Mother Liked This Poem

To begin with, my mother was more than a little apprehensive of my writing poems. She dreaded finding herself published inside one of them. When one of my earliest publications turned out to be "Visiting the Corset Maker", her apprehension seemed well founded.Fortunately a friend of her's, who also visited the corset maker, liked the poem and her regard shifted.

However, she really did like "The Country Boy"; and though she occasionally wondered why I can't always write happy,pleasant poems, this poem convinced her that she could let me out with a biro in my hand.

When she had died I found her copy of "Sunfire" with press cuttings cellotaped in, and realised how proud she was of the book.

So for mother's day:

The Country Child.


The country child
runs in and out of rain showers
like rooms;

sees the snake-patterns in trains,
the sun's sword-play in the hedges
and the confetti in falling elder blossoms;

knows the humming in the telegraph poles
as the hedgerow's voice
when tar bubbles are ripe for bursting;

watches bees emerge from the caverns
at the centres of buttercups,
feels no end to a daisy chain,

feels no end to an afternoon;
walks on ice though it creaks;
sees fish among ripples and names them;

is conversant with berries
and hides behind thorns;
slips down leaves, behind stones;

fills his hands with the stream
and his hair with the smell of hay;
recognizes the chalkiness

of the weathered bones of sheep,
the humour in a rusted fence,
the feel of the white beards that hang there.

The country child
sees a mountain range where blue clouds
are heaped above the horizon,

sees a garden of diamonds
through a hole scraped
in the frost patterns of his bedroom window

and sees yet another world
when tints of cerise and ochre
streak the evening sky.

He knows no end, at night
he sneaks glimpses of Heaven
through the moth-eaten carpet of the sky.

I Give You

This tree's dripping fruit
to place in your mouth
to ripen your tongue.

The water guttering down
these green leaves
to be a trellis of fingers
about you.

This soft drizzle of sunlight
to fall gentle as the petals
of meadowsweet on your cheeks.

This bindweed and all tendrils
to hook and bind
our desires together.

Inspirational Bacon

Three Monsters (Sunfire, Dedalus Press 1998) is based on Francis Bacon’s famous triptych. The visceral nature of much of his work cuts straight through to feeling and so makes writing more heart-felt and immediate, that along with the mind-bending imagery which aids innovation.


Three Monsters.


Here are three monsters :
Agony, a greyhound skinned; howl.
Hollowness, a hen plucked; peck.
Dementia, a bundle of hay; scratch.


I have stood them on furniture
to pose.


They were in the entrails of spirit,
I picked them out with a forceps.
I thought they looked remarkable in the light.
I thought the viewing public
might want to scrape at them
with their spatulas.





Attitude (Sunfire) came from another Bacon image, "Paralytic Child Walking on All Fours (from Muybridge)".It has probably further from the spirit of the artist’s work; somehow the image engenders feelings of pity in conveying delicacy and vulnerability.

Attitude.


Who owns the child
with the withered arm-wings,
who carries the mutation that weighs a tonne;
who, when the air is full of flight, hops
and hops and hops.


See how the children littering the yard
launch like torn pages into careless flight.
Like gulls they hog the sunlight
while a sea worries far below.
This is the currency.


But who owns that child,
the child with the withered arm-wings.


Whatever about the success of the poems, Bacon’s art is wonderful.

War's Harvest

Early each morning, the river is obscured by fog;
sounds come ashore like cries from Limbo.

At dawn the young women come,
spools of brightly coloured thread, with fishing rods;

and, magical spiders, they cast weightless filaments
out over the water;

and for a moment there are more threads hanging
than there are people on the streets of Calcutta.

The river stops;
nothing stirs; the earth turns a little.

Then suddenly a rod bobs and bends
and stares through its tiny eye into the water;

straining, tensing, till in a slick of weed,
slivered as newt, a young man's body breaks the surface;

bulb-eyed, marble-chested and tapered
to a train of drops dripping back into the river.

Thousands upon thousands, like lanterns,
or candles being lifted from wax.

And when the fog clears
the women are standing with their unlit lanterns;

the bank is a thousand miles long
and the river is wider than an ocean.

Laughter Yoga in Rathmines

Catherine will be leading two Laughter Yoga sessions as part of ‘Festival Under The Clock’ on April 2nd in Rathmines Town Hall. The sessions are at 11am and 2pm, admission is free. She recommends you wear loose clothing, bring a yoga mat or towel to lie on, and a bottle of water.

A combination of unconditional laughter and yogic breathing, Laughter Yoga is a group activity in which laughter is induced without comedy but soon becomes contagious and yields well proven physiological and psychological benefits to those involved.

Clinical research on Laughter Yoga has proven that laughter lowers the level of stress hormones e.g. epinephrine and cortisol in the blood. It combats stress and depression, fosters positivity and hopefulness.

