The Blue Girl

Picasso, Blue Nude

My poem The Blue Girl can be read on i am not a silent poet. I wrote it a couple of weeks ago after reading about the #bluegirl, Sahar Kohdayari.

Bailieborough Poetry Prize 2019

At Dun a Rí Forest Park - Jim McPartlin

I was recently happy to make the shortlist for this year's Bailieborough Poetry Prize and attended the prize giving in the town library yesterday. Congratulations to the eventual winner Christopher M. James with his poem Janus. I very nearly wrote about this god myself over the summer and had researched him a little one day.

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past. - Wikipedia 

The shortlist

Christopher M. James – Janus
Giles Newington – Dynamic Me
John D Kelly – The Missing Piece
Orla Fay – The Member of the Wedding
Ruth Quinlan – Eczema Herpeticum in The Limerick Regional
Eugene Platt – Thank You Note to my New Wife’s Late Husband
Anne Tannam – I’ll admit to
Kate Ennals – Drafting a Poem in my Mother’s Old Diary

My own poem took its title from Carson McCuller's novel and the poem is a remembering of early teenage years. For some it's a weekend of celebrating Junior Cert results so the poem is apt in its timing. I wrote it this summer and you can enjoy it below. Thanks to all at the Bailieborough Festival and to judge Anthony J. Quinn current Writer-in-Residence for County Cavan. I hadn't realised that the opening stanza had 5 lines and the rest 4 until now but I'm not going to change this.


The Member of the Wedding

When I think of dog days, I remember Frankie Addams,
F. Jasmine Addams lost and struggling in the novel,
adolescent, truculent, a tomboy. I see her roaming
the streets of the South on an August day, her hair slicked back
and clothes clinging to her in sweat. She longs to go to Alaska.

We studied Carson McCuller’s novel along with The Hobbit
and To Kill a Mockingbird for our Junior Cert.
I related to Frankie’s awkwardness, the way she longed to fit in.
I think our teacher was showing us that it was ok to be different,

that feeling was something we could do.
She told us to underline Atticus Finch’s words
to Scout about walking around in someone else’s skin,
to consider things from another’s point of view.

I had nothing to do on the summer holidays, so I read,
bought The Lord of the Rings trilogy in one huge volume,
the bible, my brother and I christened it. The cover was green,
a majestic Gandalf portrayed holding his staff in the woods.

We named the kittens that appeared from the haybarn Frodo and Sam.
At night we lit a campfire and trailed across the fields with a torch
and makeshift wooden weapons. We stayed out for as long as we could,
until startled by distant barking or a frightening rustle,

or until the stars were too bright, too close, too silver.
I was allowed to take the bus to O’Connell St.,
arranged to meet friends under the clock at Easons.
I wore combat trousers, smoked a Marlboro, felt dizzy afterwards.

Orla Fay

Still Dancing the Seven Veils

It was truly great to see Sinéad O'Connor return to The Late Late Show last night and sing to our heart's content A Rainy Night in Soho and Nothing Compares 2 U. It's a testament to Sinéad's talent that songwriters like Shane MacGowan and Prince trusted her with their beautiful songs.

She wore a strikingly red hijab and I was reminded of past appearances on the show when she had worn a priest's collar. Mostly though today I can hear Ms. O'Connor sing Mandinka and I recall the imagery of the lyrics of that video. She is

...dancing the seven veils
want you to pick up my scarf
see how the black moon fades
soon I can give you my heart

as a wispy crimson scarf fades into the 1980s. It was a world where MTV was new. I first heard her sing this song on Dave Fanning's show on 2fm and I recall his enthusiasm for her album, The Lion and the Cobra.

Afterwards I loved You Made Me The Thief of Your Heart from In the Name of the Father. The passion of it, the questions it asked and dared not ask at the same time. Where are we now in this Brexit era, where is our island, our lovely brothers and sister in the North? I'm still in awe of Haunted from the '90s. 

I adore that Sinéad can talk about mourning her youth (she's 52) and that she can sit herself next to Sufism. I am long a fan of the mystic poet Rumi. 

Keep the fire lit Sinéad, rebel, philosopher, whirling dervish, thinker-outside-the-box, sister of Brigid, Joan of Arc, Sagittarian child, phoenix from the ashes!

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.
 - Rumi

Her Kind by Niamh Boyce: The Spirit of Petronelle Soars

Her Kind is the second novel by writer Niamh Boyce. Her debut, The Herbalist, was published in 2013. I finished Her Kind this morning after two days reading. I knew nothing about the Kilkenny witch trial on which the book is based and I tumbled into a medieval Ireland, unsure what to expect as I stumbled through the first few chapters blindly. The year is 1324. The pace of the novel is fast and I became comfortable in the story mid way through. From then onward the novel soars to its conclusion. I was gripped.

I loved the bravery and conviction of Boyce in telling this story. She is a gifted storyteller. It is clearly a very well researched book. Boyce also excels in passages of poetic description. I won't give much of the plot away except to say that it is the tale of a wealthy moneylender, Alice Kytler and her maid Petronelle de Midia. Though the events took place so long ago they remain pertinent and the drama played out is exploratory and relevant to our times. This is an Irish book and a world I felt at home in.

Her Kind can be purchased nationwide, (I got my copy in Easons) and here.

Poem of the Week, The Irish Times

On Saturday I had a poem, The Natural Order, published in The Irish Times as poem of the week. Thanks to poetry editor, Gerard Smyth.

The poem can be read here.

