Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CONTENTS
Editorial Colin Dardis Mary O'Gorman `Kevin Griffin The Gob Kevin Graham Mary Margaret Gallagher Richard O'Toole wendy brosnahan John Pinschmidt Kinga Nowak George Rowley Kerrie O'Brien Nicholas Damion Alexander Paddy Bushe Margaret Doody-Scully P J Kennedy Linda Whittenberg Eamon O Cleirigh George Harding John McGrath Mina Lakshmanan John Saunders Niall O Connor Shauna Gilligan Micel Kearney Mike McHugh Mary Lavery Carrig Patrick Walsh Donal Mahoney Barry Finegan Helen Farrell Simcox Mike Gallagher Tatjana Debeljaki G.B. Ryan Margaret Sheehan Laurie Corzett/libramoon Maeve O'Sullivan colwin dansio Christine Allen Louis Mulcahy Brendan Lonergan Padraig 'Gallchobhair Rachel Sutcliffe These We Like 10 Thousand Poets for Change After You Go Great Aunt Jo Poems Old-Fashioned Rhyme Caught Garden Gift A Letter to Samus Who Poems Barbary Lunch at The Unicorn Fireworks/Imprint High mountain range Featured Poet Abandoned Human Desire My Bed Bridie's Gone Six Months A Lament for a Newlywed Silk of the Kine Connemara Rain its' not happening Despair Peace and Love Through the Looking Glass Found in the Guardian Newspaper eagle-eyes September Offering War and Peace Paddy Murphy's Wake Bad Poetry Themed Haiku The English Papers To Forgiveness Yoga Meeting Arise At Acre Lake Mouth is a thrush Dancing in Squares The Master Secret Garden This House Accident/Night Time Photographs 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14-16 17 18 19-25 26 27 28 29 30-31 32 33 34 35 36-37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58
EDITORIAL
Hello to the world. Welcome to our band of writers. This month I have been flicking through my world atlas - remember those? - to pinpoint where some of you live. And you live everywhere. It is amazing that. in the space of a few short months, we have managed to circumnavigate the globe. It is amazing that we have been able to reach you all and that you in, in turn, have come back to us to share your thoughts, your words, your truths, your rich, rich voices. Thank you all from the gang in Listowel. Last Saturday afternoon, a group of writers gathered at the Seanchai Centre to celebrate the Listowel leg of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change event. Many of those present have been together for years and, with our new friends, we shared the spirit of camaraderie that exists not only at local level but among writers throughout the world. Thank you Michael Rothenberg and the gang for inspiring such an awesome event. Here's to next year. This is a special edition for us, a closing of the circle. As I explained in our first edition, we evolved from a workshop facilitated by Paddy Bushe in 2003. Paddy is our featured poet in thefirstcut #3 and, gentleman that he is, he has written five new poems especially for us. This is a great privilege for us because of the esteem in which Paddy is held in poetic circles. Read Paddy Bushe's piece on how he writes; the central tenet of his message is honesty because, like all great poets, Paddy knows that, without honesty, there is no poetry. Later this month, the Seanchai writer's Group reforms, having disbanded for a year. The break made us realise how important the group was to us. Writing is essentially a selfish, lonely existence. I have never heard of any great poem that was written in a workshop. Still, the coming together of minds with similar interests always agitates the creative juices and averts the eyes from selfobsessed naval gazing. We, as a group, have become better writers through mutual support. It is not for everyone but do try it; join a group or form one of your own if there is not one near you. Failing that, you are always welcome in thefirstcut family of writers. Reading poetry is an important part of writing poetry. It goes without saying that we should read the great poets, both those of the past and those currently writing on a regular basis. But we should also read our peers because it is sometimes in their writing that we can best see what is good and bad in our own writing. Read the other poets in the journal, think of what you would do differently and feel free to comment in a positive and constructive way. Keep writing.
Kevin Griffin DICKCASSEL A nugget of fools gold, it danced from the dictionary. Dickcassel.noun, north America, sparrow - like bird , related to the cardinal. Now if you didnt already know.. DUTY It was a morning in spring and I, on the cusp of adulthood, vaulted over our gate, cleanly over the top bar, because I had to. My mother scolded, because she had to. VANITY Loving the look of me in my best coat. Wallowing in the smile of an approaching friend.
Garden Gift
Red sunset, red tomatoes, warm - yielding to his touch. Tomorrow's promise held today, softly laid down on the table, free from constraint the fruit awaits the gentle slice from the knife.
