Category Archives: Art

The Cézannization of what wasn’t left, an excerpt from ‘Machinations’

untitled oil on canvas by Michael McAloran

untitled image , oil on canvas by © Michael McAloran 2003

histology slice 3

[ a tissue cloth so delicately coloured in mauves and purples indigo
and ivory cells become tissue whereas this isn't at all the case
all is one in febrile disequilibrium not excluding momentary states
of euphoria and relative equilibrium the macabre beauty of histology
like a travelogue along enlarged detailed drawings of funghal spores
or sporoform zoophytes white exquisitely and hypersensitively drawn
by haekcle against a black CSO corps sans organes the hubris debris
humus against which lines flightlines maps nomadologic trails micro
politic events pointillistic gestes rhizomatic ghanaean junglean infra
branchings dadaistic or ba'akan pygmee refrains establish unfold
glare and disappear amongst glacis' of ice basalt slate sapphire or
northsea grayness and mist histology is that : the slice with obsolete
or ephemereal or contingent a truth to leave the observor with her's
his's own ponderings of carcinogenic intimacy or clean tissue missive
towards the ones receptive the ones donating slices out of their body
to be mapped navigated coloured in mauves grays deep purples
to indigo ]

Text is © Aad de Gids

Recours Au Poème ; Contemporary Poetry/The Poetic World


Irish Poets and Reviewers call-out.

Recours Au Poème is edited by Matthieu Baumier. Baumier is inviting contemporary Irish poets and poet-reviewers to consider submitting to the journal. There is a contact form link available in the base of this post for those who are interested in having their poems published in a modern multi-lingual contemporary poetry journal dedicated to excellence in poetry and review.

In order to give the Irish poet, poetic-reader, reviewer, and/or essayist an idea of the breadth of the site I am adding herein the index of Recours Au Poeme for issue #26. I suggest that the aspirant poet-writer would read some of the critiques and essays before submitting.

Below the index I have included some examples of works that I enjoyed reading recently. These include an essay on Poetry In Translation by Raymond Humphreys, a review of Surrealism, Underground Tour by Paul Vermeulen and the works of the two women poets, Marissa Bell Toffoli and Dominique Hecq

I am excerpting a teeny piece of Hecq’s , Canted bone poem here as a taster. The entire poem can be read at this link

Canted Bone Poem

‘Poems grow in the dark, trace
the descent of sound
into silence

This is a song of silence

This is the sound of the bone
breaking through the skin
of a slow waisting

 Canted Bone Poem is © copyright Dominique Hecq. Published, Recours Au Poème

  Recours Au Poème, Issue # 26  (index):

Rencontre: Jean-Charles Vegliante, traducteur de La Comédie, de Dante.
Focus :  Abdourahman Waberi
Poèmes: Cécile Guivarch, Laurence Sarah Dubas, Sonia Khader, Triunfo Arciniegas, Nikola Madzirov
Chroniques: S’ils te mordent, Morlay, la chronique de Christophe Morlay autour du Manifeste pour la vie d’artiste de Bartabas.
Notes pour une poésie des profondeurs (5) : Marc Alyn en présence de la poésie, par Paul Vermeulen.
Essai : Vu de New York : Is Poetry (Scene) alive in New York (and beyond)? par Maya Herman Sekulić
Le jardin des adieux : flux et reflux de la perte ou l’abandon lumineux, sur la poésie d’Alain Duault, par Sylvie Besson
Critiques Michèle Finck, L’élégie balbutiée, par Mathieu Hilfiger
Une syllabe, battant de bois de Mary-Laure Zoss, par Pascale Trück
Vision de Roger Munier, par Fabien Desur 
MIDRASH d’Eurydice désormais de Muriel Stuckel, par David Schnee
Mon pays ce soir de Josué Guébo, par Etty Macaire

The following are a collation of links mentioned in the post above. They are  to a review, an essay on translation, and links to the poems of Dominique Hecq and Marissa Bell Tofolli.

          Related Links

Thanks to Matthieu Baumier for requesting submissions and proposals regarding the work of some contemporary Irish Poets. I thought the best way to deal with a call-out to Irish Poets was to link the site (as I have done so above here) and see if any poets wish submit to it.

Note – I joined the Recours Au Poème mailing list in recent weeks. Weeks that have been incredibly busy, and in terms of collaborative and writing work both very interesting and fruitful. I sent along a few poems for consideration, and they will be published later in the year.

 

2013, by Aine MacAodha

“The Chinese New Year 2013
marks the year of the Snake
graceful and dark at the same time.
As one year bows out to another
I often reflect on past occurrences
failures and wins, silly mistakes,
see if I have learned from them.
Death brought many clouds of grief
at losing my brother so suddenly
family gatherings feel strained
we all want to talk about him but don’t
for fear it will create even more sadness.
Like a lost bead on a necklace, the space
a constant reminder of his passing.
Death is a leveler of sorts a stopper of tracks
just like the new year as it approaches
vows will be made and broken
there will be make-ups and break-ups.
Haves and have-nots, peace and war.
With my anthology of wishes I push on.
I wish 2013 be the year man returns to listening
to his intuition like the ancestors did
working from within using inner radar
learn to be more spiritually aware of others.
Respect the songs of others like the birds in the sky
their choruses are many and they live freely.
Slow down and awaken to the new.”.

