed. But others stand up in extremely difficult situations when faced with injustice and wrongdoing perpetrated by the powerful. Sometimes – and I think we know this – standing up for what is right is, effectively, a death sentence and yet people do it. Near when I was finishing writing the book, the Honduran activist Berta Cáceres was shot dead by paramilitaries linked to state security. She was threatened with murder so many times but she wouldn’t give up. And they did murder her in the end. I think, for what it is worth, the story is trying to celebrate bravery but the bravery of the underdog.
Q: As To Keep A Bird Singing moves on we begin to see something a lot darker – a group of abusers are possibly involved. They have protection though, from on high, from inside the Irish state. Is this based on a real situation.
A: The story is fiction and in another sense it isn’t. Did the Irish state protect abusers? Without doubt, yes. The Catholic church wrecked havoc on the lives of many children in Ireland right up until recent times. Abuse happened and often it was known that if certain children were sent to certain places they would be abused there. The courts not only didn’t stop this, it insisted on sending these children into these place and then, further to that, it then protected the abusers who abused in those institutions. Take the case of Fr Donal Gallagher. He was a notorious abuser and there were a myriad of complaints made against him. His order, the Vincentians, did absolutely nothing of substance to stop him. But the Gardaí failed repeatedly to pursue him too. There is a quote in the Murphy Report [p357] which really tells it all in my view.
The sergeant who conducted the investigation [into Fr Gallagher] stated in his report: “Fr Gallagher is a professional man and strikes me as a sincere and genuine individual. I can see no useful purpose to be gained by the prosecution of Fr Gallagher at this late stage”.
So I think you could argue in general that, yes, the Irish state by being so consistently negligent did abet child abuse. Was there a more sinister angle to some of this convenient ‘negligence’ on behalf of the Irish state or people acting on its behalf? I think we’d be naive not to think so.
Q: Do you think your own politics has helped in writing the book?
A: Hugely. Your politics determine what way you look at the world. In crime writing and so on its hard to avoid politics in some way. Even the murder, mayhem and gore brigade deal with it because it is all around in almost anything that goes on. But ‘political’ crime in sense of criminality deriving from how society is structured, from the reality that we live with under capitalism, gets off very, very lightly. You have to go to the Continent, to Italy and France to find any substantial body of work. That’s the way it looks to me anyway. But there is also a certain amount of ‘feed people what they are used to eating’ attitude around too. The popular impression of crime is that it is mostly constituted by gangland based violence or vicious person-on-person crimes in which women in particular appear to come out the worse. ‘Political’ and ‘white collar’ crime, apart of course from people supposedly ripping off the dole say, is largely ignored. I remember an example a few years ago, to do with crime book related to the chemical industry. As I know something about the area I thought I’d have a read. Now there are no end of examples of pharmaceutical and chemical corporations plundering the environment to maximise their profits – engaging in criminal activities to get their way too. But who was the criminal in this book? It turned out to be a crusty environmental activist who having lost his bearings decided to pollute an entire river to get the local chemical plant in trouble. I mean really like. In other words plots that fit certain tropes which coincidentally just happen to support the status generally do better with agents and publishers. Big surprise?
Edward Snowden broke the bad news.
Q: Surveillance features as an important element of the story. But it only become clear as the story crisis deepens that it is having a crucial role in what is going to happen.
A: I think that’s it. If you don’t resist surveillance isn’t really an issue for you. If you do resist then the surveillance becomes a real factor that you have to contend with. Nowadays the state is able to spy right into the very heart of our lives and when it needs to it does so with a tap of a keyboard.
Q: In To Keep A Bird Singing, Noelie and Hannah don’t know who their enemies really are. The people they are up against are ‘faceless’ and some continue to be until the end.
A: This is another reality. I mean one of aspects of recent human rights abuse – everything from drone assassinations to rendition etc – is that the perpetrators are never identified. The State has at its disposal hired killers who we – the public – have no right to know about. I mean if we look closely at this it is beyond shocking. This ‘legitimate’ secrecy that the State has reserved for its covert operation in our name is a grave threat to our security. In To Keep A Bird Singing the faceless nature of those behind one of the deaths is a key factor. Can one ever get justice if one doesn’t even know the identify of the criminal involved? If they are protected by state secrecy legislation it’s nigh impossible.
Q: The story ends on a positive note but only just. Would you agree?
