Padraig O'Morain's Poetry Blog

Poets I go back to

2012-02-04T14:50:00.000Z

Naas public library in the Town Hall, Naas

The poem that shocked me into an appreciation of the power of poetry is lost to me. I encountered it when I was in my teens and had edged surreptitiously across an invisible line into the grown-up section of our public library in Naas in County Kildare.

This was a serious frontier to cross: you could borrow most books if you were over 18 but some had dark red labels and you had to be over 21 to borrow those - and I was under 18.

Extract from my article in the "Poets I go back to" series in The North, No.47. Read the full article here ...

2012-02-04T14:04:00.001Z

Poets in medicine

New Zealand poet and doctor Glenn Colquhoun.

Examination of the mental condition of a person who seems to have dementia might seem like an unpromising subject, but I think there's something beautiful in Glenn Colquhoun's poem A mini mental status examination. Here's the first verse:

She told me that it was summer and that we were in the south of France.
The night before we had heard a man sing beautifully on the street
Her father was important and young men had always sought her.
I was no exception.
She complained of the heat.

Extract from my article on Poets in Medicine, originally published in the Irish Medical News, 2009. Read the full article here....

Poets in the parlour or on the barricades?

2011-08-14T11:53:00.000+01:00

Reading Carol Ann Duffy's poem on the murder of three men in riots in England, I began to wonder about politics and poetry and especially about the political or polemical poem. Yes, we write about our lives, our memories, the contents of our subconscious and so on and it could be argued that to do so with an absolute respect for the meaning of words is a political act in itself in a world in which meanings are routinely twisted to conceal the truth. On the other hand, we are in danger of becoming parlour poets - maybe this has already happened - with little relevance to anything or anybody outside our precious selves. Carol Ann Duffy uses imagery, alliteration, rhyme and near-rhyme in her poem and I think this matters. In an article on Poetry International Web in 2002, Ko Kooman wrote of political poetry that "that which makes it poetry is always some intrinsic poetic quality which has no relation to any purpose or goal."

I am not advocating here that we give up writing our personal poetry in favour of political poetry. I am not advocating anything at all. I would suggest though that the political or polemical poem deserves a place in the repertoire. Might current references shorten the shelf life of a poem? In my opinion, no - because poetry doesn't actually have a shelf life. For 99.9 per cent of us, the people who hear or read our poems during our own lifetimes are the only ones who are ever going to hear or read our poems - and that still applies whether we are published in books or win prestigious prizes. So poetry is for today, not tomorrow.

I have only written one deliberately political/polemical poem, about trafficking of young girls in the sex industry but I mean to write more and the composition of a polemical poem will be one of the options for participants in my Write One Poem workshop in October.

You can read Traffik by clicking here. It's the final poem on the page.

Ted Kooser's tips for poets

2011-08-07T20:37:00.009+01:00

If you write poetry, Ted Kooser's book The Poetry Home Repair Manual is a delight. Kooser (pictured above) is a former US Poet Laureate who edits the syndicated column American Life in Poetry. His column usually features poets who are alive and kicking - unlike those written by his Irish counterparts (insofar as they also have newspaper columns on poetry) Ulick O'Connor and Anthony Cronin who favour long-dead poets and often long-dead poetry and who thereby do incalculable harm to public perceptions of poetry in my opinion.

OK, rant over. Where was I? Oh, yes, The Poetry Home Repair Manual. I'll be recommending to participants in my Write One Poem Workshop that they treat themselves to reading it at some stage.To see why, check out these points from the book (the points are mostly my paraphrases):

- "...express strong feelings without expressly stating those feelings...letting the behaviour of the participants show us how they feel."

- Test opening lines as if approaching a stranger on the street at a crossing: would they frighten her away or would they draw her in?

- You almost always hurt a poem if you choose its structure before you concentrate on giving shape to an experience or emotion.

- ...you can think of writing your poem as a means of persuasion because a poem can be looked at as something to bring about an action. That action need not be more than a momentary change of mood, or a realisation.

- Try shifting parts of the poem around. Try swapping the end and the beginning.

- Put the exposition information into the title and not into the poem itself.

- Try writing out your poem as prose to spot simple errors.

