Abridged 0-34: In Blue

abridged __ p.1

abridged 0_34

contents Seamus Murphy 1 Maeve O’Sullivan 5 Jean Noviel 6 Joanna Grant 8 Peter Branson 10 Jeanette Lowe 11 Majella Haugh 12 Margo Ovcharenko 13 John Saunders 14 Ruth Stacey 15 Zoe Murdoch 16 James Meredith 18 Margo Ovcharenko 19 Howard Wright 20 Ceara Conway 21 Kathleen McCracken 22 Jeanette Lowe 23 Sarah James 24 Brónagh Corr-McNicholl 25 Rachael Mead 26 Jean Noviel 28 R. Joseph Capet 30 Alannah Robins 31 Joanna Grant 32 Patrick Mullan 33 Jane Clarke 34 Sue Morgan 35 Jean Noviel 36 Matthew Sweeney 38 Alastair Philip Wiper 39 Bill Wolak 40

Clare McCotter 42 George Bolster 43 Lizz Murphy 44 Ruth Stacey 46 Jeanette Lowe 47 Linda Anne Atterton 48

abridged __ p.3

abridged __ p.2

Margo Ovcharenko 41

Abridged 0_34: In Blue Editorial

Blue is our primary instrument of negotiation between layers of contemplation, grief and obsession that unsettle us. It is the plastic and palpable medium through which we create and recreate.

Blue is unspoken because we do not understand it in words. To move in blue is a journey of primitive sensuality. But a journey in blue touches on the ethereal, allowing us to visualise all that lies outside of physicality. To be in blue is a method of visualisation; it is how we see parts of ourselves that we cannot

abridged 0__34 No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.

Copyright remains with authors/

Autumn Day (after Rilke)

artists.

Lord: it is time. The summer was mighty.

Leave your shadow on the sundials, and let the wind loose in the pastures.

Direct the last of the fruits to ripen; give them two more balmy days to bring them to fullness, and hound

abridged is a division of

the last sweetness into the cider.

The Chancer Corporation,

comprehend through language and how we see what we allow ourselves to imagine,

c/o Verbal Arts Centre,

what we know to exist but only through the medium of blue.

Stable Lane and Mall Wall,

Whoever has no cottage will not build one now.

Bishop Street Within,

Whoever is alone will stay on the shelf,

Derry - Londonderry BT48 6PU.

will wake, read, write long letters

In looking at blue we feel the tangible world that we inhabit to be merely temporary. The greens and reds of earth and blood unnerve us, seeming fickle and so mutable beside the serene vitality of blue. They are dust while blue continues; is of another understanding; is shifting. Blue does not die.

Blue is our permanent element, embodying the subtle moods of pain and thoughtfulness that outlive us. It does not burn with the disarming immediacy of

and wander restlessly website: www.abridgedonline.com

up and down the boreens

facebook:abridged zero-nineteen

kicking leaves along the way.

twitter: @abridged030 telephone:028 7126 6946 email: abridged@ymail.com

horror or despair but throbs in mellow multiplicity and tonal diversity, slowly moving through the depths. It is beyond us and so we yearn for it.

We choose blue for its immortal otherness which fills us and feeds us in our thirst.

We push into blue elements and they sustain us, making it possible to continue of breathing.

abridged __ p.5

abridged __ p.4

a little longer in this new dimension. In this blue world we find another means

We hang between blue and blue in our humanity. Blue runs underneath us and domes above us; it is what bore us and what we aspire, through imagination, to return to.

Blue alludes to the essential and also the other, the origin and the unreachable.

Paradoxical blue fills our eyes with light as we look up and colours our skin as our gaze retreats. Blue was our home, to blue we long to return.

Next Abridged 0 – 13: Mara

Overleaf: Jean Noviel, from the Utopie(s) series 2005-2011.

Maeve O’Sullivan

abridged __ p.7

abridged __ p.6

Introduction to Greek Mythology FOB Shank, Afghanistan

When I get back to the Ed Center tent for class there’s a lock on the door.

I’m so sorry, I say. I’m not, Benny snarls. He made it so someone had to find him out there.

The rest of the staff has gone on home. They’ve forgotten. I’m new and I don’t know

He made it so someone had to clean up after him. Wipe blood and brains out of that cab

the code. But I want to learn, wails class clown Clingerman, falsetto.

because of him. Someone has to find the door and knock and tell his mama. Because of him.

He and Benny and Reeves yell Breach! pretending they’re going to shoot off the lock

Someone’s got to pack his gear, echoes Waddell. Someone’s got to put him in his coffin.

and kick in the door. Village clearance tactics. House to house. They make me laugh. We huddle.

Someone’s got to try to fix his face and tell his wife and children. Someone’s got to do his job.

He left us. Left us all alone. Waddell nurses the tear in his side. His stitches just pulled.

Battle plans. I bet I could get my hand up in that gap between the tent flap and the door and do a reacharound, says Clingerman. I just bet you could, says Benny. Mwuah ha ha ha.

So I think we need some gods. And monsters. And maybe some hot mythy Amazon women,

Hey how about we untie the tent flap from the door frame? Reeves says. We cheer.

says Benny. It’s been a long couple of days. Okay guys, I say, let me tell you a story. The boys

He works his mechanic’s hand with the torn-up knuckles around to the knot and fumbles.

settle now, eating their candy. Let me draw you a map of the world. Not the way we look at it

It’s hard for me to get it off one-handed, he pants. Shit man I got that down in middle school,

now, with all our satellites and grids, not the way those big old drones scan and beam

says Benny. Hilarity. We each take turns pushing our way through the gap, handing through

their streams of code. Imagine a smaller world. All the dreamy places where the centaurs

our backpacks our dinner trays our coffee cups and machine guns. We did it! We shout.

and the Amazons lived. So far so good, Benny says. It gets better, I tell them.

