A Poem for Thanksgiving

 

Freedom from Want Norman Rockwell

Since it's Thanksgiving on Thursday, I've edited an older poem to share. I know that in the world there are too many who are not free from want. 

Thanksgiving Invictus

 

-          after Wilde & Henley

 

Struggling for grace in morning’s prison

he wipes sleep from eyes, stretches

yet-darkness before lighting a candle.

 

Enthralled by beauty, the warbling flame,

dancing shadows cast, he hums an old, familiar tune,

remembers a friend he loved, heard joy,

 

sonorous bass in lifeblood,

drumming heart. This same ritual,

performed for centuries. The pilgrim, home.

 

Day stirring, frees herself, maiden

white with mist, gowned for occasion,

her grey veil gradually lifts, and there is bonniness

 

in simple tasks while robins chirp reminders:

make coffee, make toast, mix the Christmas cake,

how good it is to breathe, taste, see.

 

There is no gallow anon, no plank to walk.

This is no Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Stronger than any epoch is the resolve

 

that spring will return, jungle of cornucopia.

Snowdrops, previewed through dew,

in New Year’s baptism, rise renewed.

 

Orla Fay

 

Ed. 22/11/22

The Tinder Stick Road

 

Ulysses 31 1980's cartoon

Hey blog, as usual it's been too long. So here's an update. I was delighted to win Fingal Libraries Poetry Competition 2022: Travel with Joyce:1922-2022, commemorating the centenary of the publication of Ulysses in Paris. The winning poems can be read here. Thanks to the judges Enda Coyle-Greene & Máighréad Medbh. I was also grateful to have been granted an Agility Award by the Arts Council of Ireland.

Issue 7 of Drawn to the Light Press can be read here. I had a poem published in Meath Writers' Circle Annual Magazine (The Tinder Stick Road) and I have another forthcoming in The Stony Thursday Book, edited by Annemarie Ní Churreáin. Currently I am working on my debut full collection with Salmon Poetry's Jessie Lendennie. I'm sharing The Tinder Stick Road below and I'd also like to dedicate an older poem to my constant, and inspiring, Sarah. 

The Tinder Stick Road

Do not expect the way to be easy,

that branches will not sharpen like knives,

that thorns will not adorn the middle ground.

From a past you no longer serve

be free. Set one naked sole after another

on the coals until they are doused.

Imagine the end, all the little endings

of the journey, the daily living.

Imagine that comfort in the hold of the rose,

the soft pink, and red, petals and folds.

Did any voyage ever begin with certainty?

Not Ithaka! Not Bethlehem! Not Jerusalem!

Look to the stars, to Polaris and Orion.

Never be dissuaded, so that they may orbit you

when seeking them in the glittering beyond.

Let the heavens swarm like bees in the godlike centre

of your existence, your heart writing clefs and quavers

in love for yourself, this life, this humanity.

I remember (love)

- After Rilke's  You, You only, Exist

So long it has been but now and then

(and on dark winter nights)

it is with gladness of heart

that I greet the form of you

come back for an instant

to make me smile

like the flame from the fire

or a forgotten voice

resurgent

but you are gone,

far down the river,

whispering back so that I know

you were true, shadow

that cut deeper than any blade,

that raised my eyes to the sun

and laughing, suddenly you were done!

No thanks could be given. None at all.

But I take you with me to a blue sky

to the calligraphy of the birds

with pounding chests

drenched with rains of light

on their wings.

Cork International Poetry Festival 2022

 

I'll be reading from Green Carnations, an anthology of LGBTQ+ poetry next Saturday afternoon at the wonderful Cork International Poetry Festival. The festival begins on Wednesday, 18th May and runs through to the 21st. Thanks very much to Patrick Cotter, director of Munster Literature Centre and John Ennis, editor of Green Carnations for asking me to be involved. I'll be sharing the stage with fellow contributors Diarmuid Fitzgerald and Leah Keane. The event will be moderated by Kate Moore at 4.30 in Cork Arts Theatre. More information here.

Tickets can be bought here. 

Full programme of events here. 

“Why the green carnation?”

