Yes, more pictures of horses and people at the world-famous (in Kerry) Puck Fair and the lesser-known Beaufort Threshing Fair - from 2015 this time.
Taken in 2015, the poets are my former colleague Rosie Miles and Liz Berry. Rosie is sporting a bespoke book-themed shirt made for her by a friend. Liz Berry is an award-winning poet who single-handedly made the Black Country accent chic. You can't talk to anyone from the London Review of Books without enduring their attempt to address yow as 'bab'.
(The bald head is a member of the audience. I just liked it).
I was at work one day in 2015 when the sun went out. Then it came back.
I think this one was in London, at UEL's Sportsdock, though all sports halls look the same after a while. I vaguely remember the standard not being as high as usual, and having a conversation with a coach about appropriate vocabulary when criticising an actual child's performance.
Apparently fencing is now legal again, but close-quarters action is still banned. As I'm quite short, my entire approach is close-quarters, so yet again the Lanky Mafia conspire to keep me out of the national rankings. Bah.
I'm still in the mood for author photos, so here are some of Eimear McBride. I made her novel A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing a set text for the first-years' introductory module, 'Literature and Identity', a year after it was published, certain that it would amaze, delight, horrify and endure for years to come (I think I've been vindicated). We invited Eimear to talk to the students and give a public reading and interview in the evening. She was amazing with the students: drawing them out, explaining her artistic practice, telling them the reality of being a writer with a vision despite the setbacks, and filling in the cultural gaps between them and her. She was also very very funny (in my heavily annotated copy of the novel, she wrote 'all your theories about my book are wrong': I think she was joking), despite the grim subject matter of her novel. The public lecture was similar: I asked a very bright colleague to do the 'in conversation' bit, and the talk flowed beautifully. It turned out that Eimear is also a huge fan of melancholic 90s indie, so we paid her in money but also in Asphalt Ribbons bootlegs.
