Strokestown International Poetry Festival 2024

From the 3rd to 5th of May poetry lovers will  be in Strokestown along with many of the finest poets around including Rita Ann Higgins, Jane Clarke, Peter Sirr, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Ger Reidy, Tony Curtis, Pat Boran among others; quite honestly a very impressive line-up.

If you haven't spent some time in Ireland's Hidden Heartlands, this is certainly the perfect excuse to visit. Strokestown Park  and the National Famine Museum alone are worth the visit; other attractions nearby include Roscommon Castle, Elphin Windmill, Lough Key Forest Park and more.

However on this weekend poetry is the star; I'm reading on Friday night with a group of Roscommon poets. See you there.

Festival website: https://strokestownpoetryfest.ie/

Céide Fields

 

These walls, stone calligraphies

of almost six thousand years;

predating Sumerian cuneiform,

built on the tablet of geologic time;

pages stacked above the ocean,

stripes of the Céide cliffs

beneath the cover of bogland.

That book reopened,

retelling lives in Neolithic script,

a stone net thrown onto the land.

And now I think of Tom’s new walls,

the limestone boundaries of his fields;

how he has written his lines into this history;

how glorious they stand.

Emi Mahmoud's Powerful Poem On Sudan's Unnoticed Crisis

 

This BBC link, https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-68816523, contains a compelling message and poem from Emi Mahmoud. We need to be careful, the media directs our attention, but there are other crises, some claiming more lives though not lines. Lives are of equal value everywhere;  news media manages to subsume human lives to political interest.

Notable too in this interview, she underlines the importance of poetry in communicating human anguish.  

A Gap in the Hedge

 

A gap in the hedge

where briars are looping downward

under the weight of grape-like clusters

of fat juicy blackberries ‒

squelching cattle-trodden paths

lead onward to fresh, green, larder-like

half-acres of lush shining grass ‒

choked with cloud

and birdsong sweet with plenty,

among stirrings in the leaf-litter,

momentary alarms;

I step, sinking in wellingtons

in the dung-gummed earth,

into a triangular field

green as the previous,

as secluded within its sycamore,

blackthorn and elder confines.

I stop as I would passing into a new room

and know I can walk the whole country,

east to west, field to field, across this mosaic

with its opulence and endless allure.

Life Long

 

Life Long

Still:

my once loved

is standing there

as though left out in the rain

and waiting to be brought in,

ever-present,

a hologram

at the end of the garden.

Still:

my once loved

is standing there

as though left out in the rain

and waiting to be brought in,

ever-present,

a hologram

at the end of the garden.

Still,

and the years have rolled,

I have held her there.

An insight into our capability for inhumanity

 

 Inured to the inhumanity displayed in times of war, here is a horrific example of the depths we are capable of descending to. Historic it may be, but there is no real indication that anything has improved; the genes haven't changed, only the arenas in which our basest inclinations play out.

 

Iconic Photographs

Miley twerks,

Marilyn gathering in her dress,

a galaxy of stars gathered around Bradley,

a sailor kisses a woman in Times Square,

5 soldiers raise a flag at Iwo Jima,

Einstein sticks out his tongue,

a child face down dead on a Turkish beach.