The short answer is that it’s a symbol of Oscar himself. In 1892, Wilde had one of the actors in Lady Windermere’s Fan wear a green carnation on opening night and told a dozen of his young followers to wear them too. Soon the carnation became an emblem of Wilde and his group—no doubt aided by his having scandalized critics after the play by appearing on stage smoking a cigarette! Indeed, an amusing parody of Wilde was published in 1894 called The Green Carnation—and which the horrified author withdrew from publication during the Wilde trial because he felt it had helped bring Oscar down.

One poem I'll be including from Green Carnations is...

Submissions Sought Issue 6 Drawn to the Light Press

 

Aurora Deirdre McKernan

More, here 

Washing Windows Too: Irish Women Write Poetry

 

Washing Windows Too: Irish Women Write Poetry has recently been published by Arlen House and is available from Books Upstairs. It contains 100 new poems, selected by co-editors Alan Hayes and Nuala O'Connor, by women who have not yet published a full collection. It is the successor to Washing Windows? which was published in 2017. 

Alan Hayes’ preface on ‘Poetry, Power and Privilege’ makes for very interesting reading. In it he details the inequality of opportunity between male and female poets. He writes that 'from the 1950s onwards, conservative powerbrokers chose to champion their male peers, and in most instances female voices were silenced.' He believes that women authors today owe a debt of gratitude to Catherine Rose (founder of  Arlen House, Ireland's first feminist press), Dr Margaret Mac Curtain (feminist activist and seer), and Eavan Boland. Apparently, Eavan Boland travelled Ireland in the ‘80s giving workshops to women. One woman didn’t want to ‘go public’ as a poet because her neighbours would think she didn’t wash her windows. Hayes calls for a more open, independent and honest arts world.

I'd like to thank Nuala O'Connor for her introduction, 'A Voice Answering a Voice'. She opens 

'...let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves' Mary Oliver wrote in her poem 'Wild Geese', and what a pleasure it is for a reader to see what subjects new poets love enough - feel urgently enough about - to be moved to create poetry.

What subjects these are, you'll have to have the joy of discovering for yourself within the pages. I was more than delighted to get a mention in the introduction (along with many others) in the same paragraph as Virginia Woolf's Orlando. It was a book I read in my late teens and I've never really recovered from Woolf's soaring stream of consciousness and oft beautiful imagery. She left an indelible mark on me. She's still one of the most stylish writers out there.

Available to order here. 

Bitumen and Pitch by Eithne de Lacy

Thanks to Dr. Cathy Fowley of Silver Thread for asking me to launch Bitumen & Pitch by Eithne de Lacy. Silver Thread believe in the power of stories. Their mission is to listen and encourage older people to tell their stories, and to publish them as part of their legacy.  Their ethos is to be inclusive and person-focused. Silver Thread was founded in Spring 2017 by Dr. Cathy Fowley and Carmel Conroy, who both had a background in education for older people in third level institutions.  

In her introduction de Lacy says, "The cover of the book depicts a woven basket placed among reeds on a river, an image taken from the Book of Exodus... The Bitumen & Pitch were used to make the basket of Moses waterproof, thus ensuring his safe journey on the Nile." Further she notes, "Bitumen & Pitch ensured Moses' safety as he was passed from one mother to another...just as I was."

And so we begin the journey with the poet in this exploring collection. As a 43 year old de Lacy discovered, before her mother's death with dementia, that she had been adopted as a baby. The collection pays homage to her mother, Moyra, and her birth mother, freshly discovered, Bridget. She writes, "My pen refused to stop. It led me into an exploration of my two mothers, Moyra, the mother I knew, and Bridget, my birth mother who had died before I discovered I had been adopted. Two secrets. A hidden birth, a hidden adoption. Secrets, always secrets, the backdrop to many lives." Such words of truth. In the poem Rúnda (Irish word for secret) we find 

She named her baby

Rúnda, and though

She never suckled her

She kept her close,

And held her tight,

Cradling her in the

Pulsing chambers of her heart.

Lovingly written and produced, the collection is divided into 5 sections; Childhood, Unearthing, Mothers, And Now, and, Finally. In the last poem of the book, On Elephants, fittingly de Lacy writes

'Well done to you

And to your women folk.

So very well done.'