- Consider using names, brand names, people, plants.

- There is little need to tell the reader of the speaker is happy or sad if you have carefully described the associations the character is drawing through senses.

- You can begin a poem with a comparison and then expand on that comparison tomake a whole poem.

- Consider using natural units of conversational speech.

(Kooser, Ted, The Poetry Home Repair Manual, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2007).

The cinquain - made in New York

2011-07-30T13:09:00.002+01:00

How would you do if I asked you to define a cinquain without looking it up? Me neither.

I've heard of it of course but I just didn't know what it was. It's all explained in Philip Hobsbaum's book Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form.

The cinquain is a descendant of the quintain, a form from the Middle Ages, comprised of a five-line stanza.

The variation by Adelaide Crapsey (above), born in 1878 in Brooklyn Heights, New York, became known as a cinquain and is very much identified with her to this day. It's still a five line poem but based on syllable count as follows:

2 syllables with one stress
4 syllables with two stresses
6 syllables with three stresses
8 syllables with four stresses
2 syllables with one stress

Here's her cinquain November Night:

Listen…
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

And another, Triad:

These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow…the hour
Before the dawn…the mouth of one
Just dead.

Crikey - especially when you consider that she wrote much of her poetry in a race against death, following a diagnosis of tuberculin meningitis.

I was tempted to try out this form on people doing my Write One Poem web/workshop course in October. Then I tried to write a couple of cinquains myself and found it impossible to write anything satisfying in the form - a reflection on me and not on the cinquain, I guess. So I won't be imposing it on my workshop participants.

For more on cinquains and Adelaide Crapsey, go to cinquain.org and The Cinquain Page.

Yesterday's Pinstripe Suit

2011-07-23T12:44:00.003+01:00

Who'd once happily have driven
an oil and gas pipeline through
his own granny's front room; or
plopped a twenty storey car park
on the last sliver of green this side
of the Mad Cow Roundabout.

So begins Kevin Higgins' poem Yesterday's Pinstripe Suit in his latest collection Frightening new furniture, pubished by Salmon Poetry. Unlike most poets, Higgins deals with the recognisable events of today and he does so with humour as well as insight. Another example, from his poem The Financial Times:

This year for their birthday, everybody gets
the blame. We find our trousers
repossessed and down around
somebody else's ankles.

Poetry can be about today's headlines - I'll be advising participants in my Write One Poem worshop to read Higgins' "pinstripe suit" poem and you can read it here on the Salmon website (scroll down the link page).

A social class in a poem - with humour

2011-07-18T08:42:00.000+01:00

Choosing poems for people on my Write One Poem workshop to read, I particularly liked This was no Ithaca from Rita Ann Higgins' book Hurting God - Part Essay Part Rhyme (scroll down the link page on Salmon Poetry to read the poem). In a poem laced with humour, compassion and anger, she encapsulates a social world, a point in history, issues of class, depression and gender. All this in a poem so easy to read you could almost say it reads itself.

Poems - for today, not tomorrow

2011-07-09T19:11:00.001+01:00

Sara Teasdale

I was struck by the temporary nature of poems when I was leafing through the "Best poems of 1927" in the Oxfam Bookshop in Dublin today. Of course, some recognisable names were there - Sara Teasdale, for instance - but many others are no longer read or heard of. We sometimes like to think of poems as timeless - but no, only a handful, maybe only a fingerful, will survive.

Like the black butterfly that goes extinct when the coal mines close down (and there is no more coal dust on trees and shrubs for camoflauge) poems are vulnerable to changes in taste, thought and culture. The lesson? If you're a poet, seek publication, do readings, put your good stuff on the internet. In other words, get in front of today's audience because for the overwhelming majority of us, that's the only audience there is ever going to be.

So, today I did a reading for Seven Towers, along with two other Salmon Poetry writers, Seamus Cashman and Patrick Chapman. I didn't buy the 1927 book but I did buy books by three poets who are still alive - Seamus Cashman (That morning will come), Anatoly Kudryavitsky (Capering moons) and Alma Brayden (Prism).

