Aftermath
Body knows soul
does not accept—
the worst happened
it is over—
||nearly|| it is nearly over|
body experiences
s i l v e rdawnssong
blackbirdsong
silvers,
slivers of
its song
are a
silversong—
I feel it along
my arms
soul trembles
it is over,
nearly—
flowers were—their
lights
light
the path
body knows—
© Chris Murray 2023
First published The Honest Ulsterman, June 2023. Aftermath is companion to Violence, from fragments 1&2 first published Belfield Literary Review, issue 2, spring 2022, Eds. Paul Perry and Niamh Campbell. Both poems are from my forthcoming book.
Tag: Chris Murray
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sans it is all ceremony it is all the cloths all gathered-in it is white tailor’s chalk in a neat triangle it is the blanket-stitch before the machine it is the neighbour woman with her bone-pick pulling stitches one by one from the curtain lining the [bone-pick] is ivory coloured a little larger than a [tooth-pick] nubbed to cradle under the silks and lift them up so she can snip it at the ties the little knot hidden in back of the material stretched out across her knees is silver the thread is doubled-to her material is some floral-stuff on white laid onto a cream skirting she will rinse it out in cold water later and hang it on the monday line the blue-blue rope of the monday line the length of material is clean / sweaty from her handiwork she will hang it over the gauze of her nets which are always immaculate her effort is blind she does not need eyes to feel her work her gathering-to of the pleats Copyright 2013 Chris Murray Published Southword Online URL http://www.munsterlit.ie/Southword/Issues/25/murray_christine.html Collected The Blind, Oneiros Books, 2013
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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 CallerMaterials: 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’
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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
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. The Brightest Jewel
The perfume of rosemary for remembrance.
Little botanic flower baptised in Glas Naíon,
the stream of the infants.
I see the pink flower of your hand
reaching up to your blind mouth.
I breathe your name so you will live.
The stream of the infants.
Cymbidium Minuets, the flowers that you loved
grow in a house of orchids near a dark still pool
quiet by the stream of the infants.
The Brightest Jewel is © Chris Murray and was first published in V4, Issue #4 of The WomenArts Quarterly Journal. (2014)
The Brightest Jewel
La Haïe Fleurie time capsule of reminiscence
a hedge with jasmine crescent around graveyard
the stream of the infants
honeysuckle, jasmine scented glove
as if to swathe you in soft deerskin
and keep you from hard life as death
the stream of the infants
Anemone Nemorosa expressing a whiteness
aspect of you outerbodily covert coveted, ferned
quiet by the stream of the infants
This responsorial is © Aad de Gids
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Note: ‘The Brightest Jewel’ refers to the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, Dublin. ‘Glasnevin’ is roughly translated from the Irish ‘Glas Naíon’ meaning ‘The Stream of the Infants’. The National Botanic Gardens share the both River Tolka and a perimeter wall with Glasnevin Cemetery, wherein a plot known as ‘The Angels Plot’, a possible resting place for my infant brother, although there are no records. See this article on Cilíní.
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The first edition of SHE was published by Oneiros Books in 2014.
82 Pages
Perfect-bound Paperback.
The cover painting image is © Anastasia Kashian, with great thanks to David Mitchell for design, and to Michael McAloran for accepting the book on behalf of Oneiros Books.
Two poems from The Island Sequence of ‘She’
sea is a womb
sea is a womb
dip and flow the small boatrock and rock,
rock the black blackgold lace a-glitter
and rocks – the
rocks scrape her timbersbeneath the carved wave
lie monsters clawing at her base
black the inky waves lap to
black the inky waves lap to and black they suck the shale and if birds swoop they are the mere shadows of birds there are hands there to disembark you to hold you over the rocky black those hands that will arc you onto the comfort of stone this is the sea/ this inky black it does not smell of sea the gap between the boat and the shore is awesome the wood laps the water dragging it out / and bobbing it back again the chasm at the heel and one step forward to land to stone comfort.Poems from The Island Sequence of ‘She‘ are © C. Murray
black the inky waves lap to was published in The Burning Bush VIContents Page
(i) A letter found in the box that contained this narrative, being addressed to the cousin of a former patient, Miss Constance Byrne.
(ii) A note attached to the file of Miss Constance Byrne (now deceased).
Part I
Standing Stones
Grove
Lake
Serpentine The Alleyway
A Ruined Church at the Precipice
Burnt Hill
DescentPart II
The Island
She
Cousin -, The narrative that follows here is a faithful rendering of my wanderings from the time of my retirement to the dawn. It is always the same. I do not expect anyone will believe me, but I know that my dreaming life is as real as my waking life.
Indeed, I have learned not to call these sleeping narratives anything other than a different part of my reality. When I first encountered the entity that appears on the towpath I was afraid for She seemed hardly human to me. I had gone little by little into this dreaming place over the course of twenty years, and I had explored it wholly in her company. I do not know what my encounter with this lady means, I intend to find out. In my exploratory times there I have never yet met another person. Although there were signs of life (or of creaturely habitation).This landscape seemed to me to be ruined by war and by heat. What else could make marble of glass shards?
It is bleak there. At every dawn, there occurs a throb of colour and I know that somehow I am back here in this world. I do not believe that my nightly explorations are a dream, for I have found tears upon my slippers, and a rend in the lace of my dress. She wants to show me something. She has indicated for me a bridge. I intend to cross over it, and thereby to continue to explore the geography of its unknown terrain.
I travel now alone. I am unencumbered by family, nor by tradition. I leave to you this letter and some small tokens of my esteem. Know that I am safe, and although I undertake this journey with trepidation, I remain always yours,
Constance.
Cover image by Anastasia Kashian. Cover design by David Mitchell at Oneiros Books.
Chris Murray 