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How the blog works




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Contributions are welcome and can be e-mailed to me at lawrenceyoulten@gmail.com. Content can include 1) announcements about, or introductions to, forthcoming meetings and other events of possible interest to members. 2) Summaries of talks given at Literary Society meetings or at meetings of the Book Group. 3) Announcements of forthcoming TV or radio programmes of possible interest to readers. 4) Reviews of books read recently or in the past.

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Thursday 10 March 2016

Meeting on 18 March "A Terrible Beauty Is Born." Dublin 1916, Talk by William Doherty

  

This was William Butler Yeats's conclusion in his poem "Easter 1916" on the insurrection in Dublin and its aftermath. Writing within a few months of the rebellion he reveals an ambivalence towards it rather than the laudatory account that might have been expected from an unofficial national bard with early cultural roots in Gaelic revivalism.   

The importance of the Rising in Irish history is still disputed although it was undeniably a step on a path leading to dramatic shifts in political power, guerrilla warfare, a bloody civil war, separation and the emergence of an Irish Free State which was a disappointment to many of the actors in the drama.   

Famous for constantly rewriting his work even after publication, Yeats later ruminated on his possible contribution to the revolt       
                                         "That play of mind sent out  
                                          Certain men the English shot"      
and his own doubts about the nascent Free State  
                                                                         "That is not," I say,  
                                        "The dead Ireland of my youth,but an Ireland  
                                         The poets have imagined, terrible and gay."   

In this talk I propose to consider some of the formative literary and cultural influences on the Rising and the subsequent literature it shaped.     

Tuesday 8 March 2016

Gillian Southgate: prize winner in The Oldie literary competition

Congratulations to Gillian whose entry for The Oldie's monthly literary competition is published in the April issue, now out. The brief was to write a poem called "First Time in the Country" Here is her prize-winning poem:



First Time in the Country

So this was Australia. There was so much light
I thought the sky had rinsed itself away.  There were cockatoos
In the eucalypts, yellow legged and crested. They might
Have known me; they watched with heads on side
As if they would impart a secret. And like a bride
The oleanders flowered white in tumbled tiers.
A Christmas beetle, iridescent green, banged his small hide
Against a window; the blue
Of sapphires clothed the vault of sky.
The red gums blossomed, sweet and redolent
Of an old land, from whence my people came.
The birds looked down. One of them spoke my name.

A message from Jonty Driver

I’d like to encourage members of the WLS to read at least one of Sam Harvey’s novels. There is a website: www.samanthaharvey.com   There is something about her in Wikipedia.  The novels are:  The Wilderness (2010), All is Song (2013), Dear Thief (2015). I see there is a novella called Bounty Hunter, 2015;  I don’t know about that