Category: Dispossession

Orphans from Poetry Ireland’s Forum

November 5th, 2013

Some years ago poets and emergent writers used a forum on Poetry Ireland for discussion, testing poetry, and commenting on the work of others. The idea was good, although the tech wasn’t so hot. After some discussion with the then Admin it was decided to have a place (not online) where poems could be published with a view to later submissions. This was a generous extension of your basic discussion forum, and geared to the need of the emergent writer. Poems that appear online are not published by many magazines, so the space had to be a closed one.

Many at the Poetry Ireland Forum went on to publish these works. Unfortunately, the forum is to be closed and while there is no announcement on the forum pages, there is brief note there on the closure and deletion of the forum available to members. There was an email :

Dear C Murray

Over the past few weeks, Poetry Ireland has been engaged in an in-depth review of all its online resources, including the Poetry Ireland Forum.

After careful deliberation, we have decided to close down the Poetry Ireland Forum, with effect from Friday 8th November 2013. We strongly advise all members to make copies of their posts by midnight Thursday 7th November, as after this date the Forum and all its contents will be permanently deleted from our servers.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all Forum members for their participation over the past few years.

I believe that this deadline for removal of works has been extended, though not indefinitely, and that an archive has been made available to members of the PI Forum. The type of tech used does not allow for portability, so files must be manually taken off and uploaded elsewhere. This is a huge and upsetting inconvenience.

I have been in and out removing drafts of poems, the majority of them later published. I am linking them below this brief post. The conversations and encouragement on a place dedicated to poetic interests is to be expediently dumped down the tubes and some of that loss is irretrievable for me (and others)

I hope when PI finish their deliberations on their online facilities that they will find a way to extend their space to emergent writers in a manner that includes data liberation tools and a stated ethos regarding intellectual rights.

Dear C. Murray,

There is an archive of the Forum, which is currently available to all registered Forum members at

http://www.poetryireland.ie/forum/archive/index.php

Unfortunately, we no longer have the resources to host and moderate the Forum. We strongly recommend that members make copies of any posts/original work they wish to keep.

Previews from ‘In Havoc Lights’ by Michael McAloran

October 10th, 2013

vii-

…vertigo ice/ what said/ yes/ said/ it follows/ the clasp-knife breath that lingers/ in the rat deep of vermin obsolete/ of the night’s claim/ shadowed by meat/ in the presence of the none/ a blind man’s cane tracing the brail sheets of nothing left to be/ inherent dice of the unknown/ till failure/ terror of/ asking then of the what till else/ semblant/ dissipatory/ click-clack and the roundelay of ashen promises/ so speaks the silence filled with a grandeur of displaced light/ in the laughter of confrontation with the hope that never was/ as so swings the light bulb in a deserted room filled with scarlet dust with scarlet vapours/ till a-dream in sun lights/ hence the spectacle/ the a-breeze block smashing out the remnants of the ongoing/ here alack/ vibratory tone/ perhaps/ else/ till foreign once again/ [we all fall down]/ drag of the pelt of skinned longing/ here or there a vibrant echoing/ voices/ the voice grasping for nothing/ vagrant the ice subtle as the dawn growing upon the unearth-ed flesh/ breath no/ violet no/ synergy/ some distance of/ collapse of/ said without spoken/ glacial the tide consumes the lack of air/ lung-lack/ spitting out the teeth of pissoir abnegation/ furtive/ in the silence of ever having been/ as if…sudden as if…back then to fall upon the crest the wave of it/ oceanic as a cadaver’s wonderment…

xi-

…undone/ travail yes or no/ till absentee/ a colourless distance to bear/ as if the given speech were other than/ spit polish and the ashen weight of never having been/ the silence of never having been/ in retrospect/ hard pushed/ give or take a day or naught/ settling/ settling/ throughout the given dissipate of the mock sun’s spun/ in havoc lights where claim is disrepute/ scarred the air melds in a circus dislocation/ given yes to fall/ here or there a rhythm/ a calking of features marred by ongoing finality/ snap-snap the fingers cracking/ through the delve into/ of the fragrance of/ silenced by night/ one step to take above all others/ it says/ it murmurs/ as if some encore were possible in the bleak thin air of some foreign beginning/ given to task of/ all around/ beyond/ step non-step then back to the outset of commence/ here a ruptured breathing/ such is/ what known/ nothing of/ the fingers search the lie/ a mercury tear/ given to speeches unheard/ in the collapse of all/ where mimicry shadows break upon cylindrical walls/ unearthed prayers of the dead/ none to follow/ merely to gaze upon/ through cataract eyes bound by ennui/ hence the laughter never ceases to be/ and the rot of light or vapours/ posits and henceforth yet of the given lapse in each motion of the un-primed/ and so/ step/ retrace/ trace yet following on from the none that came before/ yet still the breathless pace of haven lest to fall/ sudden then to ask/ as if the voice were never more silent…