We did! I’ve broke into schools before, but it was never to learn, says Reeves.

Imagine somewhere at the edge of this map mountain ranges, with caves

Man I’m glad I’m so dang skinny, says Waddell, Else I reckon I could have ripped it

opening up and reaching down to the open space of the Underworld—we’re in chapter 15—

again. Ripped what now? We ask. This dang plywood sheet with nails stuck in it, it fell

and all the tortures you might expect for those who sinned in life. Who remembers? Yes,

on me when I was doing some work—it sliced me open here. He traces the path of a four-inch

Clingerman, that’s where you go to pay for all your worldly sins. The things you took.

slash across his narrow little boy ribs, easing himself down, pulling out his paper and pen.

The hurt you caused. Can we think of a single character we’ve met who hasn’t done his share and more of horrible things? Imagine Achilles, reliving every jolt and pitch

Well, I’m glad to be here, Benny says, after he and Williams fight over their favorite seat.

of every circuit around Patroclus’ tomb. How Hector’s body snagged and ripped

I wanna talk about hot chicks and monsters. I had to fight to get here tonight. Yeah! Clingerman

and tore apart as the chariot horses dragged it over the rocks. To desecrate the corpse.

brags. He said Words to the Lieutenant! I heard it! I knew he was gonna get smoked!

Writing in blood and bone the book of his anger. Unrelenting. No need for translating.

Suddenly “Taps” starts to play over the base PA. The trumpet shuddering.

All of them—Benny, Williams, Clingerman, Waddell with his ripped-up ribs—

Book One: The Unforgiveable. But. Not quite. Surprising, all those who find their way

all stand at attention, boys’ faces turned to stone. I never know what to do.

past the rivers of fire and hate to the fields of asphodel, where Achilles still mourns Patroclus but takes comfort in his son’s real goodness. All those mortal heroes, flawed. Forgiven.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard “Taps” played here before, I say. After the music stops.

Passing time telling all their tales. Leaving nothing out. Hopefully in the company of friends.

Someone shot himself, Benny says, voice tight. That’s why I had to fight to get here tonight. They wanted to lock us all down. That no good son of a bitch.

He was in Bravo Company, too, Reeves mutters, not laughing now. Waddell says, He shot himself in the face. In the cab of a truck out back at the motor pool. Yesterday.

abridged __ p.8

abridged __ p.9

What with the weather and all they couldn’t get the “hero” out till today. He’s angry too.

Joanna Grant

DROO

The butts of your remorseless teasing sigh; we feed your lust. Some other universe, perhaps, you grasp old age; “Good man yerself!” we cry, adore your style, the road you pack so much, the craic, the girls, way dodgy stuff, that smile. As high as cuckoo land, no will to try, you snub each olive branch and drink day-night into a wake, while we grow up.

Betimes, no matter how you strive to selfdestruct, luck rings your bell; fate broods outside.

Friends nod and wink, so no one cottons on till far too late. “Lay off the sauce,” folk smile.

Your charm declined, you hold doom in your thrall

abridged __ p.10

abridged __ p.11

till well into your fourth decade, then stall.

Peter Branson

Opposite: Jeanette Lowe, from Pearse House, Village in the City series, 2013

Decolour

I have eaten all the blue Consumed it ravenously Leaving nothing I have poured red into the sewers Bleaching any smudges left On disused floors I have crushed yellow out of existence Its sunny brightness Its hopeful lightness Gone Now shrouded in blackness Truly I feel Building in the corners of my eyes Slightly turned

abridged __ p.12

abridged __ p.13

The cold far flung inevitable

Majella Haugh

Opposite: Margo Ovcharenko, from Hermitage, series, 2011

Tilde

The flaw of uncertainty, a primordial yin and yang, the unfinished boat launched.

The glory of second guessing how things might be, the counting of blessings or unborn cattle and sheep.

The come day, go day hit-and-miss,

Halfway Between Sadness and Distress

I am in the ocean holding a bird waiting to release it.

Waiting to let it go and find my way to land and to you.

You, who told me to stop saluting those damn magpies, those damn magpies that singularly

when we fall

frightened me,

short on promises and language is armour.

all feathers and beaks.

The unravelled gut of a soldier.

The wandering of a soul or body

Black and white birds

on the mountain of this life or the next.

that clenched my heart, clenched my heart with fear that the luck would run out and it would be like before.

Only your strong shoulders and fearless smile, your fearless smile that dismissed superstition; you laughed at it, made me bold enough to keep my fist, keep my fist in my lap

abridged __ p.14

abridged __ p.15

and not salute the little fuckers.

John Saunders

Overleaf: Zoe Murdoch, Dead Magpie Blues, 2013

Ruth Stacey

abridged __ p.16

Interlude

So early it’s not quite light yet. I’m standing at a bus stop smoking my last cigarette, waiting on the first bus of the day to come pick me up & deliver me home to bed.

Too many hours of drinking smoking talking boking, too many images masquerading as thoughts.

It starts to rain. One of those drizzles that you barely notice but that ends up soaking you to the bone. Then I see the boy & girl walking up the road. The boy has taken off his light summer jacket & holds it over the girls head as she, laughing, lights two cigarettes.

The sky is brightening, amber into blue. Then I feel it come over me: a wave of euphoria, a swelling of the heart. The young couple, the sunrise, the rain in the air. I think to myself: Christ, the world can be a wonderful

abridged __ p.18

abridged __ p.19

place, sometimes.

James Meredith

Opposite: Margo Ovcharenko, from Hermitage, series, 2011

VEGAS

Divine as she is, teen beauty dispensed from bottles, a shaven dirt-bird gutter-girl a little the worse for wear, she has the personality of a freeloader and a history you can only imagine.

