Winter Papers, the annual journal of arts and ideas, presents readers with a snapshot of art practices in Ireland and abroad, examining architecture, acting, visual arts, music and filmmaking as well as more traditional literary writing. Now in its 11th volume, the journal’s production values are exquisite.
This volume opens with an interview with Eileen Walsh, tracing her acting career from her early role in Enda Walsh’s play, Disco Pigs, alongside Cillian Murphy, to her rise to international acclaim on stage and screen.
Discussing her role as Aunt Bridie in Say Nothing, she notes that the lengthy process of attaching a prosthetic hand left her wearing it for up to 14 hours a day. “The part teaches you that you have to disappear,” she says – an interesting insight into the great self-discipline and suppression of ego required by this profession.
The challenges of artistic practice – insecurities, boundary-pushing, and knowing when a work is ready – are explored in a charming conversation between poets Julia Copus and Martina Evans. Evans shares emancipating advice with her students – “Write as if your words are going into a time capsule that won’t be opened for years and years.” Poetry, Evans says, is like a magic trick, “because it’s just black and white marks on a paper or a mouthful of air, as Sappho said. And yet it can summon a whole world.”
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Male grief is rarely explored in Irish writing, but Ferdia Lennon’s short story Samhain captures the anguish of Stevo Byrne, a teenager facing death for the first time, and his attempt to return his brother’s soul to the living on Halloween night. The experience is recounted through classmate Fionn’s thoughtful and empathic voice. Somewhat macabre in places, the story contains Lennon’s trademark style of irreverent humour, strong Dublin idiom and great pathos.
In a personal piece, Colin Walsh writes of the joyful experience of becoming a father for the first time in his home in Belgium, and of his father’s illness and death in Ireland shortly afterwards. The account is interspersed with moments of great lyricism, such as an image of a butterfly looping around the newborn’s pram, “a handwritten arc of colour in the air”. The narrator imagines this might be his father visiting from the future, after his death.
The themes of loss and recovery are also central to an interview with architect Valerie Mulvin who, together with her late husband, Niall McCullough, have influenced the built landscape across the island of Ireland and beyond, changing both how we view space and live in it.
Following her husband’s death, Mulvin has pieced together the files for a new book, Dublin - Creation Occupation Destruction. The interviewer sensitively explores the architect’s loss and her engagement with her husband’s writing since his death. The final sentence encapsulates her own ambitions, “When you do something properly, and people feel it has been beautifully thought through, they respect it.”
An interview with Mexican artist Alberto Ortega Trejo provides insight into the artist’s childhood in Tasquillo and to the wider social context of the polluted and impoverished Mezquital Valley. His work is environmentally and politically sensitive, using mixed media and found objects such as cactus skins. The interview reveals an artist whose visual language is rooted in his family’s homeplace.
Closer to home, Niamh Flannagan writes poetically about her process as a printmaker and of seeing “[...] a velvety black aquatint being pulled from a copper plate”. Her black-and-white images reveal a fascination with the medium’s darker, tonal possibilities, a theme also reflected in Brian Fay’s remarks on his drawing process, where “each drawing is a sort of shadow, a shadow of the source that in itself is not present”.
Brendan Mac Evilly’s quirky story of an adulterous night which ends in tragedy strikes a fine balance between comedy and terror. The final paragraphs evoke sympathy for the devastating consequences of a man’s involuntary actions.
Jan Carson’s story raises ethical questions about the fraught area of Post-Troubles documentation. Her black humour and sensitive portrayal of the hapless academic at the centre of the controversy make this a compelling read.
A single photograph of a radio mic is a fitting tribute to the late Seán Rocks who, as the anchor on RTÉ’s premier arts show, Arena, had presented the previous 10 issues of the journal before a live audience.
There is something for everyone in Winter Papers 11 – a cultural barometer of our times, but also a Christmas annual which would stand the test of time in any time capsule.
An Alternative Irish Christmas is Tramp Press’s 13-piece anthology which, as the title suggests, presents a different version of Christmas.
The opening story, Jessica Traynor’s Careless People, has a man setting out, against his wife’s wishes, to buy a Christmas dog for their teenage daughter. His fear of losing face is beautifully captured, as are the pressures on parents in today’s tech-isolating world. Witty social observations leavened by situational comedy abound, as well as a sense of a man lost in an ever-more complex, codified world.
December Twenty Third describes a family visit to an aunt in a nursing home. Belinda McKeon’s story is wickedly humorous, but has at its essence some acerbic social commentary.
Christmas Number One by Soula Emmanuel, a touching account of a trans person coming out to their loved ones, is also set around a nursing home visit. The taking of a family photograph is used to tell family members of their transition.
Mike McCormack’s Adeste Fidelis has a scifi/gothic feel: an unexpected visitor thanks two women for their daughter’s donation and sacrifice to science. The story has echoes of McCormack’s earlier work and of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.
The final piece, an excerpt from Anne Enright’s The Green Road, offers a hilarious account of the Irish Christmas supermarket shop. Enright’s ability to capture the absurdity of human behaviour makes this a text which sparkles with life.
An Alternative Irish Christmas will make a wonderful gift, especially for anyone jaded by other Christmas literary offerings.
Sinéad Mac Aodha is the executive director of Literature Ireland