Bitumen & Pitch is a poetry collection and memoir of a woman relearning who she is. Calling on the Irish language, religious iconography, myths, stories and childhood, these poems, filled with scents and sounds, colour and wonder, are an exploration of a daughter, the mother she knew, and the mother she never met.

Available here.

Times Present and Past by Liam McNevin

Published by Swan Press, Dublin, Times Present & Past is Liam McNevin's first collection of poetry. Liam is from Dublin and has been writing for many years. He is a member of Virginia House Creative Writers. His work has appeared in journals such as Boyne Berries and Flare, Tallaght Soundings anthologies, and online in Pendemic, Drawn to the Light Press and Live Encounters, among others.

Opening with Amour Vitae Meae (love of my life), a serenade to his wife, McNevin has an unsullied sensitivity of spirit found throughout the book in poems such as Soulmate, where he feels the calming presence of his passed father come to him on his son's confirmation day. He appreciates moments. The poet has a talent for rhyme. Of falling leaves in Autumn he writes,

They remind me of dying embers,

of life coming to a close;

fiery blenheim garlands,

in restful repose. 

McNevin has a deep appreciation for the beauty of nature and nuances of light. In Campus he notes 'Early sunrise, IT Tallaght', and stops 'to take a photo/to put into verse and leave grass frost/footprints in my wake.' In Morning, while observing the crescent moon he sees 'jet lines and pinkish cloud/paint a winter sunrise'. While in Skyscape he is 'enthralled by the dawn/of a winter sky.' He spies in the darkness a 

flickering star,

a lighthouse flung-far

amidst a sea

of inky blue.

McNevin remembers those who have touched his life in character poems. Of Buddy he says 'Of course I'd like to see you as you always were./When as a young fella we'd meet', continuing with the wisdom of the line '...elders give credit...saw our show for attention as the anxious/thing.' He recalls the man who sold the Evening Herald newspaper with 'face similar to his tanned cap' in Selling the news. From another in Fisherman's blues he learns the perk of fishing, 'To step away from the routine of everyday/and let his mind wander at random.' Of a colleague, Valerie, he pens, 'No words spoken could ease your going;/but time allows for a tribute in a poem.'

The poet is concerned with the art of writing and in improving craft. In Ballpoint, an ode to the pen, he muses, 'should I really say that?' Sombre days finds him experiencing 'this threading water/while waiting for a topic to arrive.' Work in progress unearths his mission and mantra,

The task: To have a piece of writing

that is sturdy when the unveiling mist lifts

which assists in keeping lit, the pilot light

of confidence. 

I enjoyed the grace of this collection. Liam McNevin wears the true, heart-and-soul cloak of a poet, sensitive to moments of beauty and wonder about him, and ready to step out of the ordinary into the act. I particularly loved Holiday morning which captures the quiet, stillness of a moonlit night so vividly. Looking again to the skies he understands, 'Creation I'm a part of;/significant, though small.'

For more information contact liamedia15@gmail.com 

Odd as F*ck by Anne Walsh Donnelly

Odd as F*ck is the debut poetry collection from Anne Walsh Donnelly, published by Fly on the Wall Press. Anne Walsh Donnelly writes poetry, prose and plays. She is a single mother of two teenagers. Originally from Carlow in the south-east of Ireland, she now lives in Mayo in the west of Ireland. She is the Poet Laureate for the town of Belmullet in the west of Ireland. Her poetry was shortlisted for the 2019 Hennessy/Irish Times New Irish Writing Literary Award. She won 2nd place in the International Poetry Book Awards, 2020 for her chapbook, The Woman With An Owl Tattoo, and was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2019, and Words Ireland Mentorship Programme in 2020. Her work has been shortlisted for the Fish International Prize and the RTE Radio One Francis Mac Manus competitions. Her play My Dead Husband's Hereford Bull will be performed at this year's Claremorris Drama and Fringe Festival. 

The title poem is a conversation between two women on the breakdown of a marriage between Victoria, who has 'dyed her hair,/same colour as a hawthorn berry', and Jim, who has 'applied for an annulment.' It demonstrates the potential for judgement and small mindedness in a provincial town, through subjective chatter, 'Paid no heed to my warnings./I know sons never do', and humour, 'Ma, the only virgins in this town are the nuns.' A wry and droll cynicism that disguises suffering and the healing process is at the heart of many of Walsh Donnelly's poems. In  My Therapist's Dog the golden retriever asks, 'When are you going to stop coming here?/She has to have two coffee pods/before your session.' In Talk To Me Like Lovers Do she says, 'I write a poem about having sex at sixty./You should be knitting scarfs for grandchildren.'