xiii-

…no shelter from the ragged taste/ of excrement/ till trace composed/ figment or no/ haggard blood set till ember of/ scuttle of dead vermin tears/ this is sun light’s breath/ stillness of cadaver’s shine// head buried in the glimmer of the eye/ till obsolete passage/ imprint of none/ mocked spun of passage in the depths of silence/ echo of veranda/ cleft yes/ subtle yes to fall/ and so the emptiness of boned meat/ a meat hook stylus and the caress of nothing/ sneer speech/ absent speech/ traces yet to divulge/ (echoing laughter)/ the skyline it mocks it does not mock/ the earth sucks upon dead bodies/ and so in this/ the earth mocks the frozen words/ graceful to trace lies all lies it echoes/ and so forth/ breathe/ inhalations of razors and the spit of blood/ of cum/ vibrant the nocturne makes nothing of/ the eyeball sliced/ caressed by tongue/ what wounds/ effortless/ salient/ nocturne of spit speeches/ prayers to the none of/ from the none of/ walls paper walls and the skeletal starched/ back-light of a room filled with nooses/ give or take an inch/ enough to go around/ these are the dead lands/ these are the cactus lands/ spread out like a patient/ etherised upon an operating table/ in the skull of there ever having been/ stone knocked upon this is the salvage/ the nerve struck/ till dark/ all is dark/ the bone break of winter fathom and the blood struck fathomless/ given as if to cross the passage inwardly/ the voice is forever embers of what is no longer imminent/ unless/ and so the light fades/ so it burns let it go/ scraps torn away in a dressage of sight/ petals to dust/ nothing ever touched upon…

xiv-

…swaying meat/ an overture of silenced/ the dried blood of wounds and the clasp of nothing/ vibration/ yes/ as if it once/ the syringe beauty of the skulled ice/ vermin air/ the asking of as if it were other than/ null/ void/ pennies upon the eyes/ time’s passing/ absence of time/ the stain of bloody words in sands the sands of which devoured/ yet of/ so it is said/ hands dead the virus effigy/ and so it carries/ there is breath through the sneer of teeth what matter what have you/ in an elixir of silence/ (only then/ only there)/ ah the grace is enough it is not enough/ skeletal signs/ the traces of the seen/ bring out your dead your living/ nothing is all// …the fingers bite the skyline/ hence bled there is no other laughter/ collapsed/ collapsed/ head-struck the distance traced/ life no answer/ and yet the burn is this/ given to replicate/ repeat/ echo yes there will be echoes/ such is the lie of having been/ as if recalling were to recall/ in-step/ (laughter)/ the bare foot skeletal skinned of flesh makes impart in dirt// vacancy all/ dead spaces/ the hands absent the voice absent/ the shiv cannot collect the dawning/ drunkenly the whispers of teeth skin the collective waste/ there is none/ naught/ dispersed the collapsed longing for/ in the haven of desire/ till drag of obsolete returns/ voices/ voices/ the hiddeness thronged/ blinded by something that can never be spat out/ will never trickle away like piss/ and so …

These previews are © Michael McAloran , from In Havoc Lights

Poems by Rosemarie Rowley

August 3rd, 2013

ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR

I have not been keeping a ledger or account book
Of double entries, for the cost and price
Is not reckoned in the way you look
Or what you said, in whatever form or guise
I’ll never know your motives or intentions
Whether you acted blindly or on trust
But your suspicion of all engines and inventions
Does not bury the lost meaning, or let rust

The iron will, the gold enamelling –
Byzantine portraits in detail are enthralling
And with the years there comes the mellowing
Of my survivor’s guilt, the clarity of my calling
It was not fair, but lust and beauty
Caused the raid, and not excise on love’s duty.

© Rosemarie Rowley 2012

A RING TINGLE OF FEAR IN GOLDENBRIDGE ORPHANAGE.