She agrees with everything simply to hear you talk.

Fame is a curse she never said, and knowing her porn name, you both go to bed in the common twilight of godless motel bodies twisted like neon along a bad road to the mountains

abridged __ p.20

abridged __ p.21

with all the time in the world to get possessed.

Howard Wright

Opposite: Ceara Conway, Wall Zone, Digital Photograph, 2010, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland

Blue Balloon

From the badlands I am watching close up and at a distance a blue balloon scale zenith skies above Anza Borrego.

Dear Zuro in London sleeping hand on heart, I will be the one to wake you, say your mother chose this day to die and that the rising balloon you might have dreamed about has just now slipped its traces exchanged its skin of weightlessness for a sudden jet of particles

abridged __ p.22

abridged __ p.23

scattering through breakages of sound.

Opposite: Jeanette Lowe, from Pearse House, Village in the City series, 2013

Kathleen McCracken

Blue lights sequence incessantly, LED-blips strung at life’s corners, while the tumble drier grinds on daily – clothes slap metal, settle, slap.

Its water drains thin, bleached of shaped worlds’ meaningful reflections.

Recent skies resemble this strained water, blanch-faced in their wideness broken only by the script of bird flight and stripped branches.

And When

My neoned retina’s stitched from strange fragments of nucleus, unstranded.

Inheritances bicker: the right hip screams, “cripple!” my left, “hurry up.”

Without glass, my eyes sense nothing.

My pancreas is less than a withered flesh flower on its beaten-up stalk.

To each their own abstractions in thin tissue, these encoded failings, while air bleaches, days wain, metal turns, lights flash. Years lake.

Fears rise from tinnitus to siren.

There’s no swerving then from the blip of neon crushing towards me.

The ferryman has his grip firm,

abridged __ p.24

How still is the water awaiting the diver’s last flung grace – and how blue the twisted pattern of my genes’ disfigured thrash?

Opposite: Brónagh Corr-McNicholl, Blue Lady, 2013

Sarah James

abridged __ p.25

curved now round the steering wheel.

White blues Seeing Jack White at Federation Hall, Melbourne 28.7.2012

The city flows across its hills, the footpaths slick and grey as delta mud.

I am tall but not quite enough to see over the periscope iPhones.

In Chinatown, customers with chopsticks lean over steaming bowls like fine-

Jack White reaches past them to thump my chest.

The words are indecipherable yet he is speaking to me clearly. One song latches

beaked birds dipping into sweet cups of magnolia.

People hunker neckless into their scarves, the rain opening narrowly for

We understand, he’s taking us, we trust him as we trust air to form breath, the

every step.

to the next, verses in one long lament.

In the puddles, streetlights gleam with the faces of national guitars. The

And then we are the blues, stamping our feet into the boards, driven to use our

pavement is a dull stomp-box, feet beating out the day’s blues.

floor to hold us, the grey city to exist beyond these doors. bodies as instruments as we open up, give ourselves over.

Under the beanie, the man’s face is a crumpled tissue of experience. At his feet a

The terms of our surrender are a demand, he reaches back into his past and

dog is curled in the guitar box like a warm croissant.

hands us more than we’d thought to ask for.

He sits, the glass shopfront his rickety front step and his bottle-neck slide’s raw

edge blunted with use. His nod and tap round out the trio.

The fluorescent lights snap on. We jostle slowly, like cattle miraculously still

The dog’s ears twitch with the drop of each coin, dreaming of the sun’s mellow

At the open doors we bottle-neck. No-one wants to leave yet the pressure builds.

heat on her belly.

alive in the blue-white glare of a freezer.

The blues have ambled, freight-hopping and hitching across an ocean and a

We flood from the hall onto the streets, gutters overflowing with our feet, a river

century to be here in this Melbourne doorway.

Out in the night it is still raining.

His blues are a moan in which the line between pleasure and pain is unclear.

of traceless steps running upstream, tributaries draining to trickles of

The trackless rails of sheet music cannot be used as evidence one way or the

sound in the darkness.

The bluesman has gone, his doorway gently steaming with silence, the scent of

other.

warm, damp fur and Mississippi mud.

Jack White and the women are on stage. There is a fiddle, a slide and what he

calls a stand-up bass.

The blues here are dressed up Sunday-best blues, just-come-out-of-church blues with full white dresses, cuff-links and suspenders.

But they have shaken hands with punk and will all meet up later in the pub for a

abridged __ p.27

abridged __ p.26

beer.

I squint my ears, trying to hear Sun House and Blind Willie McTell.

They are in the footnotes, sitting backstage, smoking, tapping their feet and

eyeing the backing singer.

Rachael Mead

Overleaf: Jean Noviel, from the Utopie(s) series 2005-2011.

abridged __ p.29

abridged __ p.28

Visio

In the recess of the night I hear the breathing of the leaves —sleeping angels letting slip the halberds of their pious hands.

I hear the snoring of the stones— drunken devils slid down pitchfork poles.

And in the hollow of an unstruck hour I see Hildegard tucked into flame, screaming in ignota lingua a lullaby for Dee alone.

Now Vitus and now Paganini waltz her off the cobblestone.

And there they are, a dozen fevered men with nothing but two dice to toss upon the fire, palms out to Savonarola, desperately in need of warmth.

But I have stood above the moon and seen the Earth a hazelnut resting in the savior’s palm, covered in a slow-wave ocean that none of them has ever crossed.

In the fullness of an unstruck hour I gaze into the blue-black sky at cracks in the aquarium and whisper: Dwarka, Ys, and Lyonesse, Vineta and Kumari Kandam—

abridged __ p.30

abridged __ p.31

not one of them was left to burn.

