Category: Images

‘When I was six’ and other poems by Julia Deakin

July 8th, 2018

Valentine

It was you, wasn’t it?
Sent me a box of genitalia?
Not two but twenty-four ripe ovaries
with six enormous stamens each engorged with pollen
thrusting purple-veined through curvy lips and downy inner folds
around a fleshy pistil glistening with a film of moisture round the swollen tip
all bursting from a flushed, moist, hirsute declivity and smelling…
as if freshly showered?

Thank you for the flowers.
I won’t read too much into it.

Code

Dovebber, Jaduary ad Barch
the datiodal afflictiod bakes its rouds.
Wad grib afterdood you sedse
a cledched fist roud your epiglottis.
Baligd greblid, it hags id there
squeezig ad squeezig. Or baybe
you swallowed a dailbrush?

Do, you thindk, do – bore
like Hober Sibsod by the biddit.
I cad still breathe. You turd
the heatig up to baxibub, buscles achig
udtil dext bordig you fide
you’ve betaborphosed
idto a woolly babboth –

eyes streabig, dose ruddig,
gradba recobbeddig vitabid C
or baduka huddy. Feed a code, she dags
but you cad odely taste Barbite
ad TCP – there’s a cebedt bixer
codvedtiod id your siduses
ad dow your ears have god fuddy,

rushig ad gurglig like a Badhattad
sewer. Your braid turded to bush
you draba queed it, sdortig ad sdeezig
od the screed which idforbs you
you are cobbod. You have
dasopharydgitis, rhidopharydgitis,
acute coryza or a code:

ad idfectiod which affects pribarily
the dose…the bost frequedt disease
id hubads, the average adult codtracts
two to three addually. These idfectiods
have beed with hubadity sidce adtiquity.
There is do cure. You are biserable
as sid. You are hubad.

Code – first published in Magma 66, Winter 2016, Eds. John Canfield and Ella Frears (www.magmapoetry.com)

Crabtree to Gascoigne, 1641

So, our dear Horrocks is gone. Twenty-two. I must repeat
what I find so hard to accept: that such a bright star
should be lost to us so young. After all we shared,
I shall never now shake his hand.

That November Sunday he, the better astronomer,
noted his observations there and then. I was too overcome
to touch a pen. I shall make amends.

Tonight though, at my window, the cosmos
he proved vaster and more ordered than we thought
seems emptier – a mere expanse.

My lenses mist.

Would he have planned to visit had he felt unwell,
or been ill for long? No. He was in health, for all we knew.

Which, in the end, was what? Something of the spheres,
their transit centuries hence. But of tomorrow –
of accidents round corners, stalking maladies, guests
with knives – nothing. Nothing about our inner storms
or numbered days. More of the heavenly bodies
than of ours.

Thus I am plagued by fears: that to fathom the skies
without first grasping our own profound cosmologies
is perverse. That to see – not as prophets but mathematicians,
the year, the day, the hour – so far ahead, is to spy
on God.

These fears I want his reason to reject.

But since my telescope cannot bring him closer,
it leaves me cold. I have no heart for work. No instrument,
good Sir, to measure loss.

Jeremiah Horrocks [1619-1641], of Toxteth, first recorded the transit of Venus and predicted future transits, including 8th June 2004. ‘The Keats of English astronomy’ died the day before he was to meet his mentee William Crabtree [1610-1644] of Salford. Their friend William Gascoigne [1612-1644], of Leeds, invented the micrometer.

Crabtree to Gascoigne, 1641 – from Eleven Wonders (Graft Poetry 2011, Ed. Nicholas Bielby www.graftpoetry.co.uk)

Unattributed sampler
Bankfield Regimental Museum, Halifax

In memory of ELIZABETH HITCHEN, Who died November 26, this battle was begun
in 1841. The house was quiet and you must learn to be, Grandmamma whispered,
measuring the lines. Your little sister’s gone Aged 13 months to be with God.

I was just five but could already read THEY WILL BE MISST A VACANT PLACE
AT TABLE AND AT TIME OF PRAYER. What shall we put up there I asked,in the big space?
Lord knows, my love – God will decide she said, then smiled. Me, probably.

AT HOME AT CHURCH MORN NOON AND NIGHT she printed carefully MISST ALL THE TIME
AND EVERY WHERE. With the next letter, G – she stopped. When you’re a big girl, you can do the rest.
Next day she showed me cross-stitch and I sewed IN MEMORY until my eyes hurt.

Eight years slipped by AND ALSO ASSENETH WHO DIED when I was thirteen FEB 8 1849.
That night I satin-stitched an urn, an altar, half a rose. AGED 19 MONTHS. The cloth was grey by then
with childish sweat, pinpricks of blood and also tears AND ALSO

HANNAH two years on THE GRANDMOTHER OF THE ABOVE. I found the last lines of the verse
she had left off and marked them up, but couldn’t frame – until I’d lived as long again – to add
‘on’ to the G ON BUT NOT LOST OH THIS WE KNOW

– my nephew feverish, I had to end this tale. Thread by thread I drew our family back
AND ALSO EMILY MY NIECE WHO DIED AGED 4 YEARS AND 4 MONTHS AND ALSO JOHN their Father
WHO DIED 1865 AGED 28 AND ALSO AZUBAH WHO DIED AGED 18 YEARS and all so young.

WE KNOW WE TRUST I persevered THE BOUNDLESS LOVE stitching my fingers numb
oF GOD HE DOETH ill John’s son was ill, fighting for breath aged 4. If I could break the spell
I told myself and stitch one living name – my own – with some date soon perhaps all would be WELL

HIS WILL BE DONE WE SAY AND KISS his eyes his hands his fingernails God will decide
my needle vain to stop his CHASTENING ROD claiming one more AND ALSO for this field of crosses

MICHAEL HITCHEN WHO DIED JUNE 5 1872 AGED 4 and AND 10 MONTHS.

'Valentine', 'Unattributed Sampler', 'When I was six', 'Waltz' - from Without a Dog  
(Graft Poetry 2008, Ed. Nicholas Bielby www.graftpoetry.co.uk)

Image courtesy of Angela Clare, *Collections and Exhibitions Officer at Calderdale Museums Service, Bankfield Museum, Halifax*

Waltz

Married fifty years today, Ted and Edie
take the floor not needing onlookers, but pleased
for those who want to watch their Anniversary Waltz.
They bring their language from another world
of sweethearts, long engagements and apprenticeships
in which they practised drawing and respecting
boundaries, making choices at every turn
yet making believe there was no other way.
If asked, they’d say theirs was no mystery, just years
of graft, of grasping drifts and judging distances,
steering a course through fractured families, neighbours,
nations – weaving meaning into remnant spaces –
station platforms, backyards, beaches – patterning
the long and short sides of their years until they learned
to keep in step, beating time, being alive together.
Now warmed by applause they cross the boards
and, holding and yet not quite being held,
teach us the grace of gentle intimacy. They wear
the clothes they walked here in, but in the light confetti
of the mirrorball the years fall from them
and they twirl their wedding finery, still points
at the centre of a dancing world.