Divided into seven section, the first is a long poem, Days Like These, a meandering mind on the river of life in quest for the sea, in this case some sort of faith, or peace with God, which the writer, in philosophical battle, finds in herself, 'But maybe, just maybe, God is,/My Greatness/My Ordinariness/In Days like these.' Part two and four explore childhood, grief, and sadness. Soon describes a child's panic on being left in an isolation ward, awaiting her mother who does not return quickly enough, 'you vacuum-packed your heart/promised never to unwrap it,/expose yourself to germs again.' Mother's Day 2020 expresses the anguish of not being able to see one's mother, 'I don't know when I can be with you again. Weeks? Months?' Death is Nothing  At All finds the poet stricken at the loss of her mother,

Death is not - 

nothing.

It is everything. 

There are personal works where the poet's journey through her sexuality is navigated with no-holds-barred honesty. I found I'm a Jack Hammer ('I come to life when he grabs my neck/plugs me into the power socket'), and The Knife Thrower's Wife, fearless, and sad; 

Knowing that she'll survive

his onslaught, she tells him,

to do what he has to do,

no matter how bloody that might be.

While joy is literal in Joy, a gusty celebration of the female body, 'Joy is a naked woman/sitting astride/a speckled-grey mare/raising her arms', and in The Wonder of You two women in St Stephen's Green 'dare to lick/each other's cone'. Walsh Donnelly does not flinch in the discussion of the ageing process and sex, in My Menopausal Womb, My Menopausal Vagina and Vagina. 

Part seven of the book, Voices, is dedicated to Martina Evans. In this fragment objects such as a Ford Fiesta, an eel, the moon, a dreamcatcher, an umbrella and a surf board speak to the author. This is an extensive collection. It documents the struggle, personal growth, healing, liberation and hope of a woman. The butterfly who alights on the poet's shoulder in Red Admiral tells her, 'it's much too soon for me to die,/we still have a lot of living to do.' And in the final, Cygnet, after Emily Dickinson, we are urged to 'listen', 'hope', 'rise', skitter' and 'soar'. 

Odd as F*ck is recommended reading for the LGBTQ community, and wider. Mr Sun and Wrench are loving poems to the poet's son. Preparing for Death, Desecration of Time and To Be a Stranger in Your Own Home caught my eye for their philosophizing and imagery. This is an extremely well written and versatile edition. It raises questions about sexuality, mental health, women's bodies and the ageing process in particular. It does so with courageous, unwavering and stout conviction. It is available to purchase here.

Bone House by Moyra Donaldson

Bone House (Doire Press 2021) is the latest collection from Moyra Donaldson. She has published eight collections of poetry, including a Selected Poems and most recently, Carnivorous from Doire Press. Her awards include the Women’s National Poetry Competition, The Allingham Award, Cúirt New Writing Award, North West Words Poetry Award and the Belfast Year of the Writer Award. She has received five awards from the ACNI, including the Major Artist Award in 2019. Her poems have featured on BBC Radio and television, as well as on American national radio and television. She has read at festivals in Europe, Canada and America. Moyra has been involved in an array of other projects, including a collaboration with photographic artist Victoria J Dean, resulting in an exhibition and the publication Abridged 0 -36 Dis-Ease. Blood Horses, a collaboration with Wexford artist Paddy Lennon, culminated in a limited-edition publication of artworks and poems. She has also worked with Big Telly Theatre Company on a number of projects.

This is a brave, courageous book that does not compromise, as the opening poem says of the 'good glasses' So What if We Break Them. A beautiful, carefully wrought, cohesive collection, it is certainly a work of art, one you can dip in and out of, read from cover to cover in a single sitting, and one you can come back to time and again. There is so much to admire in Bone House, economical, classical, adventurous, and with a finger on the pulse. It has a daring spirit that sprints forward like the horses in Samhain, while falling back, masking an intellect and compassion that is never gaudy.