R. Joseph Capet

Opposite: Alannah Robins, Blue TV, 2013.

Miscellany of Rain Kandahar, Afghanistan

When the heavy thunderheads roll through here the raindrops don’t fall they hurl. Their angry weight against the barracks’ tin roofs. Nature’s artillery.

Not even the flowers like us here. Birds dive and shriek right for your eyes.

Everything has its prickle and sting. Under the sheds it’s said you can find yourself a dragon. A monitor lizard anyway. Its skin alive with salmonella, teeth dripping venom.

Since my prescriptions all ran out I dream strange dreams. I wake here and there in the night. My nightgown soaked with sweat. I can’t tell you what I saw most times.

Just a blur and the stink of stale adrenaline. Am I withdrawing or is this the way the real always feels. When you’re coming back after you’ve been out for a while. This rain. So hard.

Like it’s angry. At God knows what. It even smells hard. Like the shower water they cut with bleach to kill the germs. I stand and let it pound on me, wondering if it’ll ever get me clean.

Ever get anybody clean. Or anything. Puddled on the floor, it smells like a whipped wet dog.

Yet sometimes when I dream, I remember. I dream I’m in a forest. Old, old evergreens.

There on the ancient forest floor luxuriant ferns. Soft plants. The kinds that live in mist.

And in these honest leaves the patter and drip. Of rain. Real rain. Soft rain. Gentle beads.

Quivering at the ends of noses. Fingertips. Fronds and twigs. The kind of rain that soaks.

Settles into an earth that’s pleased to take it. Take it down into old pine straw and thatch and root. Rain that won’t pound tin roofs with hail and scare a sleeper. The kind that sends

abridged __ p.32

abridged __ p.33

your hands up to the sky, wishing you could sing to it like some bird too rare to have a name.

Joanna Grant

Opposite: Patrick Mullan, Blue Cells, 2013

Blue Ridge Trail

l’heure bleu

Through jewelweed and speedwell,

There is an indulgent lick of a moment

we leave the hemlock shade

between day and scarce night,

where the trail meets Trout Lake.

before the first burning star wishes itself into being,

Bluegill leap for caddis flies,

when the day stops its breath,

bullfrogs bellow in sedge,

takes stock and heaves its six o’clock sigh.

swallows loop so low

In Venice someone stoops to light the lamps,

their blue-black wings seem

pigeons return to the roost,

to stroke the water before spiralling

a mind strips bare of reason and all things seem possible.

upwards past the fiddler on a bench.

You watch and listen for every note as if it’s your father playing Schubert in the kitchen, but here the old man plays bluegrass, tapping his foot to ballads that sing of railroad tracks,

abridged __ p.34

abridged __ p.35

lonesome as the last of the light.

Jane Clarke

Sue Morgan

Overleaf: Jean Noviel, from the Utopie(s) series 2005-2011.

abridged __ p.37

abridged __ p.36

Blue in the Tiergarten For Dr K

One man slept on the grass, one on a bench. A third sat awake, with his dog asleep beside him. Then came the blue square on the trunk of a tree, and a sign forbidding ballgames.

Pleasure boats waited on the Spree to fill with tourists, while joggers whizzed past in reds and yellows.

I sat on a bench to rest, watching one swan caress another, while a woman broke off bits of a baguette to feed them. The blue square – what did it signify? If I’d traversed every metre of the Tiergarten would I have encountered others?

Was an artist obsessed with blue, and with the shape of the square?

I immediately wanted to copy him or her, and paint squares of the exact same shade of blue on every tree in the Tiergarten, till all the joggers wore blue, the boats were resprayed blue, the leaves grew out blue, and abridged __ p.38

abridged __ p.39

the sleepers woke up, smiling.

Matthew Sweeney

Opposite: Alastair Philip Wiper, Radio Anechoic Chamber, Technical University, Denmark, 2013

Lewd Indigo

color of shadows seen through a proctoscope.

Blueness erotic as a neck-length of nakedness emerging from a bra of gloves waving goodbye.

Powder-blue as the harvest of a mirror’s perfume of sparks; elastic blue as the veins of a penis at low tide suffering from clitoral amnesia.

Sometimes blue as a charm bracelet of rat scabs, or simply indigotic as the bruised voice of an alms-pit.

Also, opal blue as an unfinished sky in the hairspray of twilight, and the blue-black of burnt match tips dreaming of sails of flame.

Silver-blue of eyelashes in sunlight fluttering like kite tails.

Blue as long as a handful of night

abridged __ p.40

abridged __ p.41

lingers in the lover’s cast-off clothing.

Bill Wolak

Opposite: Margo Ovcharenko, from Hermitage, series, 2011

Sky Burial

They are burning juniper incense to summon bald headed angels holiest of birds waiting impatiently on high charnel ground.

As double-sided hand drums and incantations chime.

Well above the orchid tree line frayed messaline soil covers hard packed crystal frost and a bed of solid rock.

Some others transfigured into air back into thin air would have bought if they could pyres of cypress larch and dragon spruce.

From early youth her choice to become alms for sky dancing carrion pale-faced vulture, crow and hawk.

The small prey highland hare, vole and shrew still among snow lotus let live another day.

Now in high spirits the body breakers, their work done with ritual flaying knife and axe and sledge, mix for the wakeful griffons ground bone, sweet milk and roasted barley.

While the yak that carried her, released into the crack of dawn, abridged __ p.42

ghost winds riffling the hem of his great black coat.

Cold as a stone slab where livor mortis, shadowing flesh with lapis lakes and pools of gentian, proved what she always knew death is the colour of ascension.