When I was six

Lotus shoes (early 1900s), The Tolson Museum

they broke my ankles and bound my feet.
They said it wouldn’t hurt when they put me to sleep
but when I woke it did and when I tried to stand
I fell and gashed my face and lay and screamed
and a nurse and my maid Suyin came running
and said don’t cry, with your tiny feet
you’ll be the envy of Szechuan.
Dressing my face,
nurse said I’d be lucky not to have a scar –
but when they unwound the bandages and saw
my feet, blue-black as a typhoon, the shape and smell
of rotting vegetables, I said o you want that then ,
is that what you want and they looked away,
busying themselves as I lay, listening to their feet.

You will be beautiful my father said, as if
it were an order and I said was I not that already
had I not been a perfect baby then and he said
you know that isn’t what I mean and me
this is the twentieth century not the tenth and him
the more you argue the more you prove my case.
What case, I said, what case?
I looked at mother
who was silent. Later she said why didn’t I paint
or practise holding my fan, looking ladylike…
that I should be grateful for a life of ease,
only having to bow and look serene.
But she did not look at me then, or when, married
at fifteen, I told her the day they broke my feet
still seemed like yesterday.

You’re lucky, says Suyin, brazen now,
you can sit around all day and think
how beautiful you’ll be – you are…. as she walks
away. You are not meant to walk but glide
they say, but I can only shuffle. My husband grunts
he married a lady not a labourer and anyway
he likes me better lying down.
Opium helps,
but sometimes I wake myself screaming
you said it wouldn’t hurt when you put me to sleep
and to my father, truly deaf now, what case, what case
and to my mother ladylike and to my husband
off somewhere and Suyin, in her own oblivion.
Tears run into my ears, along a faint scar.

When I was Six and other poems are © Julia Deakin

Julia Deakin is a UK-based poet with three full-length collections, each praised by nationally renowned poets. ‘Crafted, tender poems, written with passion and purpose,’ said Simon Armitage of Without a Dog (Graft, 2008). Anne Stevenson enjoyed its ‘mature wit and wisdom’. ‘Real linguistic inventiveness’ said Ian McMillan. ‘Bold, irreverent and wickedly funny,’ said Alison Brackenbury of her Poetry Business Competition winner The Half-Mile-High-Club.

Eleven Wonders (Graft 2012) Michael Symmons Roberts judged ‘powerful, assured, elegant. Her formal skill and inventiveness make this a rich and eclectic collection. Those who, like me, have admired her individual poems in the past, will be struck by their cumulative strength and range.’

A compelling reader, she has featured twice on Poetry Please and won numerous prizes. Her fourth collection, Sleepless (Valley Press) will be published in October 2018.

‘Brontë in Boots’ and other poems by Denise Ryan

April 18th, 2018

Portobello

The summer is in town
when the ducklings wear their sequins;
performing the salsa,
gliding on the continental ripples
from the lights’ projections.
Glistening water arena of summer juices
featuring mirrored swans
wearing white tuxedos dancing the tango
to an applauding sun
and ever changing clouds
imperilled on the lacquered sky.

Delicately they flush their sacred win,gs
a waterfall of transparent energy
to baptise birds.
Happily, I rest beneath the arm
of a weeping willow.
Time is in no frantic rush,
unwinding near the rushes.
Can-Can dancers perform on the Canal Bank,
swishing their feathers to and fro,
a chorus line of marsh plants,
costumed in petticoats of weeds
and black root stockings.

They look burlesque for the seedy traffic,
as clowning butterflies uplift –
their papier-mâché coats,
like tiny fluorescent parachutes
ejecting from the smallest of flowers
landing gently on the rugged edge
of silken waters.

Brontë in Boots

Winter, my Heathcliff warms the narrative,
growing in my chamfered heart.
I imagine the moors reaching out behind
the city skyline, heather snapping like a whip;
under my studded-belt, novels gleam into portholes.

November mornings drool in romanticism,
I am at home among sinuous shadows
tailored in the fabric of winter,
listening to the wind’s barbed echoes fence the swallow like snow.

I sip my coffee, staring at the clouds’ heavy
hopelessness, whorls of hail clatter
against my window like Kathy’s shattered soul,
winter’s air is a man’s granite kisses;
the dark, his wiry black hair.

Like a metal flower, I bloom in biker boots
and cashmere, welcoming winter’s
intractable sorrow and it’s inward desolation.
Dwarfed under the emptiness of light
leaves unhook themselves from hollow trees.

Dali

You plant
your thoughts on duality
inside the cranium of her skull.
They grow into razor-edged roses
creeping down her nasal spine.
You wedge art inside her eye sockets,
arousing your desires to bloom through her frontal bone.
Her body mirrors a five-point star touching nothing,
except light touching darkness,
the moon cowering under her breastbone like a nuclear atom,
the gods assembling on the Moebius strip of her hip,
while you sit in the carnal cavity of her cheeks,
breathing in the olive air of Cadaqués,
your restless need for form hardening into infinity.

On a High

Build me a house in the cleft of a cliff
where we can live life on the edge,
raise it up on wooden stilts
so we can see the neck of the ocean
and feel the sun in the folds of our skin

drink gin for breakfast
moshing in the shadows
cracking the morning bones
both naked in blushing light
pebble-eyed and dewy

watch the night crawl like a giant crab
as we lie on the blue tongue of the moon
breathing each other in like vapour,
but promise never to look down
the fall too steep.

Out of the Blue

We enter sleep as conjoined twins,
my head resting on your chest
listening to your heart beating
like the thundering drums of China.

I lie twisted within myself
as the moon capsizes over Asia,
nursing my dreams, but one.
The heart reveals itself in time.

I imagine how beautiful it must look,
a clotted poppy
rooted between your lungs,
sluicing bouquets of blood through your veins.

I long to hold your thick burning fist
in the ewer of my hand,
kiss your hollow-pumping swell
that love acclaims

nuzzling my face into the smooth
membrane of the inner surface,
tasting a mouthful of your existence,
shadows shifting around neck and elbow

as you push in the blue light
detaching from our wild flower oneness
gaping from your wiry chest
an ugly black emptiness.

