‘A FUNERAL CRY AT NOON’: LOUIS MACNEICE’S CARRICKFERGUS REVISITED
"It was Carrickfergus—the names, variously, of an old Irish folksong, the MacNeice poem, the eight-hundred-year-old town named after a basalt outcrop (Carrick) and a leprotic king (Fergus) in search of a cure—that lured me to the east coast of Northern Ireland. I doubt there is an Irish singer of note who hasn’t recorded a version of the song. Twenty years ago, it was played in St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, New York, at the memorial service for John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren G. Bessette, who died together when the light aircraft he was piloting went down. In the recording I have, Van Morrison sings: 'I wish I had you in Carrickfergus, / Only for nights in Ballygrand, / I would swim over the deepest ocean.'" via THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS |
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| "He probably introduced the poems with something about unusual words and whether we knew what juniper and pied meant. But I wasn’t listening. I was reading: “One must have a mind of winter… junipers shagged with ice … rough in the distant glitter,” and wondering what it felt like to be cold so long that your mind turned wintery and you felt like a snowman. I was repeating silently to myself over and over that mysterious, solemn, slow last line. “The nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” Nothing and nothing at the far-end of a long sentence and an un-foot-printed walk through the snow." |
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NORTH STREET BOOK PRIZE FOR SELF-PUBLISHED BOOKS
Now in its fifth year, sponsored by Winning Writers and co-sponsored by BookBaby and Carolyn Howard-Johnson. $10,500 in cash prizes. Categories include Poetry, Mainstream/Literary Fiction, Genre Fiction, Creative Nonfiction & Memoir, Children's Picture Book, and Graphic Narrative. One grand prize winner will receive $3,000, and the top winner in each category will receive $1,000, plus additional benefits. Gift for everyone who enters. Deadline: June 30. Final judges: Jendi Reiter and Ellen LaFleche. Entry fee: $60. Winning Writers is one of "101 Best Websites for Writers" (Writer's Digest). Entries accepted by mail and via Submittable. See guidelines and past winners at Winning Writers. |
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