Opposite: George Bolster, Fight to the Death, 20132

Clare McCotter

abridged __ p.43

crosses a wide plateau

Blue and brought an unknown sky into the space the organ pipes reaching like gold painted trees beyond it I went to church in my straw bonnet the front of my hair piled too high my Bible large in my gloved child-hands my young brother unruly in my care attracting busty heaves until small children’s time in a side room I wonder now if they devised it because of us My eyes fixed on the blue It is why I kept

The time a semi-trailer was tailgating us on the Pacific Highway his lights bouncing on our back seat Suddenly in front of us barely visible in the pitch a gigantic motor home doing a three-point turn FOR GOD’S SAKE I couldn’t just slam on the brakes the semi would’ve run over the top of us I simultaneously flicked on the emergency lights braked on and off until the semi pulled back then I BRAAAAKED With a split

going back

second to spare the motor-home got itself three-point-turned into the

Going to my grandmother’s church that one time

came upon us giving the semi the chance to get around us not a second

we walked to a main road to catch the bus Gallagher’s factory must have been close I always get a hint of the sour processing of tobacco when I think of that time We were well happed up but our breath was visible under frozen noses and the eeriness of new electric street lamps Trying to make conversation she said to me your lips are purple you’ve got a bad heart I bit my bottom lip feeling for true colour under the transforming light I didn’t understand the attempted humour but I knew bad hearts Her

oncoming lane and his missed caravan park entrance An overtaking lane to spare When we got to our holiday unit I just lay down I thought I saw angels suspended in the indigo of that evening Even today my old church boasts of its missions A couple of years ago I found myself back in my home city across the road wondering what colour the interior walls are these days It was another Sunday School though that brought in the missionaries to give us talks We heard about witchdoctors

son my father died from one An awkward moment

biblical diseases still rife crude tactics for women with difficult births

There were no birds

money It was worth it Here is my love of a good story my curiosity

unless you count sparrows nesting up in the gutters or starlings living in City Hall throngs of them unleashing at dusk like bats from their caves Or the harlequin exotics stuffed by ornithologists for the museum Glass bead stares

They brought us the miracle of faith and prayer Then they took our about what happens in the rest of the world and a rage for what women endure I want to go back to that road on a Sunday morning to hear

on branches stripped of their leaves not a prayer left in them

the church bells and how well the bell ringing tradition has been

She took me in as a teenager

out like flocks of competing songbirds with polite pauses and solo

told me of a girl who fell pregnant before she was wed She was still angry with the boyfriend even when she saw them sitting up in church married with three children all smiling in a row and after what he did to her! She was a woman of belief this was the closest she had to sex education She was my church she taught me empathy compassion I would’ve written Marilyn Munroe off as a junky only for her brief sermon on the Hollywood industry the stress of their public lives over

preserved Are they all reduced to one ropey note or do they still sound interludes to allow the faithful to refocus their direction avoid inadvertent divergence to another denomination?

Corncrakes are globally endangered now You wouldn’t have thought so back then We all sounded like corncrakes according to our mothers and melted the ears of our marzipan-hatted choir leaders I see their call is written

the top of the radio presenter

as crek-crek but if you go by the name corncrake and how it

I painted a pair of landscapes once

creak

hills stretching heavenward in all their brightness I could’ve eaten that abridged __ p.44

Another miraculous moment

cobalt and the Prussian blue squeezed straight from the tube ambling downhill Cobalt is a summer blue even in winter It is predictive Here I am looking out on the rural after-rain arching into cobalt space I would

is pronounced there

really it is somewhere between crek and

and there isn’t an alphabet for that in this hemisphere

Once there was a river with tall timbers and stars above I thought I could be buried there made peace with that torment the afterlife Sometimes I’ll hear a bird call out in the dark and

never have thought it

I think you too? Thinking about this life and how you’ve got on with it

There’s a fence now across the crest

wings as I refold mine impatient to leave the night ajar unfold in the

on the other side the neighbours have planted trees on the decline and

quite well how much more there is still to do? You stretch your crane light-bringer’s next lambent blue

the canopies are encroaching on my sky It grows colourless as I say this and yet trees are my cathedral Kangaroo silhouettes graze along it and one day two males fought for territory or breeding rights boxing like girls until one took off wheeled hurtled back into the other’s gut Retaliation was the acrobatic leap into the air the balancing on the end of the long powerful tail and coming down with the hind legs and feet to disembowel As far as I can tell he missed This was a miracle

Lizz Murphy

abridged __ p.45

I remember when they painted the skin-white walls

Iglu

Half sleep in shades of blue, voices tell of the

frustrated

attempt to describe violet flowers, blankets of them in shade dappled woods.

The view down a tunnel, blocks are cut in an hour.

Light turns the white ice shades of blue – the feel of animal skins: they hold back death.

In here sweat gathers on the clavicle, the brown skin on your stomach has never been touched by the sun – I touch.

The furs beneath my back are blistering, the oil grey bed is filled with shades of blue: the purple flowers wilt

abridged __ p.46

abridged __ p.47

just as you said they would.

Opposite: Jeanette Lowe, from Pearse House, Village in the City series, 2013

Ruth Stacey

Contributors Brónagh Corr-McNicholl ooriginally from Tyrone studied

Scotland. She has had a number of poems published in

Art at the NCAD and Media at the University of Ulster,

Scottish and Irish magazines. Others are due to be

before relocating to Derry in 99’ from where she

published later in the year. She is currently editing a

completed an MA in ‘Film and Television Production and

collection of her sonnets.

Management’. She was a recipient of the RTE bursary for

No matter how cornflower blue the sky,

George Bolster was born in Cork, Ireland. He lives and

The sea is always cloudy here.

works in New York. He has exhibited in museums and

You grow to love it or you leave it:

galleries through Europe and North America including

Stay, and every other ocean,

solo presentations at Chung King Projects, LA, USA;

Will always seem too blue.

