Liberties Festival Poems of the People

This sounds a little like IPYPIASM. Dropping poetry in public places.  


Poems of the People is an exciting public participation poetry project in association with Litterapture. We’re painting a poetic picture of Ireland and we want you to be a part of it.

The Liberties Festival celebrates with a call to children and adults of all ages, wherever you live, to write and submit their own poem.

Copies of poems will be ‘dropped’ in unexpected places – such as cafés, bus-stops, and parks – in the Liberties area for people to find, to bring a moment of quiet, a smile or a memory to their day, leading up to and throughout the 2012 Festival.

Poems can be on any topic relating to the (very open) theme ‘my Ireland’ and up to approximately 25 lines each. You can submit as many poems as you like. Please include your contact details and age. When ‘dropped’ and otherwise publicised, poems will contain your first name, age and where you’re from, e.g. Mary, aged 68, Dublin 8 or James, aged 9, Dublin 1.

Send us your poem today!

By email: libertiesfestivalpoems @ gmail.com

Litterapture, which has received sponsorship from the Fulbright Alumni Fund, is a global online initiative and poems submitted may also be uploaded to www.litterapture.com.

Writing Workshop in Monkstown July 29

Writing From The Five Elements-
Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water

These are interesting prompts. Get out and do a workshop every now and then if you are writing, to kick start new ideas. This one is from Shirley McClure who is well published in Ireland.

In this workshop, we will draw on the 5 Elements and their many associations to begin 5 new pieces of writing. You will be led into writing by the use of visual prompts, evocative materials, examples of poetry & prose by established writers.

When? Sunday 29th July 2012, from 10 a.m. To 4.30 p.m.

Where? Pakenham road, Monkstown, 5 minutes' walk from Salthill/Monkstown DART station

Cost: €50 (2 concession places available at €35)

Course Leader: Shirley McClure

Suitable for beginners & people who have been writing for a while.
Group limited to 12 participants.

Tea/ coffee provided.

Enquiries/ booking: 086-603 4481 shirleymcclure2@gmail.com www.thepoetryvein.com

Poetic Forms - Triolet

Part x in a very occasional series of poetic forms. The Triolet.

Definition
a poem or stanza of eight lines in which the first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh and the second line as the eighth with a rhyme scheme of ABaAabAB

Got that?

Here's one of mine (actually the only one I'll own to)

She Stoops to Conker

My daughter and I in the woods gathered

holly and cones for a winter display.

The locals tattled tales; I overheard

my daughter and I in the woods gathered

scarlet toadstools,  moth wings, eye of blackbird -

a much better tale this eve than to say,

my daughter and I in the woods gathered

holly and cones for a winter display.

So  "My daughter and I in the woods gathered" appears in lines 1, 4 and 7.

"holly and cones for a winter display." appears in lines 2 and 8.

and lines 1,3,4,5 and 7 rhyme as do 2,6 and 8.

So the lines must bear repeating. Ideally the line must have a slightly different meaning or feeling when you hear them again.You can mess around with the punctuation, if that helps and some poets may even mess with the prepostitions, but that's not very hard core.



The origin is supposed to be French medieval poetry but it's not uncommon now.

It looks so simple and yet it's a tricky one to master. It has been used cleverly for some horror poems as the simple, lyrical form and the repetitions can make scary stuff seem more menacing.

You can have a look at a triolet by Wendy Cope here, with some brilliant rhymes and another here.

It is a close cousin to other strict rhyming forms with repetition, such as the Rondeau, Villenelle and Pantoum. I may cover these in a later post in this very occasional series, but I'm not promising anything!

Nonsense poems

Free to enter!

Derbyshire Literature Festival Nonsense Poetry and Flash Fiction Competition.  This contest celebrates Edward Lear’s bicentenary
nonsense verse (up to 40 lines) or flash fiction story (up to 100 words).  

There are three age categories: 12 and Under, 13 to 17, 18 and Over.  

