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The following two poems are by Sarah Clancy from a forthcoming collection of prose and poetry, called Friction.
Veracity and other stories Gullible. |
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A New Ulster Poetry and Literary Ezine
What distinguishes A New Ulster as poetry journal is evident also in Bone Orchard Poetry and in other Ezines that are led by artists and writers who respond with alacrity to a need for publishing platforms for new and established writers. When I started this blog five years ago, I did a yearly review of what is offered to the poetic writer in the way of publishing platforms. The developing commitment of literary editors to the usage of online tools, such as Ezines, BlogZines, online-publication, and adapting traditional publication was at an exciting point. Jacket2, Harriet the Blog (The Poetry Foundation) and Poetry Ireland were busily adapting to and testing the poetic waters, as was UBUWEB . Editors have been using social-media tools to ensure that poetry is read. I find it strange that there appears to be an inherent distrust of the medium in some quarters here in Ireland. Underutilisation of open-source systems and social media tools strikes me as a little ungenerous.
The years began providing exciting new magazines and platforms, an increase in poetic-writing is showing itself in publications like Burning Bush 2, And Other Poems, Anon Publications, Bare Hands and Southword, to name a few. The other side of the coin is how traditional publications are adapting to internet and using social-media to advance poetic writers and their audiences. It may have been bold to claim a poetic-renaissance but I am sticking to it, maybe others will catch up when they get their heads out of Miley Cyrus’ arse, who knows ?
A New Ulster a publishing platform led by Amos Gideon Grieg and Arizahn, is that wonderful poetic-hybrid of traditional and internet publication that uses a wide variety of social-media platforms to generate audience and writer alike. Because the publication is writer led, the editors bring in their skills as poet and fiction-writer, and their (hopefully not exhausted enthusiasm) for new forms and methodologies of communicating literature with their readers.
Poets featuring in a New Ulster include :
- Issue 1 : Judith Thurley, Micheal Mc Aloran, Colin Dardis, Csilla Toldy, Cliff Wedgbury and J. S. Watts
- Issue 2 : Micheal Mc Aloran, Alistair Graham, Heller Levinson, Inso, Jogn Liddy, Geraldine O’Kane, Aine MacAodha, Brian Adlai, J. S. Watts, Peter Pegnall and Peter Fahy.
- Issue 3: David McClean, Neil Ellman, Angela Topping, Nancy Ann Miller, Christopher Barnes, Stella Burton and more.
- Issue 4 , added as link
- Homepage of a New Ulster
- Aine McAodha on Poethead
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untitled image , oil on canvas by © Michael McAloran 2003
histology slice 3
[ a tissue cloth so delicately coloured in mauves and purples indigo
and ivory cells become tissue whereas this isn’t at all the case
all is one in febrile disequilibrium not excluding momentary states
of euphoria and relative equilibrium the macabre beauty of histology
like a travelogue along enlarged detailed drawings of funghal spores
or sporoform zoophytes white exquisitely and hypersensitively drawn
by haekcle against a black CSO corps sans organes the hubris debris
humus against which lines flightlines maps nomadologic trails micro
politic events pointillistic gestes rhizomatic ghanaean junglean infra
branchings dadaistic or ba’akan pygmee refrains establish unfold
glare and disappear amongst glacis’ of ice basalt slate sapphire or
northsea grayness and mist histology is that : the slice with obsolete
or ephemereal or contingent a truth to leave the observor with her’s
his’s own ponderings of carcinogenic intimacy or clean tissue missive
towards the ones receptive the ones donating slices out of their body
to be mapped navigated coloured in mauves grays deep purples
to indigo ]Text is © Aad de Gids
- Discussion of the paintings and texts of Machinations is here
- Purchase link for Machinations
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Stone weighting my palm
has sprung a cathedralheart jumps
walking in the flesh of its surpassing grace
groin-vaulted and high asno bird ever escaped to soar this
high-up—
seamless andthere is no blood
no feather
no bone—stone cannot make the bird.