A trawl through some ‘laughter quotations’ confirms the above, my favourites include:

“Laughter is an instant vacation” - Milton Berle

“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face” -Victor Hugo

“Laughter………. the most civilised music in the world” - Peter Ustinov

“There is little success where there is little laughter” - Andrew Carnegie

“Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it.” Henry Ward Beecher

“A good, real, unrestrained, hearty laugh is a sort of glorified internal massage, performed rapidly and automatically. It manipulates and revitalizes corners and unexplored crannies of the system that are unresponsive to most other exercise methods.” Author unknown

(This latter is true, there are very impressive and genuine statistics for the value of laughter as a physical work-out. Elsewhere it has been described as an internal jog.)

For further information on ‘Festival Under The Clock’ check out: www.festivalundertheclock.webs.com

20 Essential Irish Writers

Thanks to Carl Andrews for sending “Poetry and Miscellaneous Yap” a list of "20 essential Irish writers". See http://www.onlinecollegesanduniversities.net/blog/2011/20-essential-irish-authors/.
The advantage of lists in general is that they serve as a good introductory reading list for new-comers to a particular genre or whatever and of course, they give rise to lively debate. The downside is that they guide readers away from the many very talented writers, often more provocative and interesting , who never feature on lists. Of course the problem for the compilers of lists is that they know they will come under attack and so they play safe. At least here the list does not claim to be definitive, merely essential and it is interesting that a quarter of the writers on this list are from the Gaelic tradition.
My strongest point of disagreement would be the omission of Brian Friel. There would be strong arguments for short story writers Frank O’Connor or Sean O Faolain, for Máirtín Ó Direáin and Seán Ó Ríordáin, for Patrick Kavanagh, for Flann O’Brien. I would include any of these before Frank McCourt or Anne Enright.
However, follow the link and see what you think.

A Question I Ask Myself

Is the photography of the victims of war, famine, crime, natural disasters etc. acceptable? The argument, of course, is that it makes the rest of us aware and maybe mobilises our sympathies to the point where we do something about it.

But what about the photographer on the spot, who prioritises the photograph over the victim in a fleeting situation? The media circus attached to certain disasters?

And what about myself who buys the books?


A Brief Note on an Imminent Famine.

Everyone here will starve:
each bone will be a stripe,
each hand a bowl,
each leg a stick.

Then there’ll be the gluttony
of cameras:
our threadbare skin
will be devoured,
our eyes exported
shining like pickles.

Rain Street

Down the street
rain lights running
drizzling concrete
sizzling lake.
Flashes red flashes
running in rivulets
yachting cartons
crowd in a grate.
Umbrella shadows
with foot halo splashes
shirt collar drippings
shoes under siege.
Gutters play bongos
for galvanize tappers
tyres make clashes
spangling streams.
And faces in windows
unravel down panes
their cigarettes burning
their signature stains.
Then squinting bus queue
like socks on a line
become runaway legs
legs like twine.

Festival under the Clock 2011

Great line-up for this year’s “Festival Under The Clock” on April 2nd in Rathmines. Performances in Rathmines College kick off at 1.30pm with Cora Venus Lunny. Also in the afternoon are Liam O’Maonlaí, Latvian Choir "eLVē" and Cuckoo Savant.The evening entertainment includes John Spillane, comedian Jarlath Regan and the Toby Reiser Quartet.

On top of this there will be an opportunity to learn Breton Dancing and shed your worries with a session of laughter yoga.

Meanwhile a programme of events will take place in the Swan Centre and out on the street at Rathmines Square. These will include lots of family entertainments, busking, face-painting, dance etc. All sounds great and it's all free

You Know The Woman That

Her hand is tracing a face;
she sees it where her fingertips are
running down the cheek,
following along the jaw,
sweeping off the chin.

And then it seems
she doesn’t see it anymore;
standing outside Tesco’s,
her hands in mid air,
tears running down her face.

Nor does she see the procession of stares,
that great gobbling curiosity,
but gathers herself and bag,
crosses to the green grocer’s
and is, in a moment,busy pricing lettuce.

Invitation to Irish Authors to Submit Poetry/Short Stories

Stephen Behrendt,Interim Senior Editor of Prairie Schooner, the oldest continuously publishing academic literary journal in the United States writes to say that he wishes to publish a special issue of the journal featuring the work of contemporary Irish writers, including both poetry and short fiction. He is hoping to have all submissions in hand by 1 May 2011, so that the issue can appear in early 2012. He is looking for previously unpublished work, which can be sent as email attachment to: sbehrendt1@unl.edu

If you would like to have a look at the Prairie Schooner website, here is the link:
http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/index.html

Roscommon Childhood

Roscommon, and the memories of a happy childhood there, in a poem that starts off realistically but ends with a skyscape transposed to earth. The child's imagination makes the place a Paradise at the close.


