TIGH LITRÍOCHTA
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Welcome to the Munster Literature Centre Founded in 1993, the Munster Literature Centre (Tigh Litríochta) is a non-profit arts organisation dedicated to the promotion and celebration of literature, especially that of Munster. To this end, we organise festivals, workshops, readings and competitions. Our publishing section, Southword Editions, publishes a biannual journal, poetry collections and short stories. We actively seek to support new and emerging writers and are assisted in our efforts through funding from Cork City Council, Cork County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland. Originally located in Sullivan's Quay, the centre moved to its current premises in the Frank O'Connor House (the author's birthplace) at 84 Douglas Street, in 2003. In 2000, the Munster Literature Centre organised the first Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival, an event dedicated to the celebration of the short story and named for one of Cork's most beloved authors. The festival showcases readings, literary forums and workshops. Following continued growth and additional funding, the Cork City - Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award was introduced in 2005, coinciding with Cork's designation as that year's European Capital of Culture. The award is now recognised as the single biggest prize for a short story collection in the world and is presented at the end of the festival. In 2002, the Munster Literature Centre introduced the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize, an annual short story competition dedicated to one of Ireland's most accomplished story writers and theorists. This too is presented during the FOC festival. The centre also hosts the Cork Spring Literary Festival each year. Workshops are held by featured authors in both autumn and spring, allowing the general public to receive creative guidance in an intimate setting for a minimal fee. In addition, the centre sponsors a Writer in Residence each year. We invite you to browse our website for further information regarding our events, Munster literature, and other literary information. Should you have any queries, we would be happy to hear from you.
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The Belling
László Lator's poetry displays a Rilkean density and intensity. His concerns are a combination of the alchemical and the existential. An obsession with middle Europe's tragic history and the fate of the individual framed within is related often with a Judeo-Christian symbology and a unique mercurial phrasing.
Selected Poems from The Belling
Sodom
Like a snake on the landscape’s body the road curls between the trees. A sandy murmur of voices brushes the foliage as slowly everything is eroded by the breeze and rust falls on the petrified leaves.
Here is the shelter, the home of rampant sin – another Sodom. Anyone who reads the stars flees or sacrifices a fledgling dove. Wanderer, shake the dust from your shoes, skedaddle far from this dive, get out of here, shift your bottom, pluck yourself out of Sodom.
The clouds could be dragons from hell as evening slouches towards darkness. Convulsed by an Idol’s spell the captive flock is helpless. The Idol, like Janus, has a double – one has the grin of the feebleminded, his other face glares menace and trouble: a Cyclops that should be blinded.
He’s filled with green demonic brightness from his horrible head to his toes: from him an electricity oozes, he is shining metal, his bronze arse glows. We should see, O we’d all notice if only for a moment his spell would cease and its enthralling radiance retreated to embers in his yellow eyes.
Like a snake on the landscape’s body the road curls between the trees. A sandy murmur of voices brushes the foliage as slowly everything is eroded by the breeze and rust falls on the petrified leaves.
The bristly grass rattles, snake headed roots hiss: we have missed the moment for freeing ourselves – fire comes, fire comes to consume us. We know what will be will be as a golden glow creeps beneath the grass. The skeletal bark shines, the frail walls incandesce.
An inner burn crackles in the molten metal atmosphere. As in Dante’s Circles sulphur chokes the air. Already fire is hatching, its winged dance is unwinding to scorch foliage, trees, with its desire.
Now the poisonous flames are squatting, crouching over the green embers until with a rustling swaying they again fan, higher and ever higher. The fire is a sea, it swirls and swells – we have missed the moment for freeing ourselves.
The land will glow for seven days, burn in tormented fever. On the eighth– you will walk in ashes and sackcloth through a humming shower into a fog that has no memories, you shall grope until a lunar vista is re-created by your blinded eyes.
__________ Dawn Sketch
Out of the air strong music rises, springs higher, bends down, curtseys; birds whose great throats are golden swim beneath the ripening sun.
From rifts in swaying distances serene light tremulously dances; the poplars get a move on, start walking, between their arms heavens are stretching.
Treading the landscape the sky radiates shamelessly, then goes shy; above the road in spacious droves go the heavy-uddered cows.
Seven showering rays grow, become seven plump bright-winged columns; days are days, always the sun dies and night comes stealing in.
__________ Plateau
Who or what sent you up here to this forbidding plateau? Higher and higher springs the heather until consumed by scorching fire.
You eyes begin to take in the roving curves of the land as it embraces you in a spin twirling you around and around.
Ravishing overabundance torments yet is a dream of forever as currents carry you in a dance through ever more spacious pastures.
Unadulterated solitude can open halls, lofts, stables when brilliance pierces Time’s forehead with a light that’s unendurable.
Now and then everything disappears from the plateau…that is trouble followed by doubt and numbing fear in this place – so close, so ineffable. Copyright ©2005 László Lator English translation Copyright ©2005 Divers Hands
László Lator was born in 1927 in Tiszasásvár, South-eastern Hungary. Poet, teacher, editor, translator. Educated at the University of Budapest, Lator graduated in 1951 with a degree in Hungarian and German Language and Literature and subsequently worked for five years as a grammar school teacher. Highly lauded as a poet, Lator has received many awards for his work, including the Attila József Prize in 1972 and the Kossuth Prize in 1995. As an editor, he worked first as a contributing editor and later took over the role of Editor-in–Chief of Európa Kiadó (Europe Publishing House). In 1992, Lator became one of the founding members of the Széchenyi Academy of Arts and Literature. An outstanding and prolific translator from numerous languages Lator is also one of Hungary’s most eminent literary critics. Politically active and socially conscious, Lator’s literary and non-literary contributions to Hungarian society have been essential.
Divers Hands are Gregory O'Donoghue, Liz O'Donoghue, Eugene O'Connell and Pat Cotter.
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Read Southword Journal Online
Supplement 18 now online.
Sean Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition
now closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.
Best Irish Poetry in English 2010
Visit our bookstore here.
Poetry International.org
The Munster Literature Centre produces the Irish section of this prestigious poetry site. Current featured poets are from Landing Places, the new Dedalus anthology of immigrant poets. For further information, please visit the site at www.poetryinternational.org.
Festivals
The Munster Literature Centre hosts two annual festivals. The larger Cork City - Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival takes place each September, while the Cork Spring Literary Festival, with varying themes, is presented each spring. Further information is available on our drop down menus.
Workshops
Workshops in poetry and fiction run in Spring and Winter at MLC. Contact Jennifer for more information.
Munster Literature Centre
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©2009 The Munster Literature Centre |
Frank O'Connor House, 84 Douglas Street, Cork, Ireland. Tel. (353) 021 4312955, Email: munsterlit(AT)eircom(DOT)net |
Irish Registered Charity No.12374 |