The cool and dry alternative to Oxegen

2011-07-05T08:54:00.001+01:00

Not going to Oxegen this weekend? Then come along to an even cooler event, a reading by three Salmon Poetry wrtiers (Seamus Cashman, Patrick Chapman and mygoodself) downstairs in the Twisted Pepper in Middle Abbey Street, Dublin on Saturday 9th July at 3pm. We also guarantee no rain inside the venue, so no need to bring your flowery wellies. It's organised by Seven Towers. Click here for the events page.

Meg Peacocke - words written in stone

2011-06-26T11:05:00.000+01:00

Poet Meg Peacocke - whom I had the pleasure of meeting this week - has literally had her words written in stone. She was chosen to write twelve poems to be cut into stone for the Poetry Path at Kirkby Stephen in Cumbria. She told me that one of the most unusual aspects of the work was proof-reading the stones - which you do by reading the words backwards, letter by letter.

She was my tutor for a one year poetry course I did at the Open College of the Arts and I was delighted to meet her at her home in Barnard Castle in County Durham. She is in her early eighties and still writing - her next collection will be out later this year.

Arena on The Blue Guitar

2011-06-17T08:57:00.000+01:00

My interview with Sean Rocks (above) on the RTÉ Radio One programme Arena about The Blue Guitar, with a reading of three poems, can be heard by clicking here and scrolling down the programme page. I recorded three other poems which will be used as fillers between items.

The writer who just didn't write

2011-06-12T14:27:00.000+01:00

"I always thought of myself as a writer who just didn't write." So said Judith Hart and many of us can identify with that. Ms Hart, who died recently, became a successful novelist when she got going but also did a great deal to promote poetry through her poetry evenings at the British Library. Some of readings were published in the enjoyable CD "Catching life by the throat."

She was a Mullingar girl who worked in the ESB showrooms in the town and acted in a local drama group before setting sail for London.

The Guardian obituary is here.

The picture above is also from The Guardian.

Will Bahraini authorities kill Ayat al-Gormezi for reading a poem?

2011-06-09T09:24:00.000+01:00

Twenty year old poet and student Ayat al-Gormezi was forced to turn herself in to the police after they threatened the lives of family members. Her crime: reading a poem at a pro-democracy rally. She is to face a military tribunal according to this story in the Independent.

Francis Ledwidge on poetry, war and his childhood

2011-06-07T11:55:00.000+01:00

"..... my best is not yet written. I mean to do something really great if I am spared, but out here one may at any moment be hurled beyond Life."

So wrote Francis Ledwidge in an extraordinary letter from the trenches written a month before his death in World War One.

In the letter he talks of why he, an Irish nationalist, joined the British Army: "I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilization, and I would not have her say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions."

He writes beautifully about his early shyness: "I have always been very quiet and bashful and a great mystery in my own place. I avoided the evening play of neighbouring children to find some secret place in a wood by the Boyne and there imagine fairy dances and hunts, fires and feasts. I saw curious shapes in shadows and clouds and loved to watch the change of the leaves and the flowers, I heard voices in the rain and the wind and strange whisperings in the waters."

And he tells us something of how he writes: "Of myself. I am a fast writer and very prolific. I have long silences, often for weeks, then the mood comes over me, and I must write and write no matter where I be or what the circumstances are. I do my best work in Spring. I have had many disappointments in life and many sorrows, but in my saddest moment song came to me and 1 sang. I get more pleasure from a good line than from a big cheque."

The letter was included in Legends of the Boyne and Selected Prose of Francis Ledwidge- edited by Liam O Meara and is reproduced on the dublin.ie forum. To read it, click this link and stroll down the page, past the picture of Ledwidge.

How a poem happens: a blog for readers and writers

2011-06-04T17:05:00.005+01:00

Brian Brodeur's blog How a Poem Happens is a great read for anybody into contemporary poetry. In each posting Brodeur publishes a poem followed by the author's responses to questions about the process that brought the finished poem to the page. I especially liked this example: Camille Dungy's poem Requiem.

How it begins

2011-05-28T15:11:00.000+01:00

Her breath is rank with booze,
she fumbles a carnation
into his hand, murmurs
I've always fancied you.
A flurry of too-sweet scent
catches in his throat;
she whirls and titters
at someone else's joke.

