Upcoming Events

Culture Night 2012 is Friday, 21st Septembers. I’m looking forward to reading poems from Above Ground Below Ground at Cruachán Aí Heritage Centre in Tulsk http://www.rathcroghan.ie/ . Artist Elaine Leigh and I will present images and poems that relate to the Neolithic sites at Lough Crew in Meath, Brewell Hill and Killeen Cormac in Kildare, and the legends and myths associated with these sites. 

A body of work still in the making: the subject matter has fascinated Elaine for a number of years, I’ve only caught the bug this year, but I've been amazed at what it has taught me and at the dam-burst of ideas it has ignited, (those last few words seem to have escaped from a war comic c. 1965).

 

From  “ Above Ground Below Ground”

 

The sun enters the passage;

I meet him on my way;

he touches my head

like water. 

I emerge into day;

in the chamber

the sun dwells a moment

on my earlier impressions. 

I return after the day

to elaborate my carving,

my spirals,

my perpetual turning.

 

 

 

On Monday 24^th, I’m in Mullingar for the launching of Mullingar Scribblers, Poems and Stories Volume 5.This fantastic writer’s group, the Mullingar Scribblers, who meet on Monday nights in the Annebrook Hotel have produced excellent writing for many years; I hope they get great support from everyone in Mullingar. I might also suggest that, if you are local and half interested in writing, you could do a lot worse than call into one of their sessions.

Explaining Our Madness

A friend, contemplating the various madnesses of humanity during the week, mentioned the irony of governments paying people to save lives and kill simultaneously; only doctors save lives one by one, soldiers kill in thousands.

There is a short period in childhood when these ironies are questioned, I think this is the only time in which we can save our children from what we've perpetuated. From Sunfire...

 

   Growing Up           

Shortly you will trace lines,

leave,

join the herds,

leave a trail among the trails

meandering over the hills. 

We are part of some eccentric’s

geometry;

I wish I could tell you more,

my little love.

First Film of Amazonian Tribe

Loggers threaten the existence of uncontacted Amazonian tribes by removing their living resources and space, introducing diseases and by violence. One of the great problems is convincing governments that these tribes actually exist; the film instances the activities of illegal Peruvian loggers being permitted by the Peruvian government. This moving clip from a BBC Survival documentary, made with the collaboration of the Brazilian Indian Affairs Dept shows the first footage of an uncontacted tribe and was made to convince the world that these tribes do indeed exist. Visit http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/ for more.  

Gassed

In 1919 John Singer Sargent completed a large scale oil painting, Gassed. A line of First World War British soldiers, blinded by mustard gas, is led through a sea of bodies to a first aid station. The scene is appalling, and as convincing an argument for the barbarity of war as any. It is strongly reminiscent of Wilfred Owens’ Dulce Et Decorum Est:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
 

 

 

I found this video of the painting on Youtube. The camera picks out the detail in the painting very well, and helps to convey the horror of it all. Thanks to denise4peace on Youtube  for this.

Emigration - Empty Houses

An upshot of emigration is the aging of the population, particularly in rural parts. Old farmhouses, their young families gone, used to be a much more prevalent feature of the Irish countryside in the sixties and seventies; the  new wave  of departures may, sadly, turn the clock back. In silencing dead summer  heat, the emptiness of these houses is accentuated.   

 

 A Stranger In The Townland.

 

In Autumn the farmhouse

with the sun-folded field beneath its chin,

traps the daylight in its spectacles,

then flashes it away.

 

A swing hangs among the orchard's arthritic trees

without stirring;

without remembering

a frantic liveliness now reduced

to the occasional commotion of a falling fruit.

 

Once songs of apples filled the farmhouse;

but the children became photographs,

the dust settled on their frames

and soon Autumns were flying uncontrollably by.

Today, between its curiosities, a bluebottle drones.

 

Now that the conversation with the hillside

is ended, the farmhouse

with the sycamore stole

has become an eccentric;

a stranger in the townland. 

Arguments can be hallucinogenic.

 

The Blue Man.

 There was a manon the white line,

middle of the street;

clasping his shins,

he made a hemisphere

to cage his pain. 

Closer,

disfiguring agony;

the pain exploding,

he opened:

a carrier bag in a gust;

I saw a man o the white line,

dead of night;

I'd been in an argument,

the street was taking me

further along.

