Beach Birth

 

During the week I heard on the radio about the whales who became stranded on Laytown Beach and Mornington Beach: http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0620/457762-whale-meath/

 

I always think that being beached is so incredibly tragic for these creatures.  It reminded me of a poem I wrote about dolphins.  I've looked for the poem and it was published in The Meath Chronicle in May 2002.  So yes, here's one of mine from the archives...

Beach Birth

Across the television screen the young reporter tells me
That over a hundred dolphins were beached today
On the stony, grey shore of Brittany.
Men in waterproof clothing help the creatures to water,
Like Arion they remember the debt they must pay
To this silver-backed sea-daughter
Trembling and thrashing now against the hard earth.

There must be a curse on the ocean, an ill wind of some sort
To drive the beautiful to disaster,
To take its own pride in natural cull.
There is little hope for the school according to this report;
The inward current is stronger and faster
Than a dolphin's swimming urge and skill.
Bottle-nosed and floundering they lie.

Their streamlined skin is no addition now,
Glittering and silky in the murky sand,
Soon to become coarse and dry like the ear of a sow.
High pitched screams fall tragically on the deaf land,
Heard only by the devil and the deep blue sea.
This is not an image to comfort any soul;
A listless, bloody dolphin's eye.

Kell's Hay Festival 28th-30th June

John Banville

If you can get to this festival then go!  Thanks to Eamon Cooke from The Boyne Writers' Group for passing on information about it.  I've booked a ticket to hear Jeanette Winterson on the Friday and I'd love to hear John Banville but I will be away on the Saturday.  The programme can be downloaded from the festival website https://www.hayfestival.com/kells/index.aspx?skinid=26&localesetting=en-GB

IMAGINE THE WORLD

SAMHLAIGH AN DOMHAN

Our newest chapter is in Kells in County Meath, Ireland, 28–30 June 2013

Programme highlights include novelists John Boyne, DBC Pierre, John Banville, Tiffany Murray; poets Owen Sheers, Nerys Williams, Eurig Salisbury; memoirs from Jeanette Winterson; children's writers Jenny Valentine, Sarah Webb; playwright Frank McGuinness; actors Peter Sheridan, Lisa Dwan; a film animating The Secret of Kells; academics Germaine Greer on Shakespeare and Dr Bernard Meehan on the Book of Kells®; politician Jesse Norman on Burke; and musician Alex Valentine.
Kells & District Chamber, working with a number of partners, hope to develop an Irish 'town of books' as a national centre for all genres of literature. The Hay Festival will bring together the best Irish and international authors and thinkers to celebrate the sharing of stories and ideas.

Ireland with Emily

After googling and reading many poems about childhood, I googled poems about June and found this!!

Ireland with Emily

by John Betjeman

Bells are booming down the bohreens,
White the mist along the grass,
Now the Julias, Maeves and Maureens
Move between the fields to Mass.
Twisted trees of small green apple
Guard the decent whitewashed chapel,
Gilded gates and doorway grained,
Pointed windows richly stained
With many-coloured Munich glass.

See the black-shawled congregations
On the broidered vestment gaze
Murmer past the painted stations
As Thy Sacred Heart displays
Lush Kildare of scented meadows,
Roscommon, thin in ash-tree shadows,
And Westmeath the lake-reflected,
Spreading Leix the hill-protected,
Kneeling all in silver haze?

In yews and woodbine, walls and guelder,
Nettle-deep the faithful rest,
Winding leagues of flowering elder,
Sycamore with ivy dressed,
Ruins in demesnes deserted,
Bog-surrounded bramble-skirted -
Townlands rich or townlands mean as
These, oh, counties of them screen us
In the Kingdom of the West.

Stony seaboard, far and foreign,
Stony hills poured over space,
Stony outcrop of the Burren,
Stones in every fertile place,
Little fields with boulders dotted,
Grey-stone shoulders saffron-spotted,
Stone-walled cabins thatched with reeds,
Where a Stone Age people breeds
The last of Europe's stone age race.

Has it held, the warm June weather?
Draining shallow sea-pools dry,
When we bicycled together
Down the bohreens fuchsia-high.
Till there rose, abrupt and lonely,
A ruined abbey, chancel only,
Lichen-crusted, time-befriended,
Soared the arches, splayed and splendid,
Romanesque against the sky.

