Welcome to the Munster

Literature Centre

Founded in 1993, the Munster Literature Centre (Ionad Litríochta an Deiscirt) 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.

Winter 2011 Workshops

Beginning 1st week of November.

Download the brochure.

Download a map to the Munster Literature Centre here.

To register, email info(AT)munsterlit(DOT)ie.

Fiction with Ian Wild

Workshop Overview

Week 1: Lifting the Pen--“He took up the paper and began to study form.” Seán O’Faoláin.
This introductory workshop concentrates on taking the inhibition out of writing and clearing blocks that may lie in the path of the creative process. In a series of practical exercises, the group will also explore dialogue and the development of a distinctive prose voice.

Week 2: Switching on the Light Bulb--“Dearer to me than a host of base truths is the illusion that exalts.” Alexander Pushkin
Where do ideas come from? This workshop will look at ways to generate original imaginative material for stories. Central to this session will be the notion that a story is not a story unless something actually happens.

Week 3: Beginning--“Surprise is the greatest gift that life can grant us.” Boris Pasternak.
Short stories differ to novels in that readers have to continually make an effort to assimilate new characters and settings. This workshop will look at grabbing the reader early on with an arresting first sentence and a first paragraph that doesn’t let go.

Week 4: Middle--“That is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people.” Katherine Mansfield.
The creation and exploration of characters is a key element of narrative development. This session will look at imaginative reprocessing of life experience in the depiction of fictional characters. We’ll also look at the idea of writers giving their creations ‘freewill’ as the character-driven plot works best when the truth of a story can unfold without the intrusion of writers playing God.

Week 5: End-- “True genius shudders at incompleteness.” Edgar Allen Poe
One of the great difficulties for writers of short stories is narrative closure. This workshop will explore two key elements in concluding a story. Reincorporation of material and allowing the story to control its own ending.

Week 6: Editing – the Unkindest Cuts. “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” George Orwell
This final session will look at practical ways to achieve the distance and detachment necessary to edit effectively. Participants will practice condensing prose and streamlining narratives using examples of their own work.

Participation Details

--Intimate class size (ten maximum) individual attention guaranteed from a much published prize-winning author.
--Held weekly on Thursdays, 7-9 pm, from 3 November (Fiction).
--Fee: €120 (€100 Concession) for six workshops.

Ian Wild is a writer, composer and theatre worker from Enniskean, Co. Cork, Ireland. In 2009 he won the Fish International Short Story Prize and received a literature bursary from the Irish Arts Council. His publications and broadcast work include Way Out West—a comedy series about the English community in West Cork for RTE Radio One; The Great Moodini and other stories—20 children’s stories also broadcast on RTE’s Radio One. He has a collection of short stories published by Fish: The Woman Who Swallowed The Book Of Kells and also a volume of poetry entitled Intercourse With Cacti (Bradshaw Books). His literary awards include the North West Playwrights Award, a short story prize with the Cork Literary Review and in 2005 he won a runner-up award in the Bridport Short Story Prize. His most recent publication is The Naked Umbrella Thieves (Knightstone, 2011).

__________

Poetry with Matthew Sweeney

Workshop Overview

Workshop 1: Less is More--‘It’s what you leave out, not what you put in’: W.D. Snodgrass
In this first workshop we will be looking at the benefits of simplicity, and of being spare. And at how to avoid overstatement, and overwriting. And at the enhanced power of being implicit, rather than spelling out. How less is always more in poetry.

Workshop 2: The Devil in the Details
Choosing the right rather than the wrong details is essential to the writing of good poetry. And one very simple device that is found everywhere in poetry is the humble list, where stark juxtapositions can, if one is lucky, become inexplicably enlarging.

Workshop 3: The Perils of Autobiography--‘Yet why not say what happened?’: Robert Lowell
It’s not that easy. Many would-be poets think that it is, though. The next line in Lowell’s late poem ‘Epilogue’, from where the above quote comes, is ‘Pray for the grace of accuracy’. We will be looking at poems that use autobiography well, and at the pitfalls that writing autobiographically brings with it.

Workshop 4: Using Personae
While there is nothing wrong with writing autobiographically, when it’s done right, (as we will have seen in the last workshop) many poets find it liberating to use personae sometimes – to inhabit an imagined person’s head, and draw on made-up rather than experienced detail.

Workshop 5: The Liberating Effects of Translation--‘Poetry is what gets lost in translation’: Robert Frost
This rather grumpy belief of Mr Frost’s is not one that is shared much anymore. Certainly, more and more poetry is being translated. Some fine translations are even being done by poets who do not know the language they are translating from. We will look into all this, and at the benefits of reading translations, and of attempting to translate.

Workshop 6: Writing Poetry for Children
‘There are no good poems which are only for children’: W.H Auden
Many people think that it is easier to write poetry for children. It is not. As the Auden quote suggests, a good children’s poem will be a good poem for adults as well. Much of what passes as poetry for children is very bad – patronising to its young readers, and technically inept. We will look at this, and at good examples of poetry for children, and why these are good.

Participation Details

--Intimate class size (ten maximum) individual attention guaranteed from a much published prize-winning author.
--Held weekly on Wednesdays, 7-9 pm, from 2 November (Poetry). This workshop is suitable for new students as well as students who participated in his workshops earlier in 2011. All new content.
--Fee: €120 (€100 Concession) for six workshops.

Born in Donegal in 1952, Matthew Sweeney is based in Cork currently, having previously been resident in Berlin, Timişoara and, for a long time, London. His last collection was Black Moon (2007). Several books prior to that include Sanctuary (2004) and Selected Poems (2002). New from Salt in 2010 is his retrospective selection under the title The Night Post. Bilingual collections of Sweeney’s work came out in Germany and Holland in 2008. Earlier translations appeared in Mexico, Romania, Latvia and Slovakia.

Cork Spring
Poetry Festival

15 - 18 February 2012

Read Southword Journal

Issue 21 now online!

Poetry International.org

MLC produces the Irish section of this prestigious poetry site.
Current poets: Caitríona Ní Chléirchín, Greg Delanty,
Katie Donovan, & Michael O'Loughlin.
www.poetryinternational.org

The Gregory O'Donoghue
International
Poetry Competition

Now closed. Thanks to
everyone who
entered!

Best Irish Poetry in English 2010

Visit our bookstore here.

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.

MLC Workshops

Workshops run in spring & autumn. Check back in October 2011 for more details!

Munster Literature Centre

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Frank O'Connor House, 84 Douglas Street, Cork, Ireland.

Tel. (353) 021 4312955, Email: munsterlit(AT)eircom(DOT)net