A ring tingle of fear ran around my belly
Deep in my secret folds a spark of anger flew
To where your ears had picked up jelly-
Fish stings that wanted to be blue
It raced back to the womb of your un-desiring
Self where, abandoned, you brindled in your edge
Of razor sharp innuendo which was firing
Your awestruck envy of a child’s winter knowledge
Your long arm bent my back, a spancel
Till it almost broke with the weight of zealous
Might that needs exorcism in a chancel
To make a penitent nun like you jealous

So clapped my eyes and ears that were burning
As you roasted me on the spit your ire was turning.

ALL THIS DOING GOOD IS VERY CATHOLIC

He said as he sat at the wrought-iron utility desk
Beside the window whose frame was too large
You’ll get over me, you will risk
The transfer of love from the office to the barge
Of the old canal of desiring in my Dutch hometown
For we knew little, who were the divine elect
But that the balance of justice He wore in his crown
Of thorns on his head hurt, yet He was not perfect
But jealous of the worship of other Gods
He admits Himself, he is staff and rod
Knew Eve’s peccadillo and Adam’s pelf.
Everything ordained, the elect will be saved
Some go to Hell on the path you have paved
With good intentions, but lacking in free will
I see your progress in my view from the hill.

Rosemarie Rowley has written extensively in form: Flight into Reality (1989) is the longest original work in terza rima in English, reprinted 2010 and now available on CD. She has also written in rhyme royal and rhyming couplets. She has four times won the Epic award in the Scottish International Open Poetry Competition. Her books in print are: The Sea of Affliction (1987,one of the first works in ecofeminism, reprinted 2010, and Hot Cinquefoil Star, (2002) (which contains The Puzzle Factory a crown of sonnets and Letter to Kathleen Raine in rhyming couplets). Her most recent book is In Memory of Her (2004, 2008) which includes Betrayal into Origin – Dancing & Revolution in the Sixties (an 80 stanza poem in decima rima (ten line rhyme) and The Wake of Wonder (a regular sonnet sequence) and many other sonnets; all books, except her first, The Broken Pledge (1985, Martello) published by Rowan Tree Ireland Press, Dublin.

In 2003, she co-edited, with town planner John Haughton, an anthology of tree poems, Seeing the Wood and the Trees (Rowan Tree Press with Cairde na Coille)

Rosemarie has given papers for academic conferences in the Universities of Galway and Limerick and the Clinton Institute (UCD) in Ireland, in Bath, Edinburgh, St. Andrews’ and Stirling, Louisville, Sarasota and Atlanta Universities in the USA. in the UK, and in Prague, Venice, Paris ,and Valladolid on the European mainland. She has been active in the green movement in Ireland and in the Irish Byron Society and worked for a time in the European institutions in Europe.

Rosemarie has degrees in Irish and English Literature, and philosophy from Trinity College Dublin, an M.Litt on the nature poet Patrick Kavanagh, and a diploma in psychology from NUI.

Impress by Candi V. Auchterlonie

July 5th, 2013

Impress by C.V Auchterlonie. Published Punk Hostage Press 2012

nest

1.

I see us
as if we’re not us at all
as if we’ve let our body suits already
slipped off and skinny dipped under some glass blown
lake
one in /one out
we walk the same /we drown the same.’

nest is © Candi V. Auchterlonie from Impress (Amazon)

Impress is Candi V. Auchterlonie’s second poetry collection, published by Punk Hostage Press 2012.

Candi V. Auchterlonie is a woman of the landscape. She is a poet of the open vista and of the outdoors. One feels that the house and the hearth are an alien skin that somehow do not fit her. The house functions as doors and windows that lead to water and wide open spaces. There is an obsidian thread running as a deep cleft through and under her expression. She mines this vein revealing a controlled sure craftsmanship in her approach to poetic form.

Auchterlonie’s writing approach to her poetry is singular. Whilst she takes on themes of motherhood, alienation, beauty and violence, the aforementioned obsidian vein reveals a linguistic nomadism inherent in her expression and it runs through the whole of Impress. Sometimes the words she seeks to communicate the depth of her experience are lost to her pen. This does not give her pause, nor does it reveal a desperate clutch for the right image or symbol. In fact, Auchterlonie shows herself prepared to wait for her poetic imagery to develop.

