Category: Gardening

  • “Self Portrait as She Wolf” and other poems by Breda Wall Ryan

    Self Portrait as She Wolf   You sheer away from the warm, many-tailed beast, spurn the communal dream.   Beyond the shelter of pine and fir you lope across open ground where cold scalds your lungs,   feel a soft-nosed bullet’s kiss, lick the salt wound clean, almost drown in a starry bog,   but…

  • ‘The Goose Tree’ by Moyra Donaldson

      The Goose Tree   ‘There are likewise here many birds called barnacles, which nature produces in a wonderful manner, out of her ordinary course.’ -Topographia Hibernia, Gerald of Wales   There are certain trees whereon shells grow, white-coloured, tending to russet.   Each shell contains a little living creature; like the first line of…

  • may bell

    may bell   not a rook to maycaw its mockery seats are pulled up to the maybell statuary   starling swipes up at a yellow tree laburnum is poison it sings   yellow fish are stitched into a tree tacked into the leaf and flower   the flowerpod the seed –   maybe all three:…

  • ‘The Elm Of The Aeneid’ and ‘Spadework’ by Peter O’ Neill

    The Elm of the Aeneid   After Virgil , Lines 282-295, Book VI     In the vast shadows of the Elm, Under her ancient boughs where, According to men dreams are allied to nightmare, Intricately woven into every arrow-headed leaf, There monstrous shapes and forms Become crafted by the elements, As beheld through the…

  • Impress by Candi V. Auchterlonie

    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…

  • ‘I’ve got the Fukushima Blues’, by Glenda Cimino

    Even though it’s not in the news, I’ve got the Fukushima Blues. Strontium 90 on the grass, Iodine 131, cesium, plutonium – Cow’s milk is poisoned in your glass, But don’t tell- there’d be pandemonium! Three reactors in meltdown, Tepco now confess But where the radioactive water’s gone, Is anybody’s guess. Even though they say I have…

  • Bird poems from Poethead

    Preamble to  The Valley by  Kerry Hardie ‘The first valley is the Valley of the Quest, the second the Valley of Love the third is the Valley of Understanding the fourth is the Valley of Independence and Detachment the fifth of Pure Unity the sixth is the Valley of Astonishment and the seventh is the Valley…

  • ‘Ireland’ by Richard Ryan

    Ireland That ragged leaking raft held between sea and sea its long forgotten cable melting into deeper darkness where, at the root of it, the slow sea circles and chews. Nightly the dark- ness lands like hands to mine downward. springing tiny leaks till dawn finds field is bog, bog lake. by Richard Ryan Ravenswood.…

  • National Campaign for the Arts, Ireland: National Recovery Plan (November 24) Impact on the Arts.

    Savings of €76 million need to be made by 2014 : NCFA Response to the NRP 24/11/2010. The NCFA has issued a very restrained response to the proposed Governmental cuts in Arts and Heritage (Including Cultural Institutions), So it’s linked here, whilst I examine the faulty RSS feed: These are being frontloaded in 2011 with a…

  • ‘Aviary’ by Tom MacIntyre.

    Aviary (I – excerpted) By Tom MacIntyre Spirit-birds love black of the bog, banks loaded, juice on the spade,   from nowhere gather in celebration, taste the action, call it home.   You venture close : pacey echoes stir and murmur names forgone,   Whimbrel, Whinchat, Grebe, Merganser, the names don’t fit quite, the birds…