Tag: Single Poems

‘Proposal To Erect Monuments’ by Kevin Higgins

December 3rd, 2015

Proposal To Erect Monuments

In memory of poet, Frank Yammergob:
a twenty foot likeness entrenched in bronze;
the bits of old burger he kept in his
beard left in for authenticity.

Fastened to the dome of city hall
giving his enemies the finger. Exact
replicas atop every public building he paid
not a cent towards.

One laying permanent claim
to the disabled parking space
he liked nothing more than
to nick. Others

outside offices, factories, schools
in which he never
worked a day in what might
loosely be called his life.

The damage, a fraction of what
his parade of ex-girlfriends cost
the state in psychotherapist’s fees. Not
to speak of government grants to bury

those who shot themselves having read
his thoughts on the necessity of rhyme
in the comments section of
the Connaught Trybewn website. In life,

his one reader was a retired vice-principal
who went about the place wearing most of a sheep;
and told women he sat beside on buses
the way Yammergob’s verses

so perfectly scan calls to mind for him
days when a teacher was free to bring
the strap down on the heaving
buttocks of young girls.

Before political correctness gone bonkers.
When, from every lamp-post, down our street
hung a paedophile.

The words at the base of each effigy,
In His Memory, remind
though, technically, he still breathes,
die he eventually must.

Proposal To Erect Monuments is © KEVIN HIGGINS

Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway City. He has published four collections of poems: Kevin’s most recent collection of poetry,The Ghost In The Lobby, was launched at this year’s Cúirt Festival by Mick Wallace TD. His poems also features in the anthology Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and one of his poems is included in the anthology The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014).

Higgins’ poetry was recently the subject of a paper titled ‘The Case of Kevin Higgins: Or The Present State of Irish Poetic Satire’ given by David Wheatley at a symposium on satire at the University of Aberdeen; David Wheatley’s paper can be read in full here. Mentioning The War, a collection of his essays and reviews, was published by Salmon in April, 2012. Kevin’s blog is http://mentioningthewar.blogspot.ie/ and has been described by Dave Lordan as “one of the funniest around” who has also called Kevin “Ireland’s sharpest satirist.”

‘Cry Oceans’ by Mary Cecil

November 27th, 2015

Cry Oceans

Cry oceans and weep the seas
Where waves flow over
The endless motions of life
The swimming perfection that flees

The Armageddon of destruction
By all means possible
The mechanisation of death
The beginning of the end

For whales and tuna to consume
The mercury to garnish
The insatiable greed to fill
The merciless plunderers

To crush and pulp for cattle
The wanton waste of the world
That flies in the face of God
And wilts in the sun

The lonely song of the whale
That echoes in silent reproach
The albatross that soars
Over oceans of emptiness

The flowering coral that dies
Blooming in acid
The hymn of death
Beneath blue heaven

© Mary Cecil, Rathlin Island

‘Written in protest to the mechanisation of fishing with super trawlers‘

Mary Cecil is the mother of large family and Grandmother to eleven. The widow of Rathlin Island’s famous campaigner, diver, author (Harsh winds of Rathlin) Thomas Cecil. Lover of Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland’s only inhabited island. Mary enjoys community development and current events. She has been writing poetry for several years. Enjoys writing a variety of poems, spiritual, war, romantic, protest and nature. Keen to compose more poems based on Rathlin Island’s myths & legends. She worked in owning and managing tourist facilities both on and off Rathlin Island. Public Appointment as Lay Member, The Appropriate Authority, Criminal Legal Aid Board .

Mary Cecil’s Rathlin Island poems

“The Women of 1916” by Rita Ann Higgins

November 10th, 2015

The Women of 1916

‘the state recognises that by her life within the home’
article 41.2.1. The Irish Constitution

Years before the offending article
was even conjured up by De Valera
and the very Reverend John Charles McQuaid
with the help of a pack of Jesuits –
the plan was set in train
to banish these biddies
back to their kitchen sinks.

The banishing tool of choice
was the airbrush.
The women of 1916
did not sit back
and wait in the wings of history
with tricolor dribblers to mop
the runny eggs
from the chins of the rebels.
These unmanageables,
were there from the start.
They could knit
a thirty two county Ireland
in plain and purl,
with their eyes closed
and never drop a stitch,
while rearing seven sons
and as many daughters.
The rifles they held
were not for showing
but for using.
The handgun could nestle on a hip
or be tucked into a petticoat.
Webley, Colt, Smith and Wesson.
Winnie (with the Webley) Carney
was one of the last people out of the GPO,
revelvor in one hand, typewriter in the other.

