Abridged 0-29 Primal

Abridged 0 – 29: Primal: Edgar Martins, Lynda Tavakoli, Lynn Rothwell, Mark Goodwin, Sarah Usher, Stephen Murray, Cecilia Danell, Vivian Jones, Beth MacFarlane, Jan Harris, Stephanie Conn, Rebecca McGetrick, Dominic Connell, Kevin Graham, Aoife Mannix, Orla Fay, Mhairi Sutherland, Emma Must, Ruth Stacey, Eleanor Rees, Gail Mahon, Róisín Tierney, Martin Boyle, Ann Egan, Ian Clarke, David Andrew, Luke Prater, Belinda Loftus, Enda Coyle-Greene, Peter O’ Neill, Moyra Donaldson. Launch at the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, Thurs 04th April.

I was of course delighted to get an email from Gregory McCartney of Abridged saying that they would like to take my poem Of the Crow for this issue.  I always admire their submission calls.  Primal's was:

PRIMAL

The bodies of the naked on the low damp ground…In the violet hour to the violent sound

What first was humanity, in its primal condition, still smouldering with instinct and fear? We shift about in mind-forged manacles, the cold and viscous layer of the urban which closes us in with crusting edges. We are numbed and enveloped in the thick residue of industry and development. Lines of buildings, artificial languages and artificial lives, leave us unfeeling in unchallenged survival and a lost human heritage.

 

And we, low to the ground and overwhelmed in the sensurround, were marked with earth and the stench of other bodies. We were flooding inside, unlived and burning. All of our skin, naked to the air and to the movements of gravel under our pulsing palms and the balls of our feet; a charged weather encloses bare flesh, flailing bodies lit by a deep sun. We are locked and tangled in cyclical smoke movements around the flames and we are howling.

 

 

I've just submitted my latest two assignments through moodle.  They were 2000 words each on social and emotional well-being and gender in play.  Happy Easter!

Ó Bhéal's 300th

I very much enjoyed reading on Monday past in The Hayloft Bar above The Long Valley on Winthrop St. I met fellow featured reader and poet Maurice Devitt and I was impressed by his poetry especially the poems The Joy of Sets and The Lion Tamer Dreams of Office Work. Also I was touched by the poignant Mexico 1970 and The Watch, which both remember Devitt's father.

I must thank Paul Casey, founder and director of  Ó Bhéal for making the night enjoyable and for his hospitality. Also thanks to everyone who attended and listened.

I read from my chapbook; the 13 poems of Drawn to the Light. The readings are recorded and you can listen to lots of wonderful writers on the O'Bheal website. Next Monday the poet Ann Joyce will read. The 15th of April will be the 304th event and the 6th anniversary of O'Bheal. Well done.

On Monay night I stayed in the Parkview B & B, a rare and lovely place. Thanks to Finbar for his hospitality. Finally here is a shot of Cork City at night from the bedroom window.

Haunted by the poetic voice of Christina Rossetti

Yes this is what just happened to me!  I'm in bed writing a poem, well I've closed the document now to come back to it at a later stage, and a line from one of Christina Rossetti's poems wrote itself onto the page.  Now obviously I don't want to pawn this line as my own (as if) but maybe I'll allow its presence in italic.  Anyway I feel quite chirpy, like the birds, probably because it is spring and because I've rinsed my mind in silence.