The House of Childhood
We return to the place
where we first heard voices,
smelled the air and tasted nourishment,
where hands caressed or frightened us,
where comfort was our cocoon
or neglect made us shiver.
The tears of harm are cold,
the tears of joy warm as a lagoon.
We carry the house of childhood within us,
and spying through its translucent walls
we keep life at a distance-or embrace it.
Ode to Water
I am a nymph,
I inhabit the rivers, lakes and streams,
sing to the brooks, the ocean,
dance to life starting within.
I rise as a mermaid
an aquatic creature,
drown fires,
quell the thirst of the earth,
mix with the air.
The moon is my lover,
together we balance
the rhythm of the tides.
Crying is a Gift
I dislike sentimentality
and have always thought
that tears should be shed sparingly
until our 8 year-old grandson complained,
“I don’t like my friends to laugh when I cry.
How can I be happy again if I don’t cry?”
Tears are our release
from joy and sorrow
and like a stream
they gurgle over small stones
or gush over ravines,
all ending in the universal maelstrom
of lament and comfort.
BREAKING AWAY
Years ago at bedtime
my grandson’s chubby arms
squeezed my neck like a boa.
Now that he is growing up
my arms encircle him.
He squirms at my affection
and wriggles free from my embrace.
Then as his long legs stride out
he glances back,
tossing me a smile back.
OLD LOVERS
They are folded together like a blanket,
desire strong as ever
though the flesh is weak.
They sink into each other’s warmth,
savoring the tenderness welling up
from a life well-lived together.
“The House of Childhood” and other poems are © Ute Carson
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Ute Carson resides in Austin, Texas with her husband. They have three daughters, six grandchildren, a horse and a clowder of cats. Visit Ute’s website at www.utecarson.com |
A writer from youth and an M.A. graduate in comparative literature from the University of Rochester, German-born Ute Carson published her first prose piece in 1977. Colt Tailing, a 2004 novel, was a finalist for the Peter Taylor Book Award. Carson’s story The Fall won Outrider Press’s Grand Prize and appeared in its short story and poetry anthology A Walk Through My Garden, 2007. Her second novel In Transit was published in 2008. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and magazines in the US and abroad. Carson’s poetry was featured on the televised Spoken Word Showcase 2009, 2010 and 2011, Channel Austin, Texas. A poetry collection, Just a Few Feathers was published in 2011. The poem “A Tangled Nest of Moments” placed second in the Eleventh International Poetry Competition 2012. Her chapbook Folding Washing was published in 2013 and her collection of poems My Gift to Life was nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Award Prize. Save the Last Kiss, a novella, was published in 2016. Her new poetry collection Reflections was out in 2018. She received the Ovidiu-Bektore Literary Award 2018 from the Anticus Multicultural Association in Constanta, Romania. In 2018 she was nominated a second time for the Pushcart Award Prize by the
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.
Mary Shine was born in Templemore, Co Tipperary, in 1956 but spent most of her adult life in Dublin. She has a degree in Social Science and a Master’s in Women’s Studies from UCD. Her first poems were written in 1990 and she continued with this creative process for the next decade, while also making connections with the Dublin literary scene. The Rathmines Writers group was of particular importance as it provided her with opportunities to share and publish her work. In 2001 she decided to relocate and moved to Sligo. Her writing was interrupted by the challenges of this upheaval and it was 2016 before she again began writing her poems. In 2017 she published her first collection, A Sense Of A Life. She hopes that the long silence is finally over and that her writing life will continue.
Olly Lenihan is a twenty-year-old poet who is originally from Dingle in the south-west of Ireland. Their writing career began during a disastrous attempt at living in Galway, and they’ve been penning angst ever since. Their poetry encapsulates the dreadful clichéd romanticism of being in love in one’s early twenties, along with themes of mental illness, sexuality and loss. They are currently in their first year of IT Sligo’s Writing and Literature course, and are also working on their first novel.
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.
A.M. Cousins‘ poetry has been published in The Stinging Fly, The SHoP, The Honest Ulsterman, The Irish Literary Review and The Best New British and Irish Poets 2017 (Eyewear Publishing). Her work was Highly Commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Competition 2015 and 2016, and she featured in Poetry Ireland’s Introduction Series, 2016. She also writes memoir and local history essays and is a regular reader on “Sunday Miscellany.”
Chris Murray 