Sandymount Strand Furry Bees Swarming Sacred Tree |
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Her books are available in most of the public libraries. She won the Leitrim Guardian Literary Award in 2003 and 2011 for her poems and has been short-listed for the Scottish Open International Poetry Award. She was given the Golden Pen Award for a selection of her published poetry on Art Arena website. Her poems have been widely published in literary magazines and newspapers. Mary has read her poetry in numerous places over the years, last year at the William Carlton Summer School at Clogher, Co. Tyrone and recently to celebrate 100 years of the Rathmines Public Library. |
(d’après Marc Chagall)
Version française, Elizabeth Brunazzi
La rosée découle en jade une lune aux trois quarts
L’Amour O l’amour! Ta fleur arrachée embaume
De son parfarm ma main, bientôt
bientôt me rappelant une certaine musique-
Mon destin a toujours été de quitter le lieu
où la lune dansait avec la subtile Neptune!
Tout se dissout-
sauf le souvenir de ton visage,
ton rire en pleine rue et ta danse pour la lune!
Tes bagues de jade et ta fleur sont mes bijoux,
nuançant toutes choses d’une teinte de vert, de pourpre, d’un bleu profond.
La rosée découle en jade une lune ornée comme un bijou,
Sa fleur blanche fond sous le bleu.
Je me souviens d’un visage, maintenant fixé en lumière,
maintenant un ton, une bague ornée de bijoux, une certaine nuance brillante.
(after Marc Chagall)
Dew drops into jade a three-quarter moon.
Love, love! Your uprooted flower dissipates
Its scentedness onto my hand, soon
soon recalling to me a certain music —
My fate was always to leave the place
where moon danced with subtle Neptune!
All dissolves –
save your remembered face,
your laughing in the street and your dancing for the moon!
Your jade rings and your flower are my jewel,
shading everything green, and purple, a rich blue.
Dew drops into jade a jewelled moon,
Her white flower dissolves under blue.
I remember a face, now caught into light,
now a tone, a jewelled ring, a certain bright hue –
 Doris Lessing died a matter of days after I had received permission to carry some of the poems from her Fourteen Poems on this site indefinitely. I had put up the following note and message and see no reason to remove it. I am happy that I have carried her work for a few years. I wrote a brief tribute to Lessing’s writing and her influence on my writing life here.
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| Dear Christine
We’d be delighted for you to host the poems for longer especially if you’re getting such good reactions. Doris Lessing was never very keen on her poetry and didn’t think it was any good so I doubt we will see a re-issue but at least this way, they are available in an alternative form. |
SnakeCrowned as the serpents
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The accompanying Leonora Carrington image is entitled Ulu’s Pants (1952) and is on the IMMA website advertising, Leonora Carrington; The Celtic Surrealist. The exhibition runs from 18 September 2013 – 26 January 2014, at the Garden Galleries, IMMA, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin 8. I went, I will probably go again. Details about the exhibition and the paintings are available at the IMMA Site. |
Thanks to David Mitchell , publisher at Oneiros Books and to poetry editor Michael McAloran, who guided me through publishing my second poetry collection, The Blind.
The Blind is a contemporary poem-tale about The Furies. The themes and symbols of The Blind are entirely interdependent from beginning to end. The book is set out as a tale and employs experimental poetic methods throughout, including cut-up, repetition, symbol and internal rhyme. I did not make use of poetic prose , as I felt that it would be a challenge to tell a tale poetically. I am delighted that the book is now available. I have found it easier to employ these methods in conceiving book-length poem-tales since I began working in this manner, and to this end I have initiated another project in a similar vein.
I am delighted with The Blind, for me it was an opportunity to tell a story that I have not been afforded within the Irish Publication system , which is narrowly conceived and not open to experimentalism, save in few independent presses. Poetry as form is vital in Ireland, yet there are few opportunities to develop as a poet. I hope that this changes and that editors see the value of opening out more platforms for experimentation for our writers.
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Fragments from Noticingi The wick, uprooted/ left of light – ice-shawl thawing to the leaf-ends dissolves to the rain/ the rain’s bloom. ii Wet-edge/wet-air lifts the birds dampening to the rim of cloud quietly. iii Not-evening/ a dimming seam behind the treeline/rising a black whir of crows. iv Opposite/ unfastened flowers mantling the stone/summer’s tumbled frock. v Mirror-firth/silver with sky, with gulls’ backs. vi A dug-in place/a shadow. A black edge/a knuckle/a grave. Fragments from Noticing is © Gillian Prew . Edge/Untitled
Waiting among ghosts on the bursting stone/
white of memory/the wild weeds moved-in.
White of the rushing sea/ the gull backs/the moon.
Waiting/as if
a blue-lit eye/a voice of glass/a leaf-sway –
rain.
As if the rain a slow-motion dust.
The past –
a field/a room.
Wearing the grasses/the books
letting go/not letting go.
These pieces corrupted by time.
Small-sound stories half-writ.
The past whittled to white/and
it is ready a cut-through bone.
Edge/Untitled is © Gillian Prew |
| The following poem is an excerpt from a sequence published by Ditch Poetry. The sequence is from my forthcoming collection, The Blind (Oneiros Books 2013). Part of the Sequence is published here. The first poem in the sequence, hunger, appears throughout the collection and was first published in A New Ulster Magazine. |
suspend I ….. shiftshape-in |
Suspend I by C. Murray, is taken from The Blind (Oneiros Books 2013) and is published in part at Ditch Poetry.
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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 |
Mary Guckian was born at Kiltoghert, Co. Leitrim and has lived in Dublin since 1967 leaving to live in Sydney, Tasmania, Channel Islands and Oxford in between. Mary cut poems out of the local Leitrim Observer in her teenage years and got her first poem published in Oxford in 1983, she has gone on to publish three books of poetry, Perfume of the Soil, The Road to Gowel and Walking on Snow with Swan Press.
Chris Murray 