New year, new...

Here we are on St. Brigid's day already, and not a peep on the blog in an age. Things are moving again on the poetry front. All being well, I hope to back with my fellow peers in Ballinasloe, this weekend, and there's talk of a new collection coming out this year, with Doghouse.

That said, I need to see if I've actually got the good makings of a book: the real test is the editing day, or days, I'll be spending down in Tralee. Not too long to go now: I'm hoping to get down over the half-term coming up shortly.

The title seems to have settled on the one thing. I won't say just yet, but I'm quietly pleased with it and hope it reflects the collection as a whole.

In the meantime, I've been getting used to me new iPad. I think I can safely say it's one of the most useful presents I've ever had. The kids have been teasing me about how I never put the damn thing down.

I've all sorts of wee games and functions on it now, and a whole lifetime's worth of music is now on tap whenever I'm up for it. I can even listen to the radio, read and sometimes type at the same time. I even read poems from it at a reading the other night!

If you've got one, do look out for a wee game app, Machinarium: it has great appeal if you're into solving puzzles and lateral thinking at the same time. Reminds me of all the Discworld games I used to play - not that long ago!

Better start thinking about doing some readings and promotion then, hadn't I?

Short Season over the way

Regular readers of Raw Light, Jane Holland's blog, will know that she is running a short season of other poets and their work.

Today, I got a wee spot with 'On Not Seeing inside the Sistine Chapel.' Do pop over and read through some of the other offerings too - I'm in very, very good company there. *modest blush*

Poems celebrating Obama's Election

The inauguration ceremony for the 44th President of the USA takes place on Tuesday, 20th January 2009.

It's a very tough time for someone whose campaign was so full of hope and promise to be taking office, in terms of both domestic and foreign policy.

So, it's perhaps a good time to re-savour the elation of his election, captured in these poems featured on the Over The Edge blog. Well worth a read, as the contributors list is as follows: Gary King, Eva Bourke, Susan Millar DuMars, Dave Lordan, Aidan Hynes, Maureen-Eilish Purcell, Gemma Marren, Michael Conneely, Desmond Swords, Marie Cadden, Susan Lindsay, Kevin Carmody, Deirdre Kearney, Gary Beck, Eileen Byrne, Rosanna Guneratne, Steve Ely, Lucie Kantorova, Kevin Higgins & Trisha McKeon.

Rising to Rachel's Challenge

It's been a terribly long time since I had a poem up here and as Rachel rightly points out I rarely talk that much about what I'm doing writing-wise, which probably leads a lot of people to think that I don't write much.

Au contraire! But I am horribly self-critical of my own work, so I like to try and get things into the best shape possible... which ain't easy in present mega-biz conditions: finishing off CW classes for this term; assembling Santy lists; booking me graduation at QUB for me masters; trying desperately to finish B&W photography work for artist's book of image/text to be launched on 9th December at Belfast Exposed... and there are other things I have to do too, like get a job (He's told me - no more slacking!?!)

Anyhoo, here's a poem. It's not great, but there ya are :)


removed for editing

I went to Rome

...and brought back a poem.

Only thing is, the poem didn't come for about four months.

I was sitting on the beach about two weeks ago (on one of the few sunny days we've had), cloud-watching and got On Not Seeing Inside the Sistine Chapel from the combination of the clouds and remembering our visit to Roma in late February, and how we hadn't come at the right time of day on the Saturday to gain access to see the famous chapel.

You can hear me read the poem at the Qarrtsiluni site, apparently their first Irish accent (cringe). It's my second poem there - anyone interested in the other one, The Angel's Missing Wings, can check this link.

Time for a Poem: Painting History

whipped for editing

OOOH! AAAH!

That's about all you'll get out of me today. Three advance copies of Kairos arrived this morning. I have to confess that I don't seem to be able to take it in just yet. It looks way better than I imagined it would: lovely cover, poems just so inside.