Published, 2000, in Snakeskin, September issue

Twoems posted on Twitter March 2011

2011-05-21T09:58:00.006+01:00

Near dark, white flowers like lilies glow behind blue railings,

the field too long ungrazed, unwalked.

A quietness then

hands let go, a sigh, a click

radio streams in.

Patrolling his fields

my father counts his cattle

and gathers up rhymes.

Pale face. Deep red lips.

Black balloon skirt. Umbrella.

I stare through the rain.

If we had met then

it would never have lasted.

Timing is all, see.

In a black-walled room
listening to poets reading
I order more drink.

Cannes, diamonds, champagne
eternal youth, sweet breath, kiss.
Hey! Hands off, buster.

My kettle boiling
sounds like wind from a tunnel,
a train screeching in.

The trees hold up their arms in exultation
to the drenching rain.

Dog Latin

2011-03-17T11:34:00.001Z

Canis lupus familiaris. That’s dog
in Latin, he’d brag. Too bloody familiar,
she always threw back, resenting his mongrels
who mocked her in their dog thoughts, she suspected,
trailing her as she stomped around finding fault.
They see you as head bitch my darling, he sneered.
Well, someone appreciates me, she’d mutter,
softening for a moment. Then at it again:
When we married I married your bloody dogs.
The barking stopped for weeks after a black fog
stole her spirit, puzzled them into silence.
I have never got anything I wanted
in my life, she cried then. He sniggered. They sighed.
After a month she lifted up her head, smiled:
Well, it should be canis lupus vulgaris.
Tails began to wag. Tongues lolled. Dog breath wafted.

(Published 2011 in Dogs Singing, Salmon Poetry)

Ronelda Kamfer - a necessary voice from South Africa

2008-12-24T18:20:00.002Z

I discovered Ronelda Kamfer's work on the always excellent Poetry International Web. From the age of 10 she lived in Camp Flats, a place in which getting to school involved getting past three gangs. Camp Flats at one time had 150 gangs and perhaps still has. She saw a schoolmate shot dead in crossfire outside her school.

It's unusual to find a poetic voice coming from a background like this and I really like her poetry and recommend it to you. She writes in Afrikaans and there is just a handful of her poems available in English.

She developed her poetic style by compressing sentences into a few words to stop her little sister from reading her private stuff, according to this interview with Fred De Vries (link no longer available). I've never heard of that method before - but it worked.

Reading in the Troubadour, London next Monday 17th November

2008-11-11T20:50:00.002Z

I'll be reading at The Troubadour Café at 263-7 Old Brompton Road, Earls Court, London, at the launch of the latest issue of Magma Poetry in which I have a poem called Me and my shadow. The big draw isn't me but poets Blake Morrison and Vicki Feaver. The Troubadour readings fill up pretty quickly so early arrival is advisable. Cost of admission is £6 (concession £5). Judging by the last time I was there, you can expect a good buzz and a memorable night. You might even meet the partner of your dreams.

Singing, dancing poets - blame Shakespeare?

2008-10-12T14:00:00.002+01:00

An Irish poet once remarked to me that English audiences at poetry readings expect to be entertained in a way that Irish audiences do not. He still recalls his terror at having to follow a series of entertaining poets at a reading in England with his extremely good (in my opinion) but sensitively nuanced poems. He survived, because English audiences also happen to like good poetry. I recalled his experience at a reading I did at the new premises of Smith/Doorstop in Sheffield on 9th October. Poet John Turner wasn't just entertaining - he had backing music and he danced, and sang his poetry. I loved what he did but I was very glad I had been on before him! I blame Shakespeare for this trend in English poetry. Shakespeare, as many a poor student has had drilled into them, always introduced clowns and clown-like characters into his plays - even the witches in Macbeth can be played for laughs (though I am not calling John Turner a clown). Shakespeare was a bloody good showman and he was in the same theatrical company as the great comedian Will Kemp, for whom he wrote the part of Falstaff. So when I saw John Turner I thought of Shakespeare. And I thought of the fact that, thanks to Bill, we more melancholic Irish poets are up against it when we cross the Irish Sea.

Sensuality? Try this by Pablo Neruda...

2008-10-10T10:30:00.000+01:00

Wow, check out this poem by Pablo Neruda on the Poem of the Week blog. Talk about sensuality...