Brontë in Boots and other poems © Denise Ryan. Play Stone (Youtube)

Denise Ryan is a writer of contemporary poetry from Dublin, Ireland. Denise has been published in THE SHOP, Crannóg Magazine, and also several online journals including Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts.

Between 2010 and 2013, Denise was selected to write a series of poems for the National Famine Commemoration. In 2010 Flowers of Humility was read at the Dublin Commemoration and at the overseas twinning event in New York in Battery Park when President Mary McAleese officiated at the ceremony. Denise has been internationally received and has been highly recommended, shortlisted and runner-up in several poetry competitions. These include The Francis Ledwidge, and the Jonathan Swift awards. She is a member of the Rathmines Writers Workshop, which is the longest-running writers workshop in Ireland. Denise’s poetry has been published as part of an anthology by the workshop’s Swan Press, entitled Prose on a Bed of Rhyme (2012).Her debut collection, Of Silken Waters, was published in Autumn 2017, through Ara Pacis Publishers (Chicago, USA). Denise is currently writing her second collection for publication.

‘Hinnerup’ and other poems by Jess Mc Kinney

March 28th, 2018

  *dint

It Began as most things do                       moist things do
everything everything       berry stained mouth
beer stickied floor & blood bloom undies
you ‘don’t mind’          and sure
                          I could probably get into you 
                          I only ever feel the bubbles on impact
                          during I’m somewhere else
                   the sun was a hot coal in the sky 
 seeing another one like you      he came just before   I                 
      decided a bit too late that I didn’t want what he
 asphyxiated thinking about sourcing justifications for those who 
insist            swear 
                  that my saliva isn’t a contagion
                  for those who are unknowing

  because kissing me will give you cancer 
then you’ll never be the invisible thing you imagined running 
alongside the     car          
                                               
and In Dreams     my hair falls in chunks to a cheering audience
        I grow old & genderless for money
nightly I wake feverish   trapped in the tight fist of your affection 
   drowning between cool bathroom tiles & Christmas cake sponge

but I won’t keep us downstairs    knitting and gritting at the base
          begrudging closed doors & far off hearing
          while I’m far off reliving tepid buoy lights
           & what you wanted me to hear
so I turn my mouth into a repurposed palette for the 
new             you
 walking the length of it with sparse sentiments blowing 
	you           but retaining no heat

   because unfortunately only others can administer the calming
            needed for the curdled bulb of my brain
      between me + heaven: 	    a place where I can smoke
so I left you holding the cuff of your jumper 	   waiting 

                   & bracing for the blow

AMY: spelled the right way

Frisbeeing your father’s slicked records into the ocean foam
not ‘boomeranging’ as you had once said
not coming back, not this time
but stuck in flux and spinning
reflective disks, CDs scratched and hanging
in the treehouse from which you will fall next year
on a wet November night when you weren’t old enough
trying to smoke a cigarette you stole
that’s why you fell, they said you weren’t old enough

Half our friendship was spent visiting each other in hospital
sparkling butterfly clips offered up on plastic sheets
conniving, bartering for my silence
I’m not supposed to tell anyone it happens
but it was hard to be alone after each cosmic collision
between tempered concussions and snapped clavicles
between fighting parents and shared rooms
so we continue, hushed and daring together, I pinky promise

Primary school passes, as it does, in a flurry
a few fearsome sparks and over, all of a sudden
as if all our memories already belonged to someone else
as if we didn’t need the fumbling trouble to become wisened
hardened, our most emblazoned fights mellowed
our passions come cartoonish like cheap plastic cheese slices
I can’t forget how you’d ring landlines all around town
to find me, 8pm and desperate before bed, to apologize

And when the time came to finally confront you
we were 16 and alone in the middle of a field at night
I’d crawled away from the boyfriend I got to match yours
from the tsunamis of cider, from the gendered expectation
but it was impossible still to make you understand
probably between my being drunk and crawling
so you say it never happened as you help me up
and then I just can’t stand you

turning vodka into wine

*hushed* it’s not just
not just the tropic tonic_____ now
it‘s heavier glassier receptacles
that are emptied quicker

quickly quenching the wild fire
the candle burning at both ends
wilting there now_____by the oven
before bare feet & childish eyes

sonic mother, please provide the cover
and resuscitate my ignorance
hand over cries, humming under covers
could I have been anything_____but a lover?

steady the line between us_____ just & unjust
a lot thinner when you’re stumbling
I’d do anything to be older
old enough to help you up

cortado

when well-meaning people align with me
align their lives with mine
it seems that they quit trying to become
or achieve themselves for a time
in a dastardly sense which can only descend
descend to ashes on communion
quickly quenching my reckless romance
romancing which necessitates an end
and so I approach you with an openness
forward an eager and honest grasp
but with well-meaning hands instead I rouse
rouse the ashes already put to bed
tidied away when setting aside the past
covertly hushing the used and the dead
so my digits recoil with the disenchanted
dragging back reverberated perspectives
the intoxicating promise of new loves
desires staining my plain epidermis
with electric potential that will not adhere
when I explain that I’m trying to be good
I don’t want to be problematic at all
honestly not at all and I never did
but that’s the woe of commitment and honesty
a small drop of milk to offset the acidity
I just wanted to love and be loved once and truly
not violently over and over as it has been
a great many loves each more fantastic than the last
the salubrious possibilities adjacent my reaching
my salivating hands reaching towards you
pulling you into the room and into my life
promising you a great many things
leaning beyond you to shield my eyes
but yearning to stay put please
hands reaching to never stop holding yours
I don’t want to disappoint another one
I will not disappoint you anymore

Hinnerup

sewing after so long
i wonder if there exists a song
a glass of water warmed in the sun
for each age she’s ever been
all the taps here run scalding
following the dregs of wine
flowing from hot water factories
tell me about her lover
stagnant on the periphery
who lived three towns away
making it harder to soak
she would travel hours to him
the wilting orchids
every other weekend
softening on the windowsill
found sanctuary with his family
reaching up into the day
young and in love
delicate and deliberate
i’d like to know how she felt
like grandmother’s thin fingers
on the birthday that I learned to hate
shaking but capable
the night i faked to get away

Jess Mc Kinney is a queer feminist poet, essayist and English Studies graduate of UCD. Originally from Inishowen, Co. Donegal, she is now living and working in Dublin city, Ireland. Her writing is informed by themes such as sexuality, memory, nature, relationships, gender, mental health and independence. Often visually inspired, she seeks to marry pictorial elements alongside written word. Her work has been previously published in A New Ulster, Impossible Archetype, HeadStuff, In Place, Hunt & Gather, Three fates, and several other local zines.

