The Urban Co-Op is open again from this Thursday, 10am to 6pm in a new location.
Monday, September 19, 2016
Monday, August 15, 2016
Thursday, August 11, 2016
International Call for Writers on Trump
The following petition was created by Catherine today. Click here if you want to sign.
This is a European created petition which replicates 'WRITERS ON TRUMP' the U.S. petition against Trump's candidacy for presidency of the U.S. I have started this petition in support of all of our writing contemporaries in the United States, to visibly demonstrate the solidarity of all kinds of international writers with their campaign. Please read what they have to say below and sign this petition if you are in agreement.
Thank you.
Catherine Walsh.
"The following is a statement signed by more than 23808 U.S. writers, regarding the candidacy of Donald J. Trump for the Presidency of the United States. If you agree with us—whoever you are, whatever you do, wherever you live—we hope you'll join us by adding your name and the state you live in and help us spread the word. Many thanks.
AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR FELLOW AMERICANS
Because, as writers, we are particularly aware of the many ways that language can be abused in the name of power;
Because we believe that any democracy worthy of the name rests on pluralism, welcomes principled disagreement, and achieves consensus through reasoned debate;
Because American history, despite periods of nativism and bigotry, has from the first been a grand experiment in bringing people of different backgrounds together, not pitting them against one another;
Because the history of dictatorship is the history of manipulation and division, demagoguery and lies;
Because the search for justice is predicated on a respect for the truth;
Because we believe that knowledge, experience, flexibility, and historical awareness are indispensable in a leader;
Because neither wealth nor celebrity qualifies anyone to speak for the United States, to lead its military, to maintain its alliances, or to represent its people;
Because the rise of a political candidate who deliberately appeals to the basest and most violent elements in society, who encourages aggression among his followers, shouts down opponents, intimidates dissenters, and denigrates women and minorities, demands, from each of us, an immediate and forceful response;
For all these reasons, we, the undersigned, as a matter of conscience, oppose, unequivocally, the candidacy of Donald J. Trump for the Presidency of the United States."
Monday, May 30, 2016
Just Published: CUADERNO NEUMEISTER / THE NEUMEISTER NOTEBOOK by Carlota Caulfield
Carlota Caulfield is a poet, translator and literary critic. she is
the author of eleven collections of poetry, including At the Paper Gates
with Burning Desire, The Book of Giulio Camillo (a model for a theater of
memory), El libro de Giulio Camillo (maqueta para un teatro de la memoria) / Il
Libro de Giulio Camillo (modello per un teatro della memoria), Movimientos metálicos
para juguetes abandonados (First Hispanoamerican Poetry Prize “Dulce María
Loynaz”, Spain-Cuba 2002), Quincunce / Quincunx, Ticket to Ride. Essays and Poems, A Mapmaker’s
Diary: Selected Poems and Fashionable. Una poeta adicta a la moda. Her poetry has appeared in literary
journals in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.She has also translated the American writer Jack Foley, and the Irish poets Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Rita Ann Higgins, Paula Meehan, Medbh McGuckian, Sara Berkeley and Catherine Walsh. In addition, she has translated a number of Hispanic poets into English.
About CUADERNO NEUMEISTER / THE NEUMEISTER NOTEBOOK
A collection of poems in Spanish with facing-page English translations by Mary G Berg in collaboration with the poet.
Carlota Caulfield’s poems are detailed observations of an inner music that is constantly created by listening and looking: “You enter the forest. / You follow the night’s path.” This inner music is, as Caulfield puts it (“su materia contra mi materia”), “jazzable.” To the self-referencing poet, the “I” is “you” and shifts as it encounters experience. Boundaries blur in this rich morphing of “the soul’s grottos and…lonely tunnels,” “as if you, suddenly, were to multiply yourself.” For the reader as for the writer, The Neumeister Notebook offers us the rare opportunity not only to live beyond our skins but “to live beyond…understanding.” It is a phenomenology of wonder, a journey to the things themselves and back again as “outer” becomes “inner,” Spanish becomes English, and world becomes spirit: “Stray notes. / Listen to them.”
— Jack Foley
*
El numen poético que recorre este Cuaderno Neumeister busca encarnar y ganar voz al registrar íntimamente la experiencia creativa de otros artistas (músicos, pintores, escritores, constructores) con quienes encuentra las más disímiles —aunque no reveladas abiertamente— afinidades o complicidades de vida: islas, exilios… Su autora, Carlota Caulfield, voz singular dentro de la poesía cubana actual, entrega aquí su diario vivir en la creación artística, lo cual le permite al final del libro transformar ella misma en poesía los objetos más cotidianos que la rodean: una sopera, un frutero, una lámpara. La anima el lazo humano que implica toda traducción: traducir otras artes en su arte —o su arte en otras artes—, otras vidas en su vida —o su vida en otras vidas— y, fundamentalmente, las cosas físicas en cuerpos de sensual espiritualidad poética.
