Proofs for The Alexandra Sequence

I've had the proofs for The Alexandra Sequence now. Carcanet have done a good job on it. I also got my preferred cover image. It seems that the book will be coming out in September.

Portico Library Reading

Looking forward to reading on June 25th at the Portico Library in Manchester with Bath Spa Professor, Tim Liardet.

The Alexandra Sequence

It looks like the publication date for my next book of poems, The Alexandra Sequence, is July 2016.

I'm on the Carcanet blog talking about mumming and poetry. It's in relation to my next of poems, The Alexandra Sequence, which is due out in July 2016.

Some more reviews

A few more reviews of Poetry and Privacy have emerged. There is one in The Guardian by David Wheatley and another on the Tower Poetry website by Claire Crowther.

First review of Poetry and Privacy

Poetry and Privacy has been reviewed by David Kennedy at Stride magazine - this is the first review of the book (at least to my knowledge!)

Video of a poem being read

The people at Literature Northwest have just put together a suite of writer-performance videos. I'm seen in one reading my poem, 'Grand Theft America'  (from MUDe) and talking briefly about my work.

The latest PN Review contains an interesting interview with Peter McDonald conducted by Fran Brearton. It contains quite a lot about McDonald's early formation which I didn't know.  I've also got a new poem in the issue: 'Alexandra One'.

Some delay to the publication of Poetry and Privacy. But I've had proofs now and the publisher is just creating the index. So it should be out in a few weeks - fingers crossed!

First sight of new book

 A listing for Poetry and Privacy, my new book, appears on the W. H. Smith website.

Durcan and Kennelly

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry appears now in the OUP catalogue. I've got an essay in it - there are 40 contributors! - which assesses Paul Durcan and Brendan Kennelly. Both of these poets have been very popular, of course, and they have had some academic attention. In his time Kennelly has probably been over-rated, but I'm not sure Durcan has been fairly treated (at least by academia.)

New poems

I've got some new poems up at Digital Behemoth.

Review of Liddy 'Selected'

Over on his blog, Michael Begnal, the editor of Honeysuckle, Honeyjuice, has written a positive review of Liddy's Selected Poems.

Irish Championships 2011

As it happened, I managed to exceed my targeted performance in the Irish Chess Championship. I finished in second place, scored 7/9, and had a rating performance of 2397.

In the penultimate round, I was a little unlucky, when, in travelling to the venue, I was delayed by a double accident on the M50. This meant I got to the venue 35 minutes late and I didn't manage to win the game. I doubt it would have made any difference to the overall result, though, as Stephen Brady was simply playing too well.

I did particularly well with the Black pieces, scoring 4/4 (following 4/5 with Black last year). I even got away with playing the Nimzo-Indian, an opening I hadn't ventured for over twenty years.

After the launch

James Liddy: Selected Poems was launched at the Irish Writer's Centre on Tuesday. There was a good crowd and five people gave readings from the book. Arlen House have done a fine job with the production of the Selected (including a limited edition hardback) and I am very happy with it.

Launch of Liddy's Selected Poems

The Irish Times has looked forward to the launch of Liddy's Selected Poems on Tuesday. The Arlen House blog also has some details as well as an image of the book's cover.

Liddy

A couple of things have come out recently. The most important of these is James Liddy: Selected Poems, which has just emerged from Arlen House. There will be a launch at The Irish Writer's Centre in Dublin on June 28 at 7.00 pm. Besides that, I've got a poem in the new Poetry Ireland and a review (of Hodge by Oliver Reynolds) in New Welsh Review. Meanwhile, I have an essay in the latest edition of The Reader on the relationship between poetry and computer games.

On the chess front, I recently played at the e2e4 event at Sunningdale. I came joint sixth in a group of players on 4.5/7 with a performance rating of 2265. Not so bad (my only loss was to GM Keith Arkell) and that was certainly a lot better than my performance of 2139 at this year's 4NCL. Probably the final event I will play this season is the Irish Championships in Dublin where I would like to improve on the score I got last year of 5.5/9.

Some new poems

Some new poems of mine have gone up at John Hoppenthaler's site.

Poetry and Privacy

It looks like my critical book is coming out with Seren in July 2012. The full title is: Poetry and Privacy: Questioning Public Interpretations of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry. I'll probably tweak a few things between now and publication day, but the set of chapters, if not the exact sequence, is fairly certain: (a) Mahon (b) Maxwell (c) Heaney and Plath (d) Minhinnick (e) Groarke (f) Burnside (g) Jones and Graham

Selected Poems of James Liddy

I've been co-editing the Selected Poems of James Liddy for the past while. On my visit to Madison some weeks ago I was able to meet up with my co-editor, Tyler Farrell, with James's partner, Jim Chapson, and with Alan Hayes, the likely publisher of the book. It's possible that this volume, which will be a relatively selective Selected, may now appear sooner (i.e. this summer) rather than later.