Writers on the highways

The new Cork Literary Review will be promoted across America this week, writes Colette Sheridan

THE Cork Literary Review (Volume XIV) has a strong international flavour this year, with its inaugural American section showcasing the best of contemporary American poetry, edited and introduced by multi-award-winning American poet Brian Turner. To celebrate this, the Cork Literary Review will tour five American cities, beginning this week, with readings by editor of the journal, poet, Eugene O’Connell as well as readings by Turner and poet and director of Poetry Ireland, Joseph Woods. The tour will take in San Francisco, Berkeley, Chicago, Boston and New York. It is being funded by Culture Ireland’s Imagine Ireland initiative, which celebrates the Irish arts in the US. The San Francisco leg of the tour is funded by Cork City Council’s Twinning committee, acknowledging Cork’s special relationship with the city.

Since it first appeared in 1994, the Cork Literary Review, published by Bradshaw Books, has evolved from a slim anthology of winning competition entries into a significant literary journal. Through the years, it has featured contributions from leading Irish poets and writers, including Séamus Heaney, Paul Durcan, Thomas McCarthy, Frank McGuinness, Medbh McGuckian and William Wall.

O’Connell, who has edited the Cork Literary Review on three occasions, says his aim this year was to produce a review of “the artistic scene with a special emphasis on poetry and prose. It also has ambitions to be international with Brian Turner’s section. He is one of America’s foremost poets and was shortlisted last year for the TS Eliot Award. I’m keen to introduce international literature to an Irish audience. Most bookshops here don’t stock reviews featuring literature from around the world.”

The handsome 450-page hardback book does not have an introduction. O’Connell deliberately avoided such a starting point. “I feel the book should speak for itself. If I open a book of poems, there is no introduction. If I look at a painting, there is no introduction. A review is a genre that is capable of telling a story and conveying a message just as a documentary or a memoir does. It’s up to the editor to exploit the genre. The editor has to have a purpose in the same way that an artist starts with an idea for a painting.”

In editing the Cork Literary Review, O’Connell was conscious of developing a thread of thought “so that every aspect of the book is connected.” O’Connell’s editorship is cognisant of the socio-political climate in Ireland. “The situation we find ourselves in at the moment as a country is a kind of limbo. Post boom, we’re drifting. This book, like all discussions, is a search for answers or some way of going forward in a new direction. I remember some years ago, Barack Obama was asked questions about the direction of the US. He said that when directions come, they’ll surprise us. They’ll be things we won’t have thought of ourselves. Obviously, there’s the ecological movement. Also, new directions are about going back to our own culture and roots.”

In editing the Cork Literary Review, O’Connell says his purpose is the same as that of Seán Ó Faoláin’s approach to his journal, The Bell: “The Bell was a literary and artistic magazine but it was much wider than that. It was a social and cultural magazine that made political statements. That was because Ó Faoláin regarded everything as being intertwined.

That’s very much my approach. For example, the book is very strong on interviews with people from different walks of life. The reason for this is because Ireland is at a crossroads. I feel no aspect of society can exclude itself. A book like this has to interrogate and question the situation we’re in.”

The main interview in the Cork Literary Review is with James Sharkey, “Ireland’s most travelled and most distinguished ambassador. I met him in Shanghai at the World Expo 2010. I heard him talking and felt from one conversation I had with him that he could give an international focus to the situation in Ireland.

James, who is the Irish representative of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, has a very strong social view of Ireland. He feels that we have to reinvent our attitude towards land. So much of the land of Ireland is laying waste under schemes. Instead of having it set aside, we could be growing more food, for example.”

The Cork Literary Review features an interview with writer, Frank O’Connor’s daughter, Liadain O’Donovan. “She was a very reluctant interviewee who was extremely defensive about her father. I had to do numerous drafts of the interview before I got it. Liadain, although very private, is quite frank about various aspects of her father’s life. She gives an interesting insight into O’Connor’s home life. Liadain’s mother (Welsh actress, Evelyn Bowen) tried to establish a home with O’Connor in the country to the extent that she even got hens, goats and bees. But he rejected that kind of life. Liadain pulls no punches about her parents’ separation when she was ten years old. She says her mother never forgave her father for going on to marry Harriet (Rich) who was many years his junior.”

Cork writer Cónal Creedon is interviewed in the book by poet, Jennifer Matthews. “It’s an excellent interview. Cónal has made a statement in it to the effect that writing in Cork, especially poetry, is going through a golden age. Certainly, this book contains a lot of Cork writers. In years to come, people will look at this book and see a snapshot and an example of that golden age.”

But despite the title of the book and the presence of Cork poets, it is not intended to be primarily a Cork publication. The Cork Literary Review includes a series of translations of European poets by William Wall. There is an interview with the Hungarian writer, George Szirtes, as well as poetry by him. There are Scots Gaelic poems by Aonghas MacNeacaill as well as poems by Scottish writer, Gerda Stevenson (a regular contributor to BBC 4). Helen Kidd has an essay on the Scottish poet, Edwin Morgan, who died last year.

The Cork Literary Review includes an article on identity in Italian literature by Elizabeth MacDonald who teaches at the University of Pisa in Italy. MacDonald asks: “Is it the language that gives rise to the peculiarities of a culture, or is it the culture that moulds the structures upholding a language?” Culture from across the globe is under the spotlight in this dense eclectic journal which poses as many fascinating questions as it attempts to answer.