The Cathach 2011 - Volume II (PDF) - Sligo Libraries

Editor’s Introduction
THE CATHACH opens with Joseph O’Connor’s recognition that the battle of
the books today pitches paper originals against electronic copies on the likes
of the Kindle and iPad. Whatever form the book takes, however, its concerns
are manifestly human. So we find Bernard MacLaverty wittily employing the
titles of books to reveal a life. Elsewhere, he makes clear the difficulties
of breaking a habit intimately associated with the act of writing that can
subtract from the lifespan of the writer. The life of the writer as breadwinner
is the concern of Carlo Gébler. And every aspiring writer should read his
practical account of what a life in books entails. Not only does he illuminate
how his writer’s imagination works, he gives detailed practical advice on the
craft of writing, and he speaks honestly about the mercenary realities of the
publishing business. In Mary Branley’s story the prize is literacy itself and the
liberation it brings. Sean Golden’s poem addresses a bookish man’s lifechanging
encounter with lethal force violence. And Thomas Lynch returns to
the famous judgement from ‘The Battle of the Books’ that established the
principle of copyright by stating, ‘To every cow its calf; to books their copy”:
a civil notion that begat savagery. There is the psychological savagery too of
withheld approval and the winning of a father’s endorsement through words,
in Mary O’Shea’s short poem. Leland Bardwell considers the significance of
‘your room’ when you realise that your room is gone. While Galway poet
Mary O’Malley reflects on the depth of meaning within a single word when
we bring our dead ‘home’. A world-wide-web situated literary journal, this
volume of The Cathach delights in the notion that where the future of ‘the
book’ is concerned the true binding material is the rich experience of being
human.
- Brian Leyden