Poetry reading in Sheffield for National Poetry Day

2008-10-09T06:17:00.000+01:00

It's National Poetry Day in the UK today and I'm off to Sheffield for a reading at the new premises of Smith/Doorstop at Bank Street Arts. It starts at 7.30pm and admission is free so get on that plane now. Readers include Geoff Hattersley, John Turner and Poetry Business competition winners Julia Deakin & myself. The latest issue of The North will be launched at the do.

Reading at The Troubadour

2008-10-07T22:40:00.005+01:00

Reading at The Troubadour in London last night with Yvonne Green, Julia Deakin and other past winners of the Poetry Business Award organised by Peter and Ann Sansom of Smith/Doorstop. It was a particularly special night for one reader, River Wolton, because her collection, The Purpose of Your Visit, had been printed that very day. Much of her poetry is political and I found this really interesting because many poets, including myself, shy away from current events and from issues. The fear is that issues make for bad poetry. But I think River has found a way to write good poetry about issues. You can read an example of her political poetry here in Magma. River is currently Derbyshire Poet Laureate.

London reading at The Troubadour Monday 6th October

2008-10-05T07:50:00.000+01:00

I'll be reading poems from You've been great at The Troubador in Earls Court, London, on Monday 6th October. There will be readings of 15 minutes each from current and past winners of the Poetry Business Award includingmyself, Julia Deakin and Yvonne Green. Some runners up are also expected to read. The do will be hosted by Ann and Peter Sansom of Smith/Doorstop, publishers ofThe North who organise the Poetry Business competition. Readings run from 8-10pm.

Check out my Poetry Daily feature today

2008-10-04T07:30:00.001+01:00

I'm delighted that Poetry Daily, a website I've been reading with admiration for years, is featuring one of my poems today, Saturday 4th October. The poem, The red heifer, is from my collection You've been great. Click on over there and take a look.

Reading on the Arts Show, RTÉ Radio One

2008-09-15T11:51:00.002+01:00

I read four poems from You've been great on the Arts Show on RTÉ Radio One on 19th August. You can listen to the readings and the interview with Seán Rocks here.

Award-winning poems published

2008-08-09T06:40:00.002+01:00

You've been great, my collection of 20 poems which was a winner of the Poetry Business Award 2007, is published by Smith/Doorstop. Smith/Doorstop, based in Sheffield, publishes the poetry magazine The North as well as books and pamphlets and was founded by poet Peter Sansom. The collection of 20 poems was one of four winners of the competition run by The Poetry Business which is associated with Smith/Doorstop. The competition was sponsored by the Arts Council of England and Kirklees Cultural Services. Also winning and having their collections published were Julia Deakin, Yvonne Green and Ann Pilling. Look down the column on the right to find out how to buy You've been great.

That's it

2007-10-13T16:13:00.002+01:00

The nurse hoisted him into the car,
shoved the wheelchair into the boot,
pecked him and said goodbye and meant it.
He was a shell, not full of years but emptied of them.
As his daughter drove past the gagged
windows of the old tobacco factory
towards the bright ribs of the new stadium
he spotted a girl walking, eighteen or nineteen,
white trousers stretched tight.
Great big arse, he thought.
He managed a twitch. His daughter said,
What you thinking about Dad? He said,
That's it, great big arse.
That was it all right. She did not ask again.

Published, 2003, in Ambit, Issue 172.

Chatting her up

2007-10-13T16:12:00.001+01:00

A boy and girl drag themselves to the back of the bus.
He mumbles the slurred syllables of methadone.
He intends to impress his dark haired, dark eyed girl
who folds her hands like a nun and contemplates the windscreen wipers
while he displays for her admiration
the tapestry of his suicide attempts.

He took the sharpest kitchen knife to bed
mother in an oooh of horror found him too soon.
On the empty stairs of the flats at two a.m.
he slung a rope across a bannister and would have launched himself
but for a man from God-knows-where hunting down a deal.
I would jump from the balcony he says but with my luck
they'd have built a fucking swimming pool there before I hit the street.

She giggles, then sits in silence
watching the rain smack against the windows
thinking perhaps of sipping multicoloured cocktails
by hot Spanish poolsides in the healing sun.

