Poetry Workshop at the Boyle Arts Festival

I'm looking forward to giving a poetry workshop this Saturday at 2.30pm in the Boyle Enterprise Centre and admission is a paltry €5. It's just one of a number  of workshops  on the day. Also reading on Sunday evening at 7.30 in King House as part of  'An Evening of Poetry and Prose with the Moylurg Writers'. Admission again, a mere €5.

More information at http://boylearts.com/

Images from Clare

We were in Miltown Malbay for the Willie Clancy. In the afternoons, we went walking. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera, but I did have my mobile, so couldn't resist a few scenes.

The first is this view of the Cliffs of Moher looking south, but for all the world, it looks like a ledge hanging precariously high  above the ocean.

Not far from Miltown, there is the beautifully maintained holy  well in honour of St Joseph. As regular visitors here will know, I have a fascination for holy wells; places that have a special other-worldly atmosphere about  them. I hope more people come to visit them, so that they may survive.

Every time I come to Clare, I want to walk in the Burren. Bloody Cranes-bill filled the grykes.

But you have to marvel at nature's resilience, here's a small nest of plants surviving in spite of everything.

I was reminded yet again, something music-lovers have always known, Clare is a very special place.

In The Home

 

Sitting by her bed,

among those sobbing, groaning women,

in a room claustrophobic with impending death,

her spirit shrivelled inside her,

her mind fled to the fifties.

 

But later, given a bed near a window,

her mind cranked up.

It was the birds on the lawn;

the grubbing thrushes and blackbirds;

those birds kept her alive.

Messi Teleportation

It appears to be the case that Lionel Messi can teleport, but it's not quite instantaneous; in fact it takes 3 seconds.

This ability has obvious advantages in football: presented with an apparently impassable phalanx of the opposing forces, Messi flicks the switch and.................

 

with thanks to www.101greatgoals.com where this picture was originally published.

for madmen

 

 

 

How enormous are we! How far our reach!  How endless our creativity! (Sometimes it comes as a surprise that the great are still only human.)

In war, the notion of humans being anymore than their puny physical selves is completely abandoned. So in war,we debase ourselves. And for the power trips of madmen,(western and eastern), we do it over and over.

 

 

 

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 Rain Was Falling.

Standing at the kitchen door,

trying to pick out

individual droplets landing

like tiny footfalls on the concrete. 

How slight  our step in this world;

among all those falling droplets,

I completely missed your footsteps

leaving.

 

Civilisation

 

 

At half six I turn on the news to see how the war is going.

 

Tracers are arcing down into the city;

the reporter keeps looking over his shoulder.

 

Shoes off, I stretch out,

 

rest my feet on the coffee table.

 

 

 

Evening

 

Evening light dozed on

his unwashed dishes;

years' old dust collected behind

hanging china plates;

the Sacred Heart looked on,

as ever,

smoked and sagging.

 

His face, at the table,

jerked unaccountably;

sometimes he choked on his tongue.

The mist of his young face

had cleared completely;

his smile was in a biscuit box

with his wedding photographs, letters

and the pieces of a broken pocket watch.

The effectiveness of simple

Picking up on the word 'simple' in the first line, the poem remains simple, and is  supremely effective for that. 

 

Suicide in the Trenches

by Siegfried Sassoon

 

I knew a simple soldier boy

 Who grinned at life in empty joy,

 Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

 And whistled early with the lark. 

 

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

 With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

 He put a bullet through his brain.

 No one spoke of him again.

 

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

 Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

 Sneak home and pray you'll never know

 The hell where youth and laughter go.

Spring

i

Bleached, bone-dry,

wind-scalded wood;

 

my spindled torso

weathered clean,

 

my curlicued roots

 

clamped in the earth.

ii

 

But Spring’s moist eyes

 

defied my fingers,

 

imagining freedom,
 

conspired with soil;

 

I grew round, bright

and brazen.

