It is hard to know, for we had a recurrence of winter twice this month. I was in Budapest to begin with, enjoying winter nights with my parents and gallery walks with a friend. Apart from taking time for my writing, kindly supported by the Art's Council of Northern Ireland and the Lottery Commission, I gave a radio interview to my friend Sandor Gerebics at Radio Bezs. It is fair to say that it was not a formal interview, but rather a chit-chat about poetry, films and writing. He played some of my poems made into songs by Fil Campbell, included in "The Emigrant Woman's Tale" and some of Fil's songs from the album. In the second hour, Réka Fésűs creative producer of animation films joined us, so we could discuss Weinstein and all the excitement about the Oscar nomination of the Hungarian director Ildiko Enyedi, too. The interview presented a somewhat nerve-wrecking challenge for me, for I had to translate my own poetry, into Hungarian.

Added to this, an interesting synchronicity occured on the same night:

As Radio Bezs is broadcast on the internet, anyone can listen to it, anywhere in the world. So, a couple of hours later I was asked whether I would agree to it that my poem CAFE "YOU AND ME" would be performed before a film screening in Los Angeles, for it had the same mood as the film "Time stays still" written by Geza Beremenyi and directed by Peter Gothar in 1982, just a year after I left Hungary. I said yes, of course. You can hear Reka Peti-Peterdi reciting it here, if you felt like listening to the beautiful sound of Hungarian language.

The next event was International Women's Day. On 8th of March I read with my writer friends from the Rostrevor Writers Group in Warrenpoint Library and in Banbridge Library with members of the Women Aloud Community Group. On 10th March, we travelled down to Dublin to the Irish Writers Centre to take part in a Readathon, 80 women writers from the North and South of Ireland reading from their works non-stop for hours. It was a fantastic day, culminating in a mass reading in the Garden of Rememberance.

On the 18th March, due to snow I missed the launch of Resonance, the annual poetry anthology of Community Arts Partnership, containing the winning poems of the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing. It was held in the Seamus Heaney Centre in Bellaghy, so I was really sorry to miss it. However, the anthology contains my poem "Lines" which was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2013.

On 22nd March I read from my poems in Waterstones Belfast who are storing my books, I'm glad to report. It was an enjoyable evening, reading and listening to other members of WomenAloudNi, organised by Elizabeth McGeown and WomenAloudNI.

#art #poetry #Budapest #womenaloud #CAP