2013 is © Aine MacAodha

Thanks to Aine for her poem 2013 to mark this New Year on Poethead. I am adding Aine’s website landing-page, Poetry and Links. Aine has published Fire of the Gaels on Poethead previously,  and I have included her in my Index of Women Poets.

  • Look out for Aine Mac Aodha and a bevy of contemporary poets at A New Ulster

Aine MacAodha

On ‘Two Songs of War and a Lyric’, an update.

This year I wrote a cycle of poems relating to war and to women. I titled part of it Two Songs of War and a Lyric for the SouthWord Journal, although it is intimately related to an earlier sequence of art poems, and to the 75th anniversary of Guernica which was marked in 2012. 

The second poem in the art series , Gernika, was written for Euskal PEN and was read during the 75th anniversary commemoration of Guernica this summer of 2012. The first and last poem of the sequence, A Lament, was written some time ago and had been put in a folder. A Lament is too awkward a piece to submit to most journals as it is written for three voices and does not slip easily into the submission guidelines of many reviews. A Lament was written firstly as a poem and then as a chorus. It was conceived to weave in and out of the sequence which was published initially in SouthWord Magazine. Lament is an inherent part of the sequence because it involves the voices of the women who inhabit the poems in Two Songs of War and a Lyric.

As if, Sabine, Gernika , A Lament, and Through the Blossom-Gate are meant to work together, and are about loss and recovery. Here is what has happened to the original cycle, the Lament, and the unpublished cycle of seven poems since I sent them out.

Gernika

A Lament

The 7 cycle is provisionally entitled Eamon Ceannt Park Cycle , after the park that the dream-sequence was written in. I had planned to send it out, as it is ready. However, in all the entire sequence including the lament amounts to thirteen inter-related poems written over the period of a year or two. They inherently form one piece. There is also an emergent coda for the entire. (Completed)

I am glad the poems have found homes and that they resonate with people. I hope to publish the  thirteen poems  together at some point, but I see that I will have to make my own arrangement for them, as they hardly fall into a traditional submission-shape. The most important thing for me is that they maintain their integral unity and coherence. I am editing them into a folder and deciding how I will eventually publish them in their integrity as a whole piece.

I included the list where the poems appear separately beneath this post.

At the Crane Bar ; Crannóg #31

Crannóg magazine celebrated its 10th Birthday with readings last evening, (26/10/2012) in Galway‘s The Crane Bar. I went along because I have a little poem in the issue. The 2012 Autumn Edition of Crannóg Magazine is available to buy at link, and there are free back issues in .pdf format for collectors of good poetry, writing, and stories. In a short time, the issue will be available in pdf and I will link it beneath this post. I believe that the thing was recorded as well, so there may be a Vid/Audio link too, soon.

My first poem published by Crannóg is linked in this back issue (pdf) , issue #26  and is entitled Descent from Croagh Patrick (P.54). The text of the poem is on this blog, but is currently password-protected, due to its publication in Crannóg. I keep forgetting to edit it !

The poem that I read for Crannóg’s Birthday issue is linked here !

List of contributors for the 31st issue of Crannóg:

Fiction

Caroline England, Geraldine Mills, Cróna Gallagher, Mark Haughton, Simone Howells, Seán Kenny, Johanna Leahy,  Mari Maxwell, Ashlie Schweitzer , Many Taggart, Patricia Burke Brogan , Margaret Faherty, Ger Burke.

Poetry 

Mark O’Flynn, Alan McMonagle, Maria Bennett,  John Gosslee, Nicola Griffin, Mark Hart, Clare McCotter , John McKernan, Susan Adams, David Starkey, Ann Howells, Jeffrey Alfier, Bernie Ashe, Gerard Beirne, Peter Branson, Maurine Curran, Mairéad Donnellan, Thomas Alan Holmes , Éamon Mag Uidhir, Mark Mitchell, Christine Murray, Bradley R. Strahan, Boguisa Wardein, Ciarán Parkes, Sandra Bunting , Betsey Carreyette, Sean Donegan, Jarlath Fahy, Mary Dempsey,  Joan McBreen, Breid Sibley,  Mary O’ Rourke, Lars Gustafsson, Tony O’ Dwyer.

Thanks to  the Crannóg Editorial Board : Sandra Bunting, Gerardine Burke, Jarlath Fahy, and Tony O’Dwyer for ten years of innovative arts , poetry and fiction publication. It was nice to be invited back to read again on such a special evening for you all, and the Crane Bar is always good craic.