In William Gibson’s novel Pattern Recognition, protagonist Cayce Pollard arrives in London assured that her “soul” is lagging in the air stream behind her, “…being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic.”
We couldn’t help thinking of this as our students arrived in Dublin, enthusiastic in spirit if a bit exhausted by the journey. Naturally, we plied them with lunch and an orientation to their pending stay here in Ireland at the beautiful Irish Writers Centre, which serves as a particularly nice bookend since we’ll have our final reading in this very room on our last night in country.
Introduction by way of personal interview. We were amazed by the stuff these students dug up in five minutes’ time.
The Irish Writers Centre, home of our pending Final Reading.
Thanks to co-leader Patrick for snapping this post-lunch squad pic!
After checking into our hostel, we parted into individual workshop groups for our first real foray into the city for dinner. We can’t wait to hit the ground running tomorrow, after a well-deserved (and needed!) full night’s sleep. Oíche mhaith!
– Veronica and Patrick