A: The story is not over. In a number of ways actually. As was pointed out to me by a kind reader of the book, Noelie has been left in the lurch, romantically speaking. So at the very least that has to be sorted. Other matters too are there to be followed up. But yes at the end of To Keep A Bird Singing, Noelie and his friends have made progress but at a price. It’s reality, no? It is very hard to get justice without making a sacrifice. Everyone who fought for the freedoms we now have – from advances in working conditions to women’s suffrage – put a lot on the line. They knew they had to but importantly they thought and knew it would be worth it too.
** My thanks to ml for taking the time to do this interview with me.
Links Suffer the Little Children and Haunting Cries are informative and disturbing accounts of the industrial schools network here in Ireland.
Industrial Memories – A response to the Ryan Report
The Punk Bit …
I was a Stiff Little Fingers fan [c. 1980]
I was lucky to have an uncle who lived in Paddington and he attended the market religiously on Friday and Saturday morning every week. My brothers and I often went to stay with him in the summer months during the seventies and through that I got to know the ins and outs of Portobello market in west London: where the ‘tourist’ end was and where the locals went. Under the Westway flyover, there were often plenty of punks and lots of punk records, new and second-hand, to be had; I spent a good deal of time there sifting through the records stalls. Further down the market , in the direction of Notting Hill, there was Rough Trade of course – another Mecca for anyone interested in punk back then.
Thankfully my collection of 45s survived the theft.
Douglas Street
Being broken into is an unpleasant experience. I was living on my own in a fairly decrepit flat on Douglas Street when it happened – working my way through my Masters when the theft took place. Some money was taken and a few other bit and pieces but the record collection’s disappearance was the big loss. I can’t remember for sure now but I think the thief was caught – he attempted to cash a cheque from a campaign cheque book I was holding; I tended to volunteer then for jobs like ‘treasurer’ or ‘secretary’ – and after being told to return to the bank with ID if he wanted to cash said cheque, he did and was duly arrested. He never revealed where my prized collection was however and, as I recall, the garda detective involved was not that interested either.
I spent awhile haphazardly combing through various second-hand record stores in Cork hoping to spot one of my treasures, hoping indeed to see any part of my collection again but I never did; the records were gone and I suppose were soon dispersed in every direction. That, in a sense, was the end of the story.
Charity Shop
Castle Street, Cork
Years later and at a very different stage in my life, my record collection came back into my mind. By then I had two children and they were attending The Cork School Project (Educate Together) located on Grattan Street in Cork. I often dropped them to school and collected them later to bring them home again. This involved walking through town and one shop of particular interest that we often passed was on Castle Street (pictured) off North Main Street. A charity shop along the street was well known for making an art form of its interesting window displays.
This was the noughties and records and LPs were not yet back in fashion as they are now. There were boxes of vinyl lying on sale at giveaway prices in the shop and I often checked them, somewhat absent-mindedly, but with an eye for any of the gems that I had lost all those years ago. I wondered about the idea of finding my collection again and what that would feel like after all this time. It would be strange and odd too, right? Now what if I found the entire collection still intact, what would that mean? It never happened but I did have an idea for how a story – probably set in Cork – could begin. All this time later it is how To Keep A Bird Singing begins.
Related Links
Lake Disappointment wins The Michael McLaverty Award.
The shortlisted writers for the Michael McLaverty Award (2016) – Ciaran Folan, Sinead Slattery and Kevin Doyle
Some time last summer I read online that that the Michael McLaverty Award (2016) was open for submissions. The prestigious prize, run biennially since 2006, was set up to foster and encourage the tradition of the Irish short story. It is hosted by Belfast’s Linen Hall Library in honour of the life and work of Michael McLaverty (1904 – 1992), one of the foremost exponents of the short story form. Michael McLaverty was born in Co Monaghan and later moved to Belfast where he worked for most of his life as a teacher. In a fitting tribute to one of the leading cultural institutions in Belfast, the Michael McLaverty papers were donated to the Linen Hall Library in 2005 by his literary executors.
I had finished Lake Disappointment in May. It was a story that I had laboured over for a while. The characters and setting – Kenmare in Ireland and the Pilbara in Australia – had been on my mind for a considerable length of time but I struggled in early drafts to find a voice through which the story’s story could be told. I experimented and gave up a few times. However, I always returned to the story. On one occasion I was passing outside Kenmare in Co Kerry – my father was from an area known as Maulnagower, outside Kenmare – and I looked at the landscape, at the bleak and beautiful McGillycuddy Reeks, and I knew I had to finish the story. It would come good, I just needed to persevere.
