Wednesday 5 November 2014

Stephanie Hladowski sings The Sailor’s Dream

Fans of Stephanie Hladowski's lovely singing voice can hear her, singing, on the new Simogo game, The Sailor’s Dream - the game is released tomorrow...

Simogo, Simon Flesser and Magnus “Gordon” Gardebäck, are based in Malmo, Sweden - they make computer games and 'game-like things'.  Things that do not involve killing real or imaginary creatures...

Some links and comments below...

http://simogo.com/about/



'That trailer gives me chills. Again, Simogo has been coy in regards to any solid details about the game itself, but their latest blog post does hint towards how important music and sound will be to the experience. There are a few new screens at their blog, but my recommendation is to not read any previews or reviews until you've been able to play the game for yourself. Simogo's talent is to surprise, delight, unnerve, and make you feel a whole range of real feelings while you experience their games. Ruining any of that would be doing a disservice to yourself, so mark a big red X on your calendar for November 6th when you'll be able to experience The Sailor's Dream firsthand.'


"We want to tackle a more philanthropic story, and instead of creating a feeling of suspense, we want to communicate something that feels warmer, yet melancholic," the developer wrote. "We're throwing out some more traditional game challenge-elements; in fact, The Sailor's Dream won't feature any puzzles at all. That doesn't mean you won't find playful things in the game, though — there are plenty of things to touch, play and tinker with.
"It's a fractured story told in different ways, from different perspectives. When it comes to telling the story, we're drawing inspirations from both books, radio plays and even musicals."




Monday 22 September 2014

The Irish World Wide - Bibliographic

I have made a little addition to the files stored - and freely available - at

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/f9ccfk929abbj/Irish_World_Wide

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ooj5btdttc9y4/Documents

In the Folder, The Irish World Wide - Bibliographic

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/xir2otrzepj2t/0._Irish_World_Wide_-_Bibliographic

In the 'Outline of the Series' text file...  I said...

'An odd problem that I have noticed is that some bibliographic software systems seem to have trouble generating good references for the individual chapters of The Irish World Wide.  Google Scholar, in particular, seems to have trouble grasping the concept of a multi-volume, multi-authored work. This is a problem I had not anticipated, in 1993. I can only apologise. For day to day references I now use a Bibtex file in Jabref - it is open source, sturdy and forgiving. When I have a moment I will generate a Bibtex file for the entire Irish World Wide series, which can then be absorbed into any standard bibliographic system.'

Well, I have now - September 2014 - made a Jabref/Bibtex file of the entire Irish World Wide series.

And I have made that file available on that MediaFire web site - it is the .bib file... 

The file contains 72 entries: 6 books, 1 General Introduction to the Series, 6 separate volume Introductions, and 59 Chapters. 

Volumes 1 to 5 each contain 10 chapters. Volume 6, The Meaning of the Famine, has 9 chapters, some of them very substantial - that volume also had to contain the Cumulative Index to the series. 

In the ABSTRACT field of Jabref I have put the opening paragraph or so of each Introduction and each Chapter - this is just to give some feel for the content and approach, and to give SEARCH something to bite into.

I have also made available different versions of my original Jabref/Bibtex file - in html, csv and ris, plus a pdf of the tidy html file.  How these will work will depend on how you have your own computer set up - but in theory you should be able to import the references into your own standard bibliographic software. 

Patrick O'Sullivan osullivan@villanous.ie

Friday 19 September 2014

Laurie Lee... And me...

Whenever I see a new book about Laurie Lee I always look inside - just to see if I am in it...

Like you do...

As far as I know, I still I have not appeared in any book about Laurie Lee.  Since no one else will tell the story...

In the late 1960s I entered a poem in the Guinness Poetry Competition at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature and the Arts.  And a letter arrived, saying that my poem had reached the short list - so, an expenses paid trip to Cheltenham, to read my poem one evening, alongside the other finalists...

What year was it?  I remember that Arthur Koestler was there, and he admired my coat.  So, that makes it 1969, the year Arthur Koestler spoke at the Cheltenham Festival...

My coat was indeed a lovely coat, of purple William Morris curtain material, made by John Stephen, Carnaby Street, London, and bought in Carnaby Street.  I still have that coat - it is in the back of the wardrobe and will one day be bequeathed to a less portly person.

And a copy of my poem from 1969 has now come (back) into my hands.

The poem is called 'In Praise of Lizzie Cotton'.  And it is long...

The main influence was Christopher Smart.  But William Blake is also there - especially in the little lyrics - and Walt Whitman and T. S. Eliot. The idea of making a long thing by stitching together a sequence of short things.  Mostly it is Christopher Smart.

It is a praise poem.  As the title says.  That is what it is - a praise poem...  We study these things, they are an important part of literary history  - and every now and again we should write one...