Mother as a figure, and motherhood feature strongly in the compilation. She is a mercurial character, literally in Mother was the Weather when 'hearts became barometers'. In the Movie of Her Life, which is the title of two poems, the mother's past is explored, the freedom she could have tasted before children and marriage, before succumbing to her father's expectation. In the duplicate title Donaldson again inspects 'My mother before she was my mother'. 

Unusual is the fact that the collection has four title poems (which could be read as one I suppose). In its first iteration mother gets no rest 'parading through the night/eternal like the moon.' The second places the poet as mother, and eternity here is in the 'milky breath' of her own daughter. In the third, poet comes face to face with the moon, 'I see the moon/and the moon sees me'. In the final phase Donaldson confronts mortality, 'is the girl already dead I loved'. This girl could be Alice in Wonderland of Untitled 'walking the roads/fearing what I might find; which one of us is missing?'

I particularly loved Beltane in the Time of Virus when Donaldson compares the topsy-turviness of COVID days to 'like being a teenager again, sitting out in the garden...thinking what the fuck'. Here there is gorgeous sensuality in 'the breeze finding its way beneath my robe and over/my body like a lover'. My First 10 Months as a Monk addresses the times too, in such a stylish way, juxtaposing the acedia of a monk's life with the monotony of the isolation we all felt 'In this year of blur/hours'. 

Hecuba in the Bowtown Estate is a teriffic poem about rage, 'I am the bitch-mother that howls outside your window'. Donaldson as matriarch fears for her own daughter's life in Daughter Competing on Her Horse. While in Daughters Who Dance with Death she relates to Amy Winehouse's mother who said 'Each time I saw her I thought it would be the last.' This angst is beautifully reflected in the succeeding poem, The Adoration of the Shepherds with a Lamp, where Rembrandt portrays Mary cloaking her son, and in another painting by the artist the foreseen woe manifests, which the poet calls 'the dark night over Golgotha.'

The cover art of the collection depicts a foetus in utero and Anatomy of the Gravid Womb - William Hunter addresses the legacy of the physician who dissected the bodies of women who died not having reached full term pregnancy. It leaves one queasy to think of this 'Foetus whole and intact: mother butchered.' In an article I found online Camilla Rostvik writes 'It is a reminder of the long patriarchal past of obstetrics.' God of the patriarchy is of the Old Testament in None Righteous and Rock of Ages. Tiresias, the ancient Greek prophet who spent seven years as a woman, leaves the reader dumbfounded by the sole interest of the old gods in 'whether the sex was better or worse.'

I adore this publication for Prayer to Black, Give Yourself Peace and Crone Song. This is an outstanding production and it is probably not fair for me to say anymore, except advise you get a copy to read. It is a master class on how a collection could be written, the composition of a maestro. Bone House is dedicated to Donaldson's granddaughter, Daisy. It contains an introduction by Paula Meehan. Like the sound of the 'singing bowl' struck like a gong in the final poem, Hearing, the artistry of these verse will continue to ring through my consciousness. 

Available here. 

Drawn to the Light Press Issue 5

Issue 5 of Drawn to the Light Press is now available to read online, and can also be ordered in print here.

Catching Air by Vinny Glynn-Steed (joy is the parrot that shouldn't be contained)

Published by Maytree Press, Catching Air is the debut poetry chapbook from Vinny Glynn-Steed. From Galway, his poetry has been widely published at home and abroad, appearing in journals and online in Mexico, the United States, Wales and Northern Ireland. He has featured in publications such as Windows 25th edition, Parhelion and Cinnamon Press anthology. Other credits include: Galway Review, Headstuff, Skylight 47, Crannóg, Into the Void, Bangor Journal, Tales from the Forest, The Ogham Stone, Ofi Press, ROPES, All the Sins, Mediterranean Poetry, Flight, Boyne Berries, Dodging the Rain, Poems in Profile and Drawn to the Light Press. 

This short collection exudes a joy and passion for family, the past, the natural world, and the written word. It glistens with jewels of imagery such as "Your blonde hair offset by the deep blue of the mosque" in the opening poem Delight, and "in the spectrum splash of light on a gable wall" from Pages from a Garden. Word-Gravity serves as prelude to the book when Steed throws his "dreams into space like a kite", to quote Anais Nin, in the hope of reaping "A spiral tapestry/of the most beautiful human stories/not yet told." The chapbook is dedicated to his son, Bobby, whom he names his spiral tapestry.

