The Penny Dreadful #1 SAMPLE

THE PENNY DREADFUL

Issue 1

THE PENNY DREADFUL

The Dreadful Press presents

Issue 1

“Reinventing the Egg”

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THE PENNY DREADFUL

Editors Marc O’Connell John Keating Assistant Editor Wolfgang Amadeus Helnwein Graphic Design Leyla Bulmer Typography Ciara Norton Cover Michael Keating

Š Copyright remains with authors and artists, 2012.

Published by The Dreadful Press, Cork, Ireland, 2012.

Printed by Lettertec Ireland Ltd. Carrigtwohill, Cork.

ISSN 2009-5589 (Online) ISSN 2009-5570 (Print) www.ThePennyDreadful.org All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the copyright owner. Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners where applicable.

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Contents 6

Introduction

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Mercedes Helnwein / Frank Eimear Ryan / Livewire William Wall / Heritage William Wall / The Performance of Reality Conor O’Loughlin / Literary Lives Armel Dagorn / Repeat Offence of Meekness

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Roddy Doyle / Interview

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Karl White / Godot by the Thames

Art

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Michael Keating / Featured Artist

Poetry

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Theo Dorgan / The Laughing Girl Dylan Brennan / Bernal Díaz in New Spain David J. Costello / After the Battle Kimberly Campanello / Cullahill Castle Alan Titley / Mná na hÉireann Alan Titley / Is fada mo chosa gan bhróga Stevie Ronnie / Email from Asra John W. Sexton / The Dadaist Spaceman John W. Sexton / Beguiled in the Loops Libby Hart / Rummage David Toms / September Richard Hawtree / To Orpheus Mark O’Leary / An Agent for a Pig’s Head Adelle Stripe / Bad Blood Jamie Urquhart / Plasma Will Schutt / Dusk Will Schutt / Diminishing Scherzo Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin / Even Then Alan Titley / The Voyage of Lochmor

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Philip Coleman / Review Jennifer Matthews / Review

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Introduction Right from the get go they energetically missed their own first deadline and, several weeks late, The Penny Dreadful Issue one entitled “I Want to Ride my Bicycle” appeared. Issue one featured three carefully photocopied and stapled short stories with a print run of fifty copies – thus the ball began to roll.

Reinventing the Egg. Greetings and salutations, Dear Reader, to The Penny Dreadful Magazine issue one.

Before we kick off the festivities formally we will introduce you to the origins and evolution of this publication. Suspend disbelief – The Penny Dreadful did not just apparate in the sanctified form that you now hold in your trembling, but magnificently manicured, hands.

Part 2: In Which the Magazine Begins to Expand.

Issues like “A Finger Massage From The Lord of Hosts”, “High Brow Litter” and “As American as Borscht, Vodka and Communism” followed quickly on the heels of the first and then something odd began to happen. People began to send in their own writing. A trickle at first but soon a positive drip. Both Keating and O’Connell were somewhat baffled by this development, for the earliest issues of the zine contained no call for submissions. Thus, so it was that The Penny Dreadful accidentally became a submissionsbased literary magazine.

Later through various pleasant incidences and coincidences it was possible to distribute the zine in both Barcelona and Los Angeles.

A review in the American magazine Razorcake described the Penny Dreadful as “…nothing jaw-dropping or life-changing, but a solid exploration in creative writing with promising future editions.”

Nothing life-changing, eh? We accept your challenge.

Part 1: In Which the Magazine is Conceived and the Zygotic Penny Dreadful is Formed.

Like all good things in this world of ours, The Penny Dreadful is the result of frustrated writers lounging in pubs sucking on sugar cubes and staring into the void. One evening, John Keating and Marc O’Connell were malingering in a Cork city pub, engrossed in yet another literary discussion. It seemed that the wheels were spinning and the cart was going nowhere.

On that fateful day however something was different. Maybe it had something to do with the gravitational pull of the moon on the earth or maybe a sugar rush but inspiration struck like the sixth plague of Egypt – why not make a literary magazine?

The Editors’ original idea was to produce a magazine in which to commit their own writing to print. This magazine, or more precisely ‘zine’, was to be anonymous and distributed around Cork city wherever there was a flat surface that wasn’t being watched too diligently.

Part 3: In Which The Penny Dreadful Evolves into its Current Form and 6

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way they smell and all that stuff. There is no reason why they cannot co-exist with digital media which does not smell nearly as good, at least not yet.