Auchterlonie handles poetic series and inter-related themes with extreme care and she will extend them without losing control of the symbols she has assembled to voice her poetry. There are series of poems with interlinked themes throughout Impress: terrarium, chambers, walnut, woman without a landscape, and ghost hands the ultimate poem of the collection are in series.

The pivotal part of Impress occurs in the series woman without a landscape:

woman without a landscape

it still startles her
the way old pain does.

she remembers it well, every hurt that tamed her
irises.
it hits her like a thousand paper cuts
to her fragile vellum skin.’

woman without a landscape is © Candi V. Auchterlonie

The tropes and symbols Auchterlonie has assembled for herself are dominated by water, rock, ocean, blue,and metallurgy. The home represented by the house sometimes feels imprisoning or unsafe in the poems of Impress :

terrarium 1.

should you remember
in retrospect
the gossamer, or
the ghostly silence
of her
the glass house in the hills
tiny crystal knobs over brass
secret kept,
unbroken stave, marble smooth

terrarium 1. is © Candi V. Auchterlonie

House is not a place of safety from storm and almost exists alone to provide metaphor or symbol. Houses have cellars and doorways that are like a magic kingdom into well-guarded memory

rock-a-bye

rocked-you-wildly
middle of the night storm

so very turbulent
that this house of mine

began to caw and creak like a flock/
like antique brass hinges flittering off like fairies.

the old house rattled right
down to its foundation.
I could hear its old belly aching
discomfort and some superficial seething pain.

3 am.
dozed

only to be woken
by the violent husbandry
of the shaking of my walls/my bed.

I began conversations
with the trees outside.

from rock-a-bye by Candi V. Auchterlonie

Objects and Auchterlonie’s perception of them are made new when she observes her child in his world. In her poems about motherhood there is a tsunami of tenderness and of self- recognition, and of her own engagement with the small and miraculous world of her son.

The experience of birthing reflects the sex that created the small boy _whose silence /goldfish gasp _ are the poet’s own. The child in Impress is the keystone of the arch that supports her epic structure. He is a window to the world and his visual language and gesture is a learning curve for the poet.

once upon a time ago

his tiny peach hands
distorted blur under lemon white
the glow of animate life
his, the digits of newness still
over worthless relics broken
ever storyless, he carefully cleans and collects them
from around the yard, ‘

from once upon a time ago by Candi V. Auchterlonie

Often there is a sense of total alienation from the domestic world, and that nomadism or will to unfold the world is of the utmost importance. Domestic ties and a tying to objects is secondary to unravelling a feeling of her place in the world.

The importance of place and one’s relation to it through the observation and study of talismanic objects, natural objects which speak of mystery are always subject to the poet’s minute investigation, as if the huge is presently too much to handle. She holds in her own hands small symbols of the enormity of place, these are shards of wonder and not remnants or leavings from. There is a questing curiousity about Auchterlonie which bodes well for her future work , as it is allied with a subtle craftsmanship in her approach to form.

Alienation from is a still evolving in Auchterlonie’s forms and tropes. Stone (or crystals) / the walnut/ water, and sub-total immersion provide useful tools for a sense of powerlessness or littleness in the utter vastness of nature.

That thread of obsidian running through the book which belies the poet’s statement of beauty as encompassing all and everything. There is a determined desire to find her place in a world which is hers – an almost childlike beligerence and desirousness to make sense of it all. This may be a linguistic disconnectedness, a nomadic inherence , or an endless wanting that is eternally restless. Restive even.

feast of figs

ravens are rare here
I find when I fumble stumble across one
should I be so lucky
I fall onto my knees searching for
the stars, Corvus!
I think of the greeks and Babylonians
the hydras tail, the raven and adad
the story of apollo’s raven
and the feast of figs, the punishment
of being stuck in the sky, thirsty for all time.
the cost was high, I recoil.

I immediately search for headstones
marble carved eyes
cemeteries
that’s where the stars live these days
onyx forms
perched and crooning over
named and muted pale stones
under storms of rusty steel wool.’

feast of figs is © Candi V. Auchterlonie

A poem by Kit Fryatt

August 14th, 2012
Months-dead grandfather
I couldn’t have written this when you were alive,
& you kept living,
unknown to me,

like someone not obscure but obsolescing
whose death surprises mainly by his
having been alive till now (I googled Lawrence Ferlinghetti
today – he’s still alive:–)

. & unknown to my mother
. she has a half-sister
. three weeks younger, alike unknown

Fatherhood is a bit of a mystery
when you put it about like that.