After waiting for the four weeks it took to print and bind, I cannot believe that it has come around so fast. Tomorrow week, I'll be in a state of high anxiety running around getting stuff done for the launch in Dundalk. Requests to read at various events have started to trickle in, so I guess that I'll just have to get used to this funny feeling in my tummy. It reminds me of the high tensile state I was in just prior to getting married.

Meanwhile, I'll just while away this evening listening to Matthew Sweeney's deep tones, as he reads from his work tonight in the Unitarian Church, St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2 @ 6.30pm. I'm making a point of talking to him afterwards too ;)

He reads in Limerick on Wednesday and Galway on Friday - not that I'm thinking of going - that might be a little like stalking and I don't think my hub would be too impressed :)))

A Found Poem

...pulled.

Go Barbara!

I have my own wooden spoon today mixing in an imaginary wooden bowl. Imagine my surprise to log onto blogger and find a little message nestling in amongst the other ones, hinting that it might be a good idea to look at the Guardian Poetry Workshop pages, for August's challenge set by Matthew Sweeney.

Imagine also logging into the OU message boards this morning to find messages of congratulations about the same! I had to go and look... and was absolutely delira and excira to find my poem picked to feature in the workshop results. There were a lot of very accomplished poems in the final mix; I noted another OU student had her poem picked too, which is a great testament to the Creative Writing courses that the OU have created. I originally posted the poem on this blog as part of a challenge to write a poem a day using the ten line prompts that Sweeney had put up. Funnily enough, the poem that everyone responded best to, was the one that was chosen.

Reading through the feedback given on the poems, I saw that Sweeney really went for poems that made dramatic use of the lines, that used realism and unique language and steered away from abstraction - something I usually find hard to do in writing, because we just can't help commenting on what we write, even though we try to do it subtly. It's a knock on effect of the way that people think - everything is cause and effect with humans. His point was, I think, that the scene or image presented should invite its own comment or judgement from the reader; leaving the door open for as wide an interpretation as possible, I guess.

So this is another thing I am taking with me from all the writing this year: let the images/sensory perceptions do the talking for you and always use as many of the senses as you can - hmm, shades of that submission call that Rob posted the other day about Making Sense. And speaking of Rob, if it weren't for the initial challenge that he made to other poets about getting off our bums and writing on as many of the prompts as we could, the poem would never have been written in the first place. So thanks Rob :)

And the last two!

I did it - I didn't think I would, but I found lines from both the last prompt lines!

Doing this as a competitive challenge seems to have brought out the best in the poets and the poetry I have read, from Colin Will, Rob MacKenzie and Ben Wilkinson. I bet that they were only the tip of the iceberg: this has to be one of the best workshops I've ever done!

Funnily enough you'd think there'd be some repetition of motifs, and there maybe was a little bit, but each poet had enough of a separate voice and vision to make them totally distinct.

I think it really pushed me out of what or how I'd usually start a poem and I'm really looking out for the unusual or catchy saying or turn of phrase in conversations,for starting lines. Older people are great for these; they pepper their conversations with expressions that are passed down through families. I've learned a great lesson in this workshop that I intend to carry on with for the next while: there's no excuses, just write! And so to revisions...

The Trouble with the Non-Smoking Ban

Meanwhile surely there must be something to say
as his words sink gently, a stone dropped from the arc
of a bridge into murky water: I know your face, followed
by the challenging stare; leering gimlet eyes wandering
over me like a pair of clammy hands. Yes, I smile
politely, that was twenty years ago. I turn back
to the company, lighting the offered cigarette, drawing
a pull and hopefully another strand to this strange conversation.

You were a great dancer and a great kisser, he adds.
I grit my fixed grin pointing out my husband.
The eyes still pierce trying to connect intervening
years, joining dots and colouring in. Get over
it, you sad fuck, is what my eyes are really saying
now and I invite my smoking friends to find
a table indoors, out of the mizzling rain.

