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.