Galway Arts Centre, Galway City; Triskel Arts Centre, Cork;

Pallas

Heights,

Dublin

and

Belltable

Arts

her degree film ‘La Femme et Dali’. She has exhibited in both Ireland and the UK. As a past programmer of Foyle Film Festival and the London Irish Film Festival, her Influences are derived from the emotive recognition and

relationships

that

exist

between

imagery

and

narrative. She strives to experiment with the process as well as the form to uncover layered meanings beneath

You learn the sun is a shiny toy,

Centre, Limerick. His many group exhibitions include

Enchanting you today, then lost tomorrow.

‘These Days – Elegies for Modern Times’ at Mass MoCA,

You play in chill shadows,

Massachusetts; Other Drawings, Ormston House, Limerick

Ceara Conway is a visual artist and singer from the

Hide in sand dunes telling stories.

City; Darkness Visible, Limerick City Gallery; Drawing

Connemara Gaeltacht in the west of Ireland. Her public

Suns are something borrowed.

Biennial at the Drawing Room, London; e v+ a, Limerick

and social artistic practice has taken her all over the

the surface.

and ‘Passing Through’ at the Glucksman Gallery, Cork.

world, from glass blowing in Italy to silent meditation

Wade where your feet touch the bottom,

He is the recipient of numerous awards including The

retreats in India and working with homeless women in

Although you never see them.

Rauschenberg Residency Award.

Downtown Los Angeles where she assisted the artist Suzanne

Drop a pebble and watch it disappear, An inch below the surface.

New bathing suits look old.

A softly sloping floor has a sudden drop, A hidden cliff you swam above.

You learn it was always there, Gasping to break through the blue shell, Spitting out fear, gulping down air.

Dive and let the ocean take you, Over the edge into a silent valley, Treeless mountains and empty fields, Bottomless gorges and shearing slopes, Dream you could live there.

Peter Branson has been published in Britain, USA, Canada,

Ireland,

Australasia

and

South

Africa,

including Acumen, Agenda, Ambit, Anon, Envoi, London Magazine,

Warwick

Review,

Iota,

Frogmore

Papers,

Crannog, Columbia Review, Able Muse, Barnwood and Other Poetry. His first book came out in 2008, a second in 2010 (Caparison Press); more recently a

commissioned by the Arts Council and CREATE expresses the experiences of the Asylum Seeking community in Galway City through the mediums of performance and song.

She is also working on a public art commission for St Brendan’s Hospital in Lough Rea. www.cearaconway.com Joanna Grant is a Collegiate Associate Professor for

prizes in recent years, a ‘highly commended’ in the

the University of Maryland. She teaches writing classes

‘Petra Kenny’, firsts in the ‘Grace Dieu’ and ‘Envoi’

to American soldiers in deployed locations. To date,

and a special commendation in the 2012 Wigtown. His

she has taught in Japan, Kuwait, Afghanistan (twice),

latest book, ‘Red Hill, Selected Poems’, was published

Djibouti, and South Korea.

recently by Lapwing, Ireland.

Majella Haugh was born in limerick city and has a Bsc

R. Joseph Capet is a poet and theologian whose work

in economics from London University. She was a finalist

has appeared in publications as diverse as decomP and

in the Desmond O’Grady poetry competition 2012. Majella

The Montreal Review, Literatura Foiro and the American

has also been published in the Revival Literary Journal.

poetry editor for P.Q. Leer (www.pqleer.com). More of his work can be found by visiting www.rjosephcapet.com and

abridged __ p.48

End Rape in LA’. Her current project ‘Visible Lives’

pamphlet was issued by ‘Silkworms Ink’. He has won

Journal of Biblical Theology. He currently serves as

Sarah James studied French and linguistics at Trinity College, Oxford, and is in the final stages of an MA in

by following @racecapet on Twitter.

Creative Writing at Manchester Writing School. She has

Jane Clarke has been published in The Rialto, The

Midlands Writer Development programme. Her work has

North, Poetry Wales, Mslexia, Envoi, Ambit, The Irish

appeared in journals and anthologies including Magma, The

Independent, The Stinging Fly, Cyphers, The Shop,

Rialto and Lung Jazz: Young British Poets. Also, her

Southword, Skylight 47, Crannog, The Galway Review.

first collection Into the Yell, (Circaidy Gregory Press,

In 2013 she won the inaugural Poems for Patience

2010), won third prize in the International Rubery Book

competition run by Galway University Hospitals Arts

Awards 2011. Her second collection Be[yond] is published

Trust and was shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish

by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press.

Writing Literary Awards and the Hippocrates Prize.

She was also runner-up in the 2013 Listowel Writer’s Week Poetry Collection Competition, the 2013 Poetry Ireland-Trocaire Competition and specially commended in the 2013 Patrick Kavanagh Prize.

