Literary Journals: The winter crop of literary journals has plenty to keep you occupied over the Christmas break, writes Rosita Boland
The Shop, No 16. €8.50
The Shop keeps things simple and elegant: poems laid out on pages with generous space, with small monotone illustrations scattered throughout. Among the contributions that catch the eye in this issue are the quiet ferocity of Aidan Rooney's 'Dismissal'; Gina Eddison's charming poem about childhood, 'Imprint'; Aileen Kelly's trio of poems about memory and photography, 'A Trick of the Light'; and Gerald Dawe's series of vignettes, A Day in the Life.
Irish Pages No 2. €14
This issue is titled "The Earth Issue", and many of the featured pieces focus on environment, landscape, science and nature. Exceptional mention is due to the outstanding picture essay by Rachel Giese Brown, entitled 'Field Work'. Her remarkable photographs are like epiphanies: a mountain road in France resembling a piece of stitched fabric; an ellipses of abandoned cars in a Donegal field; the surreal pyramid shapes of boats wrapped in plastic in a wintry Cape Cod. Other highlights include: the meditative 'Climbing Errisbeg', by Tim Robinson; an essay on Irish language by Cathal Ó Searcaigh; poems by Sarah Maguire; a memorial poem to Dorothy Molloy by Michael Longley; and an essay by Michael Viney on the 'Parsley of Alexandria'.
The Dublin Review No 17. €7.50
In this issue, Steve Yarbrough has a wonderful, compelling account of the fallout from being pickpocketed on a train in Poland, 'Reverting to Redneck'. The robbery in itself was trivial, but the effect it had was anything but. Yarbrough captures perfectly the way in which one's environment and surroundings become temporarily, but completely, sinister in the aftermath of a robbery. In 'A Nun's Grave', Denis Sampson has a beautiful, moving elegy for his wife's deceased aunt, "Auntie Nun". It also manages to say more about the Mercy Order in one piece than the piles of recent newspaper articles on the same subject. Among the rest are: a short story from a forthcoming collection by Eugene McCabe; a fine piece of reportage about the oil industry in Chad by Maurice Walsh; and an essay by Colm Tóibín on John Butler Yeats, father of the famous sons.
Southword No 7. €6
Poems up front, fiction in the middle, and reviews at the back. Very organised - but have Southword not heard of paragraph indentations? This issue contains the six winning stories from the Sean O'Faolain short story competition. They are a truly strange bunch. 'The Serpentine Trap', by Aidan Hartman, is an excruciating pastiche of the recent fictional biographies of Henry James. 'I Am On The Catwalk', by David Hart, is a dodgy stream of consciousness piece. 'The Good Kind', by Jon Boilard, at least is short. I was too depressed to read any more. Were these really the best stories that competition judge and Southword's fiction editor, Philip MacCann, could find?
Metre No16. €10
David Wheatley, one of the Metre editors, and a resident of Hull for the last few years, has been quietly making it his own place, in a series of essays, reviews and interviews associated with the city. In this issue, he has a thoughtful and intriguing interview with poet and Hull resident Peter Didsbury. There is a short, insightful tribute to the late W.G. Sebald by his friend, poet Adam Czerniawski. Among the poets represented in this are: Sinead Morrissey, with her lovely poem, 'Driving Alone on a Snowy Evening'; Carol Rumen's 'Ordinary Soles'; and Paul Muldoon's 'Sixty Instant Messages to Tom Moore', "When Malachi wore/ the collar of gold. Church Bay./ A glint of foreshore".
Here's a bee from this particular bonnet: whatever about poems carrying dedications in individual published collections, putting dedications on poems in journals is simply a distracting, irritating vanity, adding nothing for the reader. Several poems in this round of The Shop, Metre and Southword cave in to this self-indulgence. Surely poems are meant to stand alone and matter because of what they are and what they mean, and not because of whom they are dedicated to?
Studies No 272. €7.50
This issue looks at the idea of the Irish literary canon, focusing on the place of religion - specifically Catholicism - in the work of some major Irish writers. Mary Kenny examines Catholic values in Maeve Binchy's books; Stanley van der Ziel looks at redemption in John McGahern's That They May Face the Rising Sun; and Una Agnew tries to figure out what God means in the work of Patrick Kavanagh.
As Fergus O'Donoghue points out in his thought-provoking editorial, "the most convincing examples of Irish Catholicism come from those who, whilst no longer believing, have not lost their respect for the Church of their youth", and gives the example of two bestselling and radically different Irish writers of the 20th century - Maeve Binchy and James Joyce.
Rosita Boland is an Irish Times journalist