Poems by Valentina Colonna translated by Pawel Sakowski

March 27th, 2018

Ho raccolto un’ombra
quando salivo le scale.
Stava giusto scendendo.

Mentre toccavo le tegole
ho perso un’idea. Rotolava
avvolta tra i panni.
Poi il vento ha smosso le fila: è
scivolata
travolta di vuoti.

Il carro stava giusto passando.
– Flatus Fluit Ad Fortunae
Fossam –

Ho appena cambiato
l’acqua ai fiori.˜

I picked up a shadow
when I was going up the stairs.
It was just going down.

While I was touching the tiles
I lost an idea. It rolled down
wrapped in cloths. Then the wind moved the strings:
and the idea slid away
overwhelmed with emptiness.

A cart was just passing by.
– Flatus Fluit Ad Fortunae
Fossam –

I have just
watered my flowers.

Mentre cammino in terrazza la banda
suona e ti dico “La senti?”
Mi insegue da una parte all’altra
del perimetro di confine al mio riso
perché non sentano i vicini
quest’allegria dei miei anni
spaiati al vento.
Così suona nella casa di fronte
poi dietro in piazza, davanti
al secondo piano del muro bianco.
La cassa armonica ha la sua casa sul pozzo
in piazza dove la gente passa,
si siede, ripassa le arie
che da vent’anni riascolto
d’estate quando mia nonna
ancora alle nove mi sveglia
e ripete “Valentina, la banda!”

I am walking on the terrace while the band
plays, I ask “Can you hear it?”
It chases me across the space
to the borders of my laughter
so that neighbors won’t hear
this joy of my years
scattered in the wind.
So music plays in the house across the street
then behind the square, in front
of the second floor, the white walls.
The sound box has a house as its source
in the square where people pass by,
sit down, repeat the melody that
I have been hearing for twenty years.
Every summer when my grandmother
woke me up in the morning at nine
and repeated “Valentina, the band!”

Io non sono per gli altri che altro.
Sono ciò che non sanno,
che tace il senno.

Io non sono che nulla
nell’inattuale molto
che la mente scansa.

Per gli altri sono l’altro
che altrimenti vaga
oltre la trascuratezza
che ci separa.

Apparenti d’essere
mutati in nulla.

˜

To the others I am nothing, someone else.
I am what they don’t know,
where their reasons fall silent.

I am nothing, but nothing,
very much outdated,
avoided by their minds.

To the others, I am the other
who otherwise wanders
beyond neglect,
separating us.

You seem to exist –
you turn into nothing.

A MIO PADRE

Quando sento suonare e tu
non ci sei ma stai
in ogni spazio che ci trasciniamo
dietro da anni ogni volta è
sentire in anticipo il taglio
che entrambi sappiamo
irrevocabile un giorno.

Sei tu, compagno di nove mesi fa,
padre, che non posso evitare
col mio modo impacciato
di fare. In fondo sai
che i miei silenzi da sempre
arieggiano tra le foglie armoniche
per la nostra casa sollevata.

˜

TO MY FATHER

When I hear music and you
are not here but you are
in every space, we have been stretching
through all these years that have passed
to feel in advance this cut
of which we both know
is irrevocable, one day.

It is you, my companion of nine months.
father, whom I cannot avoid
with my clumsy way of acting.
Deep down you know
that my silences have always been
floating among harmonic leaves
in our house in the air.

A STUART

Mi accorgo che in fondo
eri tu il solo capofamiglia.
Me ne accorgo dalla voce
che ancora mi esce quando
per scherzo invento parole
che non avresti mai dette.

Siamo troppo presi dalle nostre
vite in bilico per annusare l’aria
come facevi tu, alzando il capo
e il naso strizzarlo a cogliere
ciò che non sentiamo, che non
intravediamo. Tu vedevi
visionario oltre il balcone
e sfiorarti era calmare
lo sguardo che gli altri
dicono non hai.

In silenzio hai aspettato
l’ultimo calore del pavimento.
Poi hai atteso che chiudessi la porta
per lasciare di te un solo grumo
bianco sotto il letto.
E un’intera casa senza voce.

˜

TO STUART

I realize that you
were the only head of the family.
I realize it by the voice
still coming out of me when
as a joke I invent words
I have never told you.

We are too busy with our
life on the edge to smell the air
as you did, raising your head
and squeezing your nose to seize
what we do not feel, what we do not
see. You noticed,
visionary beyond the balcony.
We touched you to calm down
the look that the others
say you did not have.

In silence you waited
for the last heat from the floor.
Then you waited for me to close the door
to leave you one white clump
under the bed.
And the entire house was voiceless.

Al mio funerale non portatemi fiori.
I ricordi non patiscono il buio.
Quando volti, le rose
che hai reciso per me
prendono il colore dell’ombra
e cieche posano all’ossario dei poveri,
dei sacchi all’angolo dove posto non c’è
per un chiodo al muro.

Non c’è più spazio alla tomba
dove l’abito la sera scende.
L’ho cucito in anticipo il mio
e la coda spolvera di pizzo il pavimento,
nel caso rimanga un alone
o il muro perda di salsedine.

Alla mia tomba non portatemi fiori.

Ne ho raccolti parecchi
sul mio strascico oggi.
Il tempo è questo.
È bastato passare
per trascinare dietro radici.

˜

Do not bring flowers to my funeral.
Memories detest the darkness.
When you turn away, the roses
you cut for me
take the colour of the shadow.
Blindly they cover the ossuary for the poor,
in that corner full of sacks with no space
to nail anything to the wall.

There is no more room in the grave
where my dress descends at dusk.
I sewed mine in advance
and its tail dusts the floor with lace,
in case a halo should stay
or the wall loses its saltiness.

Do not bring flowers to my grave.

I have collected many on my train today.
This is the time.
It was enough to pass,
even as my feet were bound with roots.

These poems are © Valentina Colonna – English translations © Pawel Sakowski

Valentina Colonna is a poet and composer. She was born in Turin in 1990 in a family of musicians and published the poetry books Dimenticato suono (Manni, 2010) and La cadenza sospesa (Aragno, 2015). Distinguished in several poetry competitions, in 2014 she was presented as an emerging poet in two national literary festivals by Davide Rondoni, who in the same year dedicated to her and Giorgio Caproni an episode of In which goes the world, broadcast on RTV San Marino.

