All posts filed under: Alphabets

‘I wanted to tell you, but there was no time’ and other poems by Csilla Toldy

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Kitchen   With hot chilli in my eyes I read between the lines, a coded message of noises: A child’s scream sheathed in wind blasts,   gashes through the cracks. The mandalay porcelain clock, riveting, ticks between my shoulder blades. I carry my life like a snail.   The fridge sighs, a boiler roars into motion, it broils the oil of the seas and heats – my place, the kitchen at dawn.   Clouds scrub the stratosphere with desert sand; a mad dog, stuck in fear, just shrills. The river at the bottom of our glen, shushing its song, cushions our senses.   In my body’s kitchen the heart spins unrelenting. Organs send impulses talking to each other. “Thanks for the parcel, we enjoyed the food.”   The universe of enzymes awakens, matter is transformed, vibrations vocalise. My body is gauze, from Gaza, letting through the particles of light – staunch at covering the wounds, so absorbent.   Beyond its wonders I remember last night’s cosmic dance at this table, our conversation about intelligence and …

‘Cry Oceans’ by Mary Cecil

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Cry Oceans   Cry oceans and weep the seas Where waves flow over The endless motions of life The swimming perfection that flees   The Armageddon of destruction By all means possible The mechanisation of death The beginning of the end   For whales and tuna to consume The mercury to garnish The insatiable greed to fill The merciless plunderers   To crush and pulp for cattle The wanton waste of the world That flies in the face of God And wilts in the sun   The lonely song of the whale That echoes in silent reproach The albatross that soars Over oceans of emptiness   The flowering coral that dies Blooming in acid The hymn of death Beneath blue heaven   © Mary Cecil, Rathlin Island   ‘Written in protest to the mechanisation of fishing with super trawlers‘ Mary Cecil is the mother of large family and Grandmother to eleven. The widow of Rathlin Island’s famous campaigner, diver, author (Harsh winds of Rathlin) Thomas Cecil. Lover of Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland’s only inhabited island. Mary …

“The Dream Clock” and other visual poetry by Susan Connolly

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Susan Connolly’s first collection of poetry For the Stranger was published by the Dedalus Press in 1993. She was awarded the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry in 2001. Her second collection Forest Music was published by Shearsman Books in 2009. Shearsman published her chapbook The Sun-Artist: a book of pattern poems in 2013. She lives in Drogheda, Co. Louth.

‘Sea Scarf’ and other poems by Victoria Mosley

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Shiny shine   Milk on the turn midnight history muffles owl’s cry: narcissus pulsing through dull earth to release birthday colour.   I’ve become muted: afraid of the shine shine glitter hidden here as time brushes messages on parched skin.   Pacing corridor always waiting for sun – skim star-burn impatient of humdrum yearning magnificence.   Milk on the turn garden hovers to unfurl blossom of spring: new joy pulsates at the click click clunk of the white sea gate.   Sea scarf   Sea a black scarf wrapped around the harbour it’s cold tonight, so cold the wind is taut & moon hangs silent huge immobile willing.   Sea sends whispers of how it should be sailors ghosts ride high their songs mixed with mermaids breath the slink of seal at rest.   Sea calls to me I’m immune caught up beach sweeps a canvas of wind ,water ,longing connection to every other, footsteps follow I turn   sea is a black scarf enfolding me.   Mute route   Deaf with night’s hollow whispers …

The Myth and Memory Of Eavan Boland’s Latest Poems by J P O’Malley

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I do not often recommend newspaper articles on Irish poetry, but I am making an exception in the case of The Examiner’s review of Eavan Boland’s latest book New and Selected Poems Eavan Boland (Carcanet). J P O’Malley offers an extensive review, some illuminating video links, and a preview of his upcoming interview with Boland at The Boogaloo (London) in this article. ‘The heroic narrative that the founding fathers of the State attempted to make a universal truth is also something that Boland’s poetry has challenged consistently. Lest we forget, the birth of the Irish nationalist myth was forged initially through poetry, which unapologetically glorified violence ‘ (Examiner) It was a similar situation in the visual arts where censorship was prevalent and the original blasphemy laws (we updated them again in 2010) were used to suppress arts, most notoriously the work of Charles Rouault. We can examine how publications were seized and often censored for crimes like obscenity. The fact that there existed before Boland an entire suppressed narrative, a body of literature by women poets, should not surprise us, although it continues to …