Australia Day 2022 Picturing the Old People

 

from Picturing the Old People, Genevieve Grieves

I wrote this poem after visiting GOMA on a trip to Brisbane. The original blog post is here. Reviewing it I made a couple of adjustments. I found these words by the artist and reflected on my own interpretation of the installation.

You can never control how people will interpret your work. I’ve had comments about my work that are so far from what I was intending, it continues to surprise me. Each viewer’s life experiences affect the way they see your work. For example, when I did Picturing the old people, a video installation based on archival photographs of Aboriginal people, someone said to me “isn’t it sad that Aboriginal people were forced to wear European clothes”. I was shocked, because what I was intending, and worked hard to show, was how well Aboriginal people had adapted to and existed inside this new culture which was forced upon them – I was trying to show their resilience and acceptance. I had not intended to reinforce the idea of Aboriginal people as victims – in fact, the documentation shows that Aboriginal people were required to look ‘more Aboriginal’ for these studio photos than they really were.

So my job as facilitator and my intention as storyteller is to shift the framework, and using the artefacts of colonialism allows me, and a bunch of other Indigenous artists, to inscribe new meanings on the work. It brings voice.

You know, art is a weapon and its strength lies in its ability to disturb, to disrupt and to combat racist sentiment. – Genevieve Grieves,  from https://mgnsw.org.au/articles/home-genevieve-grieves/

Picturing the Old People

After Genevieve Grieves, GOMA Brisbane, August 2012

 

From Victorian England of rural innocence

I travel to Paris with Pissarro, and on

to past masterpieces of the Prado.

Then, everything European is left

in its sphere, set

floating adrift…

 

Humidity and sunlight deaden

marshmallow flowers turned to cream,

toasted upon wilting at the bottom

of the display by the pool

separating one building

from another.

 

On the second floor they dance, Aboriginal:

angry, proud, utterly captivating,

made to pose and shot.

Polarized and stilled,

in time’s eye

I seem bereft.

 

Orla Fay

Let freedom ring... After Marin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

I Have a Dream Martin Luther King, August 28 1963

“Let freedom ring…”

After Martin Luther King Jr.

His words in 1963 painted across wireless,

from Belfast to Johannesburg, Berlin to Palestine,

China to the U.S.S.R, as urgently, widely dreamed

as in those places in the United States

he sung to: Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina,

Georgia, New York, Tennessee, and California.

Wherever bondage, or oppression clung

his vision realised a glimmer of hope

to the despairing, promised the rainbow, 

sun on the shaded side of the mountain. 

Echoes of gunshot shook walls that fell,

waking from sleep the conscience 

of those who knew they could do better.

Could the dreamer, the idealist, the peace maker

overcome still engulfing troubles?

There is violence in quests for power

that offer the ego its addictive, quick fix, 

but no lasting salve to the pierced heart, 

the wingless flight of the caged bird.

Orla Fay

Two Snowdrop Poems

 

Snowdrops John Noonan

Thanks to poet John Noonan for taking a photo of the snowdrops in his garden. Below are two pieces on the subject of the flower, and this time of the year. The first was written nearly fifteen years ago and I have slightly edited it. The second I wrote maybe two years ago. I'm still waiting to see my first snowdrop in the flesh, this January.

A Snowman and a Snowdrop Fleeting

Now I am a sculpture

my skin is cold, patterned

with fingerprints, texture

soft and full of clumps.

By my feet fluffy and wet,

is my daughter budding hope,

pure as a pearl, or an aching tear

shed before daffodil hour.

As it grows dark

the land is lavender quiet.

She nods her head in the wind

and I alone understand her silently.

We are not here for long 

we concur.  By nature

I am older and she, younger.

Together we drift.

A snowman and a snowdrop

stand between falling flakes,

neither the wiser, 

still, they are time.

Orla Fay

***

Snowdrop, Fallen Star

She calls to me, 

blissful ballerina,

the happiest thing on the embankment.

Galanthus, the milk of flowers,

hope splashed woods, fields 

and pathways her design.

Among blooms she is singular,

her trembling stem liminal,

coaxed by that expectant sun.