The winners in each category will be invited to perform their piece at An Evening of Nonsense which will be taking place during the Festival.  

Derbyshire Poet Lauriate Matt Black will be judging.  

Deadline: 1 April

    Comp Page: Click Here.
They have a form and some hints.

Poem for Mothers' Day

While it Lasted

One day when I was thirteen, my mother’s hands fell off.
They rolled under the table, giving the cat a bit of a turn.
We looked at them but they gave no sign,
a couple of twitches and that was that.
Mum stood at the chopping board as still as a goalpost.

Dad made her lie on the chaise and put on the potatoes.
She lay holding her bloody stumps high
so they wouldn’t make a mess of the gold velvet.
Dad cooked the dinner and dished up.
We gave her a plate too but how could she eat it?
“Don’t mind me,” she said.
I gave her a bite of my ham and all of my broccoli.

Dad asked if he should call the doctor.
“I don’t want to make a fuss.”
The cat jumped on her lap but, having no hands,
Mum couldn’t stroke her or tip her off.
She rubbed her head against my mother’s cheek
then left to wind in and out of my legs instead
purring, which she never did before.

“You go off and enjoy yourself,” Mum said
so I went and watched Top of the Pops
with the door shut, tied up my school blouse,
danced on the rug like Pan’s People
and didn’t turn down the volume for the loud ones.
Dad asked if she wanted to go to the pub.
“I don’t want to be in the way,” she said
and read the same page of the paper over and over.

The next day I made my own school lunch
and had toast for breakfast instead of Weetabix.
Dad put Mum’s hands neatly in a Tupperware box
and stored them next to the lentils.
“Don’t worry about me,” said Mum. “I’ll get by.”

Weeds grew, dust gathered and the cat shed ginger hairs.
We lived on fish and chips and Chinese.
Dad shopped and washed, I cooked and cleaned.
We gave up ironing and cabbage and mowing the lawn.
Mum’s stumps healed up nicely.
On the shelf next to the mouldy lentils,
her hands shrivelled like marigold seeds.

Then the cat caught a blackbird, ate it
and sicked it up all over the hall floor.
We stared at the lake of vomit and feathers.
“It was good while it lasted,” Mum sighed.
She opened the Tupperware with her teeth,
screwed both hands back in
and filled the bucket with hot soapy water.


Included in my dinky poetry book, Some Poems, available to buy here for €4 or £4 P&P included.
Why not buy a copy for your mother, aunt or child?
There's a review here

Wedding Poems

I have been trying to write a wedding poem. It's proven harder than you would expect.
There are a lot of wedding poems on Youtube. Some of the others are just terrible, most rhyme, some are funny, some are outrageous, some are sentimental (OK most are sentimental but that's OK)

This one above is far and away the best. It's called Long Distance Bike Ride by Andrea Hope

I also found a wedding poem generator, here. See mine. I really love it.

The Last Fizz of the Day

Your skin glows like the peach,
blossoms merry as the violet in the purest hope of spring.
My heart follows your cello voice 
and leaps like a wolf at the whisper of your name.
The evening floats in on a great penguin wing.
I am comforted by your coat that I carry 
into the twilight of sparkbeams and hold next to my arm.
I am filled with hope that I may dry your tears of tonic.
As my hand falls from my hat, it reminds me of your cavan.
In the quiet, I listen for the last fizz of the day.
My heated ankle leaps to my scarf. 
I wait in the moonlight for your secret flight 
so that we may walk as one, ankle to ankle,
in search of the magnificient blue and mystical lamp of love.

My Some Poems talk at IGNITE Dublin #8

I gave a talk at Ignite Dublin in the Science Gallery about Some Poems and also Poems in public spaces such as IPYPIASM. Enjoy!
I look like a vampire and my hair is a mess. I need sunshine, hair defrizzer and liposuction. Or maybe those pants from Nike...