© C. Murray
- A version of Precarious Migratory Spectacular by C. Murray is one of two poems published recently in the Galway Review. This poem was collected in Cycles at Lapwing Publications (2013)
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Excerpt from Woman and Scarecrow by Marina Carr Enter the thing in the wardrobe, regal, terrifying, one black wing, cobalt beak, clawed feet, taloned fingers. It is scarecrow, transformed. Stands looking at woman, shakes itself down, woman stares at it.
Scarecrow takes woman’s hand, pierces vein in her wrist, a fountain of blood shoots out. Scarecrow dips quill into woman’s wrist. A cry of pain from Woman.
Woman We don’t belong here. There must be
another Earth. And yet there was a moment when
I thought it might be possible here. A moment
so elusive it’s hardly worth mentioning . . . an
ordinary day with the ordinary sun of a late
Indian summer shining on the grass as I sat in the
car waiting to collect the children from school.
Rusalka on the radio, her song to the moon,
Rusalka pouring her heart out to the moon, her
love for the prince, make me human, she sings,
make me human so I can have him. And something
about the alignment of sun and wind and
song on this most ordinary of afternoons stays
with me, though what it means is beyond me and
what I felt is forgotten now, but the bare facts, me,
the sun, the shivering grass, Rusalka singing to
the moon. And I wonder is this not the prayer
each of us whispers when we pause to consider.
Make me human. Make me human. And then
divine. And I wonder is it for these elusive
prayers we are here, these half sentences that
vanish into the ether almost before we can utter
them. Living is almost nothing and we brave
little mortals investing so much in it.Scarecrow You’re determined to go with romance on your lips.
Woman I know as well as the next that the arc of
our time here bends to tragedy. How can it be
otherwise when we think where we are going?
But we must mark those moments, those
passionate moments, however small. I looked up
passionate in the dictionary once because I thought
I had never known it. And do you know what passion
means ?Scarecrow It comes from the Latin, pati, to suffer
© Marina Carr , all rights reserved
Excerpted from *Woman and Scarecrow, published Gallery Press, 2006.
Gallery Press celebrated their 43rd Anniversary in publishing this week of February 2013. Marina Carr is a playwright known to us for the excellence of her work. I was incredibly privileged to witness Marina read from her play Woman and Scarecrow in Galway during Gallery Press’ 40th Anniversary celebrations three years ago. I blogged about Carr’s reading here. I am interested in how writers use the theatrical-space to create image and symbol, as much as I am interested in how poets use the theatrical-space for poetic works. Gallery Press publish both poetry and drama, thus I wanted to look at Marina Carr’s use of structure and symbol in Woman and Scarecrow. Thank you to Suella from The Gallery Press who has helped me to find the relevant sections of the play, and who has often aided me in the past with regard to permissions for hosting Gallery poets on this blog.
- Images from Woman and Scarecrow can be found at the SecretSpaces blog
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Of strangeness that Wakes us by Ilya Kaminsky
Published Poetry Magazine, January 2013. A Publication of the Poetry Foundation
Todesfuge, by Paul Celan is a poem that I have mentioned here on Poethead in a variety of guises since I first read the poet Paul Celan in Fathomsuns’ and ‘Benighted’ (Carcanet, Trans. by Ian fairley)
Later, I went on to acquire the book, Paul Celan Poet, Survivor, Jew by John Felstiner which has a chapter entitled, ‘A Fugue After Auschwitz (1944-45 ) /your ashen hair Shulamith’, detailing Felstiner’s approach to the translation of Todesfuge. I blogged my reading of Todesfuge here .