Valentina Colonna plays A. Marcello – J. S. Bach

‘Reluctant Oration’ and other poems by Fiona King

February 28th, 2018

BIRTH

The last point of the quadrant remains to be drawn,
Out on the fringe of a shadowy dawn.
The air is still, devoid of all sound,
The raven encircles the battleground.
The troops are assembled, their swords held with poise,
To face the enemy engulfing his choice.
He arrives with his foe, emits a loud cry,
The prophetic bird falls dead from the sky.
Morning’s mist begins to fade,
The child is here, no longer afraid.

CHILD’S PLAY

The couple play a childish game,
Their toys are guilt, betrayal, shame.
They scatter them across the floor,
Expose insecurities raw and sore.
Their song is angry, well-rehearsed,
A tune of sadness, bitterly versed.
Their painting, an unfinished mess,
Made in haste, under duress.
They dance a dance of hideous precision,
Wrong is right, final decision.
Nothing to lose and less to gain,
Familiar role play, hate and pain.
Their child looks on, he takes the blame,
Discarded toy in an adult game.

WOODEN SPOON

Deed is done, misdemeanour little,
Anger rises, no acquittal.
Shriek is sharp, the echo rings,
Room spins, skin stings.
Hot tears, salty lip,
‘Water please, just one sip,’
Words strangled, sound drowned,
Face of inequity gloriously crowned.
Door slams, key turns,
Legs weak, stomach churns.
Patterned flowers on the wall,
Footsteps thud and stab the hall.
Captive now in my own space,
Prisoner in this sacred place.
Fear abates, the edge is gone,
Acquiesce to what is wrong.
No apology required,
Guilty conscience long expired.

RELUCTANT ORATION

Faces staring, pressure loaded,
She fears she will be taunted, goaded.
Hands moist, mouth dry,
Self-expectation running high.
She takes a stand, she’s on display,
Composure falls to disarray.
Blood pumps, breath claimed,
The sound emerges, wounded, maimed.
She perseveres, an uphill battle,
Spectators whisper, chairs rattle.
Her colour deepens, voice shakes,
Seeks perfection, makes mistakes.
They cast their judgement, mark their score,
Perverse entertainment, wanting more.
Silence falls, she concedes,
Last remnant of strength, fades, recedes.
Emotions naked, reserve depleted,
Feigned applause, occasion defeated.

Reluctant Oration and other poems are © Fiona King

Fiona King is a married mother of four from East Cork. She is currently on career break from her job as a primary school teacher, to care for her youngest son, Adam (in picture). Adam is 3 years old, and has a genetic condition called Osteogenesis imperfecta, a brittle bone condition. In recent months, She has begun to reflect on the arrival of her precious boy into this world and has found the best way to express her thoughts and feelings through verse. From this, she wrote the poem ‘Birth’. After this creative expression, deeper reflections from my past inspired her to write further, on experiences with emotions of such gravity that they stay with her.

Irish Times report on Fiona King

Making ‘Den of Sibyl Wren’ by Salma Ahmad Caller

January 26th, 2018

Notes on Salma Ahmad Caller’s process for the making of ‘Den of Sibyl Wren’.

The Den of Sibyl Wren is my response to Chris Murray’s A Hierarchy of Halls published by Smithereens Press It is my response to words Chris wrote about how she feels about this poem, and what she sees in her mind’s eye.

Details of the image ‘Den of Sibyl Wren’ by Salma Ahmad Caller

Materials: Watercolour, Indian ink, collage, graphite and gold pigment on Fabriano acid-free paper 57cm x 76.3cm

My process involves an intense working back and forth with words and images in my imagination. I write a lot as part of my creative process as an artist, and these writings help me create and develop the visual image. The so-called ‘visual’ image is to me embodied, materialised, haptic and tactile. So the ‘image’ in poetry and metaphorical writing is almost the same as the visual image in art, to me. So there is not a huge gap between text and image. Not in my mind in any case. The flat 2 D image is neither flat nor 2 D – but rather it is a complex and multi-dimensional terrain of emotion, sensation and concept, just as is the written word, especially in poetry.

So it felt very natural to respond to Chris Murray’s very imagistic poetry, which I already love so much.

In preparing to make work in response to A Hierarchy of Halls, I spent time reading and re-reading the poems and reading and re-reading Chris’s little notes she had sent to me via Twitter. And so the The Den of Sibyl Wren emerged. My notes on my own thoughts and responses to reading A Hierarchy of Halls and to what Chris told me about her notion of a Sibyl that represented the wren and its qualities:

The smallness and greatness of Sibyl Wren, her green den of spaces that we cannot see and her flight paths carved out in the sky. Tiny but potent and majestic in her domain.
A shamanistic female bird being interpreting or bringing the mysteries of the other worldly to us.
A materialisation of the invisible.
A feminine nature of delicacy, strength and bravery. A guardian.
An oracle seeing into the unknown and leading the reader bravely forwards through pain and difficulty.
A garden world of tiny potent things.
A sky above that is carved into great structures and pathways by nature that we cannot see.
A fecundity and joyfulness. Spring, summer.
A soaring upwards towards mystery.
Invisibility of worlds around us and within us.
The dandelion clock telling of another time besides the time we know.
A bird shrine under a shadowy tree to the dead bird in Chris’s poem.
A tiny female presence sitting and moving in an underworld of unseen unspoken spaces.

Twitter Notes

What Chris Murray said in a series of little Twitter notes to me: “The chapbook is called ‘a hierarchy of halls’ and is about small things, flight, wrens, and huge dreamlike structures are implied. My sibyls and messengers are birdlike creatures/ the little chapbook is called ‘a hierarchy of halls’ and is about a wren’s flight through my garden, am obsessed with bird workings. I didn’t see a sibyl specifically in bodies, but the first image on the Poethead page has a little putti. This is how my head works: I see the wren as a type of sibyl, a small messenger, and female. The sibyl should represent the wren! A type of oracle who leads one into the book.

Salma Caller’s process and approach to the Smithereens Press published chapbook ‘A Hierarchy of Halls’

artwork-a-hierarchy-of-halls-srgb-3590x5000px-1 (7)

Salma Ahmad Caller is an artist and a hybrid of cultures and faiths. She is drawn to hybrid and ornamental forms, and to how the body expresses itself in the mind to create an embodied ‘image’. UK based, she was born in Iraq to an Egyptian father and a British mother and grew up in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. With a background in art history and theory, medicine and pharmacology, and several years teaching cross-cultural ways of seeing via non-Western artefacts at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, she now works as an independent artist and teacher.

The Infinite Body of Sensation; visual poetry by Salma Caller
Patterns of Sensation, the Bodies of Dolls, by Salma Caller
Website.

