Thin Places
The wild meadow weave, the strand,
places of late summer, autumn,
a stone skimming water, suspended
in air, its slow motion glide punctuated
by the drop, touch, rise of a ghostly presence,
this wary hesitation between water
and stone, mysterious as the rift between
music notes in air, unsettling the familiar light
which shudders again with tiny rainbow bubbles
holding air-drops in. And then the final slide over
gravity’s edge, into polished bottomless depths,
beyond the belly-aching threshold⎯
dropping, ever dropping, into the quiet
whispering, the unspeakable tenderness.
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Binn ÉadairI have waited through the long winter grey the sun a warm breath on my neck, Far below, the murmurings of wind and water the whole of the blue sky is stretched wide, This moment is already time’s fugitive; pocket, the soft unwrapping of downy buds, like a container that holds and pours, To be lifted then into the loose over the spooling cliff, to drop
Earth MusicI will lead you by the hand to the hushed hum shivers into leaves, quiet turbulence in the air I hear its tongue-lick in ivy the way a bat hears touching the skin like sound braille, tiny neck hairs and in the stony wind, atoms of light trembling in tiny Between heart-pulse and light’s shadow-touch, the wide emptying of voiceless things; earth’s pulse,
TranslationEarly evening, the sea all silk and copper-clad, |
Moon
Take the river’s curl, the ocean’s wave,
the never-ending trees, the sway of a meadow,
the roll of the sun, the scattered stepping stars.
And take last month’s silver bud of moon
now come full to the sky, her mouth is wide and open,
white lips brimming with a soft wet light,
month by month, she gives her widening
emptiness to the earth, holds the planet in her orbit,
washes ocean after ocean over sand:
I stretch out my arms and reach for her,
hold hands with her rhythm, climb into her open
wound, my blood is lapping at her perpetual pull,
I sleep in the mantle of her tidal pulse, slip
the ring of her light onto my finger. At the last hour
of fullness, I wade inside her alluvial silt,
feel desire awash in my gut. Lost inside
her wholeness, carved into her darkening spine,
I am swallowed into goddess light.
Thin Places and other poems are © Eithne Lannon
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Her work has been listed in various competitions such as the Bray Literary Festival, the Dermot Healy competition and Galway University Hospital Poems for Patience. She was winner in 2018 of the Ballyroan Poetry Day Competition and Runner-up in Against the Grain this year. Her work was also Highly Commended in the Blue Nib Winter/Spring Chapbook 2018 and commended in the Jonathan Swift Awards.
Eithne’s first poetry collection Earth Music was published by Turas Press in April 2019. |
Eithne Lannon is a native of Dublin. Her poems have been included in various publications such as The North, Skylight 47, The Ogham Stone, The Lea-Green Down Anthology and Boyne Berries. On-line in Ireland, the UK, US and Canada, she has work published on Headstuff, Artis Natura, Sheila-na-Gig, Barehands and Punch Drunk Press among others.
Shadab Zeest Hashmi is the author of poetry collections Kohl, Chalk and Baker of Tarifa. Her latest work, Ghazal Cosmopolitan has been praised by poet Marilyn Hacker as “a marvelous interweaving of poetry, scholarship, literary criticism and memoir.” Winner of the San Diego Book Award for poetry, the Nazim Hikmet Prize and multiple Pushcart nominations. Zeest Hashmi’s poetry has been translated into Spanish and Urdu, and has appeared in anthologies and journals worldwide, most recently in Prairie Schooner, World Literature Today, Mudlark, Vallum, POEM, The Adirondack Review, Spillway, Wasafiri, Asymptote and McSweeney’s latest anthology In the Shape of a Human Body I am Visiting the Earth. She has taught in the MFA program at San Diego State University as a writer-in-residence and her work has been included in the Language Arts curriculum for grades 7-12 (Asian American and Pacific Islander women poets) as well as college courses in Creative Writing and the Humanities.
Lisa Ardill is a twenty-something-year-old woman with a passion for feminism, human rights, neuroscience, literature and film (roughly in that order!). She writes poems and prose to entertain herself, cheer herself up on gloomy days, and keep the spark for creative writing in my brain alight.
Alicia Byrne Keane is a spoken word artist and poet from Dublin, Ireland. She has performed at festivals such as Body & Soul, Electric Picnic, Castlepalooza and F Festival. Her poetry has been published in magazines such as Bare Hands, Headstuff, and Impossible Archetype, among others. She is a long-time performer at poetry events around Dublin such as Lemme Talk and Come Rhyme With Me, and was more recently involved in the Science Gallery’s INTIMACY exhibition. She is currently a PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin researching translated literature and placelessness, more specifically in the case of authors who self-translate. Her work explores the absurdity that arises from losses in translation, even when interacting in one’s native language. She is interested in the effect of unexpected sincerity afforded by short, snapshot-like poems.
Rhiannon Grant lives, writes, and teaches in Birmingham, UK. Her writing engages with questions about religion, philosophy, how we understand the world, and how we communicate with one another. Most of her published work so far has been in academic journals, but she has a book on Quaker theology forthcoming and some poems recently appeared in the magazine A New Ulster.
Wasekera C. Banda is a twenty-three-year-old Psychology student at City College in Dublin, Originally from Malawi, she has lived in Ireland for three years and was the 2016 winner of the Irish Times Africa Day Writing Competition. Wasekera enjoys writing and reading poetry, she is inspired by the late Maya Angelou.
Fiona Smith won the poetry section of the 2012 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition. She was elected to read as an emerging poet at Cork Spring Poetry Festival 2013. She has had poetry published in Poetry Ireland Review Southword, Crannog, Hennessy New Irish Writing, The Galway Review, the Templar Poetry anthology Skein and Poetry Ireland Review (No.122).
Gaynor Kane is a graduate of the Open University, with a BA (Hons) Humanities with Literature. She has had poetry published in the Community Arts Partnership’s ‘Poetry in Motion’ anthology Matter and in online journals, such as: Atrium Poetry, The Galway Review and The Blue Nib. In 2016, Gaynor was a finalist in the annual Funeral Services NI poetry competition. In June 2017, she was appointed as a member of the Executive Board for Women Aloud NI. Founded by Jane Talbot, Women Aloud aims to support female writers from, and/or living in, Northern Ireland.
Emma Gleeson lives in Dublin. Her writing adventures include poems, cultural reviews, and essays. She has worked in the theatre industry as a costume designer and events coordinator, and lectures on sustainability. She has a BA in Drama & Theatre and an MA in Fashion History.
Chris Murray 