In many ways I do not feel as if I will ever finish with the reading of that poem. I feel that this blog space is too limited to write about Paul Celan and his dedicated translators including, Ian Fairley, Pierre Joris, and John Felstiner. However, when an interesting article or translation of Celan emerges I link to it here. Poetry Magazine (January 2013) has an article on Celan’s poetry, including some discussion of Felstiner’s translation of Todesfuge. The text of the Felstiner translation of Todesfuge is included in Of strangeness that Wakes us by by Ilya Kaminsky.
Here Kaminsky discusses Celan’s alleged hermeticism , which the poet himself denied. He looks at the issues of expressing the experience of the Jewish poet Post-Holocaust and at Adorno’s exhortation that ‘it is barbaric to write poetry after the Holocaust’.
Poetry had to be written after the Holocaust, as art had to occur. Weil or Tuominen would describe poetry written in cataclysmic times as a poetry of necessity.
The expression of the WWII diaspora poet in the great Todesfuge becomes, in Felstiner’s words an encapsulation of or/ the Guernica of Post-War European Literature. Those readers of Celan who come to Poethead to link to Celan’s works will be intrigued by Kaminsky’s discussion on Celan’s poetic-process, his approach to language, to the creative-process, and to his expressing of human catastrophe
On Felstiner’s translation of Todesfuge Kaminsky says,
‘In my private library, this is one of the great translations of the twentieth century. But the word “translation” to my mind is misleading. This translation (or any great translation, for that matter) is not a mirror. While one appreciates Felstiner’s haunting use of German words interspersed with English, this striking and powerful juxtaposition of languages doesn’t happen in Celan’s poem.’ (Of strangeness That Wakes Us )
The sheer brokenness of the mother-tongue in Celan’s expression is precisely what allows for linguistic multi-layering within a translator-approach to the poet’s work. It is precisely this that Felstiner divines and uses in his translation, and whilst it may not appeal to the purist, it is that seamless juxtaposition and use of the German that gives the Felstiner translation its evocative quality.
Get Poetry Magazine and read the entire Felstiner translation which is embedded into his wonderful article on Paul Celan.
Note: I linked a Pierre Joris essay on Paul Celan here in August 2010, regarding Todtnauberg , as well as numerous references to Celan’s work. Essays on Celan and his translators are too all-encompassing to limit to (or add to) existent blog-posts. I recommend that readers with an interest in Celan visit Poetry Foundation, Pierre Joris’ Nomadics blog, and Jacket 2 for further discussion on the work of Paul Celan.
YouTube of Todesfuge. -
Irish Poets and Reviewers call-out.
Recours Au Poème is edited by Matthieu Baumier. Baumier is inviting contemporary Irish poets and poet-reviewers to consider submitting to the journal. There is a contact form link available in the base of this post for those who are interested in having their poems published in a modern multi-lingual contemporary poetry journal dedicated to excellence in poetry and review.
In order to give the Irish poet, poetic-reader, reviewer, and/or essayist an idea of the breadth of the site I am adding herein the index of Recours Au Poeme for issue #26. I suggest that the aspirant poet-writer would read some of the critiques and essays before submitting.
Below the index I have included some examples of works that I enjoyed reading recently. These include an essay on Poetry In Translation by Raymond Humphreys, a review of Surrealism, Underground Tour by Paul Vermeulen and the works of the two women poets, Marissa Bell Toffoli and Dominique Hecq
I am excerpting a teeny piece of Hecq’s Canted bone poem here as a taster. The entire poem can be read at this link
Canted Bone Poem
Poems grow in the dark, trace
the descent of sound
into silenceThis is a song of silence
This is the sound of the bone
breaking through the skin
of a slow waistingCanted Bone Poem is © copyright Dominique Hecq. Published, Recours Au Poème
Recours Au Poème, Issue # 26 (index):
Rencontre: Jean-Charles Vegliante, traducteur de La Comédie, de Dante.
Focus : Abdourahman Waberi
Poèmes: Cécile Guivarch, Laurence Sarah Dubas, Sonia Khader, Triunfo Arciniegas, Nikola Madzirov
Chroniques: S’ils te mordent, Morlay, la chronique de Christophe Morlay autour du Manifeste pour la vie d’artiste de Bartabas.
