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ONLINE BOOKSTORE FEATURED TITLES

Best of Irish Poetry 2010
Editor: Matthew Sweeney

Songs of Earth and Light
Barbara Korun poems translated by Theo Dorgan

Done Dating DJs
by Jennifer Minniti-Shippey
Winner, 2008 Fool for Poetry Competition

Richesses: Francophone Songwriter Poets
Edited and translated by Aidan Hayes

Munster Literature Centre

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SOUTHWORD JOURNAL ONLINE

It has always been our policy to rotate Southword’s poetry and fiction editors to allow for different tastes and schools of writing to have a chance of being represented in the journal.  In this issue we say goodbye to James Harpur as poetry editor.  James has faced a difficult challenge admirably well, presiding over the poetry section during our transition from print to web publication. The continuity provided by James assured our readers, contributors and funders that the move to the web would mean no diminution of editorial standards.  For his final issue James has once again made a marvellous selection of Munster, Irish and international poets, both established and beginning.  For many years through his own website James has been offering personal tutoring in poetry and short story writing and he will now also be offering online writing courses.  We have no reservations in heartily recommending  James’s services, details of which can be found below.

We welcome Tania Hershman to this issue as fiction editor. Tania is already well known not just for her own writing but for being editor and publisher of the web’s leading reviewer of short fiction www.theshortreview.com.  For her first issue Tania has made a departure from previous editors and challenges the reader with a selection of mainly flash fiction or short shorts (as they used to be known when I was a boy)—not as short as some of Lydia Davis’s pieces but shorter than stories we usually publish. For lovers of longer, more traditional short stories we include, in translation, by the Shanghai author Wang Zhousheng,  a tale of people embroiled in the uncomfortable and discomforting conditions of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

The review section includes reviews of new books by leading Munster poets, including the first new poetry collection in more than a decade from Theo Dorgan.

In our next issue due in December/January we will be featuring the prize-winning entries from the 2010 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition. We will also be featuring videos from Frank O’Connor short story festivals past and present including an interview with Richard Ford. Leanne O’Sullivan is our new poetry editor who is assessing current submissions. We wish her luck.

Patrick Cotter

James Harpur

On the Right Lines

Writing Courses and Tutoring

Award-winning poet, translator and editor James Harpur is offering online poetry courses in September. They will be designed for beginner and advanced writers and include integrated modules on themes, form, reading and writing. He is also offering a tutorial service for poets and short story writers.
James enjoys engaging with emergent writers and is noted for his honest, insightful, sensitive and encouraging approach. He believes that, above all else, writers should enjoy the process of creation and of giving their work their very best shot. His aim is to maximise a writer’s potential, irrespective of his/her experience. He believes that the goal of getting work published is an important and inevitable one, but that such an aim should not obscure the joy of writing in the first place.

 For more information visit James’s website http://www.jamesharpur.com/

Read more about the Southword Journal Online editors here.

Back to Southword Journal 18 Contents Page

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