That evening in Cheltenham a small man in a brown suit approached me, and explained that he used to be connected with the Cheltenham Festival of Literature and the Arts, but was no longer involved, and that he used to be a judge on the Poetry Competition, but was not a judge this year.  But he had read my poem, and he really liked it, and he hoped I would win.

And I said, Thank You...

By an accident of alphabet, I was the last person to read.  And we had had, by then, some pretty intense stuff.  I could only do my best.  My poem was long, yes - but it was funny, whimsical, entertaining.  The audience began to relax, to laugh, and be entertained.

So, I finished.  An allowed myself to go to the bar and have a drink.  Where people surrounded me, congratulating me on having won the competition.  Now, throughout that evening I was really, really good - I knew enough to know that chickens must not be counted.  I said, calmly, that we had heard some very fine poems - we must await the decision of the judges...

Back in the hall, the judges announced the name of the person who had come third in the competition.  It was not me.  And the person who had come second.  Not me.  And the first prize.  Not me.

And the audience revolted, led by the small man in the brown suit.  Who revealed himself to be Laurie Lee.

And Laurie Lee called me over, and instituted there and then a special Laurie Lee poetry prize.  (I remember two notes - two twenty pound notes?  But memory has maybe inflated for inflation.  Private Eye says 'ten quid' - so two five pound notes...)

And I went to the bar, where I bought two double whiskeys.  I took them back into the hall, gave one whiskey to Laurie Lee, and I toasted him with the other.

On the stage I could hear one of the judges say, 'Well, if you like rhetoric...'

Which, maybe, dates the event fairly precisely.  I went back to the bar and I took no further part in the proceedings...

I don't know if there are newspaper accounts of Laurie Lee's gesture that evening.  The incident was certainly mentioned in Private Eye.

After Cheltenham I was invited to a number of poetry events.  I particularly remember an evening at the Poetry Society.  And feeling that I really, really did not want to be part of this.  But that is another story...

Patrick O'Sullivan


Notes:

Arthur Koestler, Literature and the Law of Diminishing Returns, The Cheltenham Lecture, given at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, November 1969, is collected in Arthur Koestler, The Heel of Achilles: Essays 1968–1973, 1974. 

John Stephen's archives are now with the V & A.

This is The Guardian obituary...

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/feb/09/guardianobituaries.veronicahorwell

There is a book, Jeremy Reed, The King Of Carnaby Street: A Life of John Stephen, 2010.

A snippet view on Google Books of Private Eye 1969 gives that 'ten quid' detail.

There are now many books - and web sites - about Laurie Lee.  None of them mention me.

Friday 22 August 2014

We will always have Gargrave...

Just signing off the last few details of the Gargrave Autoharp Festival....

The August 2014 issue of the Gargrave Parish Magazine is now available on its web site...

http://www.gargravemag.co.uk/

Click on the cover image and you will get into the pdf of the magazine.

On pages 10-11 you will see a little account of the Gargrave Autoharp Festival 2014, written by me. As usual with these things, I was contacted on the Friday evening, and told that the deadline was Saturday morning. I did my best...


FROM the Gargrave Parish Magazine, August 2014

The Gargrave Autoharp Festival 2014, Friday June 27 Saturday June 28 & Sunday June 29, 

The Gargrave Autoharp Festival 2014 slotted in neatly after the Gargrave Autoharp Festival 2013, which laid the ground rules. The strong argument for 2014 was that, this year, we and the autoharp could be part of the Yorkshire Festival, the programme of cultural events leading up to the Grand Depart of the Tour de France. That all worked - we were very visible on the Yorkshire Festival web site and in the media, we were supported by Mike Harding, England's folk music guru. And wasn't the Tour de France great fun?

The good things about holding the Autoharp Festival in Gargrave were even better in 2014. Again we had the support of Sally Thomas and her team at the Village Hall -and we thank them, especially for the way the volunteers waded in again and again when they could see that we were overstretched. And, as the Fable of the Autoharp shows, Gargrave is now the place in England where everyone knows what an autoharp looks like - and how it sounds. And we had local support - witness the charming models on our poster, from Jaki Prescott's dance school, and the charming illustrations to the Fable of the Autoharp from Alan Poxon's art group.

In the Village Hall on the Saturday we had our programme of classes and demonstrations - this year we attracted new players from the North of England. As was the plan. We had our lovely concert on the Saturday evening, which included Gargrave favourites from 2013, Mike Fenton and Guy Padfield. Everyone commented that Guy Padfield had become a much more confident and skilled musician since last year. The special guest at the concert was Patrick Couton - in the year of the Tour de France our own star from France. Wonderful music. Patrick Couton's travel expenses were covered by local boaters, the East Lancashire and West Yorkshire Boat Club.

The members of the Boat Club have asked me to say that this is their way of thanking Gargrave for all the work that goes into keeping the towpath and the canal clean and tidy.