All images & images associated with ‘Den of Sibyl wren’, ‘A Hierarchy of Halls’, and ‘Gold Friend’ are © Salma Ahmad Caller

‘Invisible Insane’ and other poems by Afric McGlinchey

December 20th, 2017

Traces

You can’t decide, you keep glancing
between two lines of thought
the whole length of the tree-hung street;
and you recognise someone saying your name,
and you go right up to the moment,
right up to the third person within you,
but they’re a different shape
in some essential way,
and you re-read your traces,
like a tree, stroking
its silver leaves against the wind
a tree in the cold,
a tree its own breath.

First published in Tears in the Fence (Ed. David Caddy)

On the Road to Westport

I’m trying to shift
focus to the brain, but my heart’s driven
all the blood to my gut, which is churning.
Didn’t know that I’d lost it, till I found
myself halfway to Westport, following you,
a BLT in my lap, cappuccino
in the console, cats’ eyes leering. On the stereo,
Oblivion.
You knew all about the racing start
of the heart, then the skidding halt at the trespass.
I race onward, into the dark,
letting my terror be for the bends I’m going round.
It feels like some sort of countdown.
Eleven years ago, I thought about the lesson
I’d learnt from you. Had it at the start
of the journey, alongside this pot
of gladioli, flashing their bravado.
Sit tight, I tell them. We’re taking off.
You knew all about hitting the road
in a rage. The time you rocked
up at our student digs, surprising me and the lads–
and you didn’t bat an eye when you found
I was sharing a room with one. The fellas
adored you, the way you flirted, sitting on the counter
top, impressing them with your rugby know-how.
Praising Robbie for his cooking.
Four long days of liberation,
swimming in the sea
with a boogie board, margaritas
on the roof. Then, you tucked
tail for home. Ah, mum.
I only know that it’s Westport I’m going to,
because I passed the signs three weeks ago.
How long have I been on auto?
See the shovel in the footwell? It’s to honour
a runaway rebel. I’m going to plant
these brazen beings on your grave.
Then follow through.

Invisible insane

‘It was always the other way round’
– Margaret Atwood

Not merging
with your reflection in a shop window,
or your shadow up against a wall,
or three-legged jaywalking
across the city’s
huddled roundabouts –
but no matter where,
there’s no getting you out
of my mind.
After all, our planet’s just a snowglobe
for the angels.
Are you google earthing me?
Is that you I can hear,
between bells, faintly?

(‘Invisible insane’ is Google Translate’s Japanese version of the English proverb: ‘out of sight, out of mind.’)

Storm, passing

All kinds of things are happening to me.
Skin’s becoming scaly, forehead a terrain of anthills,
and my feet are stiffening as though belonging to a corpse!
Hair’s falling out of course. And there’s my vision.
I try to read, but words swirl
in little whirlwinds on the page;
even when they’re behaving, I feel
I’m gazing at some complicated log of random numbers.
Enough of this I say aloud, take to the beach –
perhaps it’s distance my eyes are seeking.

But there I find fish tumbling from the sky,
myself face up in a clump of seaweed
foamy wavelets eddying about me.
Almost blinding,
the light is different from what I’m used to.
and I wonder if I’m dreaming,
back in the southern hemisphere,
if this sinking will have a rising too.
The next cat out the bag’s
a girl, fifteen or so,

standing, mouth ajar,
saying nothing.
A mackerel on my belly, flapping.
I see her stare,
want to reach a hand, see if I can touch her
but suddenly she’s not there, and I come to,
still lying in damp sand like a heavy log.
There’s nothing for it but to roll over,
watch the water gouge a groove
where my body’s been.

Back home, I make a cup of tea.
The kettle boils. I lift a green mug from a hook
pour, and squeeze a lemon in.
So far, so good. I wash pots and plates, utensils.
Stare out at laundry, ponder.
The light is dimming and a rush of heat comes over me.
A massive bank of thunderclouds controls the sky.
I put on headphones, turn up the volume,
dance until my body feels fifteen. Rain pounds against the window.
I close the blinds, keep dancing.

(First published in the Italian journal, Inkroci. Ed. Sara Sagroti)

In an instant of refraction and shadow

A plane floats overhead,
lethargically as feathers.
Egyptian cotton billows.
A train somewhere whistles.
You aren’t happy, he tells me,
until you consider yourself
happy.

The afternoon light is falling
in a diagonal the length of the floor.
An arrowed line
of black gun powder.
I follow it, feel him
brace for it, my familiar cry…
and then I’m migrating, I’m gone
and there’s only grief here.

(First published in Poetry Ireland Review, ed. Eavan Boland)

Imprint

i

it overwhelms me, an instant of ocean,
delayed grief for the lost years

ii

i dream you back into existence
i dream you back into
i dream you back
I dream you
I dream

iii

i follow you to an unknowable past, mama
each detail of the journey becoming a magnified ignorance
it’s taken this long to find that a solitary walk can result in a headful of light;
returning, i step into my footprints, a kind of retrieval …
cradled in a closed palm, the ring of plaited light

iv

i write until my fingers bleed, i write out my sorrow,
i write into the terror of forgetting

v

listening to leaves settle, like the drift of a gown on ceramic tiles,
telling you: i think of you, sometimes,
and the sky is infinite, maybe.

First published in Southword (ed. Leanne O’Sullivan)

Afric McGlinchey is a multi-award winning West Cork poet, freelance book editor, reviewer and workshop facilitator. She has published two collections, The lucky star of hidden things (Salmon, 2012) and Ghost of the Fisher Cat (Salmon, 2016), the former of which was also translated into Italian by Lorenzo Mari and published by L’Arcolaio. McGlinchey’s work has been widely anthologized and translated, and recent poems have been published in The Stinging Fly, Otra Iglesia Es Imposible, The Same, New Contrast, Numéro Cinq, Poetry Ireland Review, Incroci, The Rochford Street Journal and Prelude. In 2016 McGlinchey was commissioned to write a poem for the Breast Check Clinic in Cork and also for the Irish Composers Collective, whose interpretations were performed at the Architectural Archive in Dublin. Her work has been broadcast on RTE’s Poetry Programme, Arena, Live FM and on The Poetry Jukebox in Belfast. McGlinchey has been awarded an Arts Council bursary to research her next project, a prose-poetry auto-fictional account of a peripatetic upbringing.

