Patricia’s Blog
For six months now I’ve been posting an occasional ‘half-dozen list’ on reading and writing and literary bits and pieces. I looked back over them today and found I had a half-dozen such lists. So I’ve put them all together as a half-dozen literary bunch. Here they are: Book Club Reads: A Half-Dozen Selection…
Read MoreFT.com / Life & Arts – The art of good writing. I fret about writing a sentence: whether to make it concise, minimalist and pared-down or, exuberant and rhythmic to match the tone. Are the rules that dictate brevity and concreteness enduring? My new year resolution was to craft the best sentences I could. Adam…
Read MoreIrish Farmhouse Butter | I Married An Irish Farmer. This blog from I married and Irish farmer on home-made butter made my mouth water with childhood tastes of runny buttery eggs, slides of soda bread and sharp butter milk drinks in hay fields. Golden nostalgic moments but have I the courage to go for the butter making…
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When is a book not a book? « Lynsey May writes down the night. This post by Edinburgh blogger Lysney May got me thinking. Is the word book taking on a totally different meaning she asks? When is a book not a book? As technology grows ever snazzier, it’s becoming harder and harder for me…
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I was back on the hills this week, in the heart of the Galtee Mountains, at Lake Muskry; back to where the pulse beat of the walking helps to pattern the rhythm of story and words. Appropriately, it is the place of the ‘jewel mouth’. For folklore has it that the ancient name for Lake…
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It was one of my books for Christmas. The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story. And it was my recommended read for our book club this month. But they’re a stubborn crowd, my book club lot. They know their own minds. What did they think of the book? Took a long while to get into.…
Read MoreThe Anti-Room blogger Catherine Crichton has the strange January addiction of watching the Dart Championships on TV and finding solace in the post-Christmas gloom. I’m not a dart enthusiast but I enjoyed her account below. Magic Darts January 7, 2011 by Catherine Crichton January. Don’t we all just hate it? The dark mornings, the return to…
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I took my time about it but now I’m committed. I’m joining the post a week challenge. I suppose I could really have pushed myself and gone for the post a day. But my problem is that I can’t rush the posts out; I find I need to ruminate, let a post idea churn around in my brain…
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Jo Slade’s biography poem The Artist’s Room traces the artist Gwen John (1876-1939) through Paris at the start of the twentieth-century: ‘I looked for her in Paris…/ walked from place to place, lived the smells, the sounds, / followed a plan I’d drawn.’ A painter-poet, Jo Slade uses her artist’s eye to distill the essence of Gwen John’s…
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Only a day to go and I will start over. Another year. Another set of writing resolutions: nonfiction manuscript to finish; dig through more research; get back to writing morning pages. But an image has dogged me. A child in ringlets scraping a nib across a school copybook in a first attempt at joined up writing. Every letter,…
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