The unruly trinity, The All Ireland Poetry Slam and the Nighthawks Sex Scandal

The Unruly Trinity

The picture above is something I threw together as part of a cool collaboration I've been involved with recently. I like the pic, especially the Gloc at the front looking like a spaceship, I hadn't enough time to get the thing done properly so ended up throwing everything at it, going for the whole 'Ireland gets a shakedown' vibe. One of me mates says the money looks like biscuits, but fuckit.

The collaboration came about through Nighthawks. We'd had Pony Club perform at the Cobalt a few times and Simon the pianist, who was working on his own pet project asked me if I would be interested in providing some words. He thought we'd work well together after he saw me perform Ireland Is, and the Unruly Trinity was born. It's basically an EP comprising of a musician (Simon), a poet (me) and a songwriter (Mark Cullen) and our take on where Ireland is as we head into 2012.

Anyway the EP, called Ireland Is, will be on itunes for download soon.

Here's a link to the facebook page if you'd like a nosy at some pics of me and the others hobnobbing in the library bar, them two all muso-suave and me in my Burton's best.

http://www.facebook.com/TheUnrulyTrinity

The All Ireland Poetry Slam

I won the All Ireland Poetry Slam there last weekend. It was a great event, a real showcase for the dynamic power of performance poetry and it's range of styles. A major surprise for me was Karl Parkinson not figuring in the later stages. He'd blown me away at the Leinster final the week before. The fucker gave me goosebumps.

One of the judges christened him as the 'Angel of the Flats', I'm more inclined to go with 'That fucking bastard I'd like to throw down the stairs because he's so good'

It was a really, really cool day and as Stephen James Smith, the organiser said, it's not about winning, it's about sharing the artform. So I'm gonna do just that, wrap your eyes and ears around the following vid if you'd like to watch the event. My favourite on the day, who won second place, had to be Fergus Costello. Abby Oliveira was brilliant too. There's a few breaks in the footage but you can skip through em.

Nighthawks accused of being sexist, again, and shock of all horrors, not by Emerging Writer this time.

Kate Dempsey, of the feather boa abusing Poetry Diva's, recently pointed out that we had an all male line-up for our big gig in the Project last week.

(link here http://emergingwriter.blogspot.com/2010/10/nighthawks-for-oxfam.html)

It's the third or so time that she's said it and it sorta bugs me. We've had loads of female acts since we started up, as you can see from the list in my comment on her blog. But in fairness Kate's not the only one who has said it. Someone else mentioned it on the night.

We're most definitely not sexist, but we do put on acts based on what we like. We like female artists, but they have to be good. If you think there's any wimmin out there who'd be intereste in performing with us please let us know.

The nighthawks gig was great craic by the way.

Coppers

And how about them Coppers breaking heads at that student march? You can always rely on the Guards to step in and knock somebody out on the Governments behalf, can't you? The Truncheon waving ledgebags. I wonder if the militant Socialist groups weren't there would it have been so nasty. Like, were they told to go in hard just because the socialists are getting cocky, or is the mandate to crush any grassroots resistance to anything whatsoever, wherever and whenever?

Militants 'hijacking' a pensioners march, now that I'd like to see, imagine the hospital waiting lists for hip replacements then.

Oh, before I go, I'll be interviewing Stephen James Smith here next week so keep a goggle on for that.

And Congrats to Niamh Bagnell who's had a story featured in this seasons's Stinging Fly. Copies on sale at link below. I'm also delighted to see that the issue includes a Graphic Fiction offering from Kevin Barry which looks very, very interesting.

http://www.stingingfly.org/current.html