Invisible Insane and other poems are © Afric McGlinchey

Website: www.africmcglinchey.com
Ghost of the Fisher Cat: http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=380&a=221

“Slice” and other poems by Umang Kalra

November 14th, 2017

How To Run Away

slowly pry away every hand that wields
the nails that dig into your skin, crisscross
scratches shaped into dry throats and the
taste of dust glistening through humid, hot,
sickening summer air sinking into your bones

use your fingers, use your words, unravel
the knots that hold your feet in place, that
nail your tired, broken skin to the ground that
has built your body with its dirt; wipe your
fingerprints off every surface you have touched

slit through every string that ties you to these
lives that have to bend and break to make room
for you, smooth and untouched pieces, clean
breaks all over the floor: dust off the empty
promises and send them somewhere better

scrunch up every muddy, murky memory into
your trembling fist – you exist, and they don’t
anymore – keep them safe somewhere in your brain,

for you will need bricks to build a new home

Vagabond

My heartstrings have been knotted
carelessly, messily, tightly, into place
in countless little corners of the world,
tangled in hi(stories), dancing, pulsing,
with the sound of hurried feet on stone
and sand and sleet, racing hearts and
fleets of fluttering eyes ferried through
streets of gold, dust upon dust upon
dust, upon stones that cover little bits
and pieces of the past, buried in the
corners that hide in the shadows but
sometimes glint like taunting eyes in
the yellow glow that covers the sky
on days that colour the air grey, laced
in sweet smoke, as sweat chokes me,
for every change in the weather, every
shift from seamless simplicity is (not
seamlessly) woven into me, there are
jagged bits of me that lay messily
scattered on pavements that couldn’t
know less of me, there are wisps of
air in hidden alleys that know my name,
lost among winds and blizzards that
break through walls and through me;

My heartstrings are rather fragile, they
sometimes tremble, and they crumble
onto me, and I am aching for something
resembling stability; there is much more
that I have left to see

Withdrawal

For Shashwat

You come in waves, warm
  fluttering figures dancing off
of silhouettes -- flames licking 
  memories off of summertime's 
skin, you come in shadows, lost
  to my eyes but always shivering 
at the edges of my tired mind, 
  like waves that had last kissed 
the shore so very long ago but still
  carry the scent of its salt in their
curling forms -- you are the fire 
  at my feet at the end of a day 
spent carving blisters into my skin,
  you are the soft laughter in the 
depths of my pillowcase that holds
  me as I sleep, you are the little 
corner of memories I keep hidden 
  and safe and covered in gentle 
sighs and the hurried goodbyes
  that have coloured every inch of 
of our knowing each other -- I could 
  tell you the colour of your eyes and 
the way that they sparkle when they 
  meet mine and I could tell you of the 
way your laughter rings through my
  chest even though you're so terribly
far away, but I do not have words, I 
  do not have any language that could 
hold the weight of your existence, 
  I do not know how to bottle you up 
into a poem and pretend that it is 
  enough: you come in waves, you 
always have and always will, and I
  will be patiently waiting at the edge
of the sea


Home never felt like spring

strings tied, kites flying in the back of my mind;
colour seeps into my blood and sweat pools
beneath cotton that runs against me like winds
that carried sweet smelling marigolds and
rajnigandha that sang of nighttime, drums beat
and flowers sway in sunlight that soaks me,
head to toe in heat that had alway been uninvited;
my skin is tired, scathing rain and sleet have
scraped the edges off of me, the skies rumble as if
they are coming to swallow me and I
raise my arms waiting
to be taken, but the sun dapples shadows onto
my skin and a forgotten, crumpled thing resembling
illness
bursts out of my chest, cracking like soil,
welcoming blooms and buds and softer, quieter things
than the angry thunder that winter brings;
I know now that
home will only ever feel
like spring


Slice

a mirror lies enough it does not	paint me a demon
	it does not	slice through me like the knives
that live in my throat	swallowed along with all of the
	fruit I stole from the		orchard I wished was mine
germination needs sunlight too	I could swallow the 
	ocean and it would not be enough	to grow trees
inside of my lungs


The Myth(?) of Sisyphus

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” 
	- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

One must imagine Sisyphus happy,
	clockwork crumbles under the weight
of stone and pelting skies and lines that
	cease to mean more than a smile that
never formed to begin with, and one 
	must pretend the tumbling skies are
untraveled roads, unturned stones, un-
	known folds within cloth and skin 
and stories spun from darkening nights,
	sordid sights, unsightly voices that 
sink to their knees and pull the strings out
	from below your feet – the clouds do not
move in planetary trajectories they do not
	curl in the shape of time, feet do not
rush after the turning hands of a clock, they simply
	turn and trudge within themselves, you see,
the sky is no great adventure, the earth is no
	endless sea, the ocean is waiting to swallow
the last bits of us, and our moments of breath 
	do not draw any more oxygen than
that which exists within the bellowing of thunder
	and the swaying, singing, shifting trees
that dig their roots so very aimlessly, one must
	imagine Sisyphus happy, or the voices
may someday win

Umang Kalra is an Indian poet and a student of History at Trinity College, Dublin. Her work has appeared in Tn2 Magazine, Coldnoon, The Rising Phoenix Review, Porridge Magazine, VAYAVYA, and others. She has previously worked with Inklette Magazine, and is currently involved in a year long mentorship programme for women of colour in Ireland, under the bilingual poet Doireann Ni Ghriofa.

Patterns of Sensation – the bodies of dolls by Salma Caller

July 20th, 2017

Silk Velvet Purse Doll

Tiny invisible stitches hold rivets that hold rivulets
Of silk ending in the darkness
Where dreaming continues
The sleeping and dreaming of her invisible body

Silk Velvet Purse Doll

A mille-feuille
A body of a thousand layers
A thousand gauze tissues
A thousand substances
Concealing a darkened chamber
Entombing
A heavy velvet pouch
Profligate sensual reclining body feeling inwardly
Reaching caressing touching exploring the textures of the inside of a dark and empty space
Where nothing is also everything
A costly ornate body of sensation
Silk velvet skin silk thread silk tassel nerve endings
Silent silken hair spreading
A dense and tactile embroidery surrounds her slits tips lips edges and borders
Wires closely over-sewn create
Her ribs
Brushing stroking heating and burnishing
Made a body that is close textured lustrous gleaming and smooth
Intricate and laborious twisting and twirling of twines
Tiny invisible stitches hold rivets that hold rivulets
Of silk ending in the darkness
Where dreaming continues
The sleeping and dreaming of her invisible body
That dreaming heavy velvet body
Held in the darkness by a skin of sound
Pearl fastenings fasten her breast
Silk velvet velvet silk
Threads pulled tightly holding her in holding her inwards
Net gauze tissue
Lace wire mesh
Feathers
Locks of glossy hair
Fine shimmering strands of metal thread
Seeds metal beads sequins
A weaving of delicate traps that subdue mesmerise and enclose
Hiding her in intricacy and leading to labyrinths of the eternal