Published, 2003, in Ambit, Issue 172.

The undertaker's assistant

2007-10-13T16:09:00.000+01:00

The undertaker's assistant puts her finger
to the tip of a tilted coffin
to guide the inexperienced pallbearers.

She stands at the ready in black livery,
perky buttocks in clinging trousers,
jacket pushed out by cocky breasts.

But what makes me stare is that black ribbon
looped around her saucy pigtail.

Published, 2002, in ROPES (Review of Postgraduate Studies), Issue 10, NUI Galway. (ROPES does not have its own website).

Another dreamer

2007-10-13T15:55:00.000+01:00

The grocer sits and smokes behind his counter
- pock-marked lino top with tobacco burns -
explains to any listening idler
how to get rich, run a country, rear children.
As he speaks he flicks
tiny tobacco flakes off his lips.
Customers seldom come in:
there is little to want on his hungry shelves.
He addresses the few with certainty.
His yellowed fingers weave the air.
His navy suit, thin as tissue paper,
dances on his shoulders.
He confounds his listeners
with big-money cant
conned from the business pages
which turn yellow
while the light dulls
to the cold of three decades
and the dark moves in
thick as the walls of Fort Knox
with all America's gold
locked up behind them.

Published, 2001, in ROPES (Review of Postgraduate Studies), Issue 9, NUI Galway. (ROPES does not have its own website).

Chinese painting: Young lady with butterflies

2007-10-13T15:51:00.001+01:00

See how the butterflies quiver round the shoulders:
it's a delicate little piece, isn't it?
Yes, I mean the painting, not the girl, you scoundrel!
See the way they sweep and swoop, hover and peep,
see how she skips in fright, look, she's terrified!
And the dress, the way it swirls, look at those folds, that silk!
It will add to your home should you decide to buy.
Yes, terrified! She flings her small hands in the air
but as she hops away she keeps her poise
and - yes! - the butterflies seem to flirt with her!
And she seems to frolic with the flirting wings
- a man of your discernment would appreciate such grace -
and as they dance around the shoulders, as they soar and drift,
see how she sheds her formality -
(as I'm sure you know that was no small thing
for a Chinese girl in the court in those days)
- in dismay
yet keeps her gracefulness despite her fear.

She skips so daintily because the feet are bandaged,
the toes bent back, it would hurt too much to flee.
They say that inside the bandages the feet went bad
but a man of your learning would know that already.
Wonderful how art can transform such material
into something you would pay to put on your wall.

Published, 1997, in Snakeskin, August issue

Dancing with the Germans

2007-10-13T15:46:00.000+01:00

At the start, our women itched for exotic Germans
who stuttered with empty tanks from neutral skies,
London, Bristol, Liverpool, crackling behind them,
and drifted onto soft, Irish grass among bored cattle;
where we arrested them, rattled them swiftly to camp
to plot impossible escape, brood on Fatherland,
wait for triumph or shame, finality, a new start.
We were not hard on them (we got no thanks),
paroled them to public houses, dance halls, our girls.
When they stepped out to Jimmy Dunny's Orchestra
they tantalized the Newbridge women
for they were novelties, starched, stiff,
every man an officer, or as good as!
Then on a chilly Saturday night at war's end,
shrivelled faces framed in barbed wire fences
stared awkwardly from a newsreel at our women;
who learned new names: Belsen, Dachau, Treblinka;
innocence shuffled away. Bands tuned up in dance halls;
later in Lawlor's Ballroom Jimmy Dunny played
smartly polkas, old time waltzes, two-steps, but no-one wanted
to dance with the Germans, in the shocked silence.

Published, 1999, in Snakeskin, September issue

Exile

2007-10-13T15:45:00.000+01:00

His childhood died in a nightmare.
He was in the front garden
of a country cottage
like a cottage in a story;
his father was there too, digging:
everything was perfect.
Then the child looked across the fields
to the small hills, like hills
out of a children's book,
and a mushroom cloud loomed up
from behind the small hills,
sombre and monstrous,
as colossal as a mountain.

The child knew the world was dead.
A cloud of grief and despair
unfolded in him.
His father noticed nothing
and kept on digging through the death.
The child woke up but it was true:
the cloud was there, the world was dead.

