Yeah...Murphy's a jammy git. He's only been writing for a couple of years
and won the Cuirt slam last year after only wielding the pen for a few
months. Naturally I hate him for his luck...only joking...fair play him.
I'll have to read Gough's essay again to see the goethe bit, but he's old
hat now, so last month.
As regards what I want to say about MacNeice, I dunno really, anything to
set the cat among the pigeons. Maybe I could try and prove that a close
reading of his work reveals he was a closet gay, or a radical misogynist.
Try and sound different. Be a smart arse. Pass myself off as a committed
femminist in the gender wars and make out i'm preaching from the altar of
Kristeva and her mob, in a cynical attempt to woo the minds of my fellow
soldiers at the front line.
Cloak my rhetoric in the most complex po-mo gear going. I don't think it
matters as long as I sound like I know what I'm on about and as long as it
gets me a travel grant, i don't care.
Do a performance/reading and enter the consciousness of the higher ups in
the big gals and guys playground. It's just another stage to star or rent
onself apart in innit?
I'll have to find a hook into a 2-3000 word waffle, half academic half
creative. When I did my introductions for poetry ireland last year my mate
PJ Brady who has played Patrick Kavanagh for the last 20 years in a one man
show, and was part of the grouping that hung round Katherine Kavanagh's
gaffe every Sunday after the Monaghan "w.nker" (as Behan called him, due to
the charcater in the Great Hunger who he reckoned was a regular five finger
self-shuffler) died.
He advised me to write out the whole thing, which i did, and as I opened
"... Thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity of reading.."
I smiled as it struck me that that's exactly what I was doing, nought but
"reading" off a page, and giving myself a chance to show off some good
combos, instead of linking my poems with a lot of .."erm..I was in a cafe
and erm.."
And it seemed to go well, with the golden couple of paula, theo and jim
mcauley starring in the audience. And at the risk of sounding too honest,
that's half the battle innit? Giving a good account of oneself off the page
as well as on.
I reckon the academic gigs are just the same as any other reading, just a
bit more cerebral. Same shit different rules, more polite small talk, smiles
with the wine and cheese brigade, who Heaney has a great line about in one
of his essays
"The glint of the granny glasses."
They straights love a bit of a wild card, the tinge of the real tearaway
collapsing in the gutter after making innapropriate comments after the
second bottle. Taking possession of the corkscrew and shoving a bottle down
ones kecks for later on in the park, before stripping off and hitching home
the following day, talk of the conference.
But any ideas will be very gratefully appreciated, as i am ready for the
next stage of waffling from a podium and really anyone who doesn't send the
audience to sleep at these gigs has half a chance of being hailed as a
genius. And I don't say this as an outsider moaning, but from my own
experience of witnessing the bladdy boring gits, but not anyone here.
The only time I saw mairead, as i've already said, she was the star of the
"Meet the Beats" and circulates round the top of the mountain.
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