From you I have serial faithlessness
from you she has a name
. & a maiden name
. that I am asked to say when asked by one of the ‘team’
. on the Credit Card
. Hotline, it being typically something unknown
. to other people, even those we’re close to,
. (I made one up)
& her hoary orphan paranoia.

© Kit Fryatt , all rights reserved

Untitled poem by Kit Fryatt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://wurmimapfel.net/.
- Link to Rain Down Can
- Wurm in Apfel
“The Willow’s Whisper”; a transatlantic compilation of poetry from Ireland and Native America.

January 16th, 2012
- The Willow’s Whisper: A Transatlantic Compilation of Poetry from Ireland and Native America Cambridge Scholars Publications 2011.
Thank you to Julianne Ní Chonchobhair, who has facilitated this short post with information and articles on the poets.

A note about the editors of ‘The Willow’s Whisper’

Jill M.O’Mahony is a Lecturer in The Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland. She has previously studied English Literature and Sociology in The National University of Ireland, Maynooth and The University of Manchester. She is working on a doctoral research project which focuses on performance, liminality and event in Native American Poetry. She lectures in the Sociology of Consumption, Modern Ireland, Narrative Identities and Communications. Her research interests include Political Anthropology and Transcultural Literature.

Dr. Mícheál Ó hAodha currently works at the University of Limerick where he lectures in the Department of History, School of Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication, UL, Ireland. He has published widely on many aspects of Irish migration, diaspora, social geography and oral history – including American“Outsider”: Stories from the Irish Traveller Diaspora. (2007) (with T.J. Vernon); The Stranger in Ourselves: Ireland’s “Others” (eds. M.Ó hAodha, University of Limerick; D. O’Donnell, University of Limerick and C. Power (Centre for Ethnicity and Health, University of Central Lancashire, UK) (2007). Screening Difference: Visual Culture and the Nomadic “Other” (with A. Huether and D. Waldron) (2009), Migrancy, Memory and Repossession: Women on the Historical Margins (2010); His most recent book is “The Turn of the Hand”: A Memoir from the Irish Margins (with Mary Ward) (2010). Between 2006 and 2008 he was an AHRC scholar in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester. He has also written fiction and poetry in collaboration with other Irish writers including Colum McCann and Gabriel Rosenstock. His next book is due out shortly as part of the Re-imagining Ireland series – Peter Lang, Oxford.

I am adding here some release notes for the anthology will be released on the 16th of February 2012.

There is a Nomadics category in this blog, which looks at dispossession, migrancy, rootlessness, outsider poetry and diaspora. I asked Julianne Ní Chonchobhair if I could feature a poem or two from the compilation on this blog, and she very kindly agreed. In keeping with the theme of the Saturday Woman Poet idea, I have decided to feature poet Allison Adelle Hedgecoke , with thanks to Julianne Ní Chonchobhair. Info about Allison Adelle Hedgecoke is available via the Poetry Foundation website.

The following is an excerpt from The Willow’s Whisper , a poem by Allison Adelle Hedgecoke.

Crossing Sky Vault Worlds

for Vaughan

Corn, Sunflower raise their faces toward Sun as she slides into
place among blue heavens.
Squash send floral swirls orange-red up into ground fog mist.

–
An ant angles his way watching constantly for morsels along the path.
Violet morning glories stream upward reaching with their petals
wide open for bursting light.

–
Rays split seams of blue casting hopeful yellow-white strokes
beaming brightly. Seasons later,
Red Sioux Quartzite speckled white by snow and fully ice-crusted,
holds firm hallowed Sioux Falls grounds nearby.

–
Glass flows, creating prisms in century-aged windows across this
room. Rainbows flourish here. Long ago,
Black Dog spoke to his master, foretold the coming world flood in
time for a raft to be built sparing Real People.

–
Children in Quebec, before encroachment, pleaded for maple
sweets each fall. Were pumpkin lanterns lighted?
In my Huron grandmother’s midwifing beaded bag, the entire
universe gleams at me through pointed stars in dreams.