The theme of the 2016 Michael McLaverty prize was ‘Lost Fields’, a reference to his novel about working-class life in 1930s Belfast. I had Lake Disappointment finished and realised that it suited the theme, so I sent it off. For much of last year I worked on a novel set in Cork and I more or less forgot that I had entered the prize. In early November I heard from Samantha McCombe, the head librarian at Linen Hall Library, that I was on the shortlist. On December 7th, in Belfast, at the Linen Hall Library itself, I was announced as the winner.
At the award ceremony, Patsy Horton (of Blackstaff Press), a judge along with the author David Park, said this about the theme and the prize:
Prizes like the Michael McLaverty Short Story Award are a fantastic opportunity for writers to gain recognition and profile for their writing. I’ve been delighted to be associated with the award this year and to see the very many ways in which writers chose to tackle the theme of ‘Lost Fields’. There were a good number of common threads among the stories, not least of all a focus on the land and inter-generational conflict around inheritance, legacies and tradition. Not surprisingly, emigration, as both loss and redemption, also featured strongly. There is something of this idea in the winning piece, but Kevin Doyle gives it a deeper, richer, more mysterious resonance in a story that takes the reader all the way to Western Australia and the vast unending salt plain of Lake Disappointment.’
Winning was a huge honour. I try to take risks with short stories, not necessarily to be experimental, but rather to look ‘elsewhere’ for subjects to write about. In many ways Lake Disappointment exemplified this. As a story it didn’t come easy. I had to delve deeper inside than I had before to get at the centre of the story. The risk is always there that the story won’t work in the end – that means a lot of time and effort has been lost. For awhile Lake Disappointment looked like it was going to go that way, then it came good. Getting onto the shortlist was, in itself, an endorsement; winning the overall prize was not only a boost but also an invitation to keep going, to write what I want to write about. Lake Disappointment is a love story but it is also about the search for place and peace in a world back-dropped by intolerance. 
Finally, the winning stories and those of the other shortlisted writers, Ciarán Folan (A Parting Gift) and Sinéad Slattery (for First Snow) have been published as “Lake Disappointment and Other Stories” by Linen Hall Library and are available to order online. A huge thanks to Linen Hall Library for their effort and committment to the short story form. Michael McLaverty would, I feel, be proud.
Links:
Press Release by Linen Hall Library, Belfast
Culture Northern Ireland on the Michael McLaverty Awards, 2016
Carousel Aware Prize for Independent Authors (The CAP Awards)
The emergence of low-priced electronic publishing has been a big challenge to the book industry. The cost of publishing has dropped, eBook readers are much improved and as a result there is a huge increase in the number of independently published works available to the public. Many people have bemoaned this development but there is no denying that eBooks are here to stay. They will never replace hardcopy books – and that’s a good thing – but they are now a significant part of the book market.
As a creative writing teacher, I’ve always encouraged people to write. A lot of people wonder if they should write. Generally, I say ‘Give it a go’. Lack of confidence can be a barrier but writing as a medium for self-expression is a lot more accessible and natural than some of us are led to believe. To date I’ve never come across anyone who didn’t benefit in some way from writing about something that mattered to them.
The rise in interest in writing has dovetailed nicely with new, less expensive options with the result that there are large numbers of new books entering the marketplace every week. Some of these new writers are aiming to compete in the traditional book market while others are more experimental and not too interested in sales. Others again are just happy to record a memoir or a family saga or a person’s struggle against adversity. The beauty of eBooks is that anyone can join in and it doesn’t cost the earth.
But it’s tough out there, make no mistake. There’s a massive of amount of good reading material available now. Plenty is available online and lots of people, even writers, give away their work for free. Meanwhile all of us are competing against the reality of social media which voraciously soaks up a lot of spare time.
This is where the new CAP Awards come in. Launched this year by Carolann Copeland of Carousel Writers’ Centre, the Carousel Aware Prize for Independent Authors (The CAP Awards) is innovative and timely. Focused on the ‘indie’ book market in Ireland, it has five distinct award categories: Best Junior Book, Best Young Adult Book, Best Short Story Anthology, Best Non-Fiction Book and Best Novel. As you can see the categories cover a broad range of interests and in all twenty-five books have been shortlisted for the 2016 CAP Awards.
The CAP Awards are not the last word – far from it – in terms of what is good or great out there in the world of indie book publishing but they are a very welcome effort to identity the fact that there is a lot of talent in this new area and it deserves to be taken seriously. I have been shortlisted in the Short Story Category for my collection Do You Like Oranges?
