Sinéad Gleeson’s blog
I thought Patry might get a laugh out of this piece by Garrison Keillor on Salon in which he tells writers to stop moaning about the anguish and torture of being a scribbler. As someone who moans about not getting enough time to write, this made me chuckle:
“OK, let me say this once and […]
Every year The Cúirt International Festival of Literature seems to the raise the bar with its programme, not to mention the odd coupling of certain writers for discussions. This year, its 21st, there’s a wonderful array of visual art, film, music, theatre and lectures to take in, but it’s the literature aspect of the […]
Today is Epiphany, Women’s Christmas or Little Christmas. As Gaeilge that’s Nollaig na mBan or Nollaig Bheag, celebrated mainly in Ireland and Italy. According to Wikipedia:
It is so called because of the tradition (still strong in Cork, though only just surviving in the rest of the country) of Irish men taking on all […]
I’m currently moving some of the author interviews, music interviews and album, book and film reviews from sigla which can be found here in the relevant categories on the right. Anything that predates the blog will be moved to the March 2005 archives, when the blog began.
I came across something which is older than the […]
Originally published on Sigla, November 2004
John Peel, veteran BBC dj, died last month. Sinéad Gleeson recalls what it was that made the man so special to so many.
Like most people who are borderline obsessive/compulsive about music, I owe a huge debt to the size and shape of my music collection to John Peel. NME, Melody […]
Courtesy of Ernie Whalley (scribbled over lunch hour he tells me).
Farewell, Bestie, if not quite the best
You far outdribbled almost all the rest.
A salivatory genius in your youth,
Who could have far outgobbed El Hadji Djouf.
In midst of fulsome eulogies we beg
Time to consider poor Glyn Pardoe’s leg
And all the red and yellow cards and fines
For […]
Every nation has its literary kings and queens and Ireland, is no exception. For a such small nation, we have never had any problem making ourselves heard, particularly in terms of the arts, and notably writing. For every writer that is firmly ensconced in Irish literature’s Hall of Fame, there are many that have been […]
Apologies for the lack of activity around here in last week or so, work has once again accelerated, leaving me very little time to do anything. I’ve spent so much time writing work stuff, that my own writing has been left untouched. A notebook lies by my bed, with not a word added to it […]
At Sigla, we’ve always been partial to haikus so thanks to The Guardian for pointing us in the direction of David Bader’s book Haiku U : From Aristotle to Zola, 100 Great Books in 17 Syllables.
In it, Bader synopsises 100 great literary works in haiku format. Some of them are obscure, most are spot on […]
The woman responsible for that quote is, along with Flannery O’Connor, one of the greatest short story writers ever. On Friday, it was Katherine Mansfield’s birthday and I had intended to post something about her on the day. The reason I didn’t, was time, work, the usual, but mostly because I wanted to go back […]
The shortlist for the inaugural Bibliofemme short story competition has finally been announced. Myself and a couple of the femmes had the initial task of trying to whittle down the large number of entries to 20. These were then passed on to Alison Walsh, the Commissioning Editor for Irish imprint Tivoli who no […]
It always seems to happen. Just when you’re down-sizing your workload to go away, a heap of stuff comes up. All of it good, mind, but I’m as busy as a nineteenth century chimney sweep so no time to blog in any great detail today. I also had to pass on contributing to round two […]