Trim Poetry Festival 2020

Boyne Berries 27

Cover design by Rory O'Sullivan

Boyne Berries 27 will be launched on Friday, 13th March at 7.30 pm by Pat Dunne as part of Trim Poetry Festival. Pat Dunne was born in Trim, Co. Meath and is an internationally successful crime writer. Dunne studied English and Philosophy at UCD and worked as Press Officer for Bord na gCapall before joining RTÉ Radio where he produced the station’s flagship Gerry Ryan Show. He retired in 2004 to become a full-time writer. Meath’s history and heritage feature prominently in his archaeological thrillers. Dunne is also a regular contributor to Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1 and lives in Celbridge, Co. Kildare, with his wife Theckla. 

This issue contains the work of the ten poets shortlisted for Trim Poetry Competition 2020 and 42 other pieces of work. Those included are:

Kate Ennals Liam McNevin Arthur Broomfield Eamon Cooke Dan A. Cardoza Seán Kennedy Peter Goulding Felicia McCarthy Polly Richardson Mark Ward Stephen de Búrca Kevin Graham Peter Adair Lorraine Carey Angela Kirwan Michael Farry Justin Aylward Anne Crinion Glenn Hubbard Richard W. Halperin Sinéad MacDevitt Carolyne Van Der Meer Honor Duff Diarmuid Fitzgerald Marc Gijsemans K.S. Moore L.R. Harvey Eugene Platt Elizabeth McGeown Róisín Bugler Niamh Twomey Maria Isakova Bennett Gerard Smyth Rory Duffy Linda Ibbotson Conor Kelly Orla Fay Frances Browne Matt Hohner Catherine Conlon John D. Kelly David Butler Martin Sykes Marian Brannigan Patrick Lodge Karen O’Connor Maeve McKenna Steve Wade Claire Hennessy John Conroy Jenny Andersson Anne Callan

Brigid's Beauty

Magdalene with the Smoking Flame

La Madeleine a la flamme filante

Georges de La Tour

Brigid’s Beauty

What must it have been like for her,

sweet sixteen, betrothed by her father

to the King of Ulster?

Wanting a different life, a rebel,

she prayed that her beauty

be taken away.

When ordained God gave

Brigid back the eye he had taken

in her veiling.

Her path was of milk and flowers

and the purity of her soul

was a great gift the Christians said,

but pagans recognised her witchery,

the magic of the miracles

and the splendid power of tales.

Her light lit the chambers of Tara.

Divinity was Imbolg, in the belly,

Spring’s flint, Candlemas,

Lá Fhéile Muire na gCoinneal,

a Mary of candles, goddess,

cloaked keeper of the grail.

Orla Fay

Trim Poetry Competition 2020

I will co-judge Trim Poetry Competition again this February. Last year the Boyne Writers Group secretary gave me around 220 poems which I read carefully. All poems were anonymous. As I read I placed work I considered of special merit in a separate pile knowing that I would have to whittle the stack down to 30.

The second part of the process was done with fellow adjudicator Michael Farry. We had chosen very different poems but we did have some choices in common. We discussed these preferences and after some time came up with a shortlist of 10. In the end a couple of poems were in the running for overall winner. This year we will have two runners-up.

10 poems will again be shortlisted and these 10 will be published in Boyne Berries 27. The overall winner will receive €500 and 2 runners-up will receive €100 each. To be shortlisted in a competition is a great honour as I know myself as a poet.

Things that attract me to a poem are a fitting and clever title, correct spelling and grammar, a well crafted poem, formal poetry, lyrical poetry and free verse, poems with emotion, unexpected poems, poems that try to say something different, poems that ache, poems that bleed, poems that try to heal, the voice of the poet, striking use of language, humble language and above all, imagery.

Good luck! I'm looking forward to reading your creations.

To enter there is a fee of €5 per poem or €10 for 3 poems. Entries are by email to trimpoetry@gmail.com 

Further details on how to enter can be found here.

The Persistence of Time

New Year Sunset, December 2019

Happy New Year to all reading. I hope that 2020 will bring you health and happiness. I've written a poem today to mark the end of an often difficult decade. When I went for a walk earlier I saw a lady in a red coat in the distance and that was the seed of the poem. A quick thank you to Dodging the Rain, The Pickled Body and Atrium Poetry who recently published my work.

The Persistence of Time

I wonder if she is more a future figure than a past,

this lady of the year, in a red coat festive stepping

around the corner that stretches to a decade-long length of road?

It is only when she is out of view that I wonder.

I do remember when the 80s became the 90s,

all that revolution, and when the 90s turned millennium.

2009 was an ice-cube in the Harvey Wallbanger of the 2010s.

It is only when she is out of view that I wonder.

This late afternoon could be an abstract of time,

its dreary sky combined with misting rain makes tree-clocks.

Dull, surreal faces spin about bare branch tops.

It is only when she is out of view that I wonder.

The big hand spire of the church takes me back

to Christmas morning, the sleepy mass, hymns

dreamlike, the intoxication of cloying incense.

It is only when she is out of view that I wonder.

Now I have the present and a different communion,

those walking whose spirits flicker like candle flames

in the oppressiveness of the day with chants of greeting

“A Happy New Year to you!”

The religiosity of life lays itself down for my attention,

a path both worn and unworn unknown.

Salvador Dali, musing, strokes his giant moustache before me.

When she is out of sight it is troubling to consider

that the past is the future in a rear-view mirror.

Orla Fay

A Poem for November

My poem November Roots appeared in Quarryman Five published April past. The literary journal of UCC is currently looking for submissions to issue Six.

November Roots had its origin in that Edna O'Brien quote "In a way winter is the real spring, the time when the inner things happen, the resurge of nature." When November arrives I also always think of Frost's My November Guest, "My sorrow, when she's here with me/ Thinks these dark days of autumn rain/Are beautiful as days can be..."

This is also a poem for anyone out stargazing.

November Roots

Leaving the town, the church bell grown 

to a dull clang wrings out eleven o’clock.

Into mid-November I am walking,

a countryside grown sparse,

though in fact it is dying

and I wonder at what point

is the scales tipped

from one to the other?

How almost vernal the day

becomes in the height of the afternoon

sun stretching its greatest yawn

before setting, the night a shadow

gracing the day time land,

the white and pale blue sky,

marking the bare branches, so smooth

stripped outrageously for the buds of new year.

A silence has fallen on the woods,

the hunter’s gunshot resounds,

the pheasant is startled, the dog unsure.

The moon appears, a fat thumb print

and the stars a trail of breadcrumbs

to the deepest night, an all covering

canopy of midnight pricked with silver.

What if the whole of space

is a river of time and the stars

the sunlight bouncing off its ripples

and currents, dark water, deep space?

I feel closest then to my ancestors,

minutiae of the universe,

hypnotised, rooted to the spot, eyes gazing

upwards, entranced by the heavens

but a thing of gravity. My mantra:

I am of the earth, I am of the earth,

I am of the earth, I am of the earth…

Orla Fay

21st Francis Ledwidge Poetry Award

Delighted to have a poem Highly Commended here. Well done to all on the list.