The judge in the Best Young Adult Book category, Claire Hennessy, in writing about the CAP Awards pointed out there are different and varied reasons why authors choose to go down the indie publishing route. For me it was in part to do with the particular stories in my collection. All the stories in Do You Like Oranges? had been previously published in recognised journals and the title story had won a runners-up prize in a prestigious award in the UK, but from the outset I found I had difficulty selling the stories to an Irish publisher. Some of this was timing: my stories were about a difficult time in Irish political life when the police had engaged in ‘heavy-handed’ tactics against dissent in the country. As the Troubles came to an end publishers were leaning more towards forgetting about that time rather than dwelling on it.
I decided to publish the stories in eBook format in part to move on. Having one’s writing published is often, in a way, a means of parting with that particular work, and so it was for me. From my perspective as a writer, it was a good move to published Do You Like Oranges? The revolution in electronic publishing facilitated that and has made these stories available to a big audience around the world.
My thanks to Carolann Copeland and the CAP Awards committee, the charity AWARE and all the judges for taking the time to get this award up and running. While I can only guess at the amount of work involved, I have no doubt that it must have been considerable. I wish all the other writers shortlisted in the different categories the very best of luck on the night. Whatever happens these inaugural awards will be a big success for indie publishing in Ireland.
About “Do You Like Oranges?”
Do You Like Oranges?is a collection of three short stories, each of which is concerned with State repression. The setting for the stories is the Ireland of the late 70s/ early 80s.
At the time, repression and ‘counter-terrorism’ were widely used in Northern Ireland by the RUC in conjunction with the British Army. It is less well known that in the Republic (26 counties) the State used similar methods with clear disregard for human rights. The intention was identical: to instill a climate of fear among political activists. These stories then are of that time.
In the shortest story, But Your Mother, the central character is made aware of what the consequences might be for him if he continues with what he is doing. The choice that he will have to make is not resolved in the story but it is significant and cannot be ignored. The story is told in a first person narrative voice with the dilemma posed remaining interior to the character’s persona, underlining the personal and private nature of such choices.
In the title story, Do You Like Oranges? the main character has been the victim of a serious beating at the hand of Garda Special Branch. The key events take place in and around the Hungers Strikes in the Maze Prison, although the location for the story is Cork – a city geographically removed from the conflict that was ongoing in Northern Ireland at that time. In the aftermath of the assault the victim was threatened in such a way that he believed he was going to die.
We first meet the main character on his return to Ireland from exile in Australia. Events and circumstances which are only broadly alluded to in the story have propelled him to come back and confront the man who tortured him.
In this story the main character is about to take the matter of justice into his own hands. This, to an extent, is what makes the story tick – the determination to seek some re-dress. While the relevance of the story has receded in terms of the conflict in Ireland, the central concern in the story – the ability of torturers to evade justice and judgement – remains a pressing issue in particular with the resurgence in the use of torture in the post 9/11 period, particularly in the USA and the UK.
For example what should we do when the State de facto avoids its responsibilities in respect to the need and demand for justice. Or what should we do when the State itself organises the business of torture and is resistant to any attempts to hold it or any of its agents to account? Not an unusual occurrence in fact.
The third and final story, Down The Tunnels takes a different approach and is written from the point of view of a police officer who was involved in beating a confession from a number of innocent men. The story resonates with the events of the infamous Sallins Train Robbery case (here in Ireland) when Nicky Kelly and a number of other men were falsely accused and convicted of a robbery that they had no part in. The story focuses in an entirely imaginative and fictional way on what the motivation might be for a police officer who knowingly seeks the conviction of an innocent man.
The three stories that make up the short collection have all been previously published. The title story was an Ian St James International Short Story Award winner and appeared in Pulse Fiction (London, 1998) and Snapshots (London, 1999). Down The Tunnels was first published in The Cúirt Journal 7 (Galway, 1999) and But Your Mother in Stinging Fly (Dublin, 1999) and Southwords (Cork, 2000).
This collection is now available in all the main digital formats at Smashwords or Amazon.
Related articles:
Silence Now Pervades (The Pensive Quill)
Excerpt from Do You Like Oranges? (The Pensive Quill)
But Your Mother – Audio Reading
The Hand of God – A Short Story (Video reading)
The most popular [theory] I recall was from a quiet boy whose name I now forget. He advanced the idea that Brother Bannister enjoyed hitting us. When this boy first stated his view, it was followed, it should be said, by a deathly silence. Then everyone laughed.
