A Shelf of One's Own

I’ve a short story in the latest edition of The Stinging Fly , which is a brilliant Irish literary journal. If you’d like a copy (or if you like Claire-Louise Bennett or Kevin Barry or Danielle McLaughlin or Colin Barrett, who’ve all been published by SF ) you can get it here Or, you know, go to Dublin.

There’s a sudden late surge of warmth in the rough winds today and it’s the perfect day to read one of John Clare’s best sonnets: November Sybil of months & worshipper of winds I love thee rude & boisterous as thou art & scraps of joy my wandering ever finds Mid thy uproarious madness – when the start Of sudden tempests stir the forrest leaves Into hoarse fury till the shower set free Still the hugh swells & ebb the mighty heaves That swing the forrest like a troubled sea I love the wizard noise & rave in turn Half vacant thoughts & self imagined rhymes Then hide me from the shower a short sojourn Neath ivied oak & mutter to the winds Wishing their melody belonged to me That I might breath a living song to thee

When I walked over the lock the other day, I passed a man pushing a bike, explaining autumn to his kid. There are four seasons a year, he said, and this is the one where the leaves fall. 'Each new autumn is closer to the last autumn we’ll have, and the same is true of spring or summer; but autumn, by its nature, reminds us that all things will end, which is something we’re apt to forget when we look around us in spring or summer.' - Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

And then I remembered a quotation from Cassandra at the Wedding , which I read seven years ago. And of course I’d put it on here. So I found this old dear old thing again, how wet behind the ears. There I am, young self: voluble, enthusiastic. I miss old credulities. It’s time to bring this thing out of the closet and into the end of this decade. To tell that old self: I am reading Savage Detectives again, after all these years.