Hangover

Just for the sake of recovering
the kettle is pressed into service.
Dark brown coffee grounds release
their nutty, sharp scent in the plastic nest
above the mug with a swirl of oxygen
and hot water. Cane sugar dissolves
and cream flourishes its rounding swags.
Two Nurofen complete this recipe
accompanied by tasteless tobacco;
inhaled, exhaled, in a blue plume.

Must be up to eight by now...

... this Guardian Workshop is by far the most interesting that was ever set so far, for me anyway. These prompts are each a gift in their own right, as you sit down to interrogate the whys and wherefores of each one. In the CW course that I'm doing we're at the life-writing stage, which offers two paths: one of autobiography and one of biography.

Of course the biography seemed more appealing, because you didn't have to worry so much about emotional overburdening of the material, but having said that, I did want to investigate some autobiography, especially looking back to my grandparents who are both dead over ten years now.

That's why some of these poems seem like gifts: they're the combination of remembered detail and imagined aspects that spring forward out of the Graham lines -I'm finding that I seem to be writing by rote, if I use the interrogations and the imagined memories. Could be a title yet!

The Dairy Shed

Whatever you’ve come here to get
is forgotten as the fly-screen door
slams shut behind you. The squat
wooden barrel of the butter churn
calls you to peer inside.

One-eyed, you spy the spider’s home
and retreat. Wooden butter paddles
left by with long grooves, you feel by touch
how they’d grip the butter, shaping a pat;
creamy yellow and soft squidginess,
a small dollop tasting like buttercup
sunshine.

The top shelf of the dresser
coddles a crowd of tall-necked blue
bottles gawking at the willow plate,
disapproving of Koon Shee and Chang,
their doves taking off soon over
the weeping willows and beyond the dresser.

Below, the illicit small white bottle of poitín,
for rubbing its fire into new-born calves,
kicking the life into them when dawn
threatens a steal. You remember now;

the yellow corn meal, and grab a handful
from the yawning hessian sack, into the bowl
with boiled potato skins. The secret
ingredient to the hen’s deep golden yolks.

Another Guardian try - Abandoned

Shut up, shut up. There’s nobody here
to let you out, to take you beyond,
to reach your hand, to help you.
You’re shut up behind your own misery,

blind to the matters of here and now.
You’re stuck in a groove, in a groove,
in a groove, that you thought yourself into.
The grey spin of each day is passing

you by and this wallpaper is still here;
these delicate fronds of white that unfurl
across the pale yellow vellum, tickling
your nerve ends – they’re the only shred

of reality as you unpeel them.
Each left to right curl that you pick off
is grasping you, pulling you into
the places within that you’d closed off.

The bars on the window have rust
marks where you scratched your name –
what is your name now? And the round
oak door knob, you’ve forgotten its smooth

touch. You don’t even try that any more.
Nobody answers your calls, echoing on
the bare boards, the high attic ceiling
and nobody waves from the street, under

the bald sodium light. You’re a ghost
shut up, unfolded, unfound and your house
is condemned to the wrecking ball.

That's it for today

pulled.

Another...

Gently disintegrate me
like the sound of the lulling sea
on the evenings when the rain
has kept us quiet indoors.
I’ll turn down our feathered quilt
and close out the ebbing light.
We’ll tuck into the night
and I’ll blink at the ceiling
where green, glow-in-the-dark stars
depict Orion’s slim hips.

More Guardian Poems

I'm playing catch up now so, I've been quite busy this evening!

This morning, I am ready if you are,
to take back the words I flung at you.
They were hasty, I said things to hurt you
that would needle you, press the right buttons.
I was looking for BBC 1 – but
you gave a bravura Channel 4;
There were your days, stolen, drunk at some bar,
rejecting my calls when I rang you,
or the granules when I wanted powder.
But the best one of all is this last one,
when the barbs hooked you and stuck in your flesh:
your long strides to the front door, a crash
the door frame juddered, the car door crashed shut
and your dinner followed on the windscreen.

No. 3 for the Guardian Challenge

pulled.

I leave this at your ear for when you wake

...pulled!

Imagine a Forest

pulled!