Regardless of the medium however the onus of The Penny Dreadful is on producing the highest quality magazine we can.

Fortunately, we received an amazing slew of talented writers in response to our call for submissions. Without them this would not have been possible.

We would also like to take the opportunity to wholeheartedly thank Roddy Doyle for taking a few hours off while Marc awkwardly spluttered questions at him in the first of our interviews.

The Penny Dreadful hopes to probe the nooks and crannies of the cavities of fiction, poetry and every form of literature. It does not have stars in its weeping eyes nor a particularly idealistic soul. There is only the void.

Attempts to Justify its Existence in an Increasingly Digital World.

To meet the challenge, The Penny Dreadful team expanded to include Wolfgang A. Helnwein as Assistant Editor and Leyla Bulmer and Ciara Norton as designers. With extra hands on deck the team set out to expand the magazine into something more substantial than photocopied, highbrow litter made in a kitchen. After a short yet poignant silence for the earlier zine, the team rolled up their sleeves, greased their elbows, cracked their knuckles and then crunched the numbers.

The original plan was to pay for the printing with shoeshines and chewing gum, but money is a way better idea. So to pay for this expansion an online fundraising campaign was launched. It is as a result of the generosity and patience of our patrons and funders that we can present you with the finished magazine you hold in your hands today. Indeed, the entirety of the ever growing Penny Dreadful team are profusely thankful to everyone who donated to the magazine both nonymously and anonymously.

From the outset the editorial staff wanted something that could be held and saved, something that you could stack up on your book shelves to show all your friends how worldly and clever and sophisticated you are.

Without seeing the printed word as sailing against the winds of ineffable change under bare poles, the decision was made to create a digital edition for increased accessibility. The crux of it is the editors like printed books, the

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Patrons Germånico Baltar Claus Christensen Ciara Ferguson Dermot Magee Donal McCarthy The Munster Literature Centre Damien O’Sullivan Tina Pisco

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Mercedes Helnwein / Frank PART I: FRANK That damn asshole who lived on the other side of the fence with his reindeer sweaters and the coffee mug finally met his maker the other day.

To begin with, that fence is mine and everything on my side of it is likewise mine. I painted it white on a sweltering Sunday afternoon when I could have been doing any number of pleasurable things. But no, I stuck to my pride. I said to myself, “Chad, you’re gonna have the best damn yard in town, and quite frankly, that fence has got to be white. And you’re gonna paint it white, because you’ve got morals.” And it’s true – I do. So I went to Harold’s Hardware down the street, picked out a bucket of white paint and painted that thing all Sunday long.

“Watcha doin’, Chad?”

You see, that was Frank with his, fancy, yellow Sunday drink. He came strolling over to the fence with one hand in his pocket and the other holding his drink, smiling. He doesn’t drink coffee on Sundays – just his special “Sunday Drink”.

“I’m painting the fence white,” I muttered.

“Looks great.”

Great my ass! How could he tell? I hadn’t even finished my first stroke. I mean, of course it was great, but how could he tell? Yeah, but what are you going to do? He’s a dentist.

“What color are you using?”

“White.”

“I meant the brand,” he laughed and patted me on the back.

“Dutch Boy. Does it really make a difference to you? Can you sleep better now?”

I shook his hand off my shoulder and ducked out of sight to paint the lower part of the fence. I’m allergic to Frank and I’ve never made a big secret out of it. My wife says it’s embarrassing, but as far as I’m concerned it’s my right as an American to hate my neighbor.

“Anyway, it looks great, buddy,” he said. “Are you getting ready for the yard contest?”

I got to my feet and stared long and hard at him. That man was up to something.

“Why?” I was as a matter of fact – I was getting ready for the Annual Silverstream Yard Contest.

Of course I was – like every year. Everyone knew that I was a yard fanatic. I had subscribed to Yard & You for eight years now, I was vice president of the Hedge Society and I obviously had the best damn yard in town. Last year I finally made it to second place, and this time my yard was so flawless it was downright scary. I woke up at nights in a cold sweat, wondering how it was even humanly possible to have such a perfect hedge – such a deep, juicy, emerald sausage running alongside the fence. My hands had created that hedge, and I trembled when I looked

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at it. I knew I was a genius.

