The very funny Blythe Roberson wrote a ‘Daily Shout’ for the New Yorker earlier this month, in the form of a mock application to the MA in Creative Writing at UCC, which supports one Fulbright scholarship annually. We’re very pleased to be in the New Yorker, even if Roberson gives the reason for applying to UCC as needing ‘to escape New York City boys and find ones I can actually date’. You can read Blythe’s full article here.

UCC’s Writer in Residence, dramatist Michael West, will give a reading of his work on Tuesday, December 1, at West Wing 5, at 6pm, followed by a welcome reception in the Social Area of the Department of English.  This event is free and no booking is required.

West, who was appointed in September for the academic year 2015/16, is an award-winning playwright and a noted adaptor of literary work.  As co-founder of the Corn Exchange theatre company, he has collaborated on productions of Joyce’s Dubliners, Nabokov’s Lolita and most recently, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, by Eimear McBride.

His play Freefall won an Irish Times Theatre Award for best new play and best director in 2009 and several of his productions have won Irish Playwright and Screenwriters Guild awards. His latest play, Conservatory, was staged at the Abbey Theatre in 2014.

As Writer in Residence, West has been teaching on the MA in Creative Writing and will be providing public workshops next semester.

Poet Jo Shapcott (The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry) will read from her versions of Rilke’s French poems, and discuss her work with Karen Leeder, Professor of Modern German Literature at New College, Oxford.

6 pm, Thursday 26th November, 2015

Room G27 (CACSSS Seminar Room), O’Rahilly Building

Jo Shapcott was born in London. Poems from her three award-winning collections, Electroplating the Baby (1988), Phrase Book (1992) and My Life Asleep (1998) are gathered in a selected poems, Her Book (2000). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition (twice). Tender Taxes, her versions of Rilke, was published in 2001. Her most recent collection, Of Mutability, was published in 2010 and won the Costa Book Award. In 2011 Jo Shapcott was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.

This Dust of Words: Poetry and/as Translation is generously sponsored by the college of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, UCC.

https://thisdustofwords.wordpress.com

UCC Lecturer in Creative Writing, Mary Morrissy, presented “Raising the Past and Entering it”, a lecture on the writing of historical fiction at the University of Florence on Tuesday, October 20th. She’s also giving a lecture today (Thursday, October 22nd) at the University of Sassari, Sardinia, , where she will read during the “Ottobre in Poesia” festival from her forthcoming collection of short stories, Prosperity Drive.

Ian Crockatt has published several collections of his own poetry, including Flood Alert (Chapman Publications, 1996), Original Myths (Cruachan Publications, 1999), The Crucifixion Bird (Northwords Folios, 2002), Blizzards of the Inner Eye (Peterloo Press, 2003), The Lyrical Beast (Salix Publications, 2004), and Skald – Viking poems Koo Press, Aberdeen, 2009 (reprinted 2011). Original Myths, which includes etchings by the Scottish artist Paul Fleming, was nominated for the Saltire Society’s Scottish Book of the Year Award in 2000.

Pure Contradiction, his selection of translations of the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (Arc Publications, 2012) was awarded the prestigious Society of Authors’ Schlegel-Tieck prize in 2013.

He recently completed a PhD thesis at the University of Aberdeen, focusing on the translation of Old Norse skaldic poetry. Crimsoning the Eagle’s Claw: The Viking Poems of Rognvaldr Kali Kollsson, Earl of Orkney was published by Arc Publications in 2014, and was a Poetry Book Society Translation Recommendation. Another collection of translations from Old Norse – ‘The Song Weigher: Complete poems of Egill Skallagrimsson, tenth century Viking and Skald – is due from Arc Publications in the winter of 2016.

This Dust of Words reading series is generously supported by the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, UCC.

15 October 2015 @ 6 p.m., G27 (CACSSS Seminar Room), O’Rahilly Building, UCC

The School of English’s autumn reading series kicks off on October 8 with prize-winning Northern Irish novelist, Eoin McNamee. Other readers coming to UCC this autumn include poet and Poetry Review editor, Maurice Riordan and Irish Fiction Laureate, Anne Enright.

McNamee’s novel Blue is the Night won the 2015 Irish Novel of the Year Award. The novel is the culmination of the author’s crime trilogy, the first of which, The Blue Tango, was nominated for the Booker Prize. McNamee’s other work includes Resurrection Man, detailing the murderous career of the Shankhill Butchers gang, The Ultras, an account of the killing of Robert Nairac and 12.23 , a novel based on the final days of Princess Diana. He also writes children’s fiction.

Jointly sponsored by Munster Literature Centre and UCC Library.

Thursday 8th October @ 6pm, The Learning Zone, Boole Library, UCC.

Admission Free. All Welcome.

Food Writing: A UCC flexi-option graduate course in creative non-fiction, taught in collaboration with two internationally renowned food businesses: Ballymaloe Cookery School and Café Paradiso Vegetarian Restaurant. Dates are 9th, 16th, 23rd & 24th October, 2015. Applications now open! Email Regina Sexton at R.Sexton@ucc.ie for more information.