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1 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48
Brian Kirk Gerard Fanning Astrid Bartl Maureen Hill Alastair Philip Wiper Kelli Allen Kenneth O’Halloran Kenneth O’Halloran Des Kavanagh Rhonda Jury Dylan Brennan Dominic Hawgood Fred Johnston Pommefritz Linda Atterton Mae Ryan Victoria Kennefick Melony Bethala Hugh O’Donnell Astrid Bartl Ray Givans Sue Morgan Jack Reed Sarah James Astrid Bartl Gerard Fanning Pommefritz Denise Weaver Ross Stephen Gunning Howard Wright Kevin Ballance Barbara A. Morton Pommefritz Joanna Grant Susan Barnett Hugh O’Donnell Shelley Rae Emma Must Stephen Connolly Fred Johnston Astrid Bartl Susan Connolly
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contents
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Pauline Thomas
Chameleon
EDITORIAL ABRIDGED 0_32 LOCKJAW
I have lived in big cities, So what happens when we’re blinded by our sun? Caught in the headlights of someone or something,
rode on buses and trains,
stark and still as a rabbit on the road, terrified that we won’t live up to expectations or won’t make
and travelled by airplane
the grade? Conversely what happens when so sure of our confidence to acquire what we want
all over the place.
and to ride out the storm we ignore or don’t care about the warning signs? We perceive danger as
I think myself modern,
distant, as far off as the sky itself. We contract our gaze and choose ignorance for ease. The human
smart, cynical even.
condition is to please. Perhaps we are so scared of loneliness that we will sacrifice everything to
I am mouthy, opinionated,
avoid its grasp, even if in our heart we know the impossibility of escaping it.
sometimes without justification. Don’t know why, I just am.
Originating from a poem based on John Singer Sargent’s painting Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, a portrait that characterised the confidence of the aspiring upper-middle class in the decades
I don’t like it:
before the catastrophic events of WW1, Abridged 0 – 32: Lockjaw sees us continuing our
the noise of the traffic,
exploration of the psyche and the fragility of our personal landscapes as they explode into
the unceasing race to maintain
disappointment and uncertainty.
the lie of our self-importance.
Lockjaw is about denial and wilful ignorance on both an individual and a group level and how
I have lived in the country,
unconsciously there’s a part of us that wills us towards disaster. This issue explores our need
picked spuds and tomatoes,
to be loved, our need to be wanted, our need to be a part of something, to be overwhelmed by
topped turnips, cut cabbage
a person or philosophy…and the terrible clarity when the consequences of our actions become
on cold winter mornings
apparent. This issue is about love, hate and the consequences of giving into the spectacle of
swimming in oilskins.
something or