And on the Sunday we had our Autoharp Service - special thanks to Michael Bland, who led the service, and to Sue Watkiss, the organist, who found ways to bring into the church service the music of Nadine White, Scotland's autoharp guru. I want to especially mention the support of  Kev and Amy, Kevan Lawson and Amy Dalgleish, the new team at The Old Swan, Gargrave's lovely old coaching inn. I don't want anybody to feel left out, but... Some of the best music of the Gargrave Autoharp Festival 2014 took place in the Swan - as the professionals and the amateurs relaxed. Witness a musical duel between John McNally, a guitarist who understands the autoharp, and Patrick Couton, an autoharper who understands the guitar. On the Sunday evening about a dozen survivors gathered in the snug of the Swan, for a last informal session - music has been played in that snug for over two hundred years. In that snug, Robert Story, Gargrave's poet, sang his songs and played his fiddle...

As to the future, 2015? Yes, the good things about holding the Autoharp Festival in Gargrave were even better - but the difficulties were much the same. We were undoubtedly overstretched. There is only so much you can ask of volunteers. The quest for money is time consuming. We will have to think... But, in the annals of the autoharp, we will always have Gargrave.

Photographs by Andrew Milne, Official Photographer, Gargrave Autoharp Festival, more here:...
www.yourdemos.co.uk/gaf_2014.htm

Monday 14 July 2014

Patrick O'Sullivan, ed., The Meaning of the Famine, 1997

At the beginning of this year, 2014 - as part of tidying up projects - I put a lot of my earlier work on this free MediaFire cloud storage site...

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ooj5btdttc9y4/Documents

It has to be a free site - there isn't a budget to do anything else.  It has worked well.

MediaFire gives me a simple download counter - this does not count people who read the texts online, without downloading.  But it is a measure.  And soon we will reach 2000 downloads since this project began, in January 2014.

MediaFire also offer a more complex statistics package, as part of the paid for, premium upgrade.  But...  there isn't a budget...

Pity really, because over the past weeks there has been an odd little anomaly in the download patterns.  Within a few weeks there have been some 200 downloads of one complete book, Patrick O'Sullivan, ed., The Meaning of the Famine, 1997, Volume 6 of The Irish World Wide.  An odd little glitch and difficult to explain.  Some sort of mad robot harvester? - the patterns do not fit.  A seminar group, somewhere, looking at the research literature on the Irish Famine? - the numbers look too big.

The book is in my thoughts because I am in the middle of writing a review article for Irish Historical Studies, about recent developments in the study of the Irish Diaspora, looking especially at the ways in which the Famine has become a central theme.  I need not go over here the problems I had bringing together a volume called The Meaning of the Famine, in 1997 - nor the criticism that my book has faced since then.

I recently read an article by Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley - the historian of famine in China...

Article (Edgerton-Tarpley2013Tough) 
Edgerton-Tarpley, K. 
Tough Choices: Grappling with Famine in Qing China, the British Empire, and Beyond. 
Journal of World History, 2013, 24, 135 - 176


It is a comparative piece, which makes excellent use of my own chapter in The Meaning of the Famine (co-written with Richard Lucking) - my chapter made a good stab at unpacking the coded language of the British mandarin class.

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~histweb/faculty_and_staff/faculty_bios/k_edgerton-tarpley.htm






Saturday 12 July 2014

REPORT: SUPPORTING THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE IRISH DIASPORA

Just come to my attention...

SUPPORTING THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE IRISH DIASPORA
Report of a Research Project Funded by the Emigrant
Support Programme, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade


The Clinton Institute for American Studies is pleased to announce the publication of exciting new research on the topic of the Irish diaspora. More and more, states are seeking to understand the form and functions of diasporas and engage with them to provide new opportunities for knowledge transfer, tourism, conflict resolution, and many other matters. In the context of these emerging interests, Ireland has some prominence as a small nation with an over seventy million strong diaspora. The Irish government, through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), is currently undertaking a comprehnsive review of its engagement with the Irish abroad. This research report scopes the changing profile and needs of Irish emigrants in relation to the Government's strategic objectives in engaging with the diaspora, particularly through the ESP, and considers how best these objectives may continue to be met. 

http://www.ucdclinton.ie/

http://ucdclinton.ie/userfiles/file/Supporting%20the%20Next%20Generation%20of%20the%20Irish%20Diaspora.pdf

TechReport (Kennedy2014SUPPORTING)
Kennedy, L.; Lyes, M. & Russell, M.
SUPPORTING THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE IRISH DIASPORA: Report of a Research Project Funded by the Emigrant Support Programme, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Clinton Institute, University College Dublin, 2014

Thursday 3 July 2014

Gargrave Autoharp Festival, Photographs

There is a small selection of photographs by Andrew Milne, Official Photographer, Gargrave Autoharp Festival, here...