Bay Blues

I took this photo on Thursday night from Seaview, Warrenpoint at about half ten. I had just come from the Whistledown Hotel after a live radio broadcast, which kicked off this year’s International Blues on the Bay Festival – I guess you can see why it has been given that title!

Over two hours we were treated to a fine array of music and styles – Jack, son of the late, great Gary Moore, joined Ian Sands’ band, The Bluez Katz, on stage. (He is such a young-looking musician, I was wondering whether he had to get up for school on Friday morning )

Old favourites like The Reverend Doc, Robin Bibi, Mirenda Rosenberg and Mark Braidner belted out a couple of classic blues numbers and it was great to see a couple of female artists make her first appearance at the festival. Kathleen Pearson, originally from the US but now based in London performed with her band Kat & Co, and Coutney Giffin from Northern Ireland gave us a great bluesy rendition of ‘Hound Dog’.

The Reverend Doc does his stuff at the Whistledown Hotel, Warrenpoint

What I love about the radio broadcast is that it is a useful taster of some of the acts that will follow over the weekend, all so it gives you a chance to decide which of the seventy gigs you want to attend.  

Last night, I popped in to hear a few tunes from Robin Bibi at the Marine Tavern and then moved on to the Foresters, where I was wowed by Alison McGrath and the Soulantics. This was a real big sound with not one, but two sax players. During a couple of numbers Alison sounded a bit like Amy Winehouse and on others like Suzanne Vega. Brilliant stuff.

Shortly I will head to my first gig of today at four – an acoustic set from the excellent Backbone Blues Band in the GAA Club Rooms and tonight, we have a date with Bill Miskimmons and his Band, Mercy Lounge. I have been recommending this gig to everyone as we saw them at the Woodstock Belfast Blues Festival last Autumn which I wrote about here on the blog after the event.

Tomorrow it is my absolute favourite festival performer, Pat McManus and his band. I have been following them around the north since I heard them for the first time at the blues festival several years ago. Pat is an original member of the band Mama’s Boys, who supported Thin Lizzy on their farewell tour.

More blues, please!

Can you (mis)spell?

Do you think you could write a piece of flash fiction filled with misspelled words? Yes, you heard right – full of bad spelling – it’s the whole point of this writing competition.

My writer friend, Mitch Lavender, author of the forthcoming novel, Undertaking Hartford , and one of my co-authors of The Infection Anthology, started the ‘Grate righter. Bad speler.’ comp last year, and is inviting entries of short stories of up to 100 words until June 2nd.

Mitch says, “The worse the spelling, the better, but it has to be totally readable and contain all the elements of a short story – in otherwords, character, setting, plot, conflict and theme. The winners will be the best stories, plagued by crazy-bad misspellings.”

To see the goodies that are up for grabs for the winners, go to Mitch’s blog, Life in sixty-four square feet

haiga

Twilight Reflections

twilight’s hush ripples over the lough

leaving only the rush of young waves

that have come from afar to kiss this shore

and offer watery bliss to the weather-beaten rocks

that wait blushing under the watchful eye

of streetlamps

Artspace

I was downloading some shots from my camera earlier and spotted several that were taken during my art group’s ‘Reflections’ exhibition in Newry City Library last Autumn.

Since I haven’t put any artwork up here for ages, I thought I’d share a few of my paintings that were on display for the month of November.

It was a lovely exhibition space – many thanks to Libraries NI.

Cured

I was delighted to hear this morning that Dave Farrington, a writer who was a member of the same writing forum a couple of years ago, has just published an ebook.

Dave’s novel Cured goes further than traditional zombie titles, providing a vision of the future for the infected rather than simply recording past events, or narrating the present.

Set in Wales, the story follows protagonist George Roberts (who has received the cure) as he tries to find his family and his way forward in a very changed world.

I wish Dave every success and having read the first fifty pages ealier I can highly recommend Cured.

Details here https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/144374#longdescr

Precious stones haiku for Semana Santa (Holy Week)

I have just discovered the editor of this journal commented on one of my haiku in his ‘precious stones’ thread, which was a lovely surprise. Sketchbook 7

I also seem to have adopted a new title – I am referred to as ‘X’ above my photo in this publication!

I was referring to an incident during an Easter holiday in Estepona, Southern Spain, during Semana Santa a few years ago. It was good Friday and the procession had been called off due to torrential rainfall. I was chatting to an old man who was one of the the cofrades - a member of one of the town’s cofradías or religious associations responsible for the religious statues used in the Semana Santa processions. The old man was very upset that the celebrations had to be stopped. Indeed, several people were openly weeping. Rain was streaming down the face of the Madonna and he told me to look at her tears, as they were made of real diamonds.

When I saw the prompt for the precious stones thread on Sketchbook, I immediately remembered his words.
____________________________________________________

Quote from John Dreiden’s article ‘Touchstone Perspectives’ in Sketchbook.

