More Troubles?

I remember very vividly the week I spent in Belfast. It changed my head. I knew my family came from Ireland, knew of the Troubles, but not until a few weeks before I left, I didn't know my family came specifically from the north, and until I got there, I had no real idea of the reality there. The division of Belfast - material, spiritual - splits my head still. One thing that stood out to me most was a tour we took of the Catholic/Protestant neighborhoods - streets like Shankhill divided like some contested border - and the tour guide putting the difficulty down primarily to the relative poverty of the area. Up the road near Queens, the realtive prosperity of that part of town saw a healthier, less hostile environment. Indeed, the Celtic Tiger gave all Ireland a reason to look forward and not behind; the economy exploded, and with each year, it seemed the Troubles were finally over.

Maybe not.

Ireland's economy, like the world's, has collapsed and just like that, the IRA - or some semblence of it - is back to killing. This time, though, it seems that neither Protestants nor Catholics are willing to let the madness of a few pull every one under. The news here in America sadly reads the same way - a man just killed ten people in Alabama, a student walked into a school in Germany and killed nine. Maybe it's not the global economic crisis; maybe it's just coincidence. Does money salve political wounds? Religious? When the pot is empty, do we fill it with anger? Hate?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mirror, Mirror

Image
Recently I bought a copy of a pretty well reviewed and promoted speculative fiction novel.  About two chapters in, the main character looks in a mirror and describes themself.  I literally closed the book and stopped reading.  The novel had other issues, but this put me right out of the story.  This technique - being generous here - occurs a lot in first person narratives, about as often as a story beginning with the main character waking up from a dream.  The mirror device is best avoided, but not necessarily because it's so overused - it's best avoided because simply put, it's so easy.  A character, especially a protagonist, should never be described; they should be imagined.
Read more

Conversations With: Dr. Daniel Dahlquist

Here's what I hope is the start of a new weekly (or so) feature on the blog: a mini-interview with writers about the craft. My good friend and teacher Dr. Daniel Dahlquist inaugurates the series. Dr. Dahlquist is a wonderful poet; his poetry has appeared in respected literary journals such as Prairie Schooner, New Virginia Review, River Styx, Kentucky Poetry Review, and the Louisville Review. He graduated from the University of Iowa's storied Writer's Workshop and holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Southern Illinois University. His first book, SPEECH TO THE DEAD PEOPLE, was published in 1997 by Cedar Creek Press. You can read an excerpt from the book (and my favorite of his poems) here . Without further adieu: Q: What poets or other writers do you consider influences? A: The apocalyptic poets appealed to me when I was very young. I started writing poems at age sixteen, on my grandfather's 1928 L.C. Smith typewriter, largely to impress my English teacher.
Read more

My Advice For Writers

More and more I get asked for advice from aspiring writers. Mostly this is because I have a book, not because I really know anything. I'm not good at giving advice. Actually, I'm pretty good at it, just not very good at following it myself. So take all of this with a grain of salt. Actually, you should probably just click away to some other website right now. If you're still here, or have just reached the end of the internet, seriously: I've given a lot of thought to what I say to a serious writer who is asking me for serious perspective, and in so much as I can give it, I usually speak to these things: Find your faults . You have them. We all do. One thing my day job has taught me is to actively seek out process improvement. Usually we wait for problems to come to us - it's how we know they're problems - but most often in business, this can get you in trouble. The same applies to your art. It is a process; you should actively seek to impro
Read more