Tribute to Michael Hartnett

The Limerick Writers' Centre in association with Limerick County Council are publishing a special tribute book to the County Limerick poet Michael Hartnett later on this year. The book will contain a number of Hartnett's poems plus a selection of poems written in tribute to the late poet.

They are now seeking submissions of poetry that has been dedicated to Michael Hartnett, if you have written such a poem and would be interested in having it considered for inclusion please email it to limerickwriterscentre@gmail.com with Hartnett in the subject box, together with your biographical details.

It's International Put Your Poem In A Shop Month

Finally finally after talking the talk about IPYPIASM at Ignite Dublin earlier this month, I walked the walk and put two poems in two shops yesterday.

 

First a nice drop of wine for the Chrimbo dinner and the start of my poem Drinking Now (available to purchase in my dinky poetry book here, the ideal Christmas present. 4 Euros or £4, a bargain. Can also be hung on the Christmas tree as a novel decoration)

Drinking Now

This wine wants to have its way with you.

It wants to seduce you with spicy notes,

dreams of long, lazy dinners and long lost loves,

warm you, make you smile, lower your defences.

This wine wants to come at you from a different angle,

touch you in unfamiliar places,

your tongue, your mouth, yes, your lips.

See swirling within, the silky undercurrents -

they have something to say.

 Then a beaker of decaff Capuccino and a choccie from the lovely Butlers Coffeeshop leaving A Matter of Taste for other coffee imbimbers to relish.

A Matter Of Taste

You make me feel

you are what gets me out of bed

keeps me awake at night

the smell of you, the way you look

not everyone truly appreciates your depths

delicious, warm and dark,

smooth with an undercurrent of bitterness.

I can’t start the morning until I have you

Lots and lots more at the instigator Various Cushions, plus the non-competative scoreboard. (Heavens to Murgatroy, the things these poets get up to!)
Also see the prolific Titus
and stop by Hope at the Road Less Travelled
The Dead Acorn here
Dominic Rivron here
Adrenaline junkie Bug here
Prolific shopper Stammering Poet
Don't Feed the Pixies gets all seasonal

Any more? Newbies extremely welcome. Guerilla poetry rocks!

The Sonnet

A well known poetic form. Have you tried to write in this form? Give it a go. It's infectious. It has inspired poets from Dante to Shakespeare, Spenser, Rilke, Auden, Dylan Thomas and Elizabeth Bishop

The Basics - layout

14 lines
usually iambic pentameter
See previous post here on rhyme and rhythm

Petrachian Sonnet, the earlier version.
Rhymes:

• Octave (8 lines) (abba abba) or (abab cdcd)
• Sestet (six lines) (cdc cdc) or (cde cde)

Shakespearean

• Three quatrains & a final couplet (or all 14 lines in one stanza)
• Rhyme scheme (abab cdcd efef gg)
• Final rhyming couplet is defining feature

Both forms usually contain a volta, which is a sort of shift in tone after the first 8 lines.

Shakespeare's Sonnet No 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

i.e. first half,.
You are lovely like the summer
volta
BUT summer passes and you are forever

How about this one?

Maundy Thursday 
by Wilfred Owen

Between the brown hands of a server-lad
The silver cross was offered to be kissed.
The men came up, lugubrious, but not sad,
And knelt reluctantly, half-prejudiced.
(And kissing, kissed the emblem of a creed.)
Then mourning women knelt; meek mouths they had,
(And kissed the Body of the Christ indeed.)
Young children came, with eager lips and glad.
(These kissed a silver doll, immensely bright.)
Then I, too, knelt before that acolyte.
Above the crucifix I bent my head:
The Christ was thin, and cold, and very dead:
And yet I bowed, yea, kissed - my lips did cling.
(I kissed the warm live hand that held the thing.)