Linda Anne Atterton

Lacy on her reproduction of ‘Three Weeks in January,

just been chosen for the 2013-2014 Room 204 Writing West abridged __ p.49

Toy Suns

Linda Anne Atterton lives in Norfolk but comes from

Jeanette Lowe is a contemporary photographic artist

Patrick Mullan has been working as a lecturer in Media

Jean Noviel (France), Born in Paris in 1973. Holder of a

Squared, The First Cut, The Weary Blues, Burning Bush

who was born and lives in Dublin, Ireland. She studied

and Art & design since 1993.From the early 1980’s

Master’s degree in Art History, Jean Noviel exposes regularly

2, Weekenders, Spinoza Blue, The Linnet’s Wing, In

photography, digital imaging and art at the National

he has continued with his own art practice that has

a personal work around recurring themes of memory, absence

Other Words and poetry 24. John is one of three featured

College of Art and Design (NCAD), Dublin and holds a

mostly involved photography and painting. He exhibited

or exile. The photography, which was always in the intimate

poets in Measuring, Dedalus New Writers published by

degree in Marketing and an MA in Creative Digital Media

throughout England and Northern Ireland in the eighties

or documentary source of its plastic approach, has become

Dedalus Press in May 2012. He is a member of the

from Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). She has

and nineties and more recently at the Context Gallery,

in recent years an autonomous medium of preference (series

Hibernian Poetry Workshop and a graduate of the Faber

previously had careers in Marketing, Communications and

Derry, 2009 and at Dunree Fort Museum & Art Gallery,

‘Paysages

‘Utopies’,

Becoming a Poet 2010 course. He was shortlisted in the

Digital Media. Her photographs have been exhibited in

Donegal 2010. The image reproduced is from a series

‘Les jours fragiles’, ‘Le temps qui reste’). His work was

2012 inaugural Desmond O’Grady Poetry Competition. His

the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Royal

of photographs taken inside Armagh Women’s Prison in

presented in ‘Les Rencontres d’Arles Photographie’ in the

second full collection Chance was published in April

Hibernian Academy (RHA) Annual Exhibition, Dublin (2010-

November 2006.

summer 2013. He also works in art department for the cinema

2013 by New Binary Press.

and was winner of the People’s Choice Award for her

contrée’,

and the theatre. Artwork: jean.noviel.free.fr

Ruth Stacey lives in Worcestershire and writes poetry

Fine Art at the University Of Ulster in Belfast before

Maeve O’Sullivan has published her poems and haiku widely.

in the small spaces between teaching and working part-

in the PhotoIreland 2012 Festival.

joining Queen Street Studios, 2001. In 2012 she was made​​

Maeve’s first collection of haiku poetry, Initial Response,

time as a landscape gardener. She recently completed

www.jeanettelowe.ie jeanettelowephotography@gmail.com to Associate Academician of the Royal Ulster Academy. She has had two solo shows at the Queen Street Studios Gallery

was launched in 2011 by Alba Publishing (UK), and her

an MA in Literature, Politics and Identity. Her poems

first poetry collection, Vocal Chords, is forthcoming

have appeared online at Ink, Sweat and Tears and Goblin

Clare McCotter’s haiku, tanka and haibun have been

and a one person exhibition in the Fenderesky Gallery,

from them in 2014. She is a member of Haiku Ireland, the

Fruit. Her poem Bikkja was published in Abridged 0-29.

published in many parts of the world. She won the

Belfast. Her work has been exhibited in a wide range of

Poetry Divas and the Hibernian Poetry Workshop.

IHS Dóchas Ireland Haiku Award 2010 and 2011. In 2013

group and theme based shows throughout Belfast and Ireland

she won The British Tanka Award. She has published

and has been included in shows in London, China, Nice,

numerous

peer-reviewed

born

New York and Pennsylvania. She received at ACNI Individual

Beatrice

Grimshaw’s

fiction.

Artist Award in 2009. In 2007 and 2010 she was awarded

Her poetry has appeared in Abridged, Boyne Berries,

the Robinson McIlwaine Architects “original vision” award

Crannóg,

Feminist

by the Royal Ulster Academy. She lives in Belfast. Her art

Review, Poetry24, Revival, Reflexion, The Cannon’s

is a visual expression of the language of her life, created

Mouth, The Moth Magazine, The Poetry Bus, The SHOp

from her own realities and imaginings. It is fundamentally

and The Stinging Fly. Black Horse Running, her first

Illustrating the inner workings of her mind and is, for

collection of haiku, tanka and haibun, was published

the most part, inspired from memories.

people that she has just met on the internet. She enjoys the

Lizz Murphy is the co-winner of the 2011 Rosemary

only recently known. Ovcharenko has had solo exhibitions in

Kathleen McCracken is the author of seven collections

Dobson Poetry Prize. She has published twelve books.

Paris, Copenhagen, Moscow and St.Petersburg; her work was

of poetry including Blue Light, Bay and College, A

Her seven poetry titles include Portraits (PressPress

selected for the 2012 Houston FotoFest biennial; New York

Geography of Souls, Moonclaves and Tattoo Land. Her

2013), Six Hundred Dollars (PressPress 2010), Walk the

Foto Festival 2011; reGeneration2 — Tomorrow’s Photographers

poems have been published in The Malahat Review, Poetry

Wildly (Picaro Press 2009), Stop Your Cryin (Island

Today, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland; Forum

Canada Review, Exile Quarterly, Poetry Ireland, New

Press) and Two Lips Went Shopping (Spinifex Press). Two

for New European Photography 2011; Fotomuseum Winterthur,

Orleans Review and The Shop, and she has given readings

Lips Went Shopping is now available as an e-book. Her

Winterthur,

in Canada, Ireland, England, Portugal, Brazil, and the

reprinted

Women

support from Garace CCC, Moscow, Russia, a fund for young

United States. She is currently Lecturer in English

Writing from an Irish Perspective (ed. Spinifex Press)

Russian artists; she also attended a one-year residency

Literature and Creative Writing at the University of

is still available. She also won the 1994 Anutech

at the La Fabrica Benetton research center in Treviso,

Ulster in Northern Ireland.

Poetry Prize, the 1998 ACT Creative Arts Fellow for

Italy. Her work has been presented in such magazines as

Literature and a 2006 CAPO-Singapore Airlines Travel

Camera Austria, European Photography, Unless you will,

Award (Australia-India Poets Exchange – Calcutta). Born

Calvert magazine, Artchronika, and others. Ovcharenko

in Belfast, Ireland, she has lived in Binalong in rural

graduated from The Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography

NSW for a long time now.

and Multimedia in 2011 and is represented by RUSSIANTEAROOM

exhibition Pearse House: Memories; Perceptions; Reality

Cyphers,

articles

travel Decanto,

on

Belfast

writing Iota,

and Irish

in 2012. Home is Kilrea, County Derry.

