introducing the joy jumble

M A Y :: what I'm loving & looking forward to

The birds are so delighted with themselves of late. I hear them from the moment I rise until late into the afternoon. Chatting across each other, interrupting, gossiping, flirting. Their banter lifts the day.

The seeds are starting to sprout in the green house. Fancy kale, flamenco-skirt coriander, sunflowers stretching towards the light. Thirsty tomato plants, shy blue poppies, gangly teenage sweet-pea shoots. My son has taken over the job of watering them daily, and comes back up with a report on each plants growth like he’s been chatting to friends.

As I type, my dog Charlie has plonked her belly on one of my feet and is resting her chin on the other. She is snoring softly, we are keeping one another warm.

These are some small things that are bringing me joy at the moment - they are my Joy Jumble.

Which brings me to my new idea. Once a month I’d like to share with you what I’m loving, what I’m looking forward to, what is sparking joy. Books, writing here on Substack, songs, things that made me laugh, what is happening out in my garden. To give you a taster, I’m going to post May’s Joy Jumble as free for everyone, moving forward it will be for paid subscribers only. It’s a pretty book-heavy edition, I just couldn’t leave any of these beauties out.

Ok, so let’s dive in.

books for my holidays, as modelled by Charlie. how beautiful are all these covers?!

Very soon, I am going away by myself for four nights and five days. Last year I did this for the first time in oof, maybe a decade or more. No agenda, no plan, just me, a beach, a bed and a pile of books. I didn’t realise quite how much I needed that complete switch off time, how deeply nourishing it was, how tired I actually was ! I am lucky enough to be able to take the time again this year, and I cannot wait. As much to dive into these beautiful books as anything else.

Hagstone | Sinéad Gleeson
'Wave-fucked’ are the opening two words of

Sinéad Gleeson

’s debut work of fiction. Words that sum up the wild, elemental sense of womanhood and of place that the novel promises to explore. I loved the corporeal, feminist, artistic explorations of self that made up her essay collection Constellations and am really looking forward to seeing where she has decided to take these ideas in fiction form. Plus, the main character is called Nell, which is the name I wish I’d had the opportunity to name a daughter, it’s strong and ancient and a little bit wild.

Weathering | Ruth Allen
Deep time. Ancient stone. Interior and exterior landscapes. I have a long-term obsession with the ways in which our own bodies can be experienced as topography. It is, I think, one of the reasons I am drawn to my work as a acupuncturist - traversing the body, I use with points with names like Joining of the Valleys, Very Great Abyss, Spirit Burial Ground, Kunlun Mountain, Yin Mound. I cannot wait to dive into this beauty of a book and learn what geologist and outdoor psychotherapist

Ruth Allen

suggests the ancient natural forms of rocks and mountains can teach us as humans about resilience and change.

All the Good Things You Deserve | Elaine Feeney
I am not very widely read when it comes to poetry, but I sometimes come across work that grabs me and won’t let me go. This latest collection of poems by Elaine Feeney promises to do this, and is right up my alley in terms of subject matter - ‘a powerful, personal, fierce collection about women's lives, bodies, battles and triumphs’. I loved her novel How to Build a Boat, and am really looking forward to sitting with her words.

The Nerves and Their Endings | Jessica Gaitán Johannesson
I’ve had this book on my shelf since taking part in

Kerri ní Dochartaigh

’s Writing Through Emergency course earlier this year. Again, it speaks to so much I am fascinated by - the body as a measuring tool for planetary harm, a nervous system under increasing stress. A book about how we respond to crises, I am really excited to read about how Johannesson draws parallels between an eating disorder and environmental neurosis and explores themes such as response and responsibility, belonging and bodies.

Minor Detail | Adania Shibli
I listened to an excerpt of this novel being read out an Irish Arts for Palestine event at the end of last year, and it has stayed with me ever since. Here is what the blurb tells us:

Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba - the catastrophe that led to the displacement and expulsion of more than 700,000 people - and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman, and kill and bury her in the sand. Many years later, a woman in Ramallah becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with the ‘minor detail’ of history. A haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow | Gabrielle Zevin
I would say 50% of the agents I’ve read up on have mentioned this as one of the books they hold up as a ‘dream book’ to publish. Zadie Smith says she ‘devoured it’, and I wanted something that I could lose myself in for a few days. This seems to be the ticket !

Making Sense of Menopause | Susan Willson
…and now for something completely different! I’m 45, I’ve had a hysterectomy (although I’ve retained one ovary, so still have some hormones), I’m out of the early baby years and I can certainly feel myself at a threshold moment in my life. I can feel (and see!) my body changing, my priorities are changing, my energy is changing, my focus is changing. And I have so many women coming into my in my acupuncture practice speaking about the same thing. I’m interested in how to embrace this new chapter of my life rather than look on it as an inevitable decline. I’ve had this book on my shelf now for about two years, and now feels like the time to begin it. It is available also as an audio book, so this might be one I take out with me for walks by the beach or in the woods.

I am also REALLY looking forward to catching up with a course I signed up for with

Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder

called Writing at the Edge which explores how, in this time of ongoing ecological transformation, can we write about our home places? The course looks at three transitional ecosystems: salt marshes, the fluctuating border between forests and grasslands and places where human development meets "wilderness " and explores how nature writing can help us navigate vulnerable edges in a time of ecological transformation. This really speaks to everything I’m fascinated with at the moment, especially the idea of interruption and between spaces, so I can’t wait to spend some time with Chelsea’s recordings in the coming weeks.

In terms of joy, my youngest son dressing himself up for World Book Day as DOCTER (spelling deliberate) NOEL ZONE from the hilarious David O’Doherty’s children’s book series Danger is Everywhere made me so happy. The books are genius, and my son looked adorable in his T-COD (Tiny Cape of Dangerology - aka a tea towel), his PEBB (Personal Emergency Bum Bag), his D.A.D. (Danger Alerting Device) and his pet rock Jeff.

Here he is in all his finery :

And finally, to finish, I am really trying to get out and lap up THIS :!

I’ve worked so hard over the last few months to clear and weed and cut back and mulch, I’m going to really try and sit back for a week or two now and just absorb the gifts of my garden, maybe with a book in tow :-)

Layla x