 

 

 

 

 

A carrier bag

A carrier bag, caught in a sycamore tree, heaved and pulled, strained itself skinny, thrashed to escape. Its mouth, a terrorized rip, was lightening in the branches.

A carrier bag gulped itself grotesque in the squall on the Lower Kimmage Road. In convulsion,  its face inflated to featurelessness.

A carrier bag flew by. I saw nothing but hands wringing.

  

          The baby in the tree

 

The baby in the tree

is screaming.

 

High above the pathway

near the black tips

of the sycamore branches

he is gaping,

white membraned luminous.

 

How did he get there?

 

He blew there in the wind;

it took him

like a flag from his cot

till he was stretched

across the boughs

like the wings of a bat.

 

And who sees him?

 

I do;

all his hopeless writhing,

too high for the passerby.

And his screams:

too high,

too high for the passerby.

 

 

 

 

How to say I love you

A red, red rose

by Robbie Burns

O my Luve's like a red, red rose

 That’s newly sprung in June;

 O my Luve's like the melodie

 That’s sweetly play'd in tune.

 As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

 So deep in luve am I:

 And I will luve thee still, my dear,

 Till a’ the seas gang dry: 

 Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

 And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:

 I will luve thee still, my dear,

 While the sands o’ life shall run. 

 And fare thee well, my only Luve

 And fare thee well, a while!

 And I will come again, my Luve,

 Tho’ it were ten thousand mile. 

             It would be near impossible to express love more beautifully or more movingly than Burns’ second and third stanzas. Read them out loud and slowly. Better still sing them. This version with Eddi Reader and Alan Kelly is just gorgeous. What a stunning voice she has, and his playing is exquisite.

             I went to see them and the rest of the band some months back. They put on a fantastic show, one of the most enjoyable gigs I’ve ever been to. So, what I'm saying is, if you get the chance........................Of course, I should point out that Alan Kelly is a Roscommon man.

 

The Douglas Hyde Conference 2014

I’m chairing this year’s conference, which takes place on July 18^th in Ballaghaderreen. Entitled ‘The Unsaved Harvest: Rural Ireland’s Cultural Heritage’, it celebrates the richness of rural Ireland’s culture, with talks, discussion, poetry, music  and song. Taking counties from the north midlands and northwest as typical of rural Ireland, it will highlight the greatness of figures such as John McGahern, Oliver Goldsmith,  Douglas Hyde,Turlough O’Carolan, James Coleman, Margaret Cousins and Brian O’Doherty, not just in Irish culture, but world culture.

And it asks the question, are we making enough of this  cultural heritage?  When people travel through Ireland, are they aware that they are passing through the landscapes that inspired some of these towering names.

A great line up of speakers and entertainers including Vincent Woods, Brian Leyden, Catherine Marshall, W.J. McCormack ( aka Hugh Maxton)and  Noel O’Grady among others will bring it all life. A wonderful day is in store.

 

from Painting Women

 

 

 

 

Her skin is clear and white (as I see it);

he picks out the heat and cold

that is in her flesh

so her belly is blue and green;

colours I have seen

where rubbish stirs in low tide.

She is a timber frame

a thousand colours.

They are inside each other

wash in and out of each other;

overlapping, under-lapping.

They graze on each other;

slap, fall, meld, hide,

shimmer, swelter, drown;

no rules until completion.

The brush, searching for challenges,

rushes about the page putting out fires

anxious for a thousand perfections

All Dublin in your armchair

If ever you plan to go to Dublin, I suggest you make a virtual tour first, and you'll no finer way to wander through the city than by Storymap. Meet the story-tellers, poets and writers: Laurence Foster, Dermot Healy, Noel O'Grady, Paula Meehan and a host of  others. Dubliners and non-Dubliners, hear their voices and their stories; arrive in Dublin with your yap in place.

 So, I give you a gateway to Dublin; step through, and enjoy. http://storymap.ie/