The poetic numen that moves about this Neumeister Notebook seeks to embody and acquire a voice by recording intimately the creative experience of other artists (musicians, painters, writers, builders) with whom it finds the most dissimilar—though not openly revealed—affinities or complicities of life: islands, exiles... The author, Carlota Caulfield, a unique voice within current Cuban poetry, delivers here her daily living of artistic creation, which allows her, at the end of the book, to transform into poetry the most everyday objects around her: a tureen, a fruit bowl, a lamp. Moved by the human bond implicit in all translation, she translates other arts in her art—or her art in other arts—, other lives in her life—or her life in other lives—, and, intrinsically, physical things in bodies of poetic and sensual spirituality.
— Jesús J. Barquet
*
Carlota Caulfield finds a simple everyday act of sipping a cup of coffee or eating a croissant gives inspiration. At the same time, the nothingness of one's ownself –“you're the nothing of your other self”--finds inspiration in diverse sources such as jazz, theater, art, photography, architecture, film and literature. In En Cuaderno Neumeister / The Neumeister Notebook, the voices of memory play as masterfully in poems that explore intimate topics as they play in poems more abstract and philosophical. Under a surrealist waterfall of her dreams, Carlota Caulfield soaks up vibrant images and delivers the reader a singularly modern work.
Carlota Caulfield, en la quotidiana naturalitat de tenir la tassa de cafè als llavis i prendre´s un croissant, troba la inspiració. I a la vegada, el no-res del propi jo -ets el no-res del teu altre jo, diu- s´alimenta de fonts tan diverses com el jazz, el teatre, l'art, la fotografia, l'arquitectura, la cinematografia i la literatura. En Cuaderno Neumeister / The Neumeister Notebook, les veus de la memòria juguen amb mestratge tant en aquells poemes de caràcter intimista com en els de tendència més abstracta i filosòfica. Sota la cascada surrealista dels seus somnis, Carlota Caufield s´enxopa d'imatges brillants i les ofereix al lector en una obra singularment moderna.
Carlota Caulfield, en la cotidiana naturalidad de tener una taza de café en los labios y tomarse un croissant, encuentra la inspiración. Y a la vez, la nada del propio yo -eres la nada de tu otro yo, dice- se alimenta en fuentes tan diversas como el jazz, el teatro, el arte, la fotografía, la arquitectura, la cinematografía y la literatura. En Cuaderno Neumeister / The Neumeister Notebook, las voces de la memoria juegan con maestría tanto en aquellos poemas de carácter intimista como en aquellos otros que tienden a lo abstracto y filosófico. Bajo la cascada surrealista de sus sueños, Carlota Caulfield se empapa de imágenes brillantes y las ofrece al lector en una obra singularmente moderna.
— Tònia Passola
Saturday, May 21, 2016
hardPressed poetry workspace - Practical Writing Evolution
AUGUST HOLIDAY Tomorrow at the Urban Co-Op café, Mulgrave St. (Old Esso Station)
Holiday all August Tuesday mornings, 10 to 11.30 Practical Writing Evolution
See you after the holidays!
Access practical help and support for reading and writing in English
Access practical help and support for your everyday writing needs: creative writing, form-filling, letters, notes and applications.
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Review of Astonished Birds and Imaginary Gardens in the Irish University Review
Two hardPressed titles, Imaginary Gardens by Billy Mills and Astonished Birds/Cara, Jane, Bob and James by Catherine Walsh, are reviewed by J.C.C. Mays in the new experimental Irish poetry issue of the Irish University Review. Here are four short quotes to give you a taste of the full essay.
On Imaginary Gardens:
On Astonished Birds/Cara, Jane, Bob and James:
On Imaginary Gardens:
At the heart of this process is the relation between words and music: the placement of words as determined by their grammatical meaning and the different relation established by their sounds. The relationship can emphasise, destabilize, and co-exist in a multitude of ways that make up snatches of harmony ‘heard beyond / the ear’s range’
No page of text in this book will be entirely complete and the hundred pages overall enact a process like a film slowed down to its separate frames… A complete story contained in one frame of a poem or a faster projection would provide different kinds of satisfaction but both would override the point.
On Astonished Birds/Cara, Jane, Bob and James:
The pages forcefully challenge what they oppose, almost as if it was alive and might at any moment speak back; they make clearer what is not than what is, and the point about this poem is that the unspoken, controlling forces are at the edge, squeezed out, skewed.
Irish poetry has always hidden its sharpest criticism under the mask of comedy … and the present instance is distinguished by its genuine sympathy for a sick society. The four characters involved are pathetic, but also simply a hoot. If you weren’t laughing, you’d want to cry. That’s a rare thing when it’s part of a larger argument about poetry as a model of consumption in a market economy that is fast consuming what it feeds.
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