Tag: poetry
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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.
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World Put to Rights
The dream that burst riverbanks
held you; blackstrap molasses,
antidote for your poison.Your plummets spraying wetness
like a coin in a cascade
woke no-one, not even us.The church spire grew legs, scaled bricks,
ran to your side, spotlighted.
I put glass over that glow.Quiet-huff of your refuge,
flailing arms, spluttering snores.
Ungainly crooning tunesto the realms of purity;
I found too sickly-sweet. You
fought the humdrum, from your seat.You would sleep outside, would sing,
stand on ledges mollified.
I won’t sing, no matter what.Float on, keep your whistles of
booze-hounds. When I awaken
I will join you, watch for me.World Put to Rights is © Kelly Creighton , all rights reserved.
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You can read more about Kelly at the following link.
Kelly Creighton/ Ceallach O Criochain is an Irish artist, writer of fiction and poetry; born in Belfast in 1979 she writes about contemporary relationships and local landscapes. Kelly has previously published poems and short stories in anthologies and magazines.Currently her poetry is in literary ezines including A New Ulster, Lapwing Publications. Recently her work was feature of the week in Electric Windmill Press.Kelly is editing her novel Yielding Fruit, a historical fiction set in West Yorkshire, she is also compiling her first collection of poems.
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“The Chinese New Year 2013
marks the year of the Snake
graceful and dark at the same time.
As one year bows out to another
I often reflect on past occurrences
failures and wins, silly mistakes,
see if I have learned from them.
Death brought many clouds of grief
at losing my brother so suddenly
family gatherings feel strained
we all want to talk about him but don’t
for fear it will create even more sadness.
Like a lost bead on a necklace, the space
a constant reminder of his passing.
Death is a leveler of sorts a stopper of tracks
just like the new year as it approaches
vows will be made and broken
there will be make-ups and break-ups.
Haves and have-nots, peace and war.
With my anthology of wishes I push on.
I wish 2013 be the year man returns to listening
to his intuition like the ancestors did
working from within using inner radar
learn to be more spiritually aware of others.
Respect the songs of others like the birds in the sky
their choruses are many and they live freely.
Slow down and awaken to the new.”.2013 is © Aine MacAodha
Thanks to Aine for her poem 2013 to mark this New Year on Poethead. I am adding Aine’s website landing-page, Poetry and Links. Aine has published Fire of the Gaels on Poethead previously, and I have included her in my Index of Women Poets.
- Look out for Aine Mac Aodha and a bevy of contemporary poets at A New Ulster
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Tree-Wheel
In the rain its knuckled bark
has the gloss of polish,a bottle-green patina.
There isn’t a skull-head for pivot,
tension is held in back of its palm
it fists into the soil,raising it up.
Beach
Dragged impasto of seaweed
aches against silver waves.I watch the wormholes
ferry their glitter of sand
in kaleidoscopes.
‘Tree-Wheel ‘ and ‘Beach’ by C. Murray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.- First published at Bone Orchard Poetry as part of a sequence.
- Image is ‘Willow trees’ by Pieter Wenning
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“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)
The image is ‘Life or Theatre’ by Charlotte Salomon
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We Protect the Weak We protect the weak and call it love or ethics.
For the safety of our students this door
must remain closed at all times. Ani yalda tova. I am a good girl,
I tell the Israeli jeweler who is impressed with my Hebrew.
Someone nearby says, Fuck Israel. I offer, I am a bad girl. Ani yalda ra.
To dance is a kind of paralysis. Muscles contract
in a certain way and we call it beautiful.
The men on the beach made me think
they were dancing tango, but instead one
was helping the other will his feet to remember
walking. If I had withered hands and always gave you
your pen with my teeth would you think it beautiful?
For the continued safety of our money
these checkpoints must remain closed
at all times. For the quality of our progeny these legs
must remain closed at all times. These minds.
This mouth. This heart. Why don’t you substitute
your for these and this? See how it feels. Ani yalda ra.
Feel that. Feel me feel you. Tell me I’m good
and bad. Tova and Ra. Let us be both…
© Kimberly Campanello
Kimberly will be reading at the National Concert Hall, on Thursday, December 6th 2012. Kimberly will be read her poems on the sheela-na-gigs in Strange Country, a new work by composer Benjamin Dwyer for uilleann pipes, tape, and poetry. More information and booking details can be found at www.nch.ie.
We Protect the Weak was previously published in the pamphlet, Spinning Cities (Wurm Press, 2011). Kimberly read this poem at Catechism, Readings for Pussy Riot, in Dublin.
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Kimberly
Campanello was born in Elkhart, Indiana. She now lives in Dublin and London. She was the featured poet in the Summer 2010 issue of The Stinging Fly, and her pamphlet Spinning Cities was published by Wurm Press in 2011 . Her poems have appeared in magazines in the US, UK, and Ireland, including nthposition , Burning Bush II, Abridged , and The Irish Left Review .