In a way Catching Air is a dance with the light. Last Light at Lough Tay comments on sunset on the mountains - "V for victory - the arms/of their embrace." In Pristine we listen 

To a corncrake's call comfortable under a carpet of stars

amongst the parcels of peat

under the mechanical arms of a giant glistening.

The arms here belong to a wind turbine in a high bog. I do like how man and nature co-exist in harmony in Steed's poetry. In The Iceman, Otzi of the Alps carried his "copper axe made of leather, yew and birch tar", and in Canal Bank Hole "long bottomed boats meandered by/en route to Dublin..."

"joy is the parrot that shouldn't be contained" the poet writes in The God of Broken-Down Things, despite "how sadness resides with darkness under the stairs/in a toolbox rusting..." Again, in this poem the light is at play in "silhouettes stretched out before us like all summer/mornings..." and there is a wistfulness for the past in this very likeable poem that reminds one of Fern Hill.

One Small King opens with the beautiful image of mist hanging over the bog like "a starched altar-cloth". We are asked to imagine its course, flapping down the mountain to the lake, where dotted islands are "the broken/rosary beads of your intent..." Steed shows reverence for, while finding solace in, his kingdom of bog and mountain. 

This introduction closes with a piece dedicated to Kevin Higgins and Susan Millar DuMars of Over The Edge Literary Events. The Phrase Factory is a writing class they instruct, where poets "breathe life/into new words" and "acknowledge their ephemeral fame." It is clear that Steed finds true delight in his pursuit of language, he is the "child catching air with a butterfly net" of the title poem, a buddha in praise of the earth. 

Highly recommended for its sense of wonder and adventure, Catching Air can be purchased here. 

Chrome Injury by Memphis Star

Memphis Star is an Indie Pop band from the Midwest. Green Bay, Wisconsin to be exact. Members include Sam Hart, Jenna Kopitske, Michael Stirk and Chris Anderson. "Their sound draws from styles of modern Indie music, as well as 1970s Blue-Eyed Soul and Alternative Rock. This blend creates a new bop with hints of nostalgia."

Their new album Chrome Injury is set for release this year. This is a wistful, 90s-sounding compilation that brings slightly to mind Electronic, The Sundays and Crowded House.  Its first song Sign of the Times can be found on YouTube. They sing here about disillusionment with politics and social media. An apathy has crept in.

Sign of the Times

Verse 1

I’m up late watching the news again

Unwanted drama when will it ever end

Build a wall screams the president

If I don’t get what I want

I’ll bring down the government

Chorus

It’s a sign of the times

When I can’t sleep at night

It’s a sign of the times

I'm not exactly sure what a chrome injury is, but The Chrome Injury was a single by the Australian band, The Church. The title track by Memphis Star also features a man who seems numbed and distant. 

75 Reasons is a gorgeous, catchy, upbeat piece with surprising arrangement and a rolling guitar solo. The lead sings "I want to tell you something, I talk but out comes nothing that ain't right, and it goes like...dum diddy dum diddy da...and it sounds right, at least in my mind."

Hearts for Hers is a funky tune about unrequited love, "I want you to fake it, on my time please take it...you act so conceited, makes me feel defeated" it rhymes. While "When I grow up I want to be something in...the movies" opens the mildly rocklike Rosie Velvet, a nostalgic, uplifting composition, like Lying in the Grass which finishes the record. Blue World is a fine blending of voice with sweet poignancy:

I don't know why I feel lonely, 

I don't know why I feel blue, 

I don't think I'm the only one, 

the only one that feels this way, 

feels this way, sometimes, sometimes. 

I don't know why you console me, 

I don't know why you were there, 

I just know you're the only one, 

the only one that seems to care, seems to care, 

all the time, yeah! All the time, yeah!

Overall Chrome Injury is a very pleasant listen with tender notes, and a care for vintage. I could imagine having one of these songs stay with me from the car radio, or being somewhere and stopping to Shazam its sound. More info here, or follow the band on Facebook.