He still wants to return.
Once I saw him look in winter
over the city's snow capped roofs
and past the icy suburbs
and across the white fields
to the hills behind the city,
and I saw him shake his head
and flick his cigarette
into the slushy street,
where it hissed and died.

Published, 1999, in Snakeskin, October issue

No sanctuary

2007-10-13T15:38:00.000+01:00

Doesn't it sound like peace in this chapel?
Stooped old men in a dark choir, girded with rosaries
peer from monks' hoods with wrinkled faces,
raise voices to god in harmony,
swelling and soaring, the stained glass windows seem to listen:
you'd think humanity had surpassed humanity.

One of these men will walk from this church in anger,
one will leave with a sly smile twisting his lips,
one will plot and plan and pretend
and one will strike a bitter blow to fix
one who played a bitter trick on him. Yet

the faithful visit here for peace and for goodness
and these men's hands make miracles of stone and earth
and miracles of ink and paper, lives and voices;
every patch of grass, every field and corner
speaks of peace and of work and of goodness.

But here too men speak spitefully of other men
and here men thwart other men for bitter decades,
detestation and dislike make friends
and men who whisper ill of other men are praised;
men plot to deny their brothers' advancement
and go to the grave with curses for prayers.

Peace visits this place no more often
than cities that glare with neon,
than streets where good things are done and hearts broken,
than streets where hearts are mended and bad things done;
and there is no refuge from the world in the end
in this place there is no refuge,
there is only the world in the end.

Published, 1999, in Snakeskin, September issue

The greatest teacher in Western Europe

2007-10-13T15:31:00.000+01:00

I am the Greatest Teacher in Western Europe, Larigy said.
Under the taut skin the skull grinned. The glasses glinted
when it was time to beat the boys - his favourite time of day.
Brother Larigy never hit us straight away for our incompetence
but loved a feast of beating at the break, so he saved us up.
Once he let us off, we thought, to play in the first snow of winter
but when our frozen hands started to thaw and began to hurt
he took the leather out - a slim leather, nine inches long, and stiff -
and lined us up and slapped us, doubling our pain and his pleasure.
He liked to threaten to pull boys' trousers down and watch them squirm
but once a boy whose house Larigy used to visit turned and hissed
'I'll tell' and Larigy let him go and flinched as if he had been hit.
One day we were sent up to the water tower to see the dentist
when we came back a Higgins twin couldn't say the prayers for bleeding
- Our Lady of this pray for us, Our Lady of That, pray for us -
Larigy slapped his face until the blood poured out. We resumed praying
with blood streaming out of Higgins' mouth at each Our Lady.
The greatest teacher in Western Europe? As far as we could see,
better had he been a bachelor scratching a living up
a mountain, spending his nights muttering in the pub.

Published, 1998, in Snakeskin, February issue

The meat man's rant to the vegetarians

2007-10-13T15:29:00.001+01:00

Eating shite out of a plastic box again,
you moaners and whingers who eat to live?
Eat? Greens, beans - and not the beans you get in tins -
roughage, dear God, chewing, mandibles straining.
Eating as an act of public contempt
for gobblers of steak and bacon and chicken,
for scoundrels who want sugar in their tea.
Looking at ye eating would make a man sick,
taking out your plastic - ha! - lunch boxes,
opening them reverentially,
commencing to chew with grim little smiles
whatever sludge is contained inside.
Eating you may reflect on your goodness
compared to those who have not seen the light
or lack the moral - if you can tolerate a pun - fibre.

I would rather be marked down as a sinner
in the book of vegetarian crimes
and sentenced to a hell of roast beef and gravy
than dine in paradise on the likes of that.

Published, 1999, in Books Ireland, May issue.

Eco-warrior

2007-10-13T15:23:00.001+01:00

He crouches
like a leopard
over dials
sniffs out prey.
Like a man who shoots little birds on Sundays
at the edge of the forest
he hunts decibels
on hard margins by motorways;
tracks transgressors in company registration files
studies spoors in county development plans.
He sucks sustenance for his long stalking from environmental impact studies,
perches now and then on trees
daring growling chainsaws,
happy as a child in a garden
absorbed by action who has become the doing itself.

