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.
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. Many thanks and best wishes Olivia
Some years ago poets and emergent writers used a forum on Poetry Ireland for discussion, testing poetry, and commenting on the work of others. The idea was good, although the tech wasn’t so hot. After some discussion with the then Admin it was decided to have a place (not online) where poems could be published with a view to later submissions. This was a generous extension of your basic discussion forum, and geared to the need of the emergent writer. Poems that appear online are not published by many magazines, so the space had to be a closed one.
Many at the Poetry Ireland Forum went on to publish these works. Unfortunately, the forum is to be closed and while there is no announcement on the forum pages, there is brief note there on the closure and deletion of the forum available to members. There was an email :
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Dear C Murray
Over the past few weeks, Poetry Ireland has been engaged in an in-depth review of all its online resources, including the Poetry Ireland Forum.
After careful deliberation, we have decided to close down the Poetry Ireland Forum, with effect from Friday 8th November 2013. We strongly advise all members to make copies of their posts by midnight Thursday 7th November, as after this date the Forum and all its contents will be permanently deleted from our servers.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all Forum members for their participation over the past few years.
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I believe that this deadline for removal of works has been extended, though not indefinitely, and that an archive has been made available to members of the PI Forum. The type of tech used does not allow for portability, so files must be manually taken off and uploaded elsewhere. This is a huge and upsetting inconvenience. I have been in and out removing drafts of poems, the majority of them later published. I am linking them below this brief post. The conversations and encouragement on a place dedicated to poetic interests is to be expediently dumped down the tubes and some of that loss is irretrievable for me (and others) I hope when PI finish their deliberations on their online facilities that they will find a way to extend their space to emergent writers in a manner that includes data liberation tools and a stated ethos regarding intellectual rights.
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Dear C. Murray,
There is an archive of the Forum, which is currently available to all registered Forum members at
Unfortunately, we no longer have the resources to host and moderate the Forum. We strongly recommend that members make copies of any posts/original work they wish to keep.
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
from the mirror architrave float down silken threads they are not blackened yet from the ceiling hooks float down wisps of red thread – almost cobweb light she is arched back unsure whether to suspend burnt orange silks cover the shutters there are children in the street she is nonetheless quite bound-up in red ropes from loop at nape and length of torso it is peaceful being spider-rolled webbed-in and arched as if a – a bird swoops down behind the orange silks
….. shiftshape-in
Suspend I by C. Murray, is taken from The Blind (Oneiros Books 2013) and is published in part at Ditch Poetry.
It has grown, not darkly, like mould, that sunless green. Sitting provides the habit of air. Children – trees, coats, limbs, the bounce of long hair as they troop the school road –
means stillness, expansion, despite unspeakable radio news on the murder of infants in temperate suburbs. Muffled, gloved, I grow in a car at the end of an eight-year planting, half of me
mulling the latest distant shooting. I would like to book a flight, transplant skills, solutions, get there fast. Instead, I wait, the smell of cooked dinner impregnating denims, boots, my cap, which she
inhales as she steps inside the car. I hold myself together beneath iced winter branches in grey couteur, feel an invisible frieze of buds stirring slowly, steady in deep cold.
Mary O’Donnell is the author of eleven books, both poetry and fiction, and has also co-edited a book of translations from the Galician. Her titles include the best-selling literary novel “The Light-Makers”, “Virgin and the Boy”, and “The Elysium Testament”, as well as poetry such as “The Place of Miracles”, “Unlegendary Heroes”, and her most recent critically acclaimed sixth collection “The Ark Builders” (Arc Publications UK, 2009). She has been a teacher and has worked intermittently in journalism, especially theatre criticism. Her essays on contemporary literary issues are widely published. She also presented and scripted three series of poetry programmes for the national broadcaster RTE Radio, including a successful series on poetry in translation during 2005 and 2006 called ‘Crossing the Lines‘. Today, she teaches creative writing in a part time capacity at NUI Maynooth, and has worked on the faculty of Carlow University Pittsburgh’s MFA programme in creative writing, as well as on the faculty of the University of Iowa’s summer writing programme at Trinity College Dublin.
Bone Orchard Poetry is variously active on discussion sites and uses social-media well. This is what writers refer to as bloody good innovative web-use. Editor Michael McAloran keeps the blogzine brief in description, ‘ An explorative blogzine of the Bleak/ the Surreal/ the Dark/ Absurd and the Experimental. ‘ There you have it encapsulated in a single minimal statement, a blogzine dedicated to new writing that focuses on the actual work of working writers.
I had been aware of Bone Orchard Poetry for a period of time. I decided to investigate it, and I submitted a single poem. Turns out a single poem isn’t enough. This is probably the best thing about Michael’s editorship of the Zine, I got an email back suggesting that a single poem submission doesn’t really tell the reader anything about the writer at all. He suggested I re-submit with a small grouping of poems. This I did. I sent a sequence based in a dream, actually based in the reality of a grief-experience. The poem initially had one extra verse, and there was a turn contained within that verse. I am still holding onto the original cycle in a folder, as I am very unsure of the turn issue in the poem.
Eamon Ceannt Park Cycleis based in a seven day walk through an unfamiliar/familiar park, in winter. This sequence does not always occur in waking reality, it is a dream-reality. Maybe the rest is nightmare. I am adding a link to the entire sequence here, and a brief excerpt from ECPC(#III).
Go read the site, I note thatKit Fryatt is a contributor , she will be familiar to Poethead readers for her poems which I published hereand here. I added the Bone Orchard Poetry link to Irish Poetry Imprints on my blogroll.
Other poet-contributors to Bone Orchard Poetry are, PD Lyons ,Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Kevin Reid, Gillian Prew, John W. Sexton, Alyssa Nickerson, Craig Podmore, , Michelle Greenblatt, Heller Levinson, David Scott Pointer, Natasa Georgievska, Carolyn Srygley-Moore, Anthony Seidman, Aad de Gids and David McLean
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.