I'm a Saturday Women Poet

I have two poems featured on this growing blog, Poethead

The first, Verbatim was originally published in the lovely mag, The Shop. It's kind of a found poem, taken from a (rather oneway) conversation with an elderly women.

The second is about what small children bring home from school (no, not nits, art and craft)

Hope you like them.

They both feature in my new poetry book from The Moth Editions. Buy one here for a bargain 4 Euro including postage.

Rhyme and reasons for rhyme - Part I

 Originally published on my blog, Poetic License on writing.ie

Rhyme and poetry go together like tomatoes and onions, tea and milk, his and hers. They often go together, complement each other. But it's not mandatory.
Rhyme in English is the repetition of similar sounds.
Cat, Hat, Wombat, Fancy that, rat-a-tat-tat
It's been around for so long in poems that a rhyme IS a poem, e.g. nursery rhyme.

Perfect Rhyme
This is when the last stressed syllable and any following syllables all sound the same.
A masculine rhyme ends on a stressed syllable

e.g. lawn, withdrawn, airborne

and a feminine rhyme on an unstressed syllable.

e.g. designation, organisation, palpatation

There's also a Dactylic Rhyme where theres two unstressed syllables at the end.
       e.g. devious, mischevious
It's recommended to end a poem on a stressed syllable for a stronger poem.

Why would you use perfect rhymes in poems? Partly there's the belief that all poems should rhyme. But we're in the 21st century now so rule is gone. If anything, rhyming poetry is frowned on. Take a look at virtually any well regarded journal and you can count the rhyming poems on fingers. Sometimes there are none. Is that just a fashion? I don't know.

Here's an example from my sonnet entitled "My Grandma's Older Than the Pope"

Gran, you're older than the pope

she didn't have her hearing aid

she said, it's upstairs by the soap

and poured a gin and lemonade

And that leads neatly into the next observation. Rhyming poems are often humerous. And vice versa. And humerous poems are also somewhat frowned on in literary circles although a good humerous poem can be much harder than a gloomy, solemn un-rhyming one.

Another reason to use rhymes is that it makes it MUCH EASIER to memorise. If you recite your poems, and you should, you will appreciate that.

Other rhymes are used everywhere, even in apparently free or blank verse. Mostly for the ear.
An imperfect rhyme is when a stressed syllable rhymes with an unstressed syllable.

e.g. Sing, dancing

If you read a lot of poetry (and you should) you should look out for slant rhymes (also known as oblique or forces rhymes) which are used within lines to add a sense of coherence. These are rhymes with an imperfect match

e.g. From my poem The Flight of Swallows, published in Grist 1. from the University of Huddersfield

A single swallow flies somehow

in the window, the gap she comes through

as thick as your hospital chart,

realises her mistake and skirts

the stitched screen...

There's also assonance (do you remember these from school?) matching vowels

e.g. escape, plate and hive, fight

and consonance (matching consonants)

e.g. pitter, patter and brain, brown

Half rhyme where the last consonants match but not the vowel (are you still with me?)

e.g. chart, skirt or truffle, offal (I'd like to see that poem!)

and that Old English/Middle English tradition, alliteration

e.g. from Beowulf

Now Beowulf bode in the burg of the Scyldings,

Leader beloved, and long he ruled

In fame with all folk since his father had gone

Well, that's enough for this blog post. Part II soon

Guest Post on Haiku by Maeve O'Sullivan

A guest post from Maeve O'Sullivan first posted on writing.ie.

Haiku. This small two-syllable word conjures up a multitude of others: Japan. Nature. Short. Funny?

I have had the haiku bug for about fifteen years now, and it shows no sign of leaving my system. I am very enthusiastic about the form (some would say evangelical, though I’m not sure how that works if one is a Buddhist). In this guest post, I am going to try and communicate how they work, or how they work for me, more specifically because, like any other form of poetry or writing, views on ‘how to’ will differ from person to person.