“In this Haiku Thread the haijin have used the “diamond” image to honor many different themes associated with human life; the religious aspect of life is one theme among many. Marion Clarke’s haiku commemorates the Madonna and the life of Christ in this haiku:

holy week procession—
the Madonna’s tears
are real diamonds

# 188. Marion Clarke, IE

Holy Week is the week which precedes the great festival of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, and which consequently is used to commemorate the Passion of Christ, and the events which immediately led up to it. In Latin is it called hebdomada major, or, less commonly, hebdo inmada sancta, styling it he hagia kai megale ebdomas. Similarly, in most modern languages (except for the German word Charwoche, which seems to mean “the week of lamentation”) the interval between Palm Sunday and Easter Day is known par excellence as Holy Week (New Advent)

In this nearly maximum length haiku Marion introduces the topic with the fragment “holy week procession—“;  she ends the fragment with an em-dash creating a full stop which results in a suitable contemplation of the religious image. The following two line phrase introduces two associated images—“the Madonna’s tears” which are said to be “real diamonds”; the assertion of line three can be read as a metaphor, or perhaps Marion is referring to a local celebration where the procession does include a statue of the Madonna with real diamond tears.  Either way, the reference to “diamonds” indicates the high worth of this religious event.”

Here is a link to the full article – it’s very interesting if you are into haiku, but probably not if you’re not! http://poetrywriting.org/Sketchbook7-1JanFeb2012/Sketchbook_7-1_JanFeb_2012_Choice_Haiku_John_Daleiden.htm

‘Ode’ to a limpet!

Looks funny to see little old Warrenpoint among such exotic locations in this issue of The Heron’s Nest! If you click on 9 #3 beside my name it takes you to the haiku.

http://www.theheronsnest.com/haiku/1401f1525/thn_issue.i1.html

The published poem was inspired by summers back in the seventies when I used to to spend the whole day on the beach with my brothers and sisters. We caught crabs and eels in the rockpools opposite our house and generally got mucked to the eyeballs (my mother’s term) on Maggie’s Island while collecting mussels for bait … once we used every towel in the house to get the silt off our shoes – a method I don’t recommend if you plan on getting a bowl of ice cream after lunch.

Congratulations to my haiku friend John McManus for having his Neverland poem selected as the Editor’s Choice. Well deserved, John.

One step for mankind…

My little poem, ‘One step for mankind’ is featured on Every Day Poets this week. I wrote it in response to the above photo, an ‘everyday inspiration’ prompt on the site.

Growing up in Warrenpoint, which is situated on Carlingford Lough in the north of Ireland, means that I spent many hours of my childhood pottering about in rockpools. Unfortuntely, it is not a sandy beach, like the one in the photo. Ours is mainly shingle, with sand at low tide only. In fact, I remember, when I was young, the local council used to deliver sand by trucks – only in Ireland would they take sand to the seaside!

Sandy beaches always make me think of holidays, collecting shells and long walks at the water’s edge when you can completely cut yourself off from everything and just think about your place in this vast universe…which is what I was trying to capture in this tiny piece. I hope you like it…

http://www.everydaypoets.com/one-step-for-mankind-by-marion-clarke/

Thanks to those of you who have already visited and left a comment or rated it.

UPDATE As of today, 3rd April, this tiny piece is the top poem on Every Day Poets. Thanks everybody for your support…this has made my day. It will probably slip off the top slot before I even get to post this – but at least I know it was there for a wee while! http://www.everydaypoets.com/top-poems/

FURTHER UPDATE: You see! I knew it, the minute I posted the comment above along came another poet and knocked me off the top spot!

Well, it was nice to have been there for a couple of days…and I have sort of contributed to my own demise by giving James Graham’s poem , ’Pieceton Smithy’, such a high score, but it was a very enjoyable read.

Two haiku

I was honoured to have two of my poems published in the latest issue of A Hundred Grouds, the quarterly journal of haiku, haibun, haiga tanka and renku poetry. The first was inspired one evening during the winter, when I was on my own in the house waiting on my children to come home from school. It was getting dark and I was beginning to feel slightly concerned, when I heard the patter of (not so tiny) feet coming up the garden path.

The second haiku was written while observing a flock of starlings overhead as they returned to their nests at the end of the day. They play a ‘now you see me, now you don’t’ sort of game as they twist and turn.

Anyway, the two poems are on this link if you feel like reading them - since they are only three lines each it doesn’t take very long!

http://ahundredgourds.haikuhut.com/ahg12/haiku03.html

Page 3 starts with my first one and the second is at the bottom of page 15.

http://ahundredgourds.haikuhut.com/ahg12/haiku15.html

It’s great to see lots of my haiku friends in there too and I’m delighted to share the page with Anatoly Kudryavitsky, editor of Shamrock - the journal of the Irish Haiku Society!