The Bumble Bee

The happiest thing I saw today was a bumble bee when I went for a walk after work. I guess summer is coming. I looked for a poem about bees and came across this, yet it's the image of the voice of a violin lasting in the air and leading into a starry night that strikes me now.

A Song on the End of the World

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.

Czeslaw Milosz

Boyne Berries 1916 Launch, Thursday, 31st March.

 

Featuring the work of 29 poets and 5 writers of fiction Boyne Berries 1916 will be launched this coming Thursday at 8 p.m. in the Castle Arch Hotel, Trim, Co Meath. Many of the contributors to the magazine will attend and read on the night. The attendance of family and friends is welcome. If you have an interest in poetry, prose or in the commemoration of 1916 come along too. It is a free event and the magazine will be available to purchase on the night.

The magazine will be launched by poet Tom French. Tom has published three collection with the renowned Gallery Press; Touching the Bones which won the Forward Prize for a first collection in 2002, The Fire Step (2009) and Midnightstown (2014). He has also published The Night Ahead (2013) and Taking the Oath (2015) with Smithereens Press He has recently won the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy award for poetry. The Boyne Writers' Group are honoured to have him launch this edition of the magazine.

Boyne Writers' Reading in Longwood this Easter Sunday

 

Boyne Berries 1916 - Cover Design Rory O'Sullivan

As part of Meath's 1916 centenary events the Boyne Writers' Group will give a poetry reading this Easter Sunday between 4 and 5 p.m. at Longwood Fair Green. We hope to preview Boyne Berries 1916 at the event.

Longwood Fair Green - Family Day - Celebrating Community 1916 -2016. Remembering Thomas Allen and Eamonn Duggan. Easter Sunday Family day for 1916. Celebrating community, families and children and those who contribute to Irish life.

The Forward Prize 2016

 

Thanks to Crannog Magazine  who have nominated my poem 'Look Back in Wonder' for The Forward Prize  for a single poem. The poem was published in Crannog 39 last summer. It's a very tough competition but it's good to be nominated.

 

It's been a productive weekend, one poem and one 2000 word short story written. I enjoyed the story immensely so maybe I should begin another one. Yet maybe a poem will come first.

 

Centenary in Poetry and Prose

Okay here we go. In advance of the launch of Boyne Berries 1916 on Thursday, 31st March at 8 p.m. I'm going to do a short review of Centenary in Poetry and Prose, published by The Meath Writers' Circle and edited by Frank Murphy of The Tara Poetry Blog.

The journal features work by members of The Meath Writers' Circle, some pieces by members of the Boyne Writers and two poems by Tom French, who will launch Boyne Berries 1916. All-in-all the local communities of Trim, Navan and its environs are well represented. I notice that Francis Ledwidge and Padraic Pearse have poems in here too; The Lament for Thomas MacDonagh and The Wayfarer.

Bird-hearted Bard of Boyne by Fr. Patrick Deighan shows some lovely turn of phrase. I enjoyed I Thank You For My Tomorrows by Michael Sheils and Monica Sherlock's Enough Said and The Dream. Myra Lalor's Rules of Execution is chilling but well written. There's lots to find nestled between the pages of this publication.

The cover image is great, it is a sculpture called Cuchulainn and Ferdia by Ann Meldon Hugh. Cuchulainn and Ferdia were brothers-in-arms I suppose. Congratulations to The Meath Writers' Circle. You can read more here The Tara Poetry Blog

Boyne Berries 1916 Submission Call

The submission period for Boyne Berries 19, which will be a special issue commemorating the centenary of the 1916 Rising, will open on Sunday, 15th November 2015 and close on Sunday, 03rd January, 2016. The magazine will  be published in late March of 2016.

 

What does 1916 mean to you now? Can you picture life one hundred years ago? Is romantic Ireland dead and gone? What would those figures, those celebrated heroes of our past make of Ireland today if they could step out from the shadows? Is this a time to truly reflect? I don't want to put words in your mouth but I'd love to know what you think, what you feel, what you imagine...

 

I am keen to read work from writers in the Meath area but national and international submissions are also welcome.

 

Send up to 3 poems per poetry submission. Poems should be no more than 40 lines long. Fiction and prose submissions should be no more than 1500 words. Please use Times New Roman 12 and single spacing. Please include a short biographical note about yourself. Submissions should be placed in the body of the email and attached as a word document attachment. Submit to orla.a.fay@gmail.com only.

 

Submissions which fail to adhere to the above criteria will be ignored.

Love of Distance

Love of Distance

I remember that, when I was in the house
of my mother, in the farmland,
I had a window that looked out
onto meadows; a distant wooded border
hid the Ticino and, farther away,
there was a dark strip of hills.
Then, I had seen the sea
just once, but I harbored
the bitter nostalgia of a lover.
Toward evening, I gazed at the horizon;
squinted my eyes; and with my eyelashes,
caressed edges and colors:
the strip of hills turned flat,
trembled, became blue: to me it seemed the sea
and I liked it better than the real one.

Antonia Pozzi

(24 April 1929)


Translated by Nicholas Benson