Rachael Mead is a South Australian writer with an eclectic past that includes working as an archaeologist, environmental

campaigner,

wedding

decorator

and

bookshop manager. In 2013 she was shortlisted for the abridged __ p.50

Zoe Murdoch was born in Northern Ireland in 1976 and Studied

‘L’étrange

international

anthology Wee

Girls:

Seamus Murphy has worked all over the Middle East, Africa,

Sixth Creek, was published by Picaro Press.

Asia and Russia. Hebegan photographing Afghanistan in

up of the Brian Moore Short Story Award. His stories and poems have been published in various magazines and anthologies in Ireland, the UK, Europe and the USA. Sue Morgan lives in Newry with her husband and two children. In 2013 she was the winner of the Venture Poetry Award and was shortlisted for the Fish Poetry prize. Some places you will find her poems are Crannog Magazine, Wordlegs, the Southword Journal and further copies of Abridged.

for many years abroad - in London, Timisoara and

York-based photographer. Gender roles in contemporary

Berlin - but based in Cork since 2008. Published a

Russia are at the forefront of her work and her photographs

number of poetry collections, most recently Horse

deal with beauty standards, intimacy, hidden despair,

Music (Bloodaxe, 2013) and Black Moon (Cape, 2007),

and trying to define the thin line between grown-ups and

and a retrospective selection The Night Post (Salt,

teenagers. Ovcharenko chooses not to pose her subjects,

2010). Co-author, with John Hartley Williams, of the

intuitively revealing the fragile vulnerability of young

satirical thriller, Death Comes For The Poets (The

adults. Her models are sometimes friends, but more often

Muswell Press, 2012).

challenge of taking intimate portraits of people she has

Newcastle Poetry Prize and her poetry collection, The

James Meredith from Belfast is a past winner and runner-

Matthew Sweeney was born in Co Donegal 1952. Lived

Margo Ovcharenko (b. 1989, Krasnodar, Russia) is a New-

Switzerland.

She

recently

received

grant

Gallery, Paris. Selected prints are available through Aperture Foundation, New York.

1994, leading to the book A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan,

Alannah Robins, from Dublin, lives in Sweden where she

a focus on the Afghan people through the turbulent years

gathers images, pulls them apart, and puts them back

1994-2007. His film of those experiences was nominated

together. She is currently exploring notions of interior

for a 2012 Emmy and awarded the 2012 Liberty in Media

and exterior worlds, of the properties of reflections,

Prize. Murphy undertook three trips to Syria in 2012.

to reveal or to conceal. The rest of the time, she

His multimedia film Syrian Spring was nominated for a

sings. www.alannahrobins.com

Prix Bayeux-Calvados for War Reporting. Other accolades include seven World Press Photo Awards. He has made films for musician P.J. Harvey and a film on the London Olympics for The New Yorker. He is publishing a book of photographs on America in 2014. “Photography is part history, part magic” says Murphy.

John Saunders’ first collection ‘After the Accident’ was published in 2010 by Lapwing Press, Belfast. His poems have appeared in Revival, The Moth Magazine, Crannog, Prairie Schooner Literary Journal, the Irish Times, Sharp Review, The Stony Thursday Book, Boyne Berries, The New Binary Press Anthology of Poetry, Poetry Bus and Riposte, and on line; The Smoking Poet, Minus Nine

Alastair Philip Wiper is a British photographer based in Copenhagen. His work deals with the eccentricities of human nature and the wondrous achievements of mankind.

Bill Wolak has just published his eighth book of poetry entitled Whatever Nakedness Allows with CrossCultural Communications. He has published poems in Nefarious

Ballerina,

Sister

Ignition,

Literarily:

Erotic, Featherlit, Clean Sheets, Obsession Lit Mag, and Meat for Tea. Recently, he was a featured poet at The 2013 Hyderabad Literary Festival in Hyderabad, India. He is currently working on a translation of the Italian poet Annelisa Addolorato with Maria Bennett.

Mr. Wolak teaches Creative Writing at William Paterson University in New Jersey.

Howard Wright lives and works in Belfast. Poems are up and coming in Poetry Review, Malahat Review and Arete.

A recent small collection, ‘Blue Murder’ was published

by Templar Press in 2011. He won the 12/ 13 Bedford Open Poetry Competition, Abridged Personnel Project Coordinator/Editor: Gregory McCartney: On another shade of empty, on another shade of blue, on another shade of yellow, sunset yellow, on another shade of you.

Editorial Assistant: Susanna Galbraith: Continuing undergraduate studies in English at Trinity College Dublin. Exploring, discovering, figuring it all out.

abridged __ p.51

12). She has had solo and group exhibitions in Dublin

fabriqués’,

Title: “A Line of Inquiry” - HD single channel video with sound, 2013 Image courtesy the artist © John Beattie 2013

A Line of Inquiry: John Beattie Resistance and Rebellion: Artist Residencies at Fort Dunree Saldanha Galleries, Fort Dunree, Inishowen, Co. Donegal Opening Saturday 16th November at 3pm Exhibition Continues 17th Nov 2013- 26th Jan 2014 Open Daily Mon-Fri 10.30 - 16.30 Sat & Sun 13.00- 17.00 phone: +35374 9363469 email: info@artlink.ie directions: www.dunree.pro.ie/findus.html www.artlink.ie

abridged __ p.56

Cover Image: Seamus Murphy, from The Swimmers series, Volgograd, Russia, 1999. www.seamusmurphy.com