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.
At the hour that rises between water and harvest yellow a seagull glided over the robust net of the fisherman Anchise It had come from far away with no break Its wings had withered, salt had dissolved their strength Only thanks to its ever vigilant eye had it entered the clearing of sheaves. Anchise at that time of day would pause to look at the sky and had noticed the bird for the solemn and cautious way it hovered So it seemed from the flight path and angle which set the bird apart from others It must have been the leader of a flock though not of seagulls, of exotic migrants from beyond the waves …
The bird touched the water as if stroking it happy to be pulled along dived through the surface and let go exhausted it aimed at the highest cloud labouring to maintain height with its wings glistening blue from the sea then whirled back towards land. Anchise, the white and nimble guardian of everything around him, gauged the elements of that sea orchestra.
Antonella Zagaroli’s Mindskin is translated with an introductory essay by Anamaría Crowe Serrano. Thank you so much to Antonella for the poems and for facilitating their publication on Poethead. Thanks to Jen Matthews of SouthWord Publications for suggesting Antonella for Poets in Translation.
About Mindskin
Poetry, Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Italian and introduced by Anamaría Crowe Serrano. Antonella Zagaroli is a poetic phenomenon. She writes prolifically, applies poetry to psychological studies, runs poetic workshops and organizes poetry, art and awareness events in health-care centers, schools and libraries. Her work is fluid and constantly evolving. Mindskin offers a generous selection from two collections of poetry (La maschera della Gioconda/The Gioconda’s Mask and Serrata a ventagli/Fan-locked), a volume of prose poems (La volpe blu/The Blue Fox) and an epic poem (Vinera minima/Minimal Venus).’
This is a brief note about the And Other Poems blog which is owned and written byJosephine Corcoran. What a breath of fresh air the blog is, judging by contemporary availability of good poetry (and critique). To say that poetry is sorely neglected in the face of market-forces is a wild understatement, but more polemic anon.
“And Other Poemsis simply a quiet, uncluttered place to read poems by different writers posted by Josephine Corcoran. The blog’s aim is to give readership to poems which would not otherwise be available, for instance poems no longer elsewhere online, out of print poems, poems published in print but not online, and new, unpublished poems by established writers. Poets have given permission for their work to be featured and copyrights remain with the poets.”
I had been seeing some of Josephine’s link on Twitter for a period of time, and as always was gladdened to see the advent of blogs and websites dedicated to the reader of poetry. Quite a few blogs and websites deal in modern and contemporary poetry in all its wonderful variety. Whilst some people may look on this avant-gardeism as a niche-activity, it is important that the poetry-reader can access all types of poetic-writing. It has been a while since I looked at how poets use online tools to disseminate literature but I see a radical improvement and diversification in the area. Josephine knows her poetry which is excellent for her readers. I recommend a perusal of her blog and of her list of poets which is wonderfully diverse. I am adding here the And Other Poems index , and of course a link to my poem i and the village (after Marc Chagall) which she kindly published on 11/09/2012.
I have never presumed that poetics are a niche-activity , but that a wholly conservative approach to critique combined with a mechanistic desire to advance contemporary fiction book-sales dominate newspaper editorials/reviews, at least in Ireland. The fact that many readers seek poetics through varieties of means, combined with news that 30,000 people signed up to PENN State’s Modern and Contemporary Poetry Course in 2012 would suggest that market-forces are just wrong. Or actually repellent ! Editors would rather clever women review silly books, than look at poetry or actual literature. If poetry readers seek adequate reviews of women authors and their books they must look elsewhere than the media, hence the blogs, the small presses, the literary journals and forums dedicated to poetry.
There is a list of blogs and websites dedicated to poetry on the right sidebar of this site. Links to And Other Poems are embedded in this post and given below :
It seems that muses, those shadowy goddesses who influence writers, are limited under current editorial and employment injunctions to give inspiration alone to great male poets. Or so Simon Gough would have us believe.
Muses apparently perform some type of quasi-sexual inspirational function and it doesn’t matter if they are girls or boys, once the poet is a dude and his inspiration is carried through the ages to the makers of poetry. I wonder (aloud) if the linked article had been written by a female poet, a woman writer – would the muse issue be a bit more interesting, or complex ?
“There’s no reason on earth why a muse should have to be female. Whatever the truth of the matter (and uncertainty still rages in the higher corridors of intellectual power), the identity of “the fair youth”, to whom Shakespeare dedicated so many of his sonnets is almost immaterial. The one certainty is that he had a muse, who provoked
‘But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st; Nor shall Death drag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.’
Here is Simon’s top nine list of great poets and their muses :
Catullus – Lesbia
John Keats -Fanny Brawne
Thomas Hardy – Emma Gifford/Florence Dugdale
W.B Yeats – Maud Gonne
F. Scott Fitzgerald -Zelda Fitzgerald
Bob Dylan – Sarah Lowndes
Neal Cassady -Jack Kerouac
Robert Graves – Margot Callas
The woman muse (or sometimes the young boy muse) provides the meat and torture of poetic inspiration to a succession of male writers in Gough’s imagination. He makes no mention of the muses of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, of Adrienne Cecile Rich, of Sylvia Plath. The entire list of writers produced by Gough includes not a single woman poet !
I’d like to see a woman poet’s perspective on the muse. Maybe that will happen in a century or so when the literary establishment comes round to the idea that women write rather excellent poetry. I have to say that I rather prefer the idea of the Duende anyway. Writers interested in the idea of the muse and of the Duende should look upFederico Garcia Lorca.
The muse who features on Poethead is called Euterpe.
Chris Murray 