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Have you decided sir? What would you recommend? Red or white, Sir? Red. The die is cast. We have an excellent house wine, Sir. Spanish. Ill have a glass of the red. Ill accept your advice. Not make it a carafe, I said. We have no carafes, Sir. Sure, Ill have a half bottle then, and it had better be good. I wag my finger indulgently and he bows again. Theres still time to leave, I think, before I get impaled on my own barbed wire. I look ahead, the laughter now seems hilarious. No longer empty, no longer banal, seductive now, a cure all. I long to join in as I used to. I was always great crack in a bar until the booze won the bottle and the duck could no longer quack. Shes heading this way. Her perfume hits me like a bullet. She walks like a gazelle, black skirt, a touch above the knees, black tights, perfect, maybe stockings, shes thirtyish. How many men has she had? How many has she destroyed? My heart starts to pepper as she passes. I have to make contact; the insanity of the old days when it was fun to drink, cascades in my head. Who is she with? I muse with unrealistic envy but the desire is huge. I am really insane. Still time to leave. Too late now; the waiter with a flourish pours a little wine, sparkling as the glass catches the light. I raise my glass, as a priest a chalice at Mass; the ritual begins. All bets are off, all bets are on. I take a sip. The horses begin to canter; let the frenzy begin. Now, no limits, now no fear, now no pain. To hell with tomorrow. The impossible is now possible. The water can be walked on. The woman with the perfume passes and her walk is so self-assured, so elegant, that I cant describe it Ill bide my time. The old dog for the hard road and Ill take the road most travelled by by me that is, the only road I know. What time is it? The man in the bed beside me asks. Its half past twelve. Lunch time; theyd poison you here. Heres the trolley. Rattle of trolley, rattle of cups, discordant; the nurse stiff as a poker. Jaysus, mutton again. Did you ever see such slop? I say nothing. Still drugged, cant focus. I pick at my lunch, cant eat. Bursting, still, to go to the loo. The duty nurse seems as immobile as a statue. Does he ever get bored? What does he think of it all? Does the routine kill him as it is killing me? I am too long coming here to expect any answers to anything. Still the questions engulf me. I sip at my tea. Its like piss, cold piss at that and lunch is over for another unending day. I look at my watch, 12:40. I count the cracks in the ceiling and Jaysus they
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wont even let you sleep to relieve the dead hand of boredom. I have no interest in books or papers, no interest in anything. Even the 1940s film on the TV does not entice me and I used to be such a movie buff and was regarded as an expert, in the pubs anyway; an expert on everything and anything and if you didnt think so Id let you know. Thats the way it was and it doesnt seem funny now and I hate myself for the zillionth time. Jesus Id go insane here except that I am up to my eyes with that stuff they gave me. You cant go mad when you whole system is battened down. You cant feel, cant imagine and you certainly cant laugh. Nothing to laugh about now. But how I laughed at the Unicorn. How they all laughed and it was a good joke even though I say so myself. Though I cant think of it now. The laughter no longer empty, the exchanges are now all substance, no longer saccharine. There are my people. I am throwing dice amongst the throng, the stakes are high and bingo I scoop the pot. I am the ventriloquist, no longer the dummy. I catch her eye and she smiles. A little wave and my heart rockets to my head. I am heading for the winning tape; I win by a nose against the odds. I would always succeed against the odds, odds invariably laid by myself and they were always long commensurate with my massive inferiority complex. I have analysed this in and out and up and down and I am sick to death of analysis. I know it all and know nothing; thats all I know. Yet in the white heat of that afternoon in the Unicorn, I could do anything, be anybody and not give a damn about anything or anybody. I was free for what now sees a moment to use my emotional credit card to the limit, a limit set by me, only me. I was in control, the puppeteer, the ring master, the conductor; the show would never end unless I said so. When tomorrow eventually comes you are beyond caring, beyond control and the analysts take you over, to dissect the indissectable, to square the circle you are encircled in. Were all going to Nesbitts, she said. Whos we? Does it matter? No, in fact it doesnt, actually I like my own company, I said. Not one of those, I hope, she said. No, but Im easy in company and just as easy on my own. We should all get on fine then. I thought we were doing that already, I laughed. Ill see you there then. And her smile promised the universe. I must get some cash, I said. Do that, she said, well need it. And thats the last I saw of her. As I passed ODonoghues the magic of the 60s, the Fleadhs on sunny summers, the nights in hay sheds, beckoned me in the door. Now this is where the real action is or was when my youth passed me by. And as I waited for my pint to settle, the blurred became unblurred and I understood everything and if I didnt, it didnt matter, nothing mattered any more. The music soared through the bar above the early evening bedlam, and I was a child again, my father on a Sunday evening in Summer, playing the Sligo Maid his favourite reel and when I got older it became mine too, it was inevitable; surely I was my fathers son and that was always important to me still is. Absurd, in his shadow all my life, a life sentence, a death sentence in effect. (to be continued)
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Imprint
They will always be there Little traces only I can feel You leave a mark each time you do it Your fingertips On my heart
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Paddy Bushe
Paddy Bushe, born in Dublin in 1948, now lives in Kerry, and is a member of Aosdna. He writes in both Irish and English, and has published eight collections of poetry, the most recent of which is To Ring in Silence: New and Selected Poems (Dedalus Press, 2008), a bilingual volume. He has also published three books of translations, and been the editor of two anthologies. A new collection, My Lord Buddha of Carraig anna, will be published by Dedalus in the spring of 2012.