–

© Allison Adelle Hedgecoke

A full list of the poets featured in the forthcoming The Willow’s Whisper are included here, N. Scott Momaday, Allison Adelle HedgeCoke, Luke Warm Water, Sherwin Butsui, Esther Belin, Joy Harjo, Nila Northsun, Joseph Bruchac, Donna Beyer (nee McCorrister), Travis Hedge Coke, Adrian C. Louis , Venaya Yazzie, Richard Van Camp, Odi Gonzales, Lee Maracle , Karenne Wood, Jules Arita Koostachin, Joan Kane, Fred Bigjim.
2011 poetry news, and online information for poets.

December 19th, 2011
Given that the Irish Times Books of the Year did not make mention of poetry books for 2011, I thought to add some links to Irish poetry presses and imprints for those readers of poetry who are not catered for in the list-system. I have to say that I do not think of such ephemera as dates when I approach a book of poetry and my reading included some 2010 volumes (and earlier). The beauty of poetry is that it is timeless and poetry books are always relevant. I am going to add links for some poetry publishers, and then some good online resources for readers and writers of poetry. I wonder how many of the books at link will survive the test of time ? (or even taste, ” So good, so funny, so real, so very, very sad” , is what amounts to review in the article).

Irish presses and poetry journals.
- The Gallery Press have an eminently worthwhile list of poets and writers, I am adding a link to their online catalogue for this and for previous years. http://www.gallerypress.com/wprs/shop/category/poetry/
- Dedalus Press is a vibrant and industrious publisher of Irish titles , their catalogue can be found here
- Salmon Press has a wonderful list of poets, and this year published Ann le Marquand Hartigan and Nuala Ní Chonchúir amongst other titles http://www.salmonpoetry.com/bookshop2.php?c2=2
- Cló iar-Chonnacht has an eclectic list of Irish Language artists, both musical and poetic, http://www.cic.ie/books.aspx for all ages of readers
I can add to this list Poetry Ireland , The SHOp Magazine , Moth (Little Editions) , Post (DCU) , Crannóg , Burning Bush , The Munster Literature Centre ( and SouthWord), The Western Writers Centre, Over the Edge, Tigh Filí , and The Irish Writer’s Centre . Online Poetry concerns include Writing.ie , Emerging Writer , Wurm in Apfel , Nuala Ní Chonchúir, and all of the above mentioned presses that use online as a source of income and connection for writers.

2011 bits and pieces.

I reviewed a few books this year and I have blogged these over the past twelve months, I liked Jeet Thayil‘s edition of Contemporary Indian Poetry and told him too, The moth magazine ‘Little Editions’ , Susan Lindsay’s ‘Whispering the Secrets, John Walsh’s ‘Chopping Wood with T.S Eliot, Human Chain by Seamus Heaney. I intend to get Memorial, by Alice Oswald and I will probably blog that too. AND this year 2011, I published some almost lost Doris Lessing Poems Here , in all a wonderful poetic year for me as a reader and writer.

This year saw the cutting of funds to Poetry Now ! and barely a whisper of protest in the media, and there was some controversy at the T.S Eliot Prize . My favourite story of the year had to be the restoration of Sue Hubbard’s ‘Eurydice’. The fourth annual Turn at Tara occurred, although some newspapers would rather not look at the wound created by rampant planning unbalanced by a single heritage and conservation bill in over a decade! Poetry happens in the most wonderful places , although these places are generally not full of literary liggers. Two wonderful editors had a spat, although Irish media coverage of same was void ,empty. I really do wonder if poetry loses importance due to the glitter and tinsel of PR management, and souped-up interest in disposable tales (the type that makes it to the charity-shops within three-four week periods of publication and sells for 1-2 Euros ?).

As is usual , I have to say that good poetry discussion occurs at Jacket2, UBUWEB, The Poetry Foundation , Salt , Anon. Pierre Joris’ Nomadics is an interesting site for those interested in translation and outsider poetics.

Other newspapers have published poetry lists for 2011.
- Boston Globe list http://bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2011/12/18/best-poetry-books/EMwDBZdDcYcbfbVNhLyh6L/story.html
- Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/poetry-songs-of-elegance-and-of-experience-6278591.html
- Guardian List http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/poetry
- And some New Yorker choices from 2011: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/
- The Harriet Blog, 2011 list http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/12/the-poetry-foundation-staffs-favorite-books-of-2011/ (Poetry Foundation)
- and then there was this…..http://zito.biz/fuckyou/?p=2533 (Fuck You Blog)
- http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2011/12/the-year-in-reading-poetry.html (New Yorker 2011 Poetry List)
- http://www.npr.org/2011/12/29/144197310/truth-and-beauty-2011s-best-american-poetry?sc=tw&cc=share David Orr’s Selection of 2011 Poetry books
T.S Eliot and the death of poetry

December 8th, 2011

The image is from this BBC report.