A sisterhood clusters

along a hedgerow, almost hidden.

They have little to say

in the nights that succumb

yet to flickering candlelight,

as the tide returns from glimmerwane,

the year half asleep, still dreaming.

She curls toes in a dawn,

while opening her eyes 

to the Plough and the Blue Moon.

Orla Fay

Dodging the Snow 2021

 

A Schoolboy Sleeping on his Book Jean-Baptiste Greuze

I'm delighted once again to be included in Dodging the Rain's 12 poems of Christmas, aka Dodging the Snow. Thanks to editor Neil Slevin for including 5 poems, written late last year, all on a festive theme. The poems can be read here, while The Christmas Book is posted below too. 

The Christmas Book

Treasure Island, Black Beauty, Heidi,

Lorna Doone, Oliver Twist, Huckleberry Finn

all populated Christmases past

(I can hear Marley’s chains rattling).

Their names are reeling spools, 

a child’s cinema on a dark winter morning, 

a galloping horse, a raft on a wide river, 

a high mountain top.

Under a duvet sky I ran by the moon 

of the torch with The Famous Five across moors.

I watched Anne’s dreams unfurl on Prince Edward Island,

realise her courage in those journeys to family and love.

You could never be lonely with a window 

to a wider world, another’s passion processed,

a transfer of energy, a most sincere communication,

a leaving for foreign places, and always a coming home.

Books are the real fairy tales.

Orla Fay

Happy Christmas 2021

 

Happy Christmas to the readers of the post. I've written this poem in the last couple of hours while pondering The Three Wise Men and some images I collected today on a walk. I couldn't help hearing T.S. Eliots's Prufrock telling me earlier,

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Last week I saw a shooting star, and hence the title of the poem. 

A Falling Star

Two millennia ago, it was a Middle Eastern town

that they visited with gold, frankincense, and myrrh,

not an Irish village dappled with rain and more blurry rain.

None of the white stuff this year, except in a snow globe,

a shaken, shook thing, a genie’s lamp, a spirit conduit,

transport to the past, a future, dreamland. 

Before the fall of night, (that great, black citadel)

the curtain draws shut, hush of Christmas Eve 

descending while light rises colourful, myriad, 

blue bulbs swaying on a penned tree, window sparkle,

twinkling phials and canisters carried on camels

across sand, hourglass, windswept dunes by Magi.

What of them, these shadowy, bronze-skinned men?

Balthasar, Melchior, and Caspar, in transit from Parthia,

astrologers chasing the sun, Star of Bethlehem, 

lost in their alchemy, Jerusalem bound, where they asked,

Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? 

For we have seen His star in the east and have come to worship Him.*

Where would they go now, following primitive instruments?

Wise still to believe in dreams, to be guided by the heart

and faith? Would they be led to a place of the faithless

to think that among the very mortal, the fallen meteors,

grace and humility could be born? When they arrive at the river

that carries the sorrow of the people,

will they recognise the child of the city?

Orla Fay

*Matthew 2:1-2

Crow of Minerva

 

Joos de Momper (II) - Helicon or Minerva's Visit to the Muses c. 1600

Huge thanks to Crow of Minerva editor Roisin Ní Neactain for including a poem poet Maeve McKenna and I collaborated on. The piece has been through several drafts and was initially formed over a year ago. Auto-da-fé can be read here. 

On the subject of Minerva (associated with the Greek Athena), the story goes that when Perseus beheaded Medusa, Pegasus grew from some spilt blood. Minerva tamed the winged horse and gave him to the Muses. It was a kick from Pegasus' hoof that created the spring of Hippocrene. It was said that if one drank from this fountain poetic inspiration would follow.

Ovid recounts in the Metamorphoses Minerva speaking:

“Fame has given to me

the knowledge of a new-made fountain—gift

of Pegasus, that fleet steed, from the blood

of dread Medusa sprung—it opened when

his hard hoof struck the ground.—It is the cause

that brought me.—For my longing to have seen

this fount, miraculous and wonderful,

grows not the less in that myself did see

the swift steed, nascent from maternal blood.”

Diwali Festival of Lights