“I heard you won second place last year,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Going for the ‘big one’ this time?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m going for the ‘big one’,” I said just to shut him up.

Frank, however, was on a roll.

“That’s great, Chad!”

“Sure.”

“And with that hedge you just can’t lose.”

“I know.”

“Of course, you know that this hedge here is technically on my property.”

I stopped painting.

“What?”

“Didn’t you know? It’s on my property. Legally. It’s your hedge, of course, but legally it’s on my property. Don’t worry, they’re just silly rules – they don’t mean much.”

Why are people like Frank born? Well, I’ll tell you why – to make life miserable for the handful of decent men who live in this cesspool. That’s all they’re there for . . . for coming over to your goddamn yard and telling you that your hedge is on their property. Let me tell you, there’s only one answer you can give these people:“You’re talking out of your ass.”

“Now, Chad – ” “This is my hedge. See that fence? The hedge is on my side of it.”

“Yes, but technically it’s mine, because that fence is three yards into my property.”

I let out a snort that I hoped sounded derisive.

He laughed. “You know, I can show you the map of the property some day.”

“Look, I’m trying to work here,” I said. “Can you just go and play Monopoly with your dentist pals or something?”

Frank held up his drink in a farewell gesture. “Well, I’ll be seeing you. Don’t work too hard, Chad. It’s Sunday.”

Fuck him. How was I supposed to concentrate on anything now? My whole insides felt like they were crawling up my throat. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to jump over the hedge and charge at him with my shovel . . . but instead, I turned away and stared blankly at a little stone next to my shoe. The tears just came trickling out and there was nothing I could do. That was my hedge. If anything was ever mine, it was that hedge, and suddenly here was Frank, telling me it was on his property. I brushed the little stone away and drove my hand gently over the green belly of the hedge.

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Michael Keating / Featured Artist the glut of information which distorts the image and hopefully what remains are the impressions, the geometry and form of the experience. The final image is a byproduct of the activity.

‘Niamh’ takes this process and widens the perspective to take in the individual. I became interested in how people influence their environment and vice versa. The external space of the university is presented through the internal viewpoint of the student.

The cover image for this issue is part of this same series, which explores the similarities between people who inhabit the same space. Fifty local women were photographed and the images layered over each other. Their common traits become exaggerated, their differences fall away, so that the resulting ‘individual’ is not a likeness of any one real participant but a new, created, fictional person- a sculpture of their shared experience in space and time.”

Michael Keating lives in Cork and studied Fine Art in the Crawford College of Art and Design. He now studies Creative and Digital Marketing in University College Cork.

This project started as a series of experiments to photograph structures in time. By this I mean creating a sense of the way we structure time through the static and instantaneous moment photography provides. In one of the early experiments, I gave thirteen art students cameras and asked them to take a photograph every hour to document their day. These photographs were then placed over each other in different ways, bringing out the similarities and discrepancies of each participant, to create a kind of photographed sculpture of time.

The British land artist Richard Long said “walking – as art – provided a simple way for me to explore relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement.”

‘Night Walk’ takes the idea of a sculpture in time and develops it through Long’s idea of ‘walking as art’. Taking the Crawford College of Art and Design as my starting point, I walked home through Cork city to Douglas.

I took photographs along my way, not with any aesthetic intent but purely as a record of the walk. I would take a photograph and then take the furthest point in that photograph as the starting point for the next and so on. All of these pictures are present in the image.

No information has been taken out but it is 12

Michael Keating / Night Walk

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Michael Keating / Niamh THE PENNY DREADFUL

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Unavailable (You have to buy it to see everything!)

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The Voyage of Lochmor

The tale I’m going to tell you And I can tell no more Is how we tried to leave the island Through wind and rain and showers.

My bag stuffed full of chickens And every kind of junk To spend the brand new year there As scuttered as a skunk.

I rose up on Wednesday morning Grabbed my ragbag in my hand To head for Lochamaddy And the Lochmor on the strand.

The cold had numbed my leggies The snow crushed down the heath I will never forget the terror Until the drawing of my last breath.

And when we reached the smithy A kind man welcomed us And showed us love and caring And strove to quench our thirst.

He dried us by the fire Put our arse fornenst the stove And sent us forth into the night With dry warm shoes and clothes.

The motor took us on our way On roads potholed and rough And we spent some time in Cearsabhagh Drowning more of the hard stuff.