Poetry was once important as a part of our culture, and as an art.

This week , the Ted Hughes memorial-stone made headlines , it is sited near to T.S Eliot’s memorial-stone in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey. I have linked the report above here. Unfortunately, T.S Eliot’s memory, and his work for poetry has reached the headlines for entirely different reasons this week. Two poets had withdrawn from the T.S Eliot Prize , as of Wednesday the 7th of December. Alice Oswald withdrew on the 6th of December, citing her ethical refusal to accept the sponsorship of Aurum (a hedge-fund group), she was closely followed in what amounted to an ethical boycott of the prize by John Kinsella on the following morning (7th of December).

The T.S Eliot Prize was targeted for ACE funding cuts in 2011 by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition, alongside nine other poetry publishers or groups. I blogged about this at the time, but I am adding here a Guardian report on the issue. It interests me that small groups dedicated to the art of poetry were treated with such disdain in England, although it happened in Ireland also (in 2010). Here’s a poethead post on same.

Those amongst us who read poetry and indeed the biographies of poets like Ted Hughes, Richard Murphy, T.S Eliot and others ( William Trevor) will be aware that the idea of poetry was supported by the BBC, by successive U.K governments and by the reading public. Poetry was a recognised art form, uncheapened by celebrity-status , or the red-carpet treatments meted out to the sorriest attempts at biography here in Ireland (for instance). I expect that this was because poetry’s place was recognised as having a literary value, which cannot be equated to a monetary-value.

When I looked at the Hughes memorial images , although it does not show the proximity of the Hughes and Eliot stones, I truly wondered if it were not actually poetry that was being memorialized as a literary-form ? Societies like the Poetry Book Society have for the current government in the U.K little or no value. I believe that the same thing is happening here under the aegis of the 2003 Arts Act which saw cuts to two Irish Writer’s Centres, and a city council cut to the Poetry Now Festival ! These festivals and centres provide the life-blood of small press buying and selling, and thus fund poets. There are quite a few pages and posts on this site about the unwonted closeness that exists between funders and politicians, which I believe was created in the 2003 Arts Act and that I discussed here. It would really be tragic if poetry as a form was set to cultural ossification because government (who support and appoint arts organisations) saw it as not a seller.

Already too much art is caught into utilitarianism here in Ireland, and what was not considered art is being supported by government in the form of tax-reliefs and other incentives. I do believe that we are gone quite topsy-turvy in how we read , or do not read, in this instance. I’d be scrutinising the lobby-groups that got arts money…..

BBC Film here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16055750

T.S Eliot and the death of poetry by C Murray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Mick Heaney , Arts vs politics: We haven’t got the balance right

November 19th, 2011

This brief post comprises a link to Mick Heaney’s article ( Irish Times , 18/11/2011 ) regarding a symbiotic relation between the politics of the State and Irish Arts in Ireland.

I have decided to link the article here, as blogging is a way of retaining record of items of interest that might otherwise be subsumed beneath current issues. I was unsure whether I should provide excerpts from the Heaney article , or to try and create a contextualisation for my reaction to the piece in terms of previous arts posts that are collected here on Poethead.

In the end I decided that the issue of Arts vs Politics is too important against any attempt of mine to extract pithy comment from it for readers. I have decided to limit this post to a full link to the piece, and some relevant links to what I consider to be a deep and unchallenged cultural ossification that was set in motion in 2003 by the De Valeresque Arts Act introduced by Seán O Donoghue T.D (Fianna Fáil), that not alone remains on our statute but was unchallenged by the current government in a single party manifesto in the run up to the last Irish general election.

It seems that our current politicians do not have any ideas about art in its cultural context save their continued financing through the flawed 2003 Act, and the realisation of the arts as an extension of the business of government, which was the main thrust of that Act. A symbiotic relationship between the narrative of the state and the work of the artist can only lead to one thing , the lessening of the independence of the arts rather than the ennobling of the State: State Art , or art as an expression or extension of the concerns of state. (an equation for disaster if ever I saw one)

The 2003 Arts Act and Related links : http://poethead.wordpress.com/the-2003-arts-act/
The Arts Act (2003) can be downloaded at the following link, http://www.oireachtas.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/bills28/acts/2003/a242003.pdf

Related links for Mick Heaney ‘Arts vs Politics ‘ :

Arts Vs Politics, We Haven’t got the balance right
Do Arts Cuts hit the right note ? http://poethead.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/excellent-irish-times-article-on-arts-and-culture-do-arts-cuts-hit-the-right-note-10122010/

A link to a VIDA conversation with poet Jane Hirshfield.