There in pinnacled protection,
One extinguished family waits
A Church of Ireland resurrection
By the broken, rusty gates.
Sheepswool, straw and droppings cover,
Graves of spinster, rake and lover,
Whose fantastic mausoleum,
Sings its own seablown Te Deum,
In and out the slipping slates.

Back to basics

 

I'm back and starting to write again.  I have only one more assignment to write of 1400 words which I may start after writing this blog.  It has been a tough year but it was necessary for me to go back to study.  This is especially evident in the aftermath of the Primetime, A Breach of Trust expose a few weeks ago.  Working in early years care and education is a bit like being caught up in a whirlwind lately. I've studied Aistear (The Early Childhood Curriculum Framework) a lot but my favourite assignments of the year were on the debate about Nature vs. Nurture, Genes vs. Environment and the role of gender in play.  On a positive note I've been complimented by tutors on how well I write. Yea thanks.  Next on the agenda is describing and analysing my own philosophy of ECCE and key influences to my practice and examining changing constructions of childhood that have evolved through time.  That should be interesting. 

 

I've been dipping in and out of John Banville's Ancient Light.  It's really good.  Niamh Boyce's The Herbalist is beckoning.  Kate Dempsey will be guest editor for Boyne Berries 14 so that will be intriguing! I'm also looking forward to reading a pdf. of Abridged Lockjaw. 

Adeste Fideles

 

I'm having a read through of Crannog 32.  Fellow Boyne Writer Brendan Carey Kinnane has a poem included in this issue.  His poem is called Khayelitsha.  I haven't read anything of Brendan's in a while but this poem, like all his poems, is rich in language.  Kevin Graham, whom I admire has a poem included called The Snow Globe.   Clare Sawtell has a poem called When They Leave which I like too.  As I'm reading the journal I can't help smiling and thinking about how I want to write something new.  I love poetry.  Isn't it good that you can fall in love over and over again?  This bodes well for fidelity!  I don't even know where to start with Abridged Primal.  I suppose initially I'm drawn to Beth MacFarlane's Deep Shadows because it has a resonation with my poem Of the Crow.  I also like Vast, Illusive Sea by Jan Harris.  Kevin Graham has a poem in this too called Raw, as does Ann Egan who has a poem in Crannog 32 called Butterfly on a Rafter.  I also love Enda Coyle-Greene's Hedgehog.  There is so much to admire and think about in these magazines.  Needless to say I'm refreshed and inspired by the work. 

The Bicycle Diary

 

Now while I should be finishing off my reflective practice journals for my course I've been making a new blog which can be found at http://orlasbicyclediary.blogspot.ie/ This blog will be a diary of my trips cycling I intend.  I hope that it will motivate me too to get fit. 

I received copies of Crannog 32 and Abridged 0__29 Primal in the post in the past week and they are lovely.  I will retreat and read them over the weekend.

Until then!

Adieu!

Boyne Berries 13

Above is a photograph and a poem by Anne Crinion representing Knowth in Co. Meath.  It appears in Boyne Berries 13 alongside the print and poem Newgrange.  Boyne Berries 13 contains prose and poetry by members of The Boyne Writers' Group.  It also contains work by Tom French, Patrick Doherty, CP Stewart, Byron Beynon, Johanna C Leahy, Cliff Wedgbury, Barbara Leahy, Margaret Galvin, Kenneth Keating, Pearse Murray, Elaine Martin, Ana Maire Blackburn, Fiona Bolger, John Ennis, Liz Quirke, Gregoir O Duill, Armel Dagorn, Eileen Ni Shuilleabhain, Rachel Coventry, Alan McMonagle, Eithne Cavanagh, Mary Bradford, Tony Bailie, Paul McMahon, James Reid, Philip Quirke, Jane Blanchard, Maurice Devitt, Kevin Connelly, John Saunders, Marie Gethins, Chris Connolly, Louis Mulcahy, Teresa Sweeney, Dawn Lowe, Frank Joussen, Greg Bogaerts and Margaret Cahill. 

 

Boyne Berries 13 can be purchased from the following link:

 

http://www.boynewriters.com/buy_or_submit.html

 

Thanks to Frank Murphy for launching Boyne Berries 13.  He is pictured below at the launch in the Castle Arch Hotel, Trim with vice-chairperson Caroline Carey Finn.