Pic by Brian Kavanagh
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The Éigse Michael Hartnett Facebook group linked to The Metre archives this week. Here are poetic treasures including essays, interviews, translations and reviews. The link that I just embedded above contains two Hartnett translations, Clocán Binn and Cén Áinius , introduced and discussed by Michael Smith. Metre was edited by Justin Quinn and David Wheatley.
I decided to add the site onto my Irish Poetry Imprints blogroll so that my readers can do their own exploring rather than have me discuss the poems that I like.
Clocán Binn Calling bell
Brought here by wild wind nightly
I would contest your clarion
Rather than war with women.Translated by Michael Hartnett
I am linking my favourite download here with a recommendation to read the entire. The essay discusses a few preoccupations of mine with regards to dissipation of (unrenewable) poetic energies, performance, audience and response.
O’ Driscoll quotes George Mackay Brown who interests me, and who is represented on this blog with his poem, The Masque of Bread. I feel that George Mackay Brown is quite a neglected poetic voice, given the cragged and ruggedness of his expression, and his use of symbol (especially in his use of light symbol).
O’Driscoll brings Pliny’s letters into his discussion, and the art of Vona Groarke. I tend to subscribe to the Yeatsian adages about solitary writing myself, but it is interesting to look at an aspect of poetic writing which I feel intrigues many poets. Wallace Stevens had a horror of public-reading and is quoted here saying that he had no interest in being a troubadour and that he found public readings of poetry ghastly.
I remember coming up against the reading or not reading issue in college whilst studying Julian of Norwich, who I believed to have written or dictated her works just for the inner ear, where the reader of the pages she offered could discern The Revelation of Love‘s musicality all by themselves. Needless to say my theory was met with a consternation (which I have not forgotten).
I have linked the entire O’Driscoll essay here.
There is an under-developed Sound and Voice category on this blog which I have linked. I hope to add some new Kit Fryatt links there soon. I am also becoming fascinated with contemporary textual and sound poetry as a result of finishing the Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Pennsylvania course which I detailed in my Open Salon Blog.
About Metre
Metre was a magazine of poetry that ran for seventeen issues from 1995 to 2005. For most of that period it was edited by Justin Quinn and David Wheatley. It presented original poetry, reviews, interviews and essays. Published and printed in Ireland, edited by two Irish people, it nonetheless billed itself as ‘A Magazine of International Poetry‘: the desire was present from the outset to provide a platform for the best of Irish work alongside the best from the UK, US, Australia as well as work in translation.
The magazine could not have continued without the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon, and occasional support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Also, patrons and sponsors generously contributed to our costs from the outset.
This site presents a database of PDFs of original contributions to the magazine, and is hosted by the Faculty of Arts, Charles University Prague, under the auspices of the Centre for Irish Studies.
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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 Cycle is 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).
Eamon Ceannt Park Cycle
III.There is a man in the stone..The dew is playing fire at her feet,wetting her legs..A legion of rooks guard his stone..© C. Murray.
Go read the site, I note that Kit Fryatt is a contributor , she will be familiar to Poethead readers for her poems which I published here and 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
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Pussy-Riot Forever : The Body
I riot, You riot, We riot.
The body riots.
Arterial riot
Breast riot
Cheek riot
Eye riot
Finger riot
Gall bladder riot
Intestine riot
Jaw riot
Knee riot
Liver riot
Mouth riot
Nose riot
Prick riot
Palate riot
Riot in Queues
Renal riot
Stomach riot
Testes riot
Thigh riot
Tongue riot
Umbilical riot
Vagina riot
Vocal cords riot
Waist riot
Wrist riot
X-ray riot
Yin Yang riotZeee riot
Dictators Never : Roll-Call
Aferworki Isaias riot
Ben Ali riot
Bashar al Assad riot
Castro riot
Duvalier Jean-Claude (Baby Doc!) riot
Ershad Mohammed Hossain riot
Franciso franco riot
Ghadaffi Muamar riot
Ghasmi Ahmad riot
Hugo Chavez riot
Hitler Adolf riot
Hussein Saddam riot
Idid Amin riot
Jean Bidel Bohassa riot
Kim Jong II riot
Lukashenko Alexander riot
Mugabe Robert riot
Moi Daniel Torotich Arap riot
Noriega Manuel riot
Ortega Daniel riot
Pinochet riot
Pol Pot riot
Putin Putin Putin Putin Putin Pussy Riot !
© Philo Ikonya and Helmuth A. Niederle.
Thanks to Philo Ikonya and Helmuth A. Niederle for permission to reproduce their two poems from Catechism for Pussy Riot. The book is available for a small donation via the English PEN website, here.
I read it Wednesday 21/11/2012 at the Grand Social as part of this event, and which I have linked in this blog, here. I read a new poem of mine called, Precarious Migratory Spectacular.
Philo Ikonya is a writing colleague of mine from PEN International and the PEN International Women Writer’s Committee. I am linking here to her website and blog.
Chris Murray 