The Natural Order was written earlier this year and was almost two pieces as it was sparked by separate, but related in the end, incidents. It had a life as a first draft but I went back to the poem a week later and reworked it a little. I had been thinking of writing something about ecology for a couple of years and I may explore that theme more. I always take great comfort from nature and its cyclicity.

Oliver Goldsmith Poetry Award 2019

Oliver Goldsmith

I was recently delighted to have been placed 3rd in The Oliver Goldsmith Poetry Award 2019. I also had 2 poems highly commended. Congratulations to the winners of this Longford based prize:

1st Prize Bona Fide by Margaret Nohilly

2nd Prize Connemara Waltz Time by Maria Sheridan

3rd Prize  The Woman Washing Jesus Feet by Orla Fay

Thanks very much to Anne Tully, event organiser, and to judge and poet, Noel Monahan. 

Goldsmith lived from 1728 to 1774 and wrote The Deserted Village.

More information about the festival can be found on the Facebook page.

An Experience on the Tongue, A Review

An Experience on the Tongue

by Glen Wilson (Doire Press 2019)

Reviewed by Orla Fay

The first section of An Experience on the Tongue is titled "Wordless But All Verb" and this line is taken from the poem "Pipping", placed towards the end of this first section. The phrase refers to the latent strength it takes for a chick to break free at last from its shell, the act is "wordless but all verb". Such eye for exact and precise detail is a feature of Glen Wilson's poetry. He examines with a microscope the sometimes brute realities of life. This attention to detail is again found in "Angelshare" where the poet describes working in a whiskey distillery and finding a sense of belonging and lineage in its production through the centuries. It is from this poem that the title of the collection is taken. On savouring the taste of the alcohol Wilson writes

...That is what I am/
what we all are, an experience on the tongue,/
casting off from the world, hoping the taste/
gilt-edged, worth gifting on./

Throughout his poetry Wilson does seek the noble and the moral, despite being sometimes disappointed. His poems are all very well crafted and mature, with  humility and conscience. They never resort to being preachy, however. Wilson is a connoisseur of language and context. In "Orchard County" the aftertaste of stolen apples leaves him battling guilt, "...An aftertaste/we don't recognise loiters on our tongues." In "Gavage" the force feeding of geese troubles the poet, who, on seeing wild geese in the sky, wishes that he too could fly away. "Mouths to Feed" similarly deals with the dilemma of unwanted kittens on a farm, the quandary it poses, especially to the eyes of a watching child.

Wilson is very good at adopting personas in his poems, vividly imagining other lives, he becomes a bereaved man, or a man suffering from dementia in "The Stable" and a wolf in "Canis Lupus", a gamekeeper in "The Gamekeeper". Concern for the natural world and its scarring by mankind arises in "Opening the Gates" where tundra swans have been disturbed by litter and violence. This was a poem that left me feeling outrage.

Section (II) of the collection, The Lotus Gait discovers the wider world outside Armagh and Tyrone. The titular poem "The Lotus Gait" explores the foot binding practiced by women in China. Lots of poems in this section deal with women in history. History is explored through poems about the Holocaust and the plight of refugees from the Middle East. Wilson wants to see the world clearly, to shine a light on injustice through his poems.  In "The Spectacles" he says

I take a cloth, wipe, make the glass clear,/, 
hope that others will do likewise./

while "Shofar" chillingly reminds us that "winter beckons again tomorrow", echoing the quote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (George Santayana-1905).

Section (III) Tipping Point opens weightily on the subject of the ruination of nature by man. The poet wonders if an egret can know regret? Still in sombre mood in "High Tide" and "The Groynes" Wilson sees the passage of time before him, realising that time and tide wait for no one. One wonders are we indeed

caught by the rotting wooden arms/
Man has thrust out into the ocean./?

In this section the poet is trying to grasp his identity and where he belongs in the world. In "Mouth of the Ford", Belfast is described as an "Oceanic, Britannic, Celtic..." city, balancing on "ever-moving currents".  In the excellent "Surface Water" the death of a homeless man is attributed to his lack of roots, flowers left by mourners are "quenching thirst with sheared roots". The very human need to belong, to be joined is found in the gorgeous "Election Night" and in "On Oresund Bridge" where the poet writes

There is a need to be joined: this body of water/
should not lie between us when we can see/
each other's coasts,/

Wilson is a voyeur on a balcony in Pamplona in "China Shop" wondering what a girl, a stranger in the streets, would think in a moment of epiphany about the running of bulls through the town.

The final part of the collection, (IV) The Founds opens with poems about a grandfather, "The Founds", and perhaps, a grandmother or elderly aunt in "Seskinore". They are followed by "View from Gullfoss" and "Traybakes" which both deal with grief. In "Brood" a beautiful pearl is described which is reclaimed, of course, by the sea. There is a lesson in this that everything we are, or have, will be washed away in death. Wilson writes

When young, I briefly held a baroque pearl,/
...before the sea made me say: Goodbye./

"The Illuminated Manuscript" portrays an enlightening encounter with a page of The Book of Kells at Trinity College. The poet feels "burdened with light" from seeing the page and believes it confirms a faith, some connection with eternity. I suppose that knowledge passed on is a thread to eternity.

"In Places with Two Names" Wilson addresses both communities that dwell in Northern Ireland, that live side by side in difference "holding a truth in each hand". The collection finishes on a poem that is a song, "The Song", to his young family where he does find belonging and connection.

An Experience on the Tongue is beautifully written. It is an impressive debut. It can be purchased from Doire Press

Glen Wilson was the winner of the inaugural Trim Poetry Competition 2019.