i just watched garden state again.
exhale
it felt good to have more than one tear in my eye as i did so.
home
risk
connection
numbness
longing
love
death
hope
this summer has had a few surprises for me. i've been waiting to hear whether or not i am going to be funded to do my phd. and i'm still waiting. i had thought it was going to fall into place quickly and easily. i had thought i would have had funding confirmed in july and been able to spend the rest of the summer looking forward to beginning in 3 weeks' time.
instead, i've been spinning a little. i might not be funded. but i am going to do this phd. because i believe it matters. because i want to do it. it matters to me. and i think it will be an important thesis in current strands of poetry criticism. but maybe more importantly, it matters to me. and i think i think that discerning your desires and following them encourages good things to happen. my friend finn reminded me about that. and i think i think that that is a process involving The One Who Is....where imagination and vocation and desire and hope merge and something close to beautiful has the chance to emerge.
i spent a few hours in the accident and emergency department of the ulster hospital one sunday morning. i had accompanied someone who had decided to swallow 24 paracetemol. i spent so long sitting in a four foot by eight foot room that i actually made a list of everything in the room, including two semi-disposal vaginal speculum, in order to write a poem which contained only this list and a final acknowledgement of the person present. anyway, i left in the early afternoon and sat waiting for the bus, eating- to my shame and starvation- a mcdonald's cheeseburger and thinking about what i should do....what i would do....what i wanted to do. i could see why sitting in a&e with someone mattered. even though they didn't really want me there. but i couldn't remember why writing about contemporary irish poetry and religion mattered. so i got lost. but i managed to get the number 4 bus back to where i came from.
lostness is a good thing sometimes. it can be very orientating. in a disorientating kind of way. i got lost and got all spinny and didn't know what to do. and i still feel like that in a way. but i have heard myself telling people that i am starting a phd in september. so i suppose that is what i am going to do.
great things happen sometimes. here is one of them. sinead morrissey asked me to write an introduction to her poetry for the september edition of a poetry journal called poetry international. (she is the poet i wrote my ma thesis about. and her work is amazing.) i was honoured and happy and scared so i wrote the introduction and it has been published and it is online so you can have a look at it here. and read her poems too. although my selection of her work would have been very different to the editor's. but he is going to give me a proper pay check which might make me feel like a real live person so i am happy about that.
the biggest spider i have ever seen just dawdled across my living room floor.
so what do we do?