He was blue

and writhing:

carrier bag in the wind.

I threw my argument into it;

his need was greater

than mine.

Places of Literary/Arts Interest in County Roscommon

Myself and three others have just spent the last two days researching, finding and photographing sites relating to personages of literary/arts  interest in Co Roscommon. Among the places seen were John MacGahern’s barracks home in Cootehall, Percy French memorial on site of his family home, Douglas Hyde’s and O’Carolan’s burial places, Goldsmith's birthplace (disputed), William Wilde’s birthplace in Castlerea, Thomas Heazle Parke’s home in Kilmore, Hanna Greally’s cottage at Coolteigue.

Apart from the sites, the two days were spent in glorious weather; the Roscommon countryside looked magnificent. What hidden gems there are in these counties ( Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon): Knockvicar, Cootehall, Highwood, Jamestown, Kilmore. There are so many places to be explored off the main roads all over Ireland. 

Candidate for most beautiful placename I ever come across: Eastersnow on the sign, Eastersnow graveyard.  

    

Summer Bliss

I think children gather an appreciation of nature and landscape in a way, and at a rate that is foreign to adults. They don’t appear to dwell on the moment; they don’t seem to have to declare to themselves that a place or a moment is beautiful. The appreciation seems to slip in while they’re busying themselves with something else; yet it gets in and lodges in their subconscious. Later in life it’s still there, a richness in their appreciation of life around them. I wonder how much they pick up when they appear to be otherwise engaged. 

Anyway, this poem recalls lazy childhood days and the awareness of all that’s stirring in the garden.

SUMMER ORCHARD EVENING.

On an evening

when apple was eating the worm,

tree grating the sun

with some clouds, dusty birds;

the green cloth

was spread to the orchard wall.

I watched bees collecting post

while cat was a tea cosy

with dozey trip-wire eyes.

Suddenly dog alarm in the hedge

comes bursting from the undergrowth:

big game hunter

and cat gone steeplejack.

Then dog winks

and we stretch out,

and I go back to being a microscope

eyeball deep in daisies.

This poem was originally included in an anthology called Real Cool - Poems to grow up with, edited by Niall MacMonagle (Martello 1994).

There Are Stars All Around

I am sitting on a park bench

 with a pool of sunlight almost on my lap;

 a cosmos of flies,

galaxies in Brownian motion,

 fills it.

I am looking into a park

after midnight;

 moths flitting beneath an unseen lamp

 are sparks streaking

from invisibility to invisibility.

I am lazing by a stream;

 the sun,

reflected in

innumerable scintillations,

 has ordered the universe

 to pulse beside my sleeve.

The Lost Heifer by Austin Clarke

When the black herds of the rain were grazing,
In the gap of the pure cold wind
And the watery hazes of the hazel
Brought her into my mind,
I thought of the last honey by the water
That no hive can find.

Brightness was drenching through the branches
When she wandered again,
Turning silver out of dark grasses
Where the skylark had lain,
And her voice coming softly over the meadow
Was the mist becoming rain.


Austin Clarke on the deleterious effect of the Irish Civil War on the nationalist ideal: a wonderful depth, a deep appreciation and understanding of symbolism and imagery, a true visualisation of Ireland in the interplay of its weather and landscape. The poem has a wealth and richness that few poets achieve today. The imagery succeeds wonderfully even without its meaning.

Natural Light

Orcadian is a dialect of Scots, spoken on Orkney. Lau means 'natural light' in Orcadian, and Lau is the name of a folk band set up in Edinburgh in 2006. Their music is exciting, beautiful, and inventive. The band, Martin Green, Aidan O’Rourke and Kris Drever, (all award-winning musicians individually), for three years in a row, from 2008 to 2010, won Best Group in the prestigious BBC Folk Awards.



Here is a link to ‘Saint Monday’, the beautiful first track from the album, Race The Loser, which is due out in October. http://soundcloud.com/tomreveal/lau-saint-monday-from-race-the   
And if that doesn't convince you, you may as well drop you ears in the bin before going to bed.

　

Love, Lust or What Else?

Sex is a complicated working of the mind. An expression of love or possibly hatred, a weapon sometimes, often no more than a pastime, sometimes an abuse of power, a cruelty, sometimes a selfish satisfaction, a lustful craving, a whim.