I write it out in a verse-
Lily O’ Brennan, Constance Markievicz,
Helena Moloney, Ellen’Nellie’ Gifford
May Moore , Rosie Hackett, Dr. Kathleen Lynn
Margaret Skinnider, Rose McNamara
Nell Ryan, Lizzie Mulhall, Kathleen’ Kitty’ Fleming…

Whenever green dresses are worn,
some tricolor dribblers spill scorn.

The Women of 1916 is © Rita Ann Higgins and was first broadcast on Arena (RTÉ)

Rita Ann Higgins was born in Galway. She has published ten collections of poetry, her most recent being Ireland is Changing Mother, (Bloodaxe 2011), a memoir in prose and poetryHurting God (Salmon 2010). She is the author of six stage plays and one screen play. She has been awarded numerous prizes and awards, among others an honorary professorship. She is a member of Aosdána.

Rita Ann Higgins’s readings are legendary. Raucous, anarchic, witty and sympathetic, her poems chronicle the lives of the Irish dispossessed in ways that are both provocative and heart-warming. Her next collection Tongulish is due out in April 2016 from Bloodaxe.

The Mission by Rita Ann Higgins

‘After The Barbecue’ by Kevin Higgins

October 20th, 2015

After the Barbecue

People like us,
always been here
and always will,
until we bequeath this land
to the bacteria.
We were fine with
the War of the Spanish Succession,
only thought it not quite long enough.
When the day gets here we’ll happily
bless our great-grand-children as they go guffawing
off to the next officially sanctioned
bloodbath of the nations. But have agreed,
by unanimous vote at tonight’s meeting,
we must build a barricade against this.

Those people’s demise –
Thomas and Sylvia, their children Jim, aged 5;
Christy, aged 2 and Mary, five-months-old.
Willie Lynch and his partner Tara,
their Kelsey aged 4, Jodie aged 9.
And Jimmy Lynch, 39 –
in the Carrickmines
barbecue is a tragedy

made all the worse by how
it contented itself
with half-measures.
We won’t have the gypsy leftovers put
in the field across from us,
to mar our hard earned view
of the surrounding countryside.

We are not the Ku Klux Klan,
in fact are profoundly jealous
of their much better outfits
and all the great movies
they, without fail, get to turn up in.
We but dream of riding horses
sharp as theirs, as we make our stand
in defence of what we see out the window
when we alight of a morning
on our genetically superior
polished, wooden floors.

These people’s Kentucky Fried
relatives are not our issue to solve.
We have scribbled our names
in their book of condolences.
but you, me, and The Evening Herald know
we are what most of the country thinks
when it draws its floral curtains,
shuts its eyelids and tells itself
truths it will never utter in polite company,
or in front of nuns who do great work
in the third world and other parts
of Africa. We realise
we’ll be vilified by people
the majority of whom wouldn’t have them either.

We just don’t want them here,
or, if possible, anywhere else.

After The Barbecue is © KEVIN HIGGINS

Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway City. He has published four collections of poems: Kevin’s most recent collection of poetry, The Ghost In The Lobby, was launched at this year’s Cúirt Festival by Mick Wallace TD. His poems also features in the anthology Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and one of his poems is included in the anthology The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014).

Higgins’ poetry was recently the subject of a paper titled ‘The Case of Kevin Higgins: Or The Present State of Irish Poetic Satire’ given by David Wheatley at a symposium on satire at the University of Aberdeen; David Wheatley’s paper can be read in full here. Mentioning The War, a collection of his essays and reviews, was published by Salmon in April, 2012. Kevin’s blog is http://mentioningthewar.blogspot.ie/ and has been described by Dave Lordan as “one of the funniest around” who has also called Kevin “Ireland’s sharpest satirist.”

“The Halved Stone”; a word image

October 15th, 2015

The Halved Stone

Sheared,

It’s round hump
Suggests a brother,

Saw driven to ( im)perfect
Its egg.

An ancient sand crack
Sounds-

Unsound, tower cannot
Upbuild its walls,

It would ring wrongly,
enough to disturb a nest.

‘Someone Wants Lovecraft’s Head’ by Christine Murray

September 9th, 2015

Someone wants to fillet Lovecraft and serve him up,
someone wants his head on a platter, a weird trophy.

It makes me want to read him again, like I did Dante
when Gherush92 found him unsuited to the academy
they wished passages excised, it sounded very painful.