Notes pour une poésie des profondeurs (5) : Marc Alyn en présence de la poésie, par Paul Vermeulen.
Essai : Vu de New York : Is Poetry (Scene) alive in New York (and beyond)? par Maya Herman Sekulić
Le jardin des adieux : flux et reflux de la perte ou l’abandon lumineux, sur la poésie d’Alain Duault, par Sylvie Besson
Critiques Michèle Finck, L’élégie balbutiée, par Mathieu Hilfiger
Une syllabe, battant de bois de Mary-Laure Zoss, par Pascale Trück
Vision de Roger Munier, par Fabien Desur
MIDRASH d’Eurydice désormais de Muriel Stuckel, par David Schnee
Mon pays ce soir de Josué Guébo, par Etty Macaire
The following are a collation of links mentioned in the post above. They are to a review, an essay on translation, and links to the poems of Dominique Hecq and Marissa Bell Tofolli.
Related Links
- Poetry in Translation par : Raymond Humphreys
- Surrealism, underground route by : Paul Vermeulen
- http://www.recoursaupoeme.fr/marissa-bell-toffoli/threshold
- The poetry of Marissa Bell Toffoli
- Recours Au poème contacts
- http://www.recoursaupoeme.fr/dominique-hecq/canted-bone-poem
Thanks to Matthieu Baumier for requesting submissions and proposals regarding the work of some contemporary Irish Poets. I thought the best way to deal with a call-out to Irish Poets was to link the site (as I have done so above here) and see if any poets wish submit to it.
Note – I joined the Recours Au Poème mailing list in recent weeks. Weeks that have been incredibly busy, and in terms of collaborative and writing work both very interesting and fruitful. I sent along a few poems for consideration, and they will be published later in the year.
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The Wild Pupil
I have spent my life
squeezing my fingers between
vibrating leaves of costal bone,
insistently scraping fascia
from muscle from nerve,
unhooking your sternum
from your throat,
prizing apart
the wedges of your spine
to reach that precious bag of blood,
to quell its chaotic pulse;
to jump back
as your thorax springs open
like an eye,
your heart
the wild pupil.‘The Wild Pupil ‘ is © Kathy D’Arcy, from The Wild Pupil, published by Bradshaw Books.
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Kathy D’Arcy is a poet, workshop facilitator and youth worker based in Cork city. Originally trained as a doctor, she is currently writer in residence with Tigh Fili Cultural Centre. Her second collection, The Wild Pupil, was recently launched in Dublin by Jean O’ Brien and in Cork by Thomas McCarthy. She has just been awarded an Arts Council Artists’ Bursary to support the future development of her work.
info at http://www.kathydarcy.com/
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The first warm day of spring
and I step out into the garden from the gloom
of a house where hope had died
to tally the storm damage, to seek what may
have survived. And finding some forgotten
lupins I’d sown from seed last autumn
holding in their fingers a raindrop each
like a peace offering, or a promise,
I am suddenly grateful and would
offer a prayer if I believed in God.
But not believing, I bless the power of seed,
its casual, useful persistence,
and bless the power of sun,
its conspiracy with the underground,
and thank my stars the winter’s ended.
Seed is © Paula Meehan, all rights reserved.
Seed is taken from Mysteries of the Home by Paula Meehan, which was re-issued in February 2013 by Dedalus Press. Dedalus release notes for Mysteries of the Home are added here. Mysteries Of The Home was first published in 1996 by Bloodaxe Books.
Thanks to Paula Meehan for suggesting the poem and to Dedalus editor, Pat Boran, for facilitating my queries regarding having a poem by Paula on Poethead. I had wanted one for some time and I am delighted to add Paula Meehan to my Index of Women Poets.
Chris Murray 