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Contributors DYLAN BRENNAN’S poetry has been published in a number of Irish and international journals such as Poetry Ireland Review, Revival Literary Journal, Arabesques, Agenda Broadsheets,Tributaries etc. A teacher of English literature, and a doctoral student of Mexican literature, film and photography he has also collaborated with the Fundación Juan Rulfo on two of their recent publications El gallo de oro (2010) and Juan Rulfo: Otras Miradas (2010). In 2006 he featured in the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. He lives and works in Mexico.

KIMBERLY CAMPANELLO was born in Elkhart, Indiana, and now lives in Dublin and London. Her pamphlet Spinning Cities was published by Wurm Press (Dublin) in 2011. She was the featured poet in the Summer 2010 issue of The Stinging Fly, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in magazines in the US, UK, and Ireland, including Tears in the Fence, nthposition, Burning Bush II, Abridged, Cream City Review, and Irish Left Review. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and is in the final year of her PhD in Creative Writing at Middlesex University, London.

PHILIP COLEMAN is a Lecturer in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin.

DAVID J. COSTELLO lives in Wallasey, Merseyside, and is co-organiser of local poetry venues “Bards of New Brighton” and “Liver Bards”. His work has been published in several anthologies and poetry journals including Quantum Leap, Chester Poets, Grist, Reach Poetry, Poetry 24 (E-Zine) and Envoi. Further work has been accepted for publication before the end of 2012 by Thynks Publishing, North West Poets, and The Passionate Transitory (E-Zine).He has been shortlisted and placed in various competitions, most recently being shortlisted for the 2011 Grist Poetry Prize and winning the 2011 Welsh Poetry Competition.

ARMEL DAGORN was born in 1985 in France and has been living in Cork for the past 6 years. His stories appear or are forthcoming in magazines such as Southword, Paper Darts andWordlegs and he keeps them all at www.armeldagorn.wordpress. com.

THEO DORGAN was born in Cork in 1953; he has made his home in Dublin for many years. Poet, prose writer, editor and translator, he has also written scripts for film documentaries and worked as a presenter of literature programmes on radio and television for over 25 years. Theo Dorgan is a member of Aosdána.

LIBBY HART’S most recent collection of poetry, This Floating World (2011), was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and The Age Book of the Year Awards. Her first collection, Fresh News from the Arctic (2006), received the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Prize. She is a recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig and a DJ O’Hearn Memorial Fellowship at The Australian Centre (University of Melbourne). She has been published widely and her work has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

RICHARD HAWTREE completed a doctorate on Anglo-Saxon poetic manuscripts in 2009. He has since written about Irish High Crosses and the theological and philosophical preoccupations of the Insular world, 800-1200 A.D. He lives in Cork where he saves rare books from neglect (by buying them) and occasionally writes poetry.

MERCEDES HELNWEIN was born in Vienna, Austria, daughter to renowned painter and art provocateur Gottfried Helnwein. She has been regularly exhibited at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles as well as throughout the U.S. and Europe. Her 2010 London exhibition Whistling Past the Graveyard was bought up in its entirety by Damien Hirst.Through her wide repertoire of drawings, pastels, and film she has collaborated with the designers like Orla Kiely, drawn album artwork for Beck and frequently worked on projects with her brother, the composer Ali Helnwein. In 2008 her debut novel The Potential Hazards of Hester Day was published by Simon & Schuster, NY. She currently lives and works in downtown Los Angeles and Ireland.

JENNIFER MATTHEWS was born in Missouri (USA) and has lived Ireland since 2003. Her poetry has been published inStingingFly,CorkLiteraryReview,Mslexia,Foma&Fontanelles,Revival,NecessaryFictionandPoetrySalzburg,andanthologised in Dedalus’s collection of immigrant poetry in Ireland, Landing Places (2010). She has read her work at the the Heaventree Poetry Festival (Coventry, UK), at Electric Picnic and as a guest poet with ‘Catch the Moon’ (Cork, Ireland). She is currently working on a collaboration with poet Anamaría Crowe Serrano.

EILÉAN NÍ CHUILLEANÁIN is a poet, translator and Emeritus Professor of English at Trinity College, Dublin. She has also served on the Board of Amharclann de hÍde and on that of Ireland Literature Exchange. Her first collection won the 18

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Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1973. In 2010 The Sun-fish was the winner of the Canadian-based International Griffin Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award. She is a founder of the literary magazine Cyphers. She is a member of Aosdána.

