Western Writers Centre Welcomes International Stories and Poems

by W.B. Yeats Wed Sep 27, 2006 18:17

My dear fellow you are rather overdoing it with all of these stories. Do they all really deserve to be published as seperate stories? You know I'm all for supporting Poetry and the Arts in the West, but dash it all old bean you are tearing the arse out of it. A modicum of restraint on your part is advisable.

You have my sympathies regarding the hassle you have been getting lately. God knows I had my own troubles with Aleister Crowley. He gave me a hell of a time.

by Fred Johnston - Western Writers' Centre Wed Sep 27, 2006 18:28

Dear W.B. - Yes, indeed you have a very good point. However, if we were to send in one continuous story about our activities and events, those upcoming as well as those past, and our invitation to European writers to submit their work, let alone our qualifications and personal achievements, it would make a very long entry indeed. I know you are a modest man - so modest, in fact, that you won't even use your real name, which is a sure sign of artistic integrity. Nonetheless, let me reassure you that we will, if Indymedia permits, submit an entire perspectus on the Centre and its activities. On the other hand, send me your address (no, your own, presuming you have left home) and I will be too happy to send it individually packaged under the sign of the star and unicorn (it's a Yeats thing, as you know).

by W.B. Yeats Wed Sep 27, 2006 18:57

My dearest Frederick, why not do what others do and put the events in date order into the Events section of this site? This would allow you to also post the occasional overview without getting on the readers wick.

by Maude Gonne Wed Sep 27, 2006 20:04

Click on the link below and read the article there. Hilarious stuff.

http://www.gaelport.com/index.php?page=clippings&id=654...=date

by Fred Johnston Wed Sep 27, 2006 21:25

MAUDE - Your slip is showing. Get Mum to sew it up, there's a good girl. My sincere thanks however, for bringing back to attention an article which interested you so much and which, yes, raises interesting questions: THE IRISH TIMES 'AN IRISHMAN'S DIARY' ITEM ON THE FAILURE OF THE WEEKEND OF NORTHERN IRISH WRITING IN GALWAY. I'd forgotten it, but you're right, it needs reading again. Thanks, Maude. WB and you should've gotten married long ago. Go on! You're a big girl now! Give it a go! - Fred

by henry Wed Sep 27, 2006 21:45

Tell me this From the little I know of this Yeats guy.
Is it true that he practiced Satanism as a mamber of the golden dawn masonic circle along with the likes of crowley and his mob and stole his mystical material from the lore in sligo and that he was born in a snuggy in sandymount? AND that he was a pompous arrogant little Pxxxk?

by .:. Wed Sep 27, 2006 21:51

However there is a lot of evidence to suggest he was a :-
wanker, proto-fascist, crypto-hetrosexual, prude, appaling dramatist, & generally greedy bastard who milked the then emergent niche market of Irish writer & creative writing master type to the full.
lovely language the french. I like the assonance in clichy sous bois

and on...& on... & on,
go deo deo arís.

by c murray Wed Sep 27, 2006 22:00

and she thought Yeats was the reverse of .!.

But they were good friends anyhow.

He played with the Golden dawn cos it got him girls and his wife had to develop her arm
muscles to keep him, because of monkey glands and all, but he was a good poet.

by henry Wed Sep 27, 2006 22:08

Maybe no credible reason but credible evidence there is .Are you a mason? I notice your triangle symbol
-very similar to the ones used on the roads as yeild signs. He was a member of the golden dawn though. Any mason I spoke to all deny they actually worship Satan. All this is still very much rampant in this Country.
I'm just in the mood for a little talk really not into deep intellectual discussion on the matter.

by Fred Johnston Thu Sep 28, 2006 14:29

Hi, all! I am delighted that my poor posting has elicited such a response. Of course, we can assume that 'Maude Gonne' is a cover-name for someone without the required courage to stand over their views. And who can't spell. W.B. Yeats is not buried at Sligo - now there's one to get your teeth into! In spite of my having written a piece for 'An Irishman's Diary' (The Irish Times - try their archives) on this, the Irish tourism people have kept their heads down on the subject in case tourists stop going to Benbulben. Yeats was initially interred at Roquebrune Old Cemetery (I was there) near Menton, just beyond Monte Carlo. There was an embarrassing mess about his 'rights' to reside in the grave. Subsequently he was dumped into the ossuary. Duclos the sculptor, a friend, and some others then arranged a midnight forage in the bone-shop (weird story about looking for hip bones with a truss wrapped about them, as Yeats was known to have worn one); God knows what mix of bones and bits actually came back to Ireland. You all may be interested to know that, in spite of various urgings by The Western Writers' Centre, Ireland Tourism West have never bothered to entertain the idea of bringing live readings or any real sort of living literary presence into Thoor Ballylee - clearly selling plastic leprechauns is better for tourists. Nor is there a street or road named after Yeats anywhere in Ireland.

by Truss Thu Sep 28, 2006 15:47

These scandals and rumours emanated for Years. Burial plots in small towns in France
used a 'rental' system, wherein your loved one could be interred during war-time aggression
or whatever. The family insisited they got the bones of a big-boned man(wearing a truss)
and they were identified by someone close. The chapel wherein they were identified was
full of various bones, so human error- may compound any mistake.
There was no DNA facility at the time.