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Bog Dream
Did I dream the village, or was I told, or did I dream I was Told, or was I told I dreamt it? And the bog, the black bog That oozed and inched itself Over the track? That certainly I could recall, as from a dream. Certainly the bog was there, just As I recalled it, when I walked That old track that disappeared Here and there into the black bog That collapsed and reformed itself All the way down the mountain. But where was the village? The village Whose ruins beside the stream Where the track crossed I recalled From the dream or from some old telling, Whose memories of the hucksters shop I shared in some half-understood way: Where were its tumbled, overgrown stones? For now, certainly, there was only the ooze Of the bog, of the black, absorbing bog. Paddy Bushe
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Boss
You can see straightaway, yes, hes a joke: The drawing breath to gather ponderous words To use as weapons. The hiding from the words Of others. The hiding, in fact, from others. The way he imagines a mirror as he talks, And listens only through his own reflection. His terror that the image in the mirror Might be shattered. That he might be forced To listen or to speak without his mirror. His grimacing at the thought is hilarious. The impersonation of the powerful man Impersonating the hollow man is Powerful. The trouble is he cannot see The joke. And this is deadly serious. Paddy Bushe
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January
That is no season for the margins, the thin Forlorn cries of seabirds along an empty shore, The exhausted light turning a haggard face To the overwhelming clouds, and the sodden clay Of the retreating cliff falling in dribs and drabs. I will go inland awhile, accept the shelter of woods, The texture of bark and knotted twigs, will ease Myself into the dark of leaf-mould, nut-mast, And become familiar with warm, hidden stirrings Among the blind, white protuberances of bulbs.
Paddy Bushe
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Waiting
When fog freezes hearts landscape And stops the veins and wells, and drains The colour from everything that grows, Oh then heart must kernel its sweet self In hiding from the hooded crow, and wait For hints of sap. Then thaw. Then flow. Paddy Bushe
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A robins whitewashed kitchen looks out on the faded green grass of the empty fields. An old stanley stove lurches away from the wall. In the yard a vintage tractor rusting falls asunder. Plaster fragments of the homestead litter the floor of the rooms. In an upstairs bedroom a window sash has slipped and become a trapezoid framing the overgrown orchard facing west. Yellow buttercups carpet the floor of the haggard, their mournful winter gone. They scent their way raising their delicate trampled heads for tastes of rainfall. Behind the roofless barn a delapidated Morris Minor car, having seen better days is suddenly carressed by the groan of the wind and lashing rain committed to preserving the delicate balance between man and nature. As walls tumble boundaries fray and the line connecting dwelling and farmyard melts away and this empty house is just one bone in a giant skeleton of abandoned human desire.
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P J Kennedy My Bed
Dear Bed, You were there for my birth. I was put to you with my teething teeth. I fall into you when I am sleepy. You were there with me during my sickness. You are primary in my good health. Dear Bed, Stay with me for my death.
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George Harding
(my version of Sen 0'Riordin's 1948 Oireachtas poem )
this language never stops. She turned back to me and An Draighnen in her stare I looked manly into her eyes glare and saw brightness more bright and music on the tide I saw the glow of my race and I was mad with pride. Old ancestral memories sounded in my mind as I swam miraculously with my Cow combined and every alien memory that dragged me in tow was cleansed from my mind in the presence of my Cow. Burying rare jewels she turned her face from me thoughts of my race withered when recalled by my Cow as she bent down in the black hole with all the jewels near. When she spoke her tribes voice became cold and clear. Oh! Stay away from the woods I am not your Cow. A bull from abroad bellows a row and as for your little calf her whinnies do not impress she was trained overseas with a Queens caress. On the banks of Irelands rivers I sat down to pine Remembering through tears the Silk of the Kine in a grove without angles with nothing in my fist and the voice of Colm Cille gone like the mist.
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Why the long face? asks Mike who suddenly looks dashing in jeans and tux. You dont want to know, I mumble. Oh but I do. Ive always wanted to be an agony aunt. Besides, we cant eat in silence, he adds as he plonks his bulk on a chair beside me. * Youre not staying here if you come home in that state again. While youre under this roof, youre my responsibility. * Mike is handing me fistfuls of tissues. I try to blow my anger onto them. I stuff my face with the incredibly ugly looking but amazingly tasty pudding. Mine is on a pink plate; Mikes on a blue. Its a rainbow house, I think, looking at the tray and dish pile in the sink growing higher and higher. Your mascaras run down your face, Mike says in a fatherly voice. I wonder where my five uncles, three great-aunts are now. The mascara weeps onto the gossamer tissue. I wiped it so roughly across my cheek that it tore. * On the count of five, four, three * Two minutes pass. I sigh. * One. * Mikes strong arms are around me, my head spinning and light. I am contained. There will be no breaking loose tonight.
