Bio

Author of three collections published by Doire Press, 2011, 2013 & 2018, Susan reads a selection from all three books here, at University of Missouri-St.Louis (Feb, 2022) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vno1MG2pSQE&t=13s . Her poems have appeared, among elsewhere, in: The Cafe Review, Oregan, USA - Gather In, in a Special Irish Edition; Bosom Pals,Ed Marie Cadden (Doire Press, 2017) an anthology entirely in aid of Breast Cancer Research in the National UniversityHospital, Galway and When They've Grown Another Me in Poetry Ireland Review, Dec 2018. https://www.poetryireland.ie/publications/poetry-ireland-review/online-archive/view/when-theyve-grow. In January 2018 her poems were Commended in the Gregory O'Donoghue Poetry Competition.

She has been an invited reader of her poems at local readings in Galway, Cork and Dublin and at festivals, including the Belfast Book Festival, Cuirt International Festival of Literature and Clifden Arts Festival and her poems have been read on radio.

Susan completed her degree in social science and qualified as a professional social worker in Trinity College, Dublin 1975. She was a psychotherapist, trainer, facilitator and occasional consultant to organisations for over thirty years until her retirement in 2012. Drawing together her writing with her earlier skills she has written interviews and facilitated conversations mediated by poetry. She has also published creative non-fiction.

Her workshop Having a New Conversation: About Dreaming was listed on the The Cuirt International Festival of Literature Programme (2015) and she facilitates similar workshops on a variety of themes, discussed through the medium of poetry, regularly and occasionally in local community settings.

While a founding editor of Skylight 47 Susan interviewed: then Ireland Professor of Poetry, Harry Clifton; Kay Ryan, the Pullitzer prize-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate, invited to Ireland by Dromineer Literature Festival - and Dani Gill, who talks about curating The Cuirt International Literature Festival.https://skylight47poetry.wordpress.com/previous-issues/. Susan's interview of Maeve O'Sullivan, appeared in The Honest Ulsterman February, 2018.http://humag.co/features/around-the-world-in-poetry-haiku-and-haibun

Thursday 26 November 2015

With Creative Devotion The Truly Profane Becomes Sacred

Whatever You Do With Devotion Is Sacred


Devote yourself to whatever, artistic or other, project and you imbue it with the sacred. The spirits attend. The muse shows up. Bali dancers, in Elizabeth Gilbert’s recounting of a tale, told to her by her teacher, in her latest book Big Magic – Creative Living Beyond Fear - adapted their dancing to suit the ideas of high-minded Western visitors who could only see the sacred as separate from profane. They left their sacred dances in the temples, danced - newly adapted forms considered a more suitable representation - in beach bars until they grew into such beautiful and sacred forms that they, in turn, transformed and re-invigorated the original temple dances and the dance goes on.

    

Create With Devotion

       Gilbert’s book demonstrates the importance of showing up: the value of making an act of devotion and giving attention to some inkling of a possibility -  devoting yourself to fanning the development of the spark of an idea or impulse. 

Intention

      That notice of intention becomes the intent that signals the muse or spirit. It is their invitation to attend. Your act of devotion, by demonstrating intention to embark on a creative project, however frail its promise, is the starting point for artistic endeavour and true creativity.



For more on creativity and Elizabeth Gilbert see the link above and her inspiring TED talks.

https://www.ted.com/speakers/elizabeth_gilbert