We exist in small rooms lit by twin lamps that, through their yellow shades, cast a sepia light. The world beyond the window, beyond the lip of the balcony, is dark. Maybe that’s light on the horizon, but the day is over. Inside, the light pulls the walls in tighter. We live in this, we live in this — I know no other way to say it.
By Niven Govinden.
He remembers roaming the forest one afternoon, and chasing a dog away from a tray of leftovers on a picnic table. Though he still recalls the taste of the meat; scraps on a chicken leg, still wet with the dog’s saliva, the overwhelming memory is one of relief: temporarily sating the cramps in his stomach; that an hour would follow when he would no longer have to think about food.
It was our pleasure to host a discussion on collaboration and experimental writing in the Irish Writers’ Centre on Thursday night, as part of the Yes But Are We Enemies project. On the panel were gorse contributors Rob Doyle (nos. 1 & 2), Christodoulos Makris (no. 2), SJ Fowler (nos. 1 & 2) and Kit Fryatt of Wurm im Apfel Press.
We were hitchhiking on a freeway on the outskirts of the capital. The situation incited a fearful joy. ‘Cruelty? That’s just like you.’ ‘This is my country, I don’t have to tolerate anyone.’ ‘Natürlich,’ I replied. Cars zoomed past us, a monstrous violence inherent in the world today. We were young and in love and nothing else mattered.
We were asked by Sinéad Gleeson for the Irish Times who we’d pick as Laureate for Irish Fiction, and why. Our thoughts turned first to Groucho Marx (“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member”), then to Austrian Nestbeschmutzer Thomas Bernhard who hated accepting honours and patronage so much he wrote a book on it – My Prizes.