This is a short note on the Petition, Twitter and Facebook Campaign4Arts .
* The Group hope to have 10,000 Signatures by the 27/11/09 = 10K/ 27.11.09*
So I am adding in here a link to the (i)Facebook Campaign, to the (ii) Twitter Address
(iii) A Politics.ie reminder note.
(i): National Campaign For the Arts.
(ii): NCFA.ie on Twitter.
(iii) P.ie Reminder on the Campaign.
'After Possession' by the Great Leonard Baskin
Abundance by C Murray (poethead).
Those images I had trashed sing now their separation
I.
An Arch forms beneath the new Forsythia leaf
enter the moorhen in her emerald stockings,
She shakes away the water drops.
II.
A wood-pigeon lumbers through egg-laden,
she threads a path through wet grasses
veined in blue weed, these mesmerise me.
III.
My daisy-chain is a fragmented treasure,
that primrose is lone,
Lit against her iron post,
IV.
She dreams of banked loam,
inky mountain scenes.
False Backdrop! But she is sweeter for her dreams.
C Murray
The Leonard Baskin image is from his collection of Women images:
This is related to a prose piece about finding the golden net of poetry in a noisy
school room aged 15. I have not the guts to publish that one….
This wee poem (one of 17 from Eithne Strong’s book, Sarah in Passing)
is one of my favourites, thus I am publishing it today in my Book of Days. The
book is published via Dolmen Press 1974, I found it on a book stall in George’s
Street Arcade some few years ago; and along with Mark My Words,by Eilís
Ní Dhuibhne (Illustrated by Alice Maher), it’s one of my favourite poetic
and illustrative collaborations:
Regeneration
“Let me out. I’m rising out of death’s skull.
Aha, old devil’s dower I have victoried.
I leave you in the morning: it deals
with every death and spring defeats the catafalque.
You see I must believe in resurrection.
This is it. Now. I was dead and am alive.
Hello eternity. I can die no more horrific
death than I have died. No hell beyond
the horrors of myself that murdered
every life; saw death in every pregnancy
of dog and nut and man. Found death
the ever death. Come bomb,come
my most killing hate, life lives outside
the blasting skull. Computer is not final.
I cannot give you proof of course,
I merely have arisen.”
Regeneration, from Sarah in Passing, by Eithne Strong, Dolmen Press 1974, illustrated by John Hodge.
I am placing herein a link to the Index page of the Irish Writer’s Centre
in Parnell Square who have been running a series of Benefit evenings
to increase core funding as a result of cutting by The Irish Arts Council,
(along with fund cutting to the Western Writer’s Centre). The Cuts
occurred just after the Minister Martin Cullen appointed a New Irish
Art’s Council Board (Linked at base of this piece/Politics.ie).
The Benefits have been running Oct > Dec 2009 and are chaired by
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and John F Deane, I hope to get out to one
or two of them also. The Index page of the IWC is here:
It’s Monday and it’s cold in Dublin, am so glad I got a new all-weather
but mostly Mountain-climbing Jacket on the Mayo Sojourn (Post-flu
and dental recovery). Since I am unpacked and having done the school
run where the little one was welcomed back with much happiness, I
thought to publish some Bronte (Brunty) poems and whilst adoring
Emily’s amazing poetry , I think Anne mostly neglected. Poethead
is about women writers , the whole idea of the blog was sited in the
Penelopiad , the woman in exile and the community of women who are
sometimes nodded to in serious writer’s chorus’, choruslines or indeed
hymn sheets, though most of the time critique is poetry and
weekend supplements tends to the male voice and academic fields.
I still have not learnt how to do an Umlaut,{ apologies}:
The North Wind
That wind is from the North: I know it well;
No other breeze could have so wild a swell.
Now deep and loud it thunders round my cell,
The faintly dies, and softly sighs,
And moans and murmurs mournfully.
I know it’s language: thus it speaks to me:
‘I have passed over thy own mountains dear,
Thy northern mountains, and they still are free;
still lonely, wild, majestic,bleak and drear,
And stern, and lovely , as they used to be
‘When thou a young enthusiast,
As wild and free as they,
O’er rocks and glens, and snowy heights,
Didst thou love to stray.
‘I’ve blown the pure, untrodden snows
in whirling eddies from their brows;
And I have howled in cavern’s wild,
Where thou, a joyous mountain-child,
didst dearly love to be.
The sweet world is not changed, but thou
art pining in a dungeon now,
Where thou must ever be.
‘No voice but mine can reach thy ear,
And heaven has kindly sent me here
to mourn and sigh with thee,
And tell thee of the cherished land
of thy nativity.’
Blow on wild wind; thy solemn voice,
However sad and drear,
is nothing to the gloomy silence
I have had to bear.
Hot tears are streaming from my eyes,
But these are better far
Than that dull, gnawing , tearless time,
The stupor of despair.
Confined and hopeless as I am,
Oh, speak of liberty!
Oh, tell me of my mountain home,
And I will welcome thee!
The edition the Poem was taken from is an Everyman: Everyman : Selected Poems, The Brontes, Ed, Juliet RV Barker, 1993 .
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