Song of the Wild | June 10, 2010

As promised, here is the Future Primitive interview conducted by Joanna Harcourt-Smith.

Winner of the Silver Medal | June 5, 2010

It is with great pleasure that I inform you that The Salmon in the Spring is now the recipient of the silver medal for the 2010 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) in the mind-body-spirit category.  No doubt this will spell great things for the future.

Additionally, UK readers now have the option of ordering The Salmon in the Spring from the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids.  Shipping internationally is quite expensive so I hope that this will alleviate that issue.  Of course, if you prefer to buy directly from the author that option is still available.

Finally, I have added several new essays to the website:

Re-inhabiting the Earth (2010)
An examination of five ecological powers—succession, decomposition, open systems, habitats, and niches—and the way in which they can be expressed through humans as a form of participation in the ecosystem.

What Use Are Poets in Times of Need? (2010)
A short talk presented at the 2010 Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Graduate Symposium at the California Institute of Integral Studies, exploring the ecological dynamics of poetry and social transformation.

Preserving Truth (2009)
This essay explores the concepts of dán, geis, and the kingship traditions of ancient Ireland within an ecological context, deriving from them an Irish cosmological perspective on Earth jurisprudence and the maintenance of right relationship with the ecosystem.

Keep your eye on this space for an upcoming audio interview from Future Primitive!

The Salmon in the Spring Released | November 6, 2009

Many bits of good news to share.  The Salmon in the Spring was officially released on November 1st and thanks to everyone who ordered it achieved an overall sales rank of #1300 on Amazon.com; reaching #1 in their Celtic Mythology section and the #2 position in Celtic Spirituality, beat only by John O’Donohue’s Anam Cara. Of course, Amazon.com sales ranks are fleeting and it has now returned to a more humble number. If you haven’t yet ordered your copy you can do so now from your favorite online retailer or directly from this website in the book section.

I’m extending the pre-order price of $14.95 until Monday. If you want to take advantage of it, now is the time to do so. It may temporarily take 1 to 2 weeks for books to ship depending on inventory, something which will soon be remedied. Also, the winner of the book raffle will be chosen this weekend and contacted by e-mail. Thanks to everyone who signed up for the newsletter.

In other news, there are two interviews with me about The Salmon in the Spring and my work in general. One is available in Druidic Dawn’s latest equinox newsletter which is freely downloadable in PDF form here:

http://www.druidicdawn.org/files/AontachtVolume2Issue2.pdf.

The other, done by James Liter of The Druid’s Utterance website, is available here:
http://druidsutterance.net/20091006708/The_Salmon_in_the_Spring_An_Interview_with_Jason_Kirkey.

Finally, there are a few talks and workshops that are in the development stage and I hope to start adding them to the schedule soon. I can, however, briefly confirm that I’ll be giving two short talks at conferences. I’ll be speaking at the Integral Ecology conference hosted by California Institute of Integral Studies on November 20th and have just been told that my abstract for the 6th Conference on Current Pagan Studies has been accepted. The conference is from January 30th-31st hosted by Claremont Graduate University. The talk is titled “Wild Law and the Irish Goddess: Myth and Ecosystem as a Model of Sustainability.” I also promise more accessible and less academic events in the near future.

Pre-Orders Now Available | September 25, 2009

You are now able to pre-order The Salmon in the Spring: The Ecology of Celtic Spirituality! Your pre-orders help fund the printing and promotion of the book and are greatly appreciated. As a way of saying thank you I have set the preorder price to $14.95 (plus shipping).  This price will last until November 1st when the book is officially released, at which point it will be raised to $17.95. Pre-orders will ship as soon as the book is available which may be before the official release date.

Orders are taken via Paypal. If you don’t have a Paypal account you can pay via credit card without registering on their website. If you would prefer to pay by check or money order you may use the contact form and make alternative arrangements. Checks and money orders can only be accepted in U.S. dollars and may delay shipping until the check has cleared. If you have any questions or concerns do not hesitate to get in touch.

I’ve put together a small preview of The Salmon in the Spring. You can now read the foreword (by Frank MacEowen), the introduction, and the first few pages of Chapter One. The preview is available here embedded from Scribd in an applet which allows you to download the file, view it fullscreen, or zoom in to a readable level.  You can also access the file directly, here, where you have the option of embedding the applet in your own website, blog, or Facebook page.

Upon release The Salmon in the Spring will also be available via online retailers such as Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Powells.com. We ask you to consider purchasing directly from the author in order to support the work but recognize that for international customers the cost of shipping may be an issue.

Also, remember to sign up for the Dinnseanchas newsletter in the sidebar to your right. I’ll be picking out a name at random from the e-mail list in October to give away a free copy of the book.  If you’ve already pre-ordered, don’t worry. If your name gets picked your money will be promptly refunded.

Finally, if you have an account on Facebook you can now become a “fan” of The Salmon in the Spring where I’ll post relevant news items, often before the site itself gets updated.

Welcome to Dinnseanchas | August 29, 2009

Welcome to the brand new Dinnseanchas website!  Work has now, for the most part, been completed on The Salmon in the Spring: The Ecology of Celtic Spirituality and is slated for a November 1st release.  It will be available from this website as well as from most online book retailers.  If you were part of the Hiraeth Press mailing list in the past you may want to sign up for the Dinnseanchas list.  Both websites were hacked and had to be wiped clean (if you purchased books from Hiraeth Press, don’t worry–your personal information was safe!).  Signing up for the mailing list will automatically enter you into a drawing to win a free copy of The Salmon in the Spring.  I’ll have more details on that later but I would like to do something special for it such as creating a hardcover copy for the winner (the book will only be available in paperback).

The site is a bit bare-bones at the moment but I’ll be adding more content gradually, including some new essays that are in the works and will be completed sometime after book release madness has subsided.  One thing to keep your eyes open for in the next month or so is a sample excerpt from the book.  I’ll be putting up the foreword (being written by Frank MacEowen), the introduction, and possibly a few pages from the first chapter.  I want to whet some appetites!  There will be an event schedule going up, hopefully around the time the book is released.  You can help with this too, though!  If you know event organizers who might like to host a workshop, lecture, or even a poetry reading I would love to travel to your town (or country).

Finally, after over a year of working with prose I’m slowly turning my attention back to my fourth poetry collection.  There are some samples up on the poetry page (not all of which are guaranteed to make it into the book).  The collection is called Twenty-One Ways to Birth a Heart and in some respects is a return to a more simple haiku-inspired form but with an eye for telling an overall “transformative narrative” through verse.  In some sense I see it as one long poem, though each stands alone just fine.

More news to come in the near future…