Until the Harvest Comes, Dunderry Park

 

I'm very happy to be doing a bonfire reading this Saturday night in Dunderry Park as part of Until the Harvest Comes, and to celebrate the autumn equinox, with thanks to Sofft Productions. I was Queen of the Bonfires as a child (and camp fires).

A few years ago I was passing the house on the Dunderry to Robinstown Road when I had a vision of a warrior with streaming hair and his hound racing past the poplar trees that grow there. I wrote this poem in response, which I will read on Saturday night.

The Park

 

Poplars stand poker straight

and silver as the light would have been

bouncing off spears

 

two millennia ago.  Those carriers

were Fianna, warriors who ran

the length of the coast

 

to defend territories from invaders.

I see them with their hounds,

shadows flickering

 

through the trees.  Blonde, ragged, long

hair flows and brown, matted rat ends

dart past.

 

Preternatural, it is only for an instant.

The oak stands alone when once

it was lost in the woods

 

and cattle are foddered by a red feeder,

freshly painted,

withstanding rust and frost.

 

When I pause by the big black gates

opening up the road inside

I dare not enter,

 

not in deference to the private property sign

but from foreboding of entrance

to another realm

 

where my ancestors call me

to renunciate my worldly goods

and to commune with a universal soul.

 

With broken vision I move forward

from calling these figments out

into the light of day. In such clear skies

 

a plane leaves a wispy trail.

 

Orla Fay

 

Dunshaughlin, Now and Again

Dunshaughlin, Now and Again

 

On Main Street, wide and welcoming, we walk,

engaged in daily routine, the buying of groceries,

a coffee-shop-stop, a commute to work on the 109,

M3 connecting once sleeping satellite to Dublin’s star.

 

These are the fine school days of Indian Summer

of the child’s treasure-trove leaves and blackberries,

of the teenager returned to uniform, a gangly swan

barely plumed learning to fly above shedding earth.

 

Queen Maeve of Tara arrives at harvest,

her skirt a moon-gown, from Kilmessan to Ratoath wide,

bodice cut of Slane, Navan and Trim,

a seasoned silk, a matrimony of now and then.

 

Peggy Murphy writes here of Derrickstown Hill,

while Tom Englishby crosses the Irish Sea in ballad,

the passage a lamentation for his Dunshaughlin,

a rowing back of black waters, a honeyed vision.

 

The bell of Patrick and Seachnall rings the Angelus,

day ending with clanging heard on the breeze

by Kings of Lagore tending crannóg stone, and wood

of home, Domhnach Seachlainn, a settled and holy place.

 

Foley’s Forge relays this din of heartbeats, anvil struck,

shoed horse clip-clopping from faded farms to mart,

and colourful years, green and gold banners,

Sam Maguire a boat on the crest of a wave.

 

Time ebbs and flows, ripples veined in villages and lore,

exhumed in the shadow of the famine land,

footstones raised like shields across the Boyne Valley

past Norman castles, Celtic Tiger, lingering pandemic.

 

Orla Fay

It's wonderful to share my poem written under commission by Poetry Ireland for Poetry Town 2021. A recording of the poem and other pieces performed for Poetry Town and Culture Night can be found on Meath County Council's Youtube Channel here. 

Congratulations to all the other artists and thanks again to Poetry Ireland, Meath County Council Arts Office and Meath Library Service for the opportunity. Thanks to Margaret McCann, local co-ordinator for Dunshaughlin Poetry Town, for her time and support. 

Dunshaughlin Poetry Town Events 10th - 18th September

 Dunshaughlin 

September 16: Dunshaughlin Poetry Town Laureate Orla Fay will facilitate a fun and open workshop on poetry exploration and critique (7-9pm).

September 17: Aloud: Voices from Dunshaughlin & Beyond: Join Orla Fay, Dunshaughlin’s Poet Laureate, and a selection of other performers in a special online event, where Orla will unveil her commissioned Town Poem for the first time.

10 – 18 September

Poetry Underfoot: Around the town.

Café & Chemist Poems: Around the town.

Words that Move Me: Imelda Breen of IB Health and Fitness brings her Pilates in the Park to a new level of wellbeing. Teaming up with Kieran Rushe.

Dunshaughlin Brownies: The group create more sparkle by bringing us their very own poems and sharing a photographic account of their twinkling adventures with words and the world around them.

Addictedtodance: Aisling Toher and her energetic and talented young dancers collaborate with Dunshaughlin Poet Laureate Orla Fay in performing a contemporary and stylish dance interpretation of one of Orla’s poems 'A Thaw in Time’; wonderfully captured on video in the grounds of the Civic Offices.

Literary Pickings: Dunshaughlin Players and guests bring their huge talent and energy to verse and the village; fitting poems have been chosen and performed at well-known sites in the neighbourhood where the Players and Dunshaughlin Tidy Towns have collaborated to showcase familiar spots in a way never previously seen.

Decades of Devotion: The Dunshaughlin Friday Club, in the company of friends, brings us the Rosary from St Patrick and St Seachnall’s Church; a video recording of this almost lost tradition of religious contemplation which celebrates the beauty and poise of its centuries-old words and rhythm.

Schools’ Competition: Check out https://www.poetryireland.ie/poetry-town/dunshaughlin

Poetry Exploration and Critique Workshop

 

As part of Dunshaughlin Poetry Town laureateship I will be facilitating an online workshop on poetry exploration and critique. The event will take place on Thursday 16th September, from 7 pm to 9 pm. Tickets can be booked on Eventbrite, here.

Anyone with an interest in poetry, budding or more advanced, is invited to attend.

Later in the week I will unveil a list of 5 poems to be discussed during the workshop. 

Congratulations to the Meath Senior Ladies Gaelic football team who won the All Ireland today in some style, and were a joy to watch.

I heard on the radio earlier that it would have been Dolores O'Riordan's 50th birthday tomorrow so I've edited a poem I wrote in her memory, when she passed in 2018. 

RIP Sarah Harding of Girls Aloud too. 

Fade-out Bittersweet

IM Dolores O’Riordan, 1971-2018

The soul of Éireann

gathered as a storm on water

summoned to her voice,

released in a yearning of rain.

 

Flowers grew, imbued with

rock ‘n’ roll tie-dyed grace,

teenagers by stereos,

without mobiles or WIFI

 

before Celtic Tiger’s roar,

when life was new.

The first snow drop

reaches up on a day of death.

 

When stars shine am I looking on you?

Or are you looking on me?

Is this great divide of selves

a pool untouchable?

 

When I think of her going

it is the recoiling of the heart I fear,

the fading into nothingness of original song

when we cannot press repeat.

 

Orla Fay