Tag: Art

Collaboration, Writing News

Holy Cows: The Red Book of Kildare

We are looking for personal responses to the theme of the sacred feminine, Brigid and the heritage of Kildare. The anthology will be published by Arlen House and launched at Kildare Readers Festival October 2024 as part of Brigid 1500 Celebrations. We hope this anthology will become a source book and a tonic. All genres of writing and visual art welcome. Collaborative submissions also welcome.

Be honest; tell your truth.                                  Crash the clichés!                                   Surprise us.

Submission Guidelines: Please read and follow the below guidelines carefully!

How to submit:

  • Submit unpublished work (online or otherwise) by email to HolyCowsRedBook@gmail.com as an attachment.
  • All submissions are read anonymously so please do not have any personal identifiers on your manuscript or art work.(any work that does can not be considered for the anthology)
  • Please put Poetry or Prose or Visual Art in the subject title – as appropriate to your work.
  • Include a brief 50-word biography in the body of your email.

What to submit:

  • Prose: up to 2,000 words, in .doc, .docx, or pdf.
  • Poetry: up to 3 poems (no longer than 40 lines, excluding title) in .doc, .docx, or pdf.
  • Visual Art: submissions in jpeg. 2MB; 300 dpi; minimum 2000 pixels in width and height.

When  to submit: Submissions will be accepted between Monday 22nd January and Monday 12th February 2024 only. No work can be considered outside these dates.

Submissions Response:

  • All submissions will be acknowledged by email.
  • Successful applicants will be informed by email before Friday 15th March 2024.
  • The decision of the editorial panel is final.  
  • The editorial panel is not in a position to enter into correspondence about submissions or to give any feedback.
  • Successful applicants will receive a small fee for their work and one paperback copy of the anthology.
Contemplation

Rest, Reset, Renew: the creative self

Photograph of Killarney Lakes, Killarney National Park, County Kerry (c) Shauna Gilligan

Flannery O’Connor states in her wonderful essay “The Nature and Aim of Fiction”,

Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn’t try to write fiction. It’s not a grand enough job for you.

And it strikes me that the dust and muck still stick even after the drafts of fiction have been written. Perhaps it’s only by getting out into the air, feeling the cold, and the wind, and seeing all the mess and the beauty that surround us that we can begin to see, really see, what is there in our creative space.

Julia Cameron maintains that “art needs time to incubate, to sprawl a little, to be ungainly and misshapen and finally emerge as itself.” And incubation takes time, energy, and space. We need to rest, reset and renew ourselves and our energy so that our creative selves can be open enough to let our creations emerge. It is only then we can accept – and then fine tune – the manuscript that sits before us.

Collaboration, Exhibitions, Writers with Artists, Writing Life

Imagining History: New writing in Exhibition Pamphlet Oriel y Bont, University of South Wales.

Black and White Cover of Exhibition Pamphlet – Imagining History

I thoroughly enjoyed both the process of responding to the art and reading the resulting writing in the Imagining History Exhibition Pamphlet. The exhibition was held in Oriel y Bont, University of South Wales, from 1 November to 17 December 2021.

In the words of Barrie Llewelyn (editor of the pamphlet), “the exhibition, pamphlet and conference focussed on the complex relationship between fiction and fact” and drew attention to the “partial, fragmentary or even distorted nature of the narratives which often shape our national histories.”

For me, the themes of landscape and memory appealed, especially in the work of John Elwyn. In my short piece, “Mama Daly” I hoped to imagine the life of a woman looking at – and also longing for – what lies in and beyond her immediate town-and-land-scapes. With thanks to Barrie for including my flash fiction piece in the publication and exhibition.

The exhibition included work by Susan Adams, Iwan Bala, Judith Beecher, Elizabeth Bridge, Jack Crabtree, Morag Colquhoun, Ivor Davies, Ken Elias, Geraint Evans, Tom Goddard, Clive Hicks-Jenkins, Rachel Jones, Naomi Leake, Kate Milsom, Radha Patel, Paul Reas, André Stitt, Daniel Trevidy, Dawn Woolley and others.

The pamphlet included writing by Tony Curtis, Frank Dullaghan, Kate Noakes, Maria Donovan, Judith Goldsmith, Derwen Morfayel, Christopher Meredith and many others, including myself.

Read more about the University of South Wales gallery, exhibition, conference and pamphlet here.

Imagining History Images with thanks to USW website https://gallery.southwales.ac.uk/current-exhibition/