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So now we meet each evening to meld/the passing and the coming life/suspended/in fading light
that knows/ just what it holds…
Short Poem from “Inspiration Meditation: A Guided Meditation to Develop Creative Intelligence. For Writers, Artists & Everyone”. By Orna Ross.
The great Artist is at work.
Around his house, his children move
in whispers, while his wife
lays down a dinner tray,
tells that it’s there
with two soft raps – no more – tapped on his study door.
The great Artist begs his work
It is one of the pardoxes of art that structure, form and convention liberate the artist – Stephen Fry (@stephenfry).
Yes, yes, I know that those of us who care about the English language are supposed to be outraged by technology-induced social-speak, supposedly the death of civilised discourse.
And yes, I too hate the lazy abbreviations that so often accompany texts or micro-blogging: the LOLs and BFNs, the “u” for “you”, and “r” for “are”, and all the rest.
But…
I contend that you don't have to
It looks like I'm going to be moving to London in the summer. I have lots of places I want to say ‘Goodbye' to in Ireland before I leave.
Tomorrow, St Patrick's Day, I'm off to Sligo.
Yeats country.
Sligo became very important to me over
Is inspiration divinely inspired? A brain blip? The byproduct or cause of mental disorder? A source of strength?
Does it come from within (the unconscious, the right brain) or without (God, a muse, your daimon)?
I learned this morning, while reading the preface to Ayn Rand's Anthem, that its original title wasThe Ego. Apparently Rand always took
Rising, curling, foam unfurling, waves of cold Salema sea,
Next one coming, meet it running, plunge into the safe beneath.
I love the term Freethinker. It's the name that most closely approximates my own approach to matters of meaning but I'm leery of the associations it has gathered in around itself.
A freethinker, according to Dictionary.com (rapidly replacing the OED in my affections) is: “a person who
Áine McCarthy who writes under the pseudonym of Orna Ross, has a knack for unlocking hidden potential. As a writing teacher, she developed a method to help her students tap into their deeply buried creativity. As a former journalist, she pushed and prodded herself into
Gertrude Stein's famous quote – “There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.” – has long been a favourite among non-believers, most lately appearing on the cover of The Atheist's Bible.
I read this morning, though, that Gertrude's pronouncement wasn't
We're all going to die, we all know it. As Mary Oliver puts it in her poem, The Summer Day, “Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?”
Hell yes, Mary, yes.
The poem then asks: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?”
That is just the kind of question I've
I consider Glendalough, Co Wicklow, Ireland, to be one of the most 
inspiring places on earth. It's where Iseult Gonne is buried and where some chapters of But A Dream, the third book in my WB Yeats trilogy are set. I spent as much time as possible there when I lived in Ireland, especially while researching that novel.
This poem is a tribute to all that was given to me there.
Time Out At Glendalough
After you have walked the ruins
of seven churches,
tilted back your head to seek the top
of the tower that took
the rounded point
of Kevin’s steeple
and thrust it up,
three times as high,
from earth to sky to mark
the ground you walk upon
as holy;
after you have circled green lake paths
that urge you up, then further up,
to top the crashing
waterfall, then
higher;
after you’ve been stopped and stopped again,
by sight of ice-sliced mountain cut to valley
its mesh of rivers and falls,
rushing to empty all into two, long lakes
that somehow take this ceaseless gush
and hold it
still,
you will know
the allure of here,
as of all the places we call sacred,
is the silence.
You will have heard
the voice
of your own blood
dropping into
the deep.
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