Tag: Guernica

2012 Poets and Poetry Sites

December 11th, 2012

“

I wanted to read or hear the narrative of someone else – a woman and a poet – who has gone here and been there. Who had lifted the kettle to a gas-stove. Who had set her skirt out over a chair, near to the clothes dryer, to have it without creases for the morning. Who had made the life meet the work and had set it down.

Eavan Boland , from Object Lessons. publ. Carcanet 1995.

As ever, thanks to my readers who keep coming back to read, to make suggestions, and to send poems. My feeling is that overall 2012 has been a good year for women poets. There have been the usual scant begrudging reviews, there is still a visibility issue in terms of how many women are published, but poets like Alice Oswald, Ros Barber, Carol Ann Duffy, Eavan Boland, and all the women here published have most definitely placed the woman-poet in her room, on the street, and in the bookshop where young women and upcoming poets may find her if they care to look.

I have added a list of blogs, journals, reviews and interesting sites to the end this post. I often link to my favourite blogs and sites directly in the posts. This year, I mention in particular Bone Orchard Poetry, CanCan, and WurminApfel. My perennial favourite websites are Jacket2, Guernica, The Harriet Blog (Poetry Foundation), Lemon Hound and Poetry Ireland

The easiest way to do this is to link the poets and translators published this year of 2012 as they were published. There is a handy monthly (2008-2012) archive to your right (and up the page a wee bit)

2012 Poets; their poetry

Sarah Clancy, Hippy Get a Job and Phrasebooks Never Equip you for the Answers. (January 2012)
Glenda Cimino, I’ve Got the Fukushima Blues
Edith Sitwell, Green Geese (in Memory of Michael McMullin)
Brittany Hill , Nine
Rainbow Reed , The Storm
Kit Fryatt , Roxy and Nanna Slut’s Long Close Summer
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill , The Mermaid in the Hospital and its Irish Original
Teresa Edmond, A Reflection on Blake
Dorothea Herbert, The Rights of Woman
Elizabeth Bishop , Sestina
C. Murray, Chaplet
Aine Mac Aodha , Fire of the Gaels
Kate Dempsey , That Broken Pot
Louise Glück, Earthly Terror
Elisaveta Bagryana , The Bird with the Engine Heart
Eleanor Hull (trans) The Fairies’ Lullaby
Bloomsday, A Celebration of Irish Women Poets
Kit Fryatt , Untitled
Ruth Vanita , Effluence
Ileana Mãlãncioiu , The Headless Bird
Antonella Zagaroli , Fan-Locked and Les Amoureux
Philo Ikonya and Helmuth A. Niederle ‘Pussy-Riot Forever; The Body’ , ‘Dictators Never ; Roll-Call’
Kimberly Campanello , We Protect the Weak
Nuala Ní Chonchúir , Die Schwangere, Pregnant in Karlsruhe

Journals, Blogs and Websites

I had recommended some online poetry journals in my opening paragraph. and I thought to link them here. I am particularly fond of Bone-Orchard Poetry where I have (almost) published two sequences. Michael McAloran has an excellent list of working poets who he publishes on a rolling basis.

Good Online Poetry Journals/Blogs

Irish Poetry Imprints and Websites

Those Irish Publishers, people involved in evolving tech to increase poetry readership, and poets who blog are listed in the sidebar of this blog. if I have neglected anyone, just contact me. I repeat the list here :

The image is ‘Life or Theatre’ by Charlotte Salomon

On ‘Two Songs of War and a Lyric’

October 31st, 2012
This year I wrote a cycle of poems relating to war and to women. I titled part of it Two Songs of War and a Lyric for the SouthWord Journal, although it is intimately related to an earlier sequence of art poems, and to the 75th anniversary of Guernica which was marked in 2012.

The second poem in the art series , Gernika, was written for Euskal PEN and was read during the 75th anniversary commemoration of Guernica this summer of 2012. The first and last poem of the sequence, A Lament, was written some time ago and had been put in a folder. A Lament is too awkward a piece to submit to most journals as it is written for three voices and does not slip easily into the submission guidelines of many reviews. A Lament was written firstly as a poem and then as a chorus. It was conceived to weave in and out of the sequence which was published initially in SouthWord Magazine. Lament is an inherent part of the sequence because it involves the voices of the women who inhabit the poems in Two Songs of War and a Lyric.

As if, Sabine, Gernika , A Lament, and Through the Blossom-Gate are meant to work together, and are about loss and recovery. Here is what has happened to the original cycle, the Lament, and the unpublished cycle of seven poems since I sent them out.

Gernika
- Gernika was read on the Anniversary of the Guernica Massacre in 2012
- It was published in a batch of poems titled, Two Songs of War and a Lyric
- It will be anthologised forthis project
A Lament
- A Lament is a companion poem to Two Songs of War and a Lyric, published SouthWord in 2012.
- It will be programmed at the Béal Festival , November 2012. Notice here.
- Cycle of seven poems , at Bone Orchard Poetry
The 7 cycle is provisionally entitled Eamon Ceannt Park Cycle , after the park that the dream-sequence was written in. I had planned to send it out, as it is ready. However, in all the entire sequence including the lament amounts to thirteen inter-related poems written over the period of a year or two. They inherently form one piece. There is also an emergent coda for the entire. (Completed)

I am glad the poems have found homes and that they resonate with people. I hope to publish the thirteen poems together at some point, but I see that I will have to make my own arrangement for them, as they hardly fall into a traditional submission-shape. The most important thing for me is that they maintain their integral unity and coherence. I am editing them into a folder and deciding how I will eventually publish them in their integrity as a whole piece.

I included the list where the poems appear separately beneath this post.
Lament

Two Songs of War and a Lyric

Gernika

Gernika at EU Parley (Anthology)

Eamon Ceannt Park Cycle