Chinking of bells
Clicking of shells

Tiny invisible stitches hold rivets that hold rivulets
Of silk ending in the darkness
Where dreaming continues
The sleeping and dreaming of her invisible body

Where nothing is also everything
A costly ornate body of sensation

Seeds metal beads sequins
A weaving of delicate traps that subdue mesmerise and enclose
Hiding her in intricacy

The Shell Bell Shaking Doll

(Aluminium silver wax fur hair beads glass twine carved wooden body musk leather lace shells bells)

She was a multi-purpose object
And made a variety of textural sounds
Chinking of bells
Clicking of shells
The dull thud of organs suspended within a hollow
Their deep and heavy percussion
Reverberating
Tasselling around her
Prickling
Metallic fragments
Sound out from pale bells
And whitish shells
A chalky body
Carved and curved
Arching over
Her painfully embroidered beaded fabric heart
Lungs of lace rustling
Under a dome
Her shells and her bells
Rang out in another realm
Skeins of silvered twine
Slivers of shivering glass
Pelts of soft fur that cannot warm her
Hand strokes of paint are
Memories of a gentle touch
An aura of sound and movement
Are shaking out of her still

She was a multi-purpose object
And made a variety of textural sounds

Chinking of bells
Clicking of shells

The dull thud of organs suspended within a hollow

The Unravelling Glassfire Doll

Her painfully embroidered beaded fabric heart
Lungs of lace rustling
Under a dome
Her shells and her bells
Rang out in another realm
Skeins of silvered twine
Slivers of shivering glass

Myriad

Myriad of the hollows
With an eye in every cell
Splitting and spitting
Seeds and jewels
Saint of the hollows
Myriad of the Sorrows
The vessel of the body curves about a sacred hollow of emptiness
Out of which a carved voice unfolds

That dark pod concealed with a shimmering Membrane

Infinitely embracing each pip

Myriad Miriam Maryam Madonna of the Pomegranate
Resurrection of shadows.

Net gauze tissue
Lace wire mesh
Feathers
Locks of glossy hair
Fine shimmering strands of metal thread

About Patterns of Sensation – the bodies of dolls

This series of works on paper by artist Salma Ahmad Caller, explores the notion of the female body as an idea that is constructed, made like a folk doll’s body, from materials both real and imagined. The folk doll or fashion model is patterned and marked by how a society thinks about femininity. Each material used to make ‘her’ carries it’s own set of cultural notions, sensations and associations. ‘She’ is often ornamented with patterned textiles, jewels, silk, velvet, embroidery, pearls, shells, tassels, bells, or associated with flowers, fruits and fertility, or with lace, nets, knots and webs, creating textures that carve ‘her’ body into zones of social and sexual importance.

Forces of cultural and social expectations mark and carve our bodies but also the things we touch and feel are etched onto us, mapping zones and patterns of our experiences, our traumas and losses, our sensuality and feeling.
Bringing the biological and the ornamental together to subvert the usual imagery of the female body, Salma uses decorative and ornamental forms, arabesques, whiplash and sinuous lines, and curvilinear shapes in her work, as a language of the biological sensational body, to try and capture the body we feel not the body we think we see.

The shape of the bodies of the ‘dolls’ in this series is based on the paisley tear drop shape or Boteh. An ‘Eastern’ ornamental form that has travelled and transformed across time. It has complex origins in many cultures, mainly from Iran, Azerbaijan and India and now has many connotations, of colonial trade, and a feminised and orientalised idea about ornament. Yet it had a previous changing life of meaning across cultures, symbolising or embodying concepts of eternity, life, of humility, of being bent under the weight of conquest, a fruit, a seed, a pine, a flower, a tear, that were not reserved for the feminine only.

These works on paper have been made using graphite, Indian Ink, collage, watercolour, acrylic and gold pigment.

The Infinite Body Of Sensation; visual poetry by Salma Caller

“narcissus” by C. Murray

May 10th, 2017

narcissus


not step twice into, not
  step back from stream.
     its nets are storm blackened,

narcissus’ flower is a cut out. 
  it has shut in the cold,
 skeining back into the bud.

 echo and,
         outbreath

he skeins back his thread
   the blind buds are always.


 step
      
       (not-step)

  back then.


 step
      
      (not-step)

  back then,

      back from the black river nets.

narcissus was first published in the Spring 2017 issue of Compose Journal

Chris Murray is an Irish poet. Her chapbook Three Red Things was published by Smithereens Press (2013). A small collection of interrelated poems in series and sequence, Cycles, was published by Lapwing Press (2013). A book-length poem The Blind was published by Oneiros Books (2013). Her second book-length poem She was published by Oneiros Books ( 2014). A chapbook, Signature, was published by Bone Orchard Press (2014). “A Modern Encounter with ‘Foebus abierat’: On Eavan Boland’s ‘Phoebus Was Gone, all Gone, His Journey Over’ ” was published in Eavan Boland: Inside History (Editors, Nessa O’Mahony and Siobhán Campbell) by Arlen House (2016). A Hierarchy of Halls was published in February 2018 (Smithereens Press) and Bind was published by Turas Press in October 2018.

⊗ See more at http://composejournal.com/articles/chris-murray-two-poems/#sthash.hM3Mv9RZ.dpuf

Category: Images

Valentine

Code

Crabtree to Gascoigne, 1641

Waltz

When I was six

Portobello

Brontë in Boots

Dali

On a High

Out of the Blue

AMY: spelled the right way

turning vodka into wine

cortado

Hinnerup

A MIO PADRE

TO MY FATHER

A STUART

TO STUART

BIRTH

CHILD’S PLAY

WOODEN SPOON

RELUCTANT ORATION

Notes on Salma Ahmad Caller’s process for the making of ‘Den of Sibyl Wren’.

Twitter Notes

Salma Caller’s process and approach to the Smithereens Press published chapbook ‘A Hierarchy of Halls’

The Infinite Body of Sensation; visual poetry by Salma Caller Patterns of Sensation, the Bodies of Dolls, by Salma Caller Website.

Traces

On the Road to Westport

Invisible insane

Storm, passing

In an instant of refraction and shadow

Imprint

How To Run Away

Vagabond

Silk Velvet Purse Doll

Silk Velvet Purse Doll

The Shell Bell Shaking Doll

The Unravelling Glassfire Doll

Myriad

About Patterns of Sensation – the bodies of dolls

The Infinite Body of Sensation; visual poetry by Salma Caller
Patterns of Sensation, the Bodies of Dolls, by Salma Caller
Website.