What Became of the Horses Poetry Chapbook Cover Design

Cover Design by Rory O'Sullivan

I'm pleased to showcase the cover of my forthcoming, second poetry chapbook What Became of the Horses. It will contain around twenty poems, including the title poem which was published in The Ireland Chair of Poetry Commemorative Anthology Hold Open the Door, and the Poetry Town commissioned Dunshaughlin, Now and Again.

Huge thanks to poet and illustrator Rory O'Sullivan for the artwork. This project is possible due to the generous support of Meath County Council Arts Office and Creative Ireland. I hope to have the book ready for late March/early April.

Metropolis

 

Transformation scene, Metropolis 1927

Since it's just us again dear blog, and since I'm back on a new journey having strayed, (tales for another day) I am here tonight in my PJs feeling grateful. Peace is not something you can buy, nor find easily when lost, nor is it something that should be traded. Peace is the equivalent of the heart. It is a reckoning in the hall of mirrors and the shadow that haunts a day. It is the monster you sleep with at night, the darkest thought in the deepest hour. All our demons are angels. There is no healthy mind without this quiet bedfellow. No true work to be done. No fateful and faithful integrity. As the epigraph states in the movie Metropolis, written by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou:

Mittler zwischen hern und handen muss das herz sein!

The mediator between head and hands must be the heart!

(There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.

Without the heart there can be no understanding between the hand and the mind).

A Dedication to Drowning by Maeve McKenna

 

From Fly on the Wall Press, A Dedication to Drowning is the debut poetry chapbook from Maeve O'Reilly McKenna. Maeve McKenna lives in rural Sligo, Ireland. In 2018, her work was shortlisted for the Red Line, and highly commended in the iYeats International Poetry competitions. In 2019, she was highly commended in the Frances Ledwidge International Poetry Award, and longlisted in the Over The Edge Poetry competition. She was joint runner-up in the Trim Poetry Competition and the Hanna Greally Poetry Competition, 2020. She was placed third in the Canterbury Poet of the Year Competition 2021 for Lemon Drops in the Pocket of My Fathers Overcoat, dedicated to her late dad who had dementia

The title poem, A Dedication to Drowning is effective, with some lovely lines such as 'your wide shoulders an Orca's/tail slicing the surface', and it finishes cleverly with a double take, launching the piece into the stratosphere. 

The prose-like Gerard's is a very human portrayal of the man behind a drug addict. Maeve perceives with an unflinching eye. There is a visceral quality to her work, where she does not shy away from the body. In the powerful Undelivered she writes 'If I could hold you, coax your chest open, blood-fill/each pulse-less chamber, lay it plump as a pillow/under mine, I would.' Cool Boiled Water is startling in imagery, 'I am trying to bend a mind' it opens, succeeded by 'Can I imagine the moon as a suffocating balloon' and, 'Or stars, the eyes of a wolf-pack,/in the dark world forest.'

There is no doubt McKenna is in touch with the primitive, the force of creation is summoned in her words. The sea is elemental to her being. I could not help hearing echoes of Virginia Woolf in Propagation -

on propagation. Oh! Hero.

Oh! Lover. Oh, desire

from consequence -

unwill me.

It is in this ecstatic vision that her verse, breaking free, soars. 

She is assured and certain in Never Tell Your Business, 'In winter, frost separated the cream,/I can't forget this.' The masculine is present as a destructive, ('Your son is trying to kill you' in The Sound of Distance) and constructive, ('And the baby, now a man,/still clapping inside the audience of a woman' in Performance) force. 

With a talent for the unexpected, and an ability to step outside herself as a writer, Maeve McKenna sees the bigger picture, bringing light to the hidden. She tackles death in A Burial in the Home, the injustice of mother and baby homes in Shadow Waiting, and gender roles in Family Web. Without doubt, her poetry carries strength and grace, along with oodles of latent passion. 

I collaborated with Maeve on work which gained publication in Beir Bua and Crow of Minerva. A Dedication to Drowning will be launched on Friday, 18th February at 7.30 pm with an introduction by poet and creative writing coach Anne Tannam. Tickets for the online launch can be found here on eventbrite. 

Australia Day 2022 Picturing the Old People

 

from Picturing the Old People, Genevieve Grieves

I wrote this poem after visiting GOMA on a trip to Brisbane. The original blog post is here. Reviewing it I made a couple of adjustments. I found these words by the artist and reflected on my own interpretation of the installation.