Published, 1999, in Books Ireland, December issue.

Unfinished work

2007-10-13T15:21:00.000+01:00

The rat trembles on the lawn like a leaf.
Our cats have snapped its back. They look bored.

I pray for them to finish it
and drag it to a neighbour's garden.

Instead they piss off and leave the job to me.

Published, 2000, in ROPES (Review of Postgraduate Studies), Issue 8, NUI Galway. (ROPES does not have its own website).

The female geriatric ward

2007-10-13T15:08:00.001+01:00

The girls are beached in geriatric beds,
life got fed up and broke their legs and fled,
abandoned them to grim faced nurses' aides
in realms of commodes and walking frames.

Poor Sleeping Beauties, their fun is at an end,
no prince is on his way to rescue them.
Princes have more to think about than this,
than waking up old ravers with a kiss.

Published, 2000, in Books Ireland, September issue

Treasure

2007-10-13T15:06:00.000+01:00

A tide washed her to his solitary island,
left her intact on its wet stones.
Morning uncovered her in first daylight.
He contemplated her from all sides, appraised.
Her eyes were slightly open. He held his breath,
edged icy eyelids back: eyes brown, black-shadowed,
earth-warm amber turned to cold;
red hair - she must have been a whip-tongued scold in life.
She dressed for her final act in a denim jacket,
lumberjack shirt, warm amber to match the eyes,
navy jeans plastered to thighs by sea water;
her skin so cold. Quiet: nothing stirred: wave, wind or bird.

He spent hours with her in night's privacy,
her cold beauty a wonder to his trembling hands,
her cold flanks smooth like sea-worn stones,
her mounds, her hollows, burning marvels.
In morning's indifferent newness he carried her back;
water sidled in, lifted her up, took her out.
He dried her clothes - sour smell of steam from his range -
folded and smoothed them, shoved them under his bed.
That night he drank, remembered mounds, hollows,
fingered her clothes, fumbled inside her jeans,
thought of her appearing out of water, naked,
dripping salt, warm, to perch on his lap.
He packed her clothes into his smouldering range,
cremated them one by one - a night of stoking, poking -
felt in hot ashes for zips, buttons,
stumbled in unforgiving day to his solitary beach
to fling them into suffocating water,
pressed fists against his island's wet stones
to cool a violent pain from her burning zips,
scalding buttons, gold and silver of her estate.

Published, 2000, in Snakeskin, February issue.

A note to Patrick Morrin, deceased

2007-10-13T09:00:00.000+01:00

Your grandchild Elizabeth stood on the altar
- you died long before she was born or the church built -
and read verses you wrote forty years ago
about death and rebirth, winter and spring
in front of your son Laurence's coffin,
he dead at seventy four, she stunned with grief
beautiful too as she read your lines
to the congregation. A child
cried, Mammy I want to go home.

Laurence's sons lifted his coffin heavily
onto their shoulders, conveyed him through incense
out of the church, down the hill, under dark skies,
hedges dripping silently, tarmac glistening,
up the wet gravel road to Caragh graveyard.

He lies near his brothers Edward, Arthur, John,
a short stroll from the old graveyard
where you await resurrection
by Robinsons' field.

Published, 2000, in Snakeskin, February issue

Poem A Month

2000-05-14T19:47:00.000+01:00

If you'd like me to send you a poem every month or so, just email me at pomorain@gmx.com. The poem may be new, old, published or unpublished. I'll include some information on the origins of the poem. Reading a poem every month may improve health, increase longevity and render the reader more attractive.

2000-05-14T18:51:00.000+01:00

The Blue Guitar is my first full collection, published by Salmon Poetry in June 2011. My poetry has been published in anthologies in Ireland and the UK and broadcast on radio. An earlier pamphlet of 20 poems gained a Poetry Business award, sponsored by Arts Council England, in 2007 and was published as You’ve Been Great (Smith/Doorstop) the following year.

I grew up in Ladytown, County Kildare and come from a family in which poetry has long been appreciated: my father composed verses in his head while he worked in the fields and my grandfather’s poems are still read at family occasions. I live in Dublin where I work in journalism and psychology. I have an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. I am married with two daughters.