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Monday 24 December 2012

Expect the Unexpected

Everything you always wanted to know about the creativity of computers but were afraid to ask... and plenty you never even suspected.

My review of Tony Veale's Exploding the Creativity Myth: The Computational Foundations of Linguistic Creativity is forthcoming in drb.

Friday 14 December 2012

The Influence of Edna O'Brien


Edna O'Brien, outside the Pavillion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire at the Mountains To Sea Festival in 2011. It's the closest I've ever been to her. But over the years I have met her figuratively, through her books, not least her recent memoir, Country Girl. I'm delighted to get the news that the iconic Eclectica, one of the oldest surviving online literary publications, will publish my review-essay 'The Influence of Edna O'Brien' in their Jan/Feb edition.


Tuesday 4 December 2012

Try Something Different


The very fine Ofi's West African edition has just gone online with poetry in translation from Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone and Ghana  www.theofipress.webs.com

My story Auslanders can now be found at http://theofipress.webs.com/mcgrathpaula.htm

Here's a taste from current Ofi Press, from the first African to be awarded a nobel prize for literature.

IN THE SMALL HOURS
By Wole Soyinka

Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on.

.......