November 5th, 2011
“I discovered sexism’s glass walls—which do exist still, to a shocking degree—later rather than earlier. A great blessing, that belatedness. As a young person, I felt the world’s heritage of art and literature was mine to forage.” (Jane Hirshfield)

This week’s blog post contains just two small links because family duties had called me away from my desk. While I was away I got totally enraptured by Paul Celan‘s Todesfuge, translated by John Felstiner, which I am writing about elsewhere. For today I am adding a conversation about Women and Poetry which is related to two published posts here at Poethead.

To preface my first excerpt and link, I want to say that the VIDA interview resonated with me in relation to a letter by Anne Hays which I published in January of 2011. The letter has been hit 4,819 times, it details a lack in women’s literary publication which I can only describe as a deadener. I am adding the letter here. I thought to publish excerpts from the VIDA interview and link in the context of the Hays letter.

“We each need the speech of reason and we need the speech of feeling. And when I’m asked the unanswerable question about the origins of poetry, my speculation is similarly multiple: prayer, courtship, work song, grief song, rituals of passage and of harvest, war song, lullaby, memory-keeping mnemonic. Each of these must have pulled poetry onto early human tongues. Most are experiences shared by both men and women, and if war-making’s drum cry has more often been the domain of men, that’s counterbalanced by the murmur that sends an infant to sleeping. If one had to guess which came first, lullaby’s as plausible a guess as any.” (Jane Hirshfield)

I wonder often about how we dream a poet, I imagine that in Ireland, we think of him as a speaker of our truths.

The above paragraph is so critical to our understanding that there are areas in poetic experience in which the gender of the poet cannot be ignored, and that is hugely important to emerging women poets to see and to read other women. If all we think about are our great male-poets when we imagine our singer of tales, then the experience of the woman-poet achieves an invisibility, a chorus. Think of T.S Eliot‘s chorus from Murder in the Cathedral, Atwood’s serving girls from The Peneliopad, or the mother nodding beside the cot in Sylvia Plath‘s art. Those are the voices of the harem, the brothel, the nursery and of the chorus-line.

Poetic invisibility becomes not a diminishment of the voice of woman but a nowhere for a woman writer to hang her hook, or to resonate with women’s experiences of war, of birth, of death. VIDA alluded to this issue in The Count, which I have linked here. Eavan Boland spoke of this lack in our imagining here .

Links to the Jane Hirshfield and Eavan Boland interviews are here,
- http://vidaweb.org/human-lives-a-conversation-between-jane-hirshfield-and-leslie-mcgrath
- Exploring Poetry’s Lesser Space ,Interview with Eavan Boland http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/03/11/exploring_poetrys_lesser_space/

Chris Murray

Category: Dispossession

Orphans from Poetry Ireland’s Forum

Poems and drafts retrieved from the Poetry Ireland Forum (C. Murray) I.

Poems and drafts retrieved from the Poetry Ireland Forum (C. Murray) II.

Previews from ‘In Havoc Lights’ by Michael McAloran

Poems by Rosemarie Rowley

ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR

A RING TINGLE OF FEAR IN GOLDENBRIDGE ORPHANAGE.

ALL THIS DOING GOOD IS VERY CATHOLIC

Related Links

Impress by Candi V. Auchterlonie

nest

woman without a landscape

terrarium 1.

rock-a-bye

once upon a time ago

feast of figs

A poem by Kit Fryatt

“The Willow’s Whisper”; a transatlantic compilation of poetry from Ireland and Native America.

A note about the editors of ‘The Willow’s Whisper’

Crossing Sky Vault Worlds

2011 poetry news, and online information for poets.

Irish presses and poetry journals.

2011 bits and pieces.

Other newspapers have published poetry lists for 2011.

T.S Eliot and the death of poetry

Mick Heaney , Arts vs politics: We haven’t got the balance right

A link to a VIDA conversation with poet Jane Hirshfield.