Monthly Archive for August, 2011

Limited spaces available for creative writing classes

SBA

Published on August 31, 2011 in News.

The Introduction to Fiction and Personal Essay course, which starts on September 14, now has limited spaces available. You can read more about the course here. Please use the online booking form to register.

Spaces are also available for the the Introduction to Fiction and Poetry course, which starts a week later – September 20. You can read about that course here.

You can get detailed course descriptions and more information about the courses and tutors through the links provided on the Some Blind Alleys Creative Writing Courses Home Page.

Please email workshops at someblindalleys dot com with any questions.

Some thoughts on the impersonal eternal

Gabriela Ailenei

Published on August 30, 2011 in The Journal.

A castle in Finland

After a visit to the impressive library at St Gallen in Switzerland, one of the most famous monastic libraries in the world, I walk into the St Gallen Cathedral. The cathedral is so opulent, so gilded; I realise I can’t stand Baroque architecture.

I light a candle and try to pray. I don’t know how. I can’t find spiritual feeling inside myself.

I remember something Cioran wrote in his notebooks, after a visit from an orthodox poet: What right have you to pray for me? I need no intercessor, I shall manage alone. The prayers of a wretch I might accept, but no one else’s, not even a saint’s. I cannot bear you bothering about my salvation. If I apprehend salvation and flee it, your prayers are merely an indiscretion.

Continue reading ‘Some thoughts on the impersonal eternal’

Goat

John McAuley

Published on August 22, 2011 in The Journal.

My uncle had a goat once. It was a treacherous cunt of thing that would eat the shorts right off your arse. It thought it was the mightiest goat around. It used to climb, with great assurance and pomposity, hills that were not hills but irregularities in the lolls of fields. How did it look? It looked like a goat – it had white fur and a smig. But it carried on as though it was the most fantastic creature of all time. At no stage did anyone point out to this goat that it was just a goat and nothing more and nothing less.

I suppose, therefore, the goat was not solely to blame. My uncle, a balding singleton with no interest in anything really, hauled the goat around as though it was a dog and not a goat. It got, in this way, preferential treatment. More so than anything else that was about the place. It was the summer, a dry one if I remember correctly, when I first came into contact with the goat. It was in the shed, upon some bails, and when I came looking for dry hay it simply refused to budge.

“Don’t go near that goat,” said my uncle, when he saw me lining up a kick. “If you know what’s good for you.”

Continue reading ‘Goat’

Please post this flyer

SBA

Published on August 10, 2011 in News.

Some Blind Alleys is currently accepting submissions for the autumn. As always, the focus will be the essay, and we’d like to invite as many contributions as possible.

If you have access to a printer, please click here (or click on the above image) to download an A4 PDF. Then print the flyer out and post it anywhere you see an empty space.

Two comics: Fable: a dog and his dreams; Cordeyceps fungi

Steve Maher

Published on August 3, 2011 in The Journal.

Two comics

Artist’s note: My work is concerned with the apparently mundane aspects of modern life, and my practice involves sculpture, illustration, writing and performance art. This work is from an ongoing series I started three years ago. I view my comic making as a part of my extended art practice; each comic is one page long. I do not obey any strict rules but I prefer the standard dimensions 17 x 26 cm.

Continue reading ‘Two comics: Fable: a dog and his dreams; Cordeyceps fungi’