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mourners rose, one by one, from folding chairs and paraded out beneath the moon, freed by a hurricane of the Widow Murphy's tears.
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Helen Farrell Simcox. (Themed Haiku) Autumn wind whipped leaves seized with swan song passion dance wildly and fall
lush greens to russet leaves swept on compost heap food for spring blooms
On Achill the post came twice each weekTuesday brought Queenshead fivers, postmarked Ormskirk, Tamworth, Kilburnshort letters from villages of men transplanted en masse to alien trenches. Thursday brought brownpaper rolls, neatly wrapped; Anthony Jack flung them from his bike cursed their weight, their wickedness, their Englishness with equal ferocities. The Achill mother unfurled the Sunday Post, plucked The News of the World from the entrails of The Sunday Mail; and, with a magicians sleight of hand, made it disappear. The others were absorbed, devoured by her children, tales of dazzling sights and city lights grooming them, too, for the emigrant fate of their fathers. The mother bided her time, waited for the covert hour, then savoured the News of the World, revelled in stories of bedroom romps, relief from absence and abstinence, far-fingered foreplay, forbidden by church and state, twin conspirators who saw fit to make slaves of their sons, sinners of their saints.
(Previously published in Revival and in Coming to the Well for Water, an Anthology)
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Maeve OSullivan At Acre Lake Its a summer afternoon on a ninety-year-old barge, in County Leitrim. Young Alice McCool straps on her set of practice pipes and plays a reel slowly as if its the most natural thing in the world which, for her, it is.
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The pawns first step let me know the game was on. Moves later, weve run short of pawns those little teases of glances and stares and words neatly uttered here and there. The knights, yet to rescue the princess from her dungeons of past. She heard rumours they were on their way, but the thud of hooves were all in her imagination. Disarmed, no castle left and all defences blown away, she wonders why the bishop has not yet blessed the union. Though she prays, he stands distant from what has now been christened a battle. The queen with the presence of a hundred pawns knows her power to force a move from the king. No one else here now, its she and he and squares that decide their fate. Its not a battle anymore but she approaches from the side with a triumphant check mate.
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dippingthepen
This section is for writers who are, maybe, new to writing and who would like to see their work in print with a view to further developing their skills. BRENDAN LONERGAN SECRET GARDEN
If I could plant a flower just like you Constant attentive endearing and true I would'nt hestitate mull or dither It would be a red rose that would never wither Washed and cleansed by summer rains Glistening in the shining frost from winters pains That danced in spring's coolest breeze Never fell like the leaves from trees Standing proudly from stem to head Nurtured pampered loved well fed Like an oasis in a field of green Your beauty seen and unseen Striking elegant surreal sublime Both forever in your perennial prime Making honey from life's sadness and mistakes It's weeds stones spades and rakes Like viewing the richest land through the world's window still I have loved both flowers and I always will It's the vulnerabilty and frailty in you I suppose That I see in every single red rose
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Night time
Evening falls from the sky Daylight gives a weary sigh Darkness envelopes like a glove Stars sparkle silver up above Still all life does not sleep In the shadows movements creep A nocturnal world comes alive Creatures of the night time thrive
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THESE WE LIKE
http://www.rimbaud.org.uk/main2.html dee Sunshine's Writers Resources Articles, links, tips, interviews.
http://writing.ie/guest-blogs/word-play/entry/guest-blogs/the-fiverules-of-writing-.html Caren Kennedy's article at Vanessa O'Loughlins great site. http://writing.ie/ A wonderful resource for writers, driven by the dynamic Vanessa OLoughlin Spike Milligan once placed an advertisement reading: "Spike Milligan seeks rich, well-insured widow. Intention: murder." He got 48 replies. (ST) http://www.hungermtn.org/blood-bones-potatoes/ Look up Claire Guyton's blog if you fancy a good nosh. http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv3n2/tracks/tracks1.html Wonderful A brilliant Saturday evening at the Seanchai Centre, Listowel for the 100 Thousand Poets event.
http://colouringshadows.blogspot.com/
Our own Christine Allen's invigourating blog. http://www.pw.org/about-us Poets & Writers magazine; hours of reading - and we are in there somewhere.
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Some of the poets who read at the 100 Thousand Poets for Change event in Listowel on 24th September 2011 The event was organised by thefirstcut Thanks to those who took part, especially Minister for the Arts,Jimmy Deenihan.
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