You probably know that haiku originated as a stand-alone form in seventeenth century Japan. It was largely nature-based and often written by practitioners of Zen Buddhism, of whom Matsao Basho, ‘The Shakespeare of Haiku’, is the best-known. It remains hugely popular in Japan today, and that has been spreading worldwide since around a century ago when Ezra Pound and other Imagists were exploring eastern forms. Pound’s poem, ‘In a Station of the Metro’, published in 1913 in the journal Poetry, is regarded as something of a precursor of haiku in English: ‘

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Basho himself has a famous haiku about a crow on a tree, one with which Pound may well have been familiar:

a crow
has settled on a bare branch
autumn evening.

But how do you go about writing haiku? Is it easier to write shorter poems than longer ones? The answer to the second question is: not necessarily, though it does depend on the writer as well.
Let’s get the syllable thing out of the way first, as it’s usually the first question that arises. In Japanese, haiku are generally arranged in a pattern of 5-7-5, i.e. 5 syllables (or word sections, to be more precise) in line one, seven in line two and five in line three. Easy, right? I’m afraid not! Since a syllable in English packs more in than a Japanese word-section, or so I’m told - I don’t speak Japanese – many writers of haiku in English prefer to use fewer than a total of seventeen syllables in their verses.
Somewhere between 10-14 is often considered to be the equivalent of the Japanese 5-7-5 system, although one is free to stick to the conventional 5-7-5 in English if one so chooses. In my experience of teaching haiku, I am very wary of anyone being slavish to the 5-7-5, especially when it results in a haiku that has been contrived for the sake of adding in extra syllables.
haiku anorak
hung up on syllable count
catching the moment.
Of course all haiku from the Japanese masters are read by us in English translation, so that can make the insistence on 5-7-5 even more forced. Some of these work okay, such as this translation of one by Issa:

in early spring rain
the ducks that were not eaten
are quacking happily.
Others work better without the constraint of the 5-7-5 in translation, such as this one by fellow haiku master Buson:
coolness -
separating from the bell,
the bell’s voice.
That’s the syllables out of the way. What else do we need to know? We need to know that haiku (haiku and not haikus is the plural of haiku) are not ditties, jokes or aphorisms. Haiku do not spring from ideas or
concepts, they should ideally come through the senses. This is the part that many regular poets struggle with. Some writers feel that their witty ideas and fertile imaginations need to be poured into this short form, but they’re the talents that actually need to be set aside.
However, once the first draft has been written down, the editing skills that are applied to all forms of poetry come into play in a similar way, albeit to a much reduced number of lines. To give an example of my own, the following haiku went from this first draft:

day of his death
soft autumn rain
after several phone calls
to this final one:
father’s death day
after hours of phone calls
soft November rain
The approach to writing haiku, therefore, is very different to that when writing poetry. I think I can say this because I have written and published both for fifteen years now, so it’s certainly true for me. It’s more important to be aware and mindful of your surroundings, be they urban or rural, indoor or outdoor, than to have clever concepts. Basho advised that one should become the pine while observing the pine, and so we as poets need to put our egos aside and take our cues from nature – both bucolic and human, by being in the moment and allowing sensations from all five senses in.

Traditional season words can be used, but are not de rigeur. Simple language should be used. James W. Hackett said ‘Remember that haiku is a finger pointing at the moon, and if the hand is bejewelled, we no longer see that to which it points,’ which is as good a guideline as any other.
Generally speaking, there are no similes, few metaphors, no rhymes, no titles and little punctuation. That’s a lot of ‘nos’, you might say, but do give it a try. You never know, you might also get the bug. Be warned, it’s very hard to shake off!