Whoever owns the truss- owns the grave?

Brings a whole new meaning to " the foul rag and bone shop of the heart" -eh?

Anyway- I doubt if Yeats is bothered and Drumcliff has sprouted a massive tourist
industry, so everyone is happy.

Unlike the Lorca situation, where the family resist exhumation of a fellow executed prisoner
and those bones have yet to be discovered. Students could build theses on poetic bones,
they really could. Can you imagine and exhumation and D+A exploratory of Yeats tomb-
sure it would cause fecking havoc, like digging up Tara, really.

Somethings are best left alone, they provide us with stories and legends, oral tales
and pub stool gossip.

by pat c Thu Sep 28, 2006 15:51

We'll just have to go on trusst.

It must be Yeats, otherwise the Wild Swans would have deserted the North West and no horsemen would have passed by.

Yeats is dead.
Maud is gone.

by Truss Thu Sep 28, 2006 15:55

am sure Yeats would not really give a fuck anyway, about his bones
though he would have had a giggle at the gombeen FFers going to the
fecking moon. with their greasy till and bumbling idiocy.

The spirit of Maud is alive in the naming of children, the new legends
and stories about the big men out west who took on a multi-national giant.

by Fred Johnston Thu Sep 28, 2006 16:22

Sorry, but I can't quite understand the 'Myers' reference here - he hasn't been mentioned previously. 'Twas myself what writ the piece for The Irish Times on Yeats. Still - and I'm sure Yeats probably could'nt care less, as you suggest, he being dead - it is shameful, in my view, that Ireland West Tourism doesn't do something to inject a literary component into Thoor Ballylee as they were asked to do. I am less impressed by 'Yeats commemorations' which seem rather to be academic outings. In France, streets are commonly named after writers. But this discussion is nonetheless good; it means people are still interested, whatever their views. Now - anyone submitting any poems or prose while they're at it?

by Truss Thu Sep 28, 2006 16:51

Sorry about the Myers bit- given your Yeats interest, maybe you should visit Tara
and hold a Yeats night, the bould Maud protested the British Israelites digging
for the Arc of the Covenant there....

The locals are The Tara Heritage Preservation group and Dr Muireann ni Bhrolochain
who can be contacted at save tara or Maynooth College.

I'd even go-if my truss allowed it....

btw: there is a lovely Yeats Head in sandymount Green, opposite a naked dancer sculpture
and beside one of Lavin's daughter's houses, it has a birdshit problem.

by Fred Johnston Thu Sep 28, 2006 18:19

Dear 'Truss' - (does one not find these pseudonyms silly?): I am glad to hear Sandymount have done something. I do wish Ireland West Tourism had as much imagination. They don't. I expect someone will bulldoze a highway through Thoor before long. I think Yeats would be interested, were he among us still, in what Irish poetry - particularly in his West of Ireland - has become these days, and there's scope for Arts Features' writers to have a look at that, if laziness doesn't prevent them. Yeats had a keen understanding that poetry had to serve a function outside the Self and beyond the diktats of the Imagination. That idea has been lost and replaced with ego-driven pompousness, too often. Everyone wants to be a poet - and there are those who are old enough (at least) to know better who try to encourage people in the notion that everyone IS a poet. They'd do better to encourage them to be politically active.

by Truss Thu Sep 28, 2006 18:54

I love nicknames, masks, projections..... in fact Yeats did too.
now who was PIAL?

The Sandymounters have a great sense of Irony, the head is opposite the dancer
who is naked, but he is turning away.

Which was weird for him- I believe he was very attracted to dancers.

If everyone were a poet, there would be no war- alas.

by Fred Johnston Thu Sep 28, 2006 20:17

Dear 'Truss' - He may have like some masks, which are better than Noh masks at all, but he wouldn't have liked anonymity. In Galway, I have protested to newspapers about the hideous practice of publishing 'Name and Address with Editor' letters, where there is clearly no danger or threat, (save that of embarrassment), a practice which is open to abuse, as you can imagine. And we at the Western Writers' Centre have had our fair share of this sort of thing, sadly. And I've also had a couple of 'anonymous' letters sent to my home. Now in the kindergarten that is the Galway arts' world, anything's possible - but the letters to my home had nothing to do with the Arts. That may go some way to explaining my attitude. But clearly using made-up names is, for the more balanced among us, simply a bit of harmless fun. Anyway - I didn't know Yeats had a penchant for dancers but fair enough. I think every Irish writer should have a grounding in Yeats - slow some of them up from 'fast-tracking' their way to platforms as poets.

by Truss. Thu Sep 28, 2006 20:29

was his sweet dancer, she went mad and danced in the rain outside his lodgings.
There were others, in fact he used dancer language about his long-term lover
Maud.

The masks were projections-sure what was crazy Jane?

The self and anti-self, the double these things and games were part of the
artistic projections of modernism- pardon me, preoccupations.

by Fred Johnston Thu Sep 28, 2006 20:38

I agree; creatively, they are possible indicators of archetypes. It's just the world we live in, they can be misused.