Let me start by saying I am sick of myself.  Sick of promoting myself.  Sick of seeing myself and encouraging news of myself so I have decided to use my blog page here instead to highlight Irish writers past and present.  These are writers I grew up reading and hearing about, writers whose words have tinkled the ivory keys of my own heart and left music writ there forever to hum along through blood and mind like the sound of a brook after fresh rain.  Writer number one; for no particular reason other than he has been on my mind of late is Patrick Kavanagh.   Kavanagh was born in the townland of Mucker near the village of Inniskeen, County Monaghan on the border of Northern Ireland, 21 Oct 1904, not more than a half hours drive from my own home in County Tyrone.  He was the 4th eldest of ten children raised and worked on a farm by his father, a simple man who doubled as a shoemaker.  By the age of thirteen, a voracious reader, Kavanagh was done with school and worked the farm with his dad.  He was writing poetry already but didn’t see his first piece published until he was twenty four.  He continued on the farm restlessly for the next ten years before saying, to hell with this I need to be a writer, and at the age of 34 jumped on a ship for London.  Well he didn’t last long there, with their long faces and murderous glances, he decided he’d be better off among his own crowd and five months later he returned to settle in Dublin.  He was an awful hoore for the drink, our Pat, and could be seen staggering from pub to pub down O’Connell St on any given day. But he wrote like a brute publishing his first major poem The Great Hunger at the age of 38.  It was a work that sparked immediate controversy due to it’s masturbating protagonist Patrick Maguire and was seized and banned upon pressure from the Catholic church for it’s indency.  Kavanagh continued to write and to drink so that by the time he was fifty although he’d kept writing and publishing here and there along the way he was a mess, a nasty drunk of some repute, the drink was robbing him of his gifts, “Alcohol is the enemy of creativity.”  he said.  In 1954 at the age of 50 he was diagnosed with cancer and had one lung removed, the experience shook some life back into him and he settled into a period of renewed vigor and  a more grounded period of writing, giving lectures at home and in America, he even married his long time companion Katherine and saw the publication of Kavanaghs Collected Poems, where he wrote “A man innocently dabbles in rhymes and words and finds that it is his life.”  The same year he fell ill during the opening performance of a play based on his first banned novel “Tarry Flynn” and he died a week later at the age of 63.   In Feb 2002 actor Russel Crowe, a fan of Kavanaghs, throttled the producer of the Bafta awards in London after they cut short Crowes recital of a four line Kavanagh poem, “To be a poet and not know the trade/ To be a lover and repel all women/Twin ironies by which great saints are made/The agonising pincer jaws of heaven.”  Kavanagh would have enjoyed the controversy no doubt.  He might also have chuckled that a statue of him resides now in Disney World outside the bar Raglan Road, called for his most famous and enduring poem to date.  To hear renditions of Raglan Road by the likes of  Luke Kelly, Dire Straits and my personal current favorite Sinead O’Connor go to You Tube and have a  listen, you won’t be disapointed, Kavanaghs poetry has risen from the dirt and will live on.

My good friend Chris Campion, the first guy to escape from the lock down ward at Bellevue mental institution since 1973, will do a reading tonight at Mug Lounge in the East Village. E13 and Ave A.  I will read for a few minutes and then Chris will read for a bit and if you wanted a book we’ll have a few at hand and then Chris will play a few tunes with his band The Knock Out Drops.  So if you’re in the mood to hang, come on down.  We will be there. Tues. Feb 23 2010.   Chris is the guy who introduced me to my agent three years ago without knowing me or ever having read a word I’d written.  Dec 29 2009 both our books were released in paperback the same day and then wound up sitting side by side in most stores.  Is it just me or does that seem a little fortuitous.  Life sure is a silly bugger sometimes.

This is a picture of the actual painting that the cover of Orangutan was taken from. It was painted by a good friend of mine John Hyams about fifteen years ago. The painting is actually titled Self Portrait. This is what John looked like back then. The picture of the painting I have posted here doesn’t do justice to the detail of the actual painting. I have seen a few other paintings he has done and he is an amazing artist. He is also a director. He has directed a couple of documentaries and recently got a shot at directing his first feature; Universal Soldier Regeneration. He has taken a simple John Claude Van Damme vehical and infused it with whatever heart and art he could get away with and the critcis are raving, about the movie, but in particular about John Hyams and what he has done with the movie. Take my word for it, this is a director to watch out for in the future. You haven’t heard the last of John Hyams, not by a long shot. And yes, the chimpanzee is loading a revolver.

I realized I don’t have a single photo of me on my blog page here from my drinking days. This one was taken outside of my old local in the Bronx some time in 2006 during my last big bender. I pissed away a small fortune in this joint and I don’t regret a damned minute of it. Although if you offered me the money in a lump sum check right about now I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it. Life is short and getting shorter by the minute, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, you still here……..

Just in case I found myself with a spare second I have decided to join a couple of friends of mine in founding a new theatre company in the Bronx. The two other founding members are Don Creedon,(to the left) playwright/actor/director, and Stephen Smallhorn, (Center) writer/composer/classical guitarist. The theatre company has found a home in the An Bael Bocht cafe 238th St, Riverdale. We will have a facebook page up and running soon to announce upcoming events. In addition to a fresh theatre performance once a month we will host acting classes by Don Creedon; Guitar lessons by Stephan Smallhorn; and I will host a writing workshop once I have the details figured out. So there you have it. Our first show will be up and running March 13th; a series of five to ten minute pieces by a bunch of different writers. We have seating for sixty for now and tickets will be available soon.

Okay two things, quickly, because it’s late and I’m exhausted. One; I have started approving some of the comments you send because it seems that a lot of the feedback I’m getting is so positive it’s hard for me not to share, so if anyone who has had their comment posted, or approved would like me to take it down, please just ask and I will remove it right away. Hope no one is offended by my choice to go public with these things. I don’t know blog etiquette. Two; I posted a notice saying I was reading Feb 4th, it’s actually Feb 3rd at An Beal Bocht Cafe in Riverdale. I will try to get a decent blog entry up here as soon as possible. I will say one other thing, I have been writing like a lunatic again and I just today finished a screenplay, the movie is set in Northern Ireland and the title of the movie is A Bend In The River. There that’s it, It’s 1.18am, I am wrecked, the baby is sleeping , the dog is sleeping, Renata is getting ready for bed. I am done it’s been a good day for me. Tomorrow I will look over my finished screenplay and fall into a dark well of self loathing and depression at how bad it really is. That’s how it usually goes. Then I will crawl back out of the hole and start all over again the following day. But tonight my friends I am in league with the greats. Goodnight.