Maeve O’Sullivan is a media lecturer and a writer of haiku and poetry, and a member of Haiku Ireland (www.haiku-ireland.com), The Poetry Divas Collective (@PoetryDivas) and the Hibernian Poetry Workshop. Her first solo collection of haiku, Initial Response, was launched in April (www.albapublishing.com). You can find her on Twitter @maeveos

Abridged 0 - 23: Desire and Dust Sumission Call

There's an attic where children are playing

Where I've got to lie down with you soon

In a dream of Hungarian lanterns

In the mist of some sweet afternoon

And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow,

all your sheep and your lilies of snow --

Ay, ay ay ay

Take this waltz, take this waltz

with its ‘I'll never forget you, you know!’

(Leonard Cohen after Lorca)

Desire, when written in the early morning dust of a suburban squat is a sweat-driven afterthought, filled with the stench of stale coffee and cigarettes. Write it in ink and it may be legally binding. Write it in dust and it will be blown away on the wings of a curse. These may be shallow waters yet we chase these Lorca/Cohen-esque visions of attic bound lust as if they are our life blood. Desire tastes best under a thin sliver of dust. It implies a narrative filled with lust, love, limpness and loss. Little death and a big dearth; It’s more than the individual; there’s a societal longing in the dust of ages, be it through ignorance, nostalgia, hopelessness or even recreation. There’s a hunger to destroy a present that doesn’t fit. And a future that won’t. There’s a past that excuses, a path that justifies. Filled with Desire and Dust.

Abridged, the poetry/art magazine is looking for submissions for its Desire and Dust issue. A maximum of 3 poems may be submitted of any length. Art can be up to A4 size and can be in any media. It should be at least 300 dpi.

Submissions can be emailed to abridged@ymail.com or posted to: Abridged c/o The Verbal Arts Centre, Stable Lane and Mall Wall, Bishop Street Within, Derry BT48 6PU.

Deadline: 8th September

you can stand all night at a red light anywhere in town
hailing maries left and right but none of them slow down

Poem for Poetry Jam

I haven't been in the Poetry Jam since it's inauguration but I've a few pieces about swimming, mainly composed with my head in the water so this week's prompt here sent me scurrying back.

Update: Removed for reworking

Poem for the Poetry Bus

Nanu is driving the Poetry Bus this week. The theme is Excess. Of Far Too Much. Of Going Over the Edge. See here for other poems.
This one is an insight into my over active imagination.

The Full Experience

As the lights dim, he ambles by,
fumbles in his pocket,
muscles shape his thin shirt,
spicy aftershave,
hair velvet-shorn,
long lean legs, soft leather belt,
and the grace of Fred Astaire.

In another life,
in an other life
I follow him to the foyer.
We scoop five flavours of Ben and Jerry’s
and climb to the projection room.
As the film reels overhead, we sample,
rip off our clothes and make love,
dirty sticky love,
down among the popcorn.

In a life,
in this life
I note him passing,
reach over and squeeze your thigh.
You take my hand,
the music builds, we face the screen.
I prefer the front row for the full experience.

Poetry Menagerie Bus

Titus the dog is driving a bus crammed to the gunnels with all shapes and appetites of animals. Check here for links to other bestial passengers and here for the prompts and suggestions.

I chose the panther and adapted a poem I already had. I think the suggestion of Bodmin Moor type visitors makes it stronger. Thanks for the nudge, Titus.

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Taken down now for rework. Thanks for all the lovely comments

This is not a controversial blog

I have to warn you now that there are bad words in the following interview. So if you are of a nervous disposition or know you are easily offended, please stop reading now.

yes, now

Still with me? Well, you have been warned.

But frankly, the bad words are not used in bad way, in my honest opinion. To be specific, cunt is used as a reported word of another writer who was, in turn, reporting the word and was actually talking, I'm told, about pudenda. And nigger was used as reported speech in a terrific, well known poem published in an award-winning collection.

There is also a drug reference (maybe more. I'm not very savvy and lots go right over my head.) I've heard and read the poem before and thought it was about cars. And his poems are not all to everyone's tastes, but whose are? The interview is challenging, arresting and well worth a read.

