Live Encounters - published by Mark Ulyseas

Thanks to Mark Ulyseas for liking my work sufficiently to publish it in Live Encounters.

The December 2017 edition can be downloaded for free from Live Encounters.

Live Encounters Poetry & Writing December 2017

Video Live Encounters Poetry & Writing December 2017. Music/soundtrack Mozart - Laudate Dominum Music by Advent Chamber Orchestra is licensed under a Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/

Posted by Live Encounters Poetry on Monday, 20 November 2017

T.S.Eliot and the Russian connection

On a recent visit to London I took a stroll off Kensington High Street.  It was a mild and dry Autumn evening.  As I walked I noticed a plaque on a wall.  Like all readers and writers our sub-conscious is always on the look out for something to read.  I walked nearer to get a proper view and read that the house I was standing in front of was where T.S.Eliot lived and died.  I had recently read an extract by T.S.Eliot referenced by brainpickings.org from the 1932-33 Norton Lectures titled 'The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism'.  The piece which drew my attention was related to 'how some forms of physical illness (if other circumstances are favourable) produce an efflux of poetry in a way approaching the condition of automatic writing......the material has obviously been incubating within the poet,....gives me the impression,.... .some obstruction is momentarily whisked away'.

I have had a personal experience with an illness and a pouring forth of poetry and have explained it 'as if a curtain had been parted'.

As I was taking a photo of the plaque a woman stopped to talk.  She lives further along this road and said I was the first person she noticed in five years that had stopped to look. We had a wonderful chat.  It turned out she is Russian and writes poetry and told me of Joseph Brodsky having written a poem 'Verses on the Death of T.S. Eliot', on hearing of the death of T.S.Eliot and how he had written it based on the form of a poem that W.H.Auden had written after the death of W.B.Yeats.  Some more information is available through JSTOR from a Journal, The Russian Review,  published by Wiley in 1968.

Earlier that evening I had a run in Hyde Park and afterwards imagined T.S.Eliot walking along the same pathways on another Autumn evening.

On my return to Cork a few days later I was browsing in The Village Hall and found and bought a copy of 'Russian Short Stories' by Everyman's Library.

The first story is by Pushkin and I have included a reference to this story in a poem I am currently writing.







(c) Bernadette Gallagher

Culture Night 2017

As part of Culture Night 2017 I read a selection of my poems in collaboration with the Jazz trio Filology: John Philip Murray - Drums; David O'Connor - Guitar and Pat Barrett - Bass.

The event was sponsored by Cork Country Arts & Library Service - with special thanks to Leah Ní Eachtigheirn and Ian McDonagh.  Here is a link to some photos taken prior to and during the night.

We had a wonderful audience who were attentive throughout. The space is, in my estimation, the best spot in Cork.

Other events taking place in Vertigo included illustrations by Hazel Hurley design, an artist from Clonakilty, who, along with others, created a live illustration on the windows of the top floor of County Hall, celebrating the landmarks which can be seen and the culture of Cork county.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Clare poet living in Cork, gave a warm reading from 9pm. Doireann is a bilingual writer whose books explore birth, death, desire, and domesticity.  It was my first time meeting Doireann and she is a lovely warm hearted and supportive person.

Sculpture by Oisín Kelly

Venue: Vertigo, Floor 17, Cork County Hall, Carrigrohane Road, Cork, Ireland.
Time: 8pm

Date: Friday 22nd September 2017