I have often found the stereotypical movie representation of the culmination of a love, (a night of passionate sex), to be very limited at best, and grossly misleading for many young people learning their way into relationships. Are these sex scenes purely for titillation, sales reasons; are they an easy option: a visual expression for a visual medium; or do directors believe that passionate sex is the summit of expression of true love.

The following poem might express love, but if I tell you that the words belong to a dangerous pervert, it becomes very disturbing. Love requires real affection, and that has a whole range of other expressions.


When I am sleeping
you come
softly over these stones;
I turn deeper.
You slip words into my ears,
liquid syllables,
sickles sliding down.

Night-time turns drunk;
longing for more,
your tongue to enwrap me;
I turn deeper.
You trickle down dreams;
our limbs braided,we slip into one.

The Sound of Rainfall

Rain falling, it's a melancholic sound. Millions of droplets landing on millions of leaves like they did on your best days and your worst, days embedded in our memories, (the good and the bad), as they will in your childrens' and grandchildrens', as they did in your parents' and grandparents.

It's the permanence of things in the face of our own impermance: the beauty of the world hath made me sad; this beauty that will pass.

This is why we must hold onto our past, appreciation is relative. Beauty imprints itself during childhood, its value appreciated in adulthood.

And that's my thought for today, tomorrow tornadoes!

What the future brings ?

I’ve never gone to a school or college reunion and doubt I ever will, but I do sometimes wonder what became of old friends and acquaintances. No doubt, there’d be stories of all kinds running from the roaring successes to the tragic.

Sometimes the stories are all too apparent in faces: the open faces, the weary faces, electrocuted, wary, bored. And sometimes it’s in the cut of the cloth: ostentatious, careless, bohemian, carefree, down at heel; sometimes it’s the demeanour.

It’s intriguing to look back at the old photos, to see happy young faces, knowing how lives unfolded subsequently. Sad oftentimes. Happy carefree people already on their journey towards………………..

Margaret.     (d. 1961)

Child that played and skipped

and ran, 

climbed among the trees

when the adult was as far away

as death itself. 

Woman in a countryside

of old men and their wives

turning spidery;

rain and years

between herself and old age. 

London: Irish skivvy;

that rolling unrolling knot

of mop, bucket and woman 

paid with poverty for accepting

oblivion. 

Spitalfields and squalor;

A dark coat, bark-rough face

beaten to a glower;

culprit and victim,

drink took them both.

Retaining Customs

It seems to me that there is more regard for the old customs now than there used to be. In the 60’s and 70’s there was great emphasis on getting ahead economically and culturally. There was, among many in the population, a sense of inferiority about Irish culture: language, music, dance etc. The future was the American way, as indeed so many Irish had freed themselves from the constraints of Ireland and taken themselves off to the U.S. In those days, American flags, icons etc were commonplace in towns and villages throughout the country, the flag almost as prevalent as the Irish flag on occasions when towns were in festive mode.

That time is gone, even through the current hard times. We have come to be proud of ourselves. Witness the number of  times a tricolour is seen waving at sporting events all over the world. Under each is an Irish person proclaiming his/her nationality.

Part of this is a new found pride in old traditions and customs. Even though the original beliefs behind the activities are gone, people see the value in retaining the practices, for their colour, social implications, for the difference i.e. we are Irish and this is how we do it.

And so, for example, wakes which were heading for extinction a number of years ago are surviving;  mirrors are covered as in the old days, the viewing rituals have been revived, the social aspect is recognized as valuable.

A step back from the globalisation of culture; and a good thing too.

These two poems were inspired by images from John Minihan’s book “Shadows from the Pale, Portrait of an Irish Town” published in 1996. They were first published in The SHOp, A Magazine of Poetry.

  At Katy Tyrell’s Wake

1.
When Katy Tyrell’s eyelids were closed,

they stopped the clock,

covered the mirror,

and she was waked.

Entwined in her hands, a rosary beads,

‘Je suis L’imaculée conception’

was embroidered on her shroud;

everyone said she looked every inch a Cherokee.

2.

After she was laid out, and the ticking stopped

and a sheet blocking the devil’s door,

he said, “ Let’s sit down to a game.”

“Shuffle the cards, dale herself in.”

“Layve the window open

and mind, don’t step in her way.”