I don't know who the interviewer is but the questions are spot on. So without further delay, may I introduce you to the wonderful, the mad, bad and dangerous to drink coffee with, poet Dave Lordan.

1. How did your readings go at the Dun Laoghaire Festival - what were you most pleased with?



They went well. As I recite by heart, rather than read, it's a little bit more of an effort and a bit more nervewracking to go before an audience then if you've got a book to prop you up. I didn't drop a line and paced and pitched things well. I got good feedback too, compliments from unexpected quarters etc.

Though I felt, as did many of the other readers, that I was at the bottom of well, or a coal mine, staring out at total black because of the absurd set up with the lights in the Pavillion. It felt a little like I was all alone up there (Don Paterson was worried that when the lights went on it would reveal a theatre full of Orcs) but, you know, that lonesomeness suits the theme and tenor of some of my work. I'm not necessarily seeking a connection all the time. Sometimes it's good to feel the distance between yourself and other people.


When you’re invited to read at a festival, how do you prepare? Do you approach each festival the same?

Every festival is different. I think about what kind of audience is going to be there and what I would like to say to them and how I would like to treat (and be treated by) that particular audience. I prepare by rehearsing the pieces I have chosen to read, though I always leave the door open to surprise and spontaneity too, if the occasion produces it.

What value do you think literary festivals offer writers and readers?

I think they offer us the chance to discover things about each other that we otherwise would not. Proximity means, as it does in other situations, that prejudices we might hold about each other are stripped way.

What was your Dun Laoghaire festival highlight? 

There were several highlights.

Anne Carson's esoteric yet mesmeric lecture on the untranslatable in all of us which featured Bacon, Joan of Arc, Velazquez and Celan. Heather McHugh's poems about cunts and ornithological glossaries, Don Paterson's discourse on the poetics of Battlestar Galactica, Borbalo Farago reading Anne Hartigan's poem On Letting Go, the Yeatsian electioneering of David Norris, Nuala Ni Dhomhaill's Merfolkery, Belinda Mckeon reading Heaney's astounding poem Had I not been awake...

On the other hand there was some dreadfully pretentious claptrap spouted too, a lot of of sub-Cage carry on about silence and silences and the 'white spaces' on the page, as if some sort of great aesthetic or philosophical breakthrough was being made when, as Ni Dhomhaill once said about virtual reality, the dogs down in Kerry know all about it. Even if it makes me unsophisticated I'd still like to think that poetry is far more to do with breaking silences, and with the substance of words, rather than with blankness and non-expression. It's obvious to me that contemporary writers who go on about silence and white spaces are really telling us- from a space of great privilege normally- that they have, in fact, nothing to say and no need to say it. I'd say that if David McSavage and John Colleary were there they got some good material for The Savage Eye.

Do you have a poem you would like to share with us?

Ode on winning of de Entente Florale

For Joseph Lordan

Told ye so. Told ye we could win it
‘Spite de filth o' de likes o' ye
With yere baseball caps and yere baggy pants
Yere ghetto blasters and yere nigger music
Yere flagons and yere Mitsoobeachies*
And de trainee hoors hanging offa ye.

Rollin in muck ye are, de flays ating ye.
Manged an’ stinkin like tinkers’ mares
like yere faaders and mudders before ye
but I’d say yere not too sure who bore ye
Shir who pished you out Twishty? De milkman?
De coalman? One o' Fossetts’ weepin clowns?

This here’s ‘come a champion little town
All down to good people like me.
We’ve patched every crack with vines ,
Blossoms cover every stain. Tis like paradise,
‘ceptin ye, ye shnakes, ye divils, ye dirty filthy
feckin animals. Ye give us all a bad name.

*Mitsubishis are a brand of E

Animated Poem

Poetry Bus Poem

TFI is driving the emergency bus this week. I took the prompt from the photo above. This is an extract from a longer poem. (I have a lot of material)

Go here for other passengers.

Thanks for your lovely comments. Taken down now for rework