Post-literacy is complex, writers no longer read but they
manage to seed adequate trifling books, empty things
that are cut off from history, stuff that wouldn’t rise a
hair on a mouse.

They cannot stand offence, hair-triggers are embedded in
every single text, it’ll be trigger-warnings next. Art must be
vague. It must reject the psychogeography of the artist and
empty itself of all meaning to suit the post literate non-reader.

They’ll pastel the woods, dock the leaves, blotting the dark
out. Soon there’ll be no interior maps, just the inane mufflings
of some coked-out artist bought by Hollywood seeking a stage
for their tired crap. Someone will have to bring Lovecraft back.

The new academy is post-literate, easy to offence, they tried
to swing Dante from the same root, the same diseased tree
of political propriety. Their stamp is a sliding shoe shuffle,
their platform, an easy media with time on their hands, the

bored crowd fattened on psychopathy and too manic to move.
Someone takes offence at Lovecraftian lore, makes me want
to read him again. To hood myself and go to those nameless
places where genetic aberration and weird alien-fucking are

the norm, where mottled and dusty books wait in dank houses
and the church of despair is a slimey cathedral. To read about
Yibb–Tstll, Olkoth, The Nameless City. To read about the endless
rot of the endless night, his dank woods.

They eviscerated Plath, twisting her words out of their meaning.
Whitman is too gay for school. While Houellebecq’s dark ranting
has people panting for some arbitrary justice. All their songs rejected,

ignored. Imagination is dark, always will be. The poet suicides
who take up their places in the anti-Parthenon; their cold grip, the
bird claw in your shoulder are taloned antis; anti-humour, anti-light,
anti-semite (maybe).

Far better indeed to stick it all in some briefcase, your tired theories,
than to look, really look, at what they created from loathing, from fear.
Those dark depression raptors, those death birds, yet someone is
trying to kill Lovecraft, and have his head on their simple stoneware.

Someone thinks hate kills hate.

Someone wants Lovecraft’s Head is © C. Murray, first published in And Agamemnon Dead, an alternative collection of Irish poetry (2015).

Lovecraft_Against_the_World,_Against_Life

‘Poem’ by Mary Cecil

September 5th, 2015

Sometimes I think, do I write as a woman?
Are my thoughts so different?
What concerns woman and not men
Do they have a gravitas I do not?

Is the world I experience
The search for truth
To flay a heart and dissect a thought
Should I be remote, detached as a diary?

Where do my thoughts sit
What else save love and loss to expect
Am I not serious in my journey?
Is there a scale I know not of?

Are all the challenges reserved for men?
To pontificate to helpless women
Or is the emotional turmoil in poetry
A commonality of the writing process?

So in consideration I shall continue
And explore the frontiers of being human
Disregard the doubts
And write, simply because I must

untitled is © Mary Cecil

Mary Cecil is the mother of large family and Grandmother to eleven. The widow of Rathlin Island’s famous campaigner, diver, author (Harsh winds of Rathlin) Thomas Cecil. Lover of Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland’s only inhabited island. Mary enjoys community development and current events. She has been writing poetry for several years. Enjoys writing a variety of poems, spiritual, war, romantic, protest and nature. Keen to compose more poems based on Rathlin Island’s myths & legends. She worked in owning andmanaging tourist facilities both on and off Rathlin Island. Public Appointment as Lay Member, The Appropriate Authority, Criminal Legal Aid Board.

Mary Cecil’s Rathlin Island poems

‘Lepus’ by Stephanie Conn

September 5th, 2015

Lepus

Their collective noun is ‘drove’
though they mostly live alone,
content with a solitary life,

or become one of a pair
growing brave in the spring;
chests puffed out, as if

fluid has filled the cavities
and dropsy has caused a long-forgotten
frenzy, that gives rise

to a meadow dash in daylight
or a moonlit boxing match
below the moon hare’s dark patches;

that ancient celestial ancestor,
as a distant cousin is driven south
by the hunter and his dogs.

Lepus is © Stephanie Conn (first published in Burning Bush II)

Stephanie Conn was born in Newtownards, Co. Down, in 1976. Her poetry has been widely published. She was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Prize, highly commended in the Mslexia Pamphlet Competition and selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. She is a graduate of the MA programme the Seamus Heaney Centre. Stephanie is a recipient of an Arts Council Career Enhancement Award and recently won the inaugural Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing. Her first poetry collection is due to be published by Doire Press in autumn 2015.

Delta and other poems by Stephanie Conn