Background: This story arose from a chance meeting with an old school friend in Cork. Inevitably we talked about that time and this led onto a conversation about one Christian Brother who had a particularly violent temper; a lot of them had just ordinary tempers. Later on however it struck me how this Brother had lived on in our minds for the wrong reasons.
This got me to wondering about what we must have thought at the time – when we were boys. You try to rationalise everything as a child even things that make no sense. But what did we make of this Brother’s violent ways and how did it match with the idea of God that was being preached to us?
Maybe the story is a metaphor for the violence of religion. God is far from loving in this story; in fact the main theory put forward by the boys suggests that God is willfully assisting in the reign of terror.
The sadism of the Brother is another feature of the story. The boys of course do not understand what sadism is but they are beginning to see that in this Brother’s case, he is enjoying his violence and power.
What remained then with the boys afterwards and how did it affect them in their lives – if it even did?
Q & A on the Worms That Saved The World…
A: For as long as anyone can remember there’s been a walk out along the headland to the Old Head of Kinsale lighthouse in Cork. It’s actually a very well known walk and remarked upon in many tourist guides to the area – there’s fantastic scenery right along the entire route. But in the late 90s some developers purchased the headland itself and announced plans to put a luxury golf course on the area that they owned. They blocked off access to the walk and declared that a walking path and their plans for a golf links were not compatible. To be blunt about it, they wanted it all for themselves and their clients.
A: A campaign got underway to defend the public’s right of way and the public’s right to access. It was called the Free The Old Head Of Kinsale Campaign. It organised some large public trespass demonstrations. These were tremendous and inspiring and I was on a number of them. But the developers had the Gardaí [G: Guards] on their side. And, as it turned out, the courts too. For a while it seemed like we might be able to regain access to the walk but in the end a High Court ruling broke the resolve of the campaign and access was lost. For the present, anyway.
A: While this was going on I had two young daughters to mind. I was aware that there were few enough children’s picture books around that were any bit different. There are lots of good books that look at the natural world in a respectful and sympathetic way, but there is lots of material around too about kings and queens, and princes and princesses and all that stuff. The big problem is the imbalance in books available to a parent or a reader. A lot of material out there simply reinforces quite traditional values – there is no question about that.
A: I am not sure how exactly the idea of the worms story came to me. But it could’ve been the fact that one of my daughters had a real grá [G: love] for making these elaborate homes for worms out in the garden. She would gather lots of worms and put them in lunch boxes with earth and leaves and all sorts of things. Probably rough enough for the worms but I did noticed that they never really hung around for long! When she returned to check on them, the worms were always long gone. I also read at one stage about the problems on some golf course with the chemicals they use to keep weeds down. And then I had this picture in my mind too of seeing a water feature on a golf course in the States once – the water was a strange ultra blue colour! Looked bizarre, to me. All these things set me thinking. So I got a rough idea for a story. But that was all it was for a long time: this community of worms having to suddenly contend with a golf course and all that involves.
A: Although I knew Spark Deeley, it wasn’t until I saw her book, Into the Serpent’s Jaw, on sale at Solidarity Books in Cork that I thought to approach her about working on the idea. Into the Serpent’s Jaws is a beautiful book with really engaging illustrations in it. So Spark agreed to take a look and went off with the bones of the story. When we met up again, she had these wonderful illustrations done. They were really brilliant and I knew from that point on that this was going in the right track. We began working on more illustrations and then on finalising the story line.
A: That’s where we are at now. Spark has completed about eight or so illustrations for the book. They have transformed how the story looks and feels. In the meantime I have worked on finalising the story line. There’s a good bit to do still, but we have started to approach publishers with samples. Truthfully, we need a sympathetic publisher because the ideas at the centre of this story are different and, you know in their own way. they are subversive too.
A: Publishing is unbelievably conservative – what I’ve seen of it anyway. Whereas this story is outside the box. Why, you ask? Well the story really is about solidarity and community – that’s a big part of it. It’s also about why sometimes we have to stand up for ourselves, and why sometimes when we do, it is best if we do it collectively. I think the ideas in Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid have also managed to get to the story, which is wonderful. Oops, now I’ve really give the game away!
[Note:the above are photos of illustrations by Spark Deeley.]
Hey, Listen To This
Last year I had the pleasure of working with Transition Year students as part of a City Library initiative to record fiction for a CD of new stories by Cork teenagers. We finally launched the CD just before Xmas. There are five stories and it was great to have the opportunity to work with these young writers. The CD is available throughout the library service in the Republic. So check it out and well done to the young writers!
Kevin Doyle Blog 