Frosty Morning From My Parents Bedroom

The music box plays
my mother’s glass-topped
mahogany
dressing table;

the frost-petalled
window
with a peep hole
for my blue eye;

a hedge of brittle
looping briars,
Curley’s field a flood
of sugary brilliance;

the beeches,
their heads in the stratosphere;
a barbed-wire fence
staggering between them;

abbey ruins,
a spire and steeple:
Roscommon town
cocooned beside

an ocean of duck egg blue
that rolls into a bay
beneath snowy mountains
a million miles away.

See and Hear Great Poets Online

Wonderful to be able to hear Alfred Tennyson reading from “The Charge of the Light Brigade” in the Historic Readings section of The Poetry Archive website. He died in 1892. And Robert Browning who died in 1889. Others audio clips include Dylan Thomas, WH Auden, RS Thomas, Patrick Kavanagh, Yeats Pound, Stevie Smith, Sitwell, TS Eliot and many more. Check out the following pages:

Alfred Tennyson http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1569
Robert Browning http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1545
Sylvia Plath http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7083
Siegfried Sassoon http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1561

And, of course, YouTube is a treasure trove. Here are some pages to start: Ginsberg reading his best, Philip Larkin and Betjeman and Jenny Joseph not old enough yet to be wearing purple.

Philip Larkin interviewed by Betjeman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTdDS05x6d0
Seamus Heaney reading Digging http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIzJgbNANzk
Ginsberg reading Howl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoY9gom50
TS Eliot reading Prufrock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhiCMAG658M
Thomas Kinsella http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l4PETJ5Z_Q
Anna Akhmatova http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htW5XzUD24k&feature=related
Jenny Joseph reading Warning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cACbzanitg




This last video’s closing banner "killed by ignorance" prompts me to post my own poem from Sunfire which carries a similar message.

Reflecting with Goya.

Of course not;
of course no one that ever cracked open a head
has seen a symphony pour out.

No executioner has seen the flow of an amber fireside
with its intimate and tangling caresses
drain from the split skulls of lovers

nor have soldiers who shoot dark holes
seen rafts of memories spilling, carrying the children,
the birthdays, the orchards, the dances.

When they shot the poet Lorca,
the bullets sailed in a universe; yet when the blood spurted,
it was only blood to them.

The Disaster of War

I get a lot of inspiration from photographs, particularly those that relate to human tragedies; and of these none have moved me more than Don McCullin’s work.
This photograph exemplifies my point. This soldier: his pockets pilfered, a trail of personnel items strewn on the ground. A family destroyed, their photographs scattered; the ruination of lives unimportant, the girl in the photograph just a child. All that is important to the assailants: pilfered. There is no glory in war.



Soldier


Shot crossing a wasteground;
they left him,
pockets pilfered,
staring beyond all wars;

a trail of photographs
and letters running from him
like a congealed flow
of memories.

Magical Art

Magical Art

I think the very best the arts can do is to lift us out of the mundane and into the wonderful. Too often I leave a cinema feeling that I been beaten over the head. No matter what the medium, when art lifts us above ourselves it reaches its finest: whether that be in soaring voices, breath-taking cinematography, beautiful words or exquisite painting. Obvious names come to mind: Mozart, Fellini, Michelangelo, Yeats, Shakespeare, Bosch, Leonardo, Bach.

But no need to be quite so classical, so grand: for me Pink Floyd, Brian Eno, Peter Greenaway. Sometimes glimpses of same are stumbled on: that’s how I felt when I first stumbled on Martin Gale’s work.

I maybe a bit behind, but I’ve just stumbled on the work of Ulla Schildt. Originally from Finland but now residing, I believe, in Oslo; she is a graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology. My discovery is in the exhibition Flow, a joint exhibition of art works from the OPW State art collection and the collection of the Department of Finance and Personnel, Northern Ireland, currently on view in the Pearse Museum in Dublin.

The image in question is Water World: a spectacular vision of lush exotic jungle flora (almost cinematic); a child stands gazing at it in some botanical garden. The wonder of the exhibition heightened by the mesmerized child draws the viewer right back to the days of childhood wonderment.

So I found some more of her works on line in which she time and again uses a transfixed child to convey to us the magic of some display of nature.Even in the tiny format employed on the website below, viewers will be interested in the exhibits on display,enchanted by the wonder of the viewing children and themselves transported back to their own childhoods by the magical displays. The images are moving and beautiful.

Visit http://www.foto.no/cgi-bin/articles/articleView.cgi?articleId=39992 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/78025134@N00/2834982711/in/photostream/
to see some examples of her work.