In Literature Lovers chat-joint - my own Love and peace gulag - where i am
the de facto dictator controlling the talk-lore and all executive decisions
pertaining to said chat - there is a Daily Diary thread, which some find a
very enabling strand on which to gas.

http://literaturelover.createforum.net/index.php

Basically, we chat about our day at the coal face of pretending and mimesis,
wherever our creational activity occurs and our aura glows; and be it in a
hutch in academia, or - as in my own case - a bedsit in Kilmainham, all the
thralls in my concentration camp of totally democratic chatter agree, it is
a useful thing to be doing.

So please feel free to speak on any and all aspect of your quotidian life,
should the mood take you, and who knows, we may bore down our barriers and
this list become the most exciting place for honest waffle since Bernstein
got gassing in '94 at Buffalo, kicking off the whole shaboodle wiv sue
shultz, bob C, Keith T and all the legends who write their own myth. Gods
make theior own importance said Patrick Kavanagh, and i believe he is right,
so let me bore you wiv my day today.

Up at 9.30 with a bad throat, voice half gone after packing in fags and
booze 2 month back and the first wave of toxic-shock hiotting me Wednesday
after Naked Lunch poetry gathering, and my voice breaking in two half way
through the Patrick Kavanagh Celebration on Sat above in the Palace Bar,
Fleet Street Dublin; the spiritual home of Irish writing.

Wrote a few e mails and then out to Inchicore college of further education
to see about a writing and culture FETAC course, which will allow me to
remain unemployable for another year, but off the live register and with a
few quid extra for being in education.

I already have a writing degree and this course looks the perfect one for
kickstarting any novels or scripts lying around in me, as i will be
operating on a different sphere than "story arc..show don't tell" etc, and
the tutor is keen to have a few extra heads in as the course is all new.

Then for lunch to Focus, the homeless charity canteen in Temple Bar. The
ethos is to give those at the foot of humanity's heap, at least one good
meal a day, all made with the freshest of ingredients and a chopice of two
main meals, salads and a dessert. 1 euro fifty cent for a large meal 75
cent a half portion.

I had chicken, mash, peas and a salsa/gravy concoction, apple crumble and
custard and water, 2 euro thirty cents; cheaper than a hot chocolate 800
yards away in the cafe in temple bar square. 15 times cheaper and 10 times
better quality food than the restaurant opposite it on Eustace Street.

Back to the attic for some more waffle, checking up on who is saying what in
the various cyber forums which constitute the gaffes in which i circuit;
most of which have slung me off at various points, for talking of bardic
lore and presenting evidence which negates the age aul con and cause for
splits between langpo and lyric practitioners; "what is real poetry; a real
poet?" etc, blah blah blah.

Not a busy day of blather for what passes as the premier online gobs; and
the quality of chat in an overall trough period, the Guardian books blog in
particular having gone right down hill since my four month tenure as poet in
residence ended five or six weeks ago.

The day ended witnessing Mathew Sweeney for the first time, launching his
latest - ninth - collection; Black Moon.

I had heard from some fellow UK bores that he had a reputation for
possessing the magic "it" live; but alas this was not the case tonight, in
the nearly deserted Unitarian Church on Stephens Green. His poems were
delivered in thedefault, priest at mass delivery, appropriately enough from
the pulpit, but any spiritual insight and effect was totally absent in, what
 seemed more like prose than poetry; delivered in what i assume was his stab
at the holy man poetic register.

Even his cheerleader, Simon O'Brien's review of this book points out this
obvious, prosaic, fact; stating that the poems in this effort from Sweeney:

"..approaches an extremity of bareness. His rhythms are conversational (or
more accurately, and at times intimidatingly, monologic).."


He talked of his works being written in European hotspots such as Berlin,
Hungary and other places, one of which was Romania, this particular poem's
conceit being about how hot is was one summer day, and an irish man's
sweat-patch on his T shirt came out ion the shape of Ireland.

The only poem i as a listener thought any good was one called The Snake,
which Sweeney told us was one of four that came out from the break up of a
relationship, thought not indicating who the protagonists were.

Then home to cook myself a tuna steak in onion/pepper and tomato sauce, and
a bitta gossip in the intellectual stop..