I'm back to you today blog for a wee check-in. Trim Poetry Festival was cancelled due to the pandemic. Well done to Patrick Lodge who won the poetry competition and to Maeve McKenna and Matt Hohner who were joint runners-up. Patrick's poem can be read here. Boyne Berries 27 has also been released and can be purchased via PayPal here.
I was delighted to have my debut poetry collection accepted by Jessie Lendennie of Salmon Poetry. It will be published in spring 2023. This is something I've been working towards for a long time.
Recently I had a poem published in Tales from the Forest, issue 11, Lore. I have poems forthcoming in Crannóg 52, Impossible Archetype and The Lake at the end of the month and early April. More news to follow of a possible reading in the summer and other things.
Yesterday I admired the buds growing on the trees, the daffodils and the first of the primroses. I've included a very old poem below in honour of the daffodils. I'm always struck by how luminous they can seem in the twilight, or the early morning light. Their trumpets really do herald the end of wintertime, the beginning of spring. The photo is my own, just taken in the garden.
Pluto’s Hidden Stars
All is silent
in the countryside
in anticipation,
where a watching child
holds her breath.
Alone in the frosted night
his mindset is fogged and closing.
Between the villages
cars travel, their headlights
search through thick air.
Wipers swish moisture.
Behind trees there is a bogeyman.
Dogs bark.
Pluto has taken all the stars
and hidden the moon
in the loneliness of falling to sleep.
In the morning ridden away
my cold dawn wakes.
In his trail a scattering
of daffodil heads;
unfound hidden stars.