You can never control how people will interpret your work. I’ve had comments about my work that are so far from what I was intending, it continues to surprise me. Each viewer’s life experiences affect the way they see your work. For example, when I did Picturing the old people, a video installation based on archival photographs of Aboriginal people, someone said to me “isn’t it sad that Aboriginal people were forced to wear European clothes”. I was shocked, because what I was intending, and worked hard to show, was how well Aboriginal people had adapted to and existed inside this new culture which was forced upon them – I was trying to show their resilience and acceptance. I had not intended to reinforce the idea of Aboriginal people as victims – in fact, the documentation shows that Aboriginal people were required to look ‘more Aboriginal’ for these studio photos than they really were.

So my job as facilitator and my intention as storyteller is to shift the framework, and using the artefacts of colonialism allows me, and a bunch of other Indigenous artists, to inscribe new meanings on the work. It brings voice.

You know, art is a weapon and its strength lies in its ability to disturb, to disrupt and to combat racist sentiment. – Genevieve Grieves,  from https://mgnsw.org.au/articles/home-genevieve-grieves/

Picturing the Old People

After Genevieve Grieves, GOMA Brisbane, August 2012

 

From Victorian England of rural innocence

I travel to Paris with Pissarro, and on

to past masterpieces of the Prado.

Then, everything European is left

in its sphere, set

floating adrift…

 

Humidity and sunlight deaden

marshmallow flowers turned to cream,

toasted upon wilting at the bottom

of the display by the pool

separating one building

from another.

 

On the second floor they dance, Aboriginal:

angry, proud, utterly captivating,

made to pose and shot.

Polarized and stilled,

in time’s eye

I seem bereft.

 

Orla Fay

Let freedom ring... After Marin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

I Have a Dream Martin Luther King, August 28 1963

“Let freedom ring…”

After Martin Luther King Jr.

His words in 1963 painted across wireless,

from Belfast to Johannesburg, Berlin to Palestine,

China to the U.S.S.R, as urgently, widely dreamed

as in those places in the United States

he sung to: Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina,

Georgia, New York, Tennessee, and California.

Wherever bondage, or oppression clung

his vision realised a glimmer of hope

to the despairing, promised the rainbow, 

sun on the shaded side of the mountain. 

Echoes of gunshot shook walls that fell,

waking from sleep the conscience 

of those who knew they could do better.

Could the dreamer, the idealist, the peace maker

overcome still engulfing troubles?

There is violence in quests for power

that offer the ego its addictive, quick fix, 

but no lasting salve to the pierced heart, 

the wingless flight of the caged bird.

Orla Fay

Two Snowdrop Poems

 

Snowdrops John Noonan

Thanks to poet John Noonan for taking a photo of the snowdrops in his garden. Below are two pieces on the subject of the flower, and this time of the year. The first was written nearly fifteen years ago and I have slightly edited it. The second I wrote maybe two years ago. I'm still waiting to see my first snowdrop in the flesh, this January.

A Snowman and a Snowdrop Fleeting

Now I am a sculpture

my skin is cold, patterned

with fingerprints, texture

soft and full of clumps.

By my feet fluffy and wet,

is my daughter budding hope,

pure as a pearl, or an aching tear

shed before daffodil hour.

As it grows dark

the land is lavender quiet.

She nods her head in the wind

and I alone understand her silently.

We are not here for long 

we concur.  By nature

I am older and she, younger.

Together we drift.

A snowman and a snowdrop

stand between falling flakes,

neither the wiser, 

still, they are time.

Orla Fay

***

Snowdrop, Fallen Star

She calls to me, 

blissful ballerina,

the happiest thing on the embankment.

Galanthus, the milk of flowers,

hope splashed woods, fields 

and pathways her design.

Among blooms she is singular,

her trembling stem liminal,

coaxed by that expectant sun.

A sisterhood clusters

along a hedgerow, almost hidden.

They have little to say

in the nights that succumb

yet to flickering candlelight,

as the tide returns from glimmerwane,

the year half asleep, still dreaming.

She curls toes in a dawn,

while opening her eyes 

to the Plough and the Blue Moon.

Orla Fay