MARK O’LEARY is in his final year studying English & Philosophy at UCC. Last year he cobbled together a poetry pamphlet called “The Action” which now no longer exists.

CONOR O’LOUGHLIN was born and bred in Cork, where he did his BA in English and German at UCC before studying literary translation at the University of Edinburgh. He now works in Scotland as a translator, and so is often to be found playing with words on either a professional or a recreational basis. His work has appeared in The Irish Times, The Douglas Post and Vantage magazine.

STEVIE RONNIE is a freelance writer and artist with a background in computer science. His work, often collaborative and participatory in nature, spans art forms to produce pieces for publication, exhibition, installation and/or performance.

Stevie’s poetry has appeared in UK and US publications including Anon, Other Poetry, Ink Sweat & Tears, nthposition and The Common. In 2010 he was selected as a Jerwood/Arvon poetry mentee. Stevie is currently working on his first full collection of poetry and next year he will undertake a month long residency in the Arctic Circle. Further information at: www. stevieronnie.com EIMEAR RYAN’S stories have appeared in New Irish Writing, The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, and the Trinity College anthology A Thoroughly Good Blue. She won the Hennessy First Fiction Award 2008, the Sean Dunne Young Writers Award 2011, and the Over the Edge New Writer Award 2011. She recently received an Arts Council bursary to write her first novel.

WILL SCHUTT is the author of the forthcoming book Westerly, winner of the 2012 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. His poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Agni, FIELD, The New Republic and elsewhere.

JOHN W. SEXTON’S fifth poetry collection, The Offspring of the Moon, is due from Salmon Poetry later in 2012. His poem ‘The Green Owl’ was awarded the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007 for best single poem, and in that same year he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.

ADELLE STRIPE was born in 1976 and lives in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire. She is a Creative Writing MA graduate from Manchester University’s Centre for New Writing and is a founding member of the Brutalist Poets. Her work has been widely published in underground publications in Britain and America. She has published three solo collections since 2008.

Her second collection Cigarettes in Bed won ‘Poetry Book of the Year’ at the 3:AM Magazine Awards 2009.

ALAN TITLEY is a native of Cork and Emeritus Professor of Modern Irish in UCC and author of six novels, more than a hundred stories, many plays and a little poetry. He has also written for radio and television. His Scéal na Gaeilge [The Story of the the Irish Language] was shown this year on TG4. His scholarly interests are mainly directed towards Irish and Scottish literature. His latest books are Nailing Theses [Lagan Press, Belfast], and Smuf [An Gúm], a novel for children. He also writes a weekly column for The Irish Times.

DAVID TOMS lives and works in Cork, where he is currently completing a PhD in the School of History, UCC. His work has appeared in many magazines; he has two chapbooks, For The Misanthropic Muse (Default, 2009), Tom O’Bedlam Sings His Song (KFS, 2010) and his first collection Soma | Sema (KFS, 2012) was released earlier this year.

JAMIE URQUHART lives in Cork city. He has a BSc in biochemistry from UCC. His poetry has been published in Vantage.

KARL WHITE is a freelance writer based in London. He holds graduate degrees in Ancient History and Philosophy. The publications he has written for includeThe DailyTelegraph,The Sunday Business Post,The Literary Encyclopaedia and Philosophy Now.Heisco-editorandcontributortoBeckettRe-MemberedAftertheCentenaryandhasalsowrittentextbooksonShakespearean drama for a secondary-school audience.

WILLIAM WALL has written four novels - the most recent of which was longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker prize - three collections of poetry and a volume of short fiction. His latest book is Ghost Estate ( Salmon Poetry). He has won and been shortlisted for many prizes, most recently the 2011 Virginia Faulkner Award in the USA. More information, as well as his blog, can be found at www.williamwall.net.

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Dylan Brennan Kimberly Campanello Philip Coleman David J. Costello Armel Dagorn Theo Dorgan Roddy Doyle Libby Hart Richard Hawtree Mercedes Helnwein Jennifer Matthews Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Mark O’Leary Conor O’Loughlin Stevie Ronnie Eimear Ryan Will Schutt John W. Sexton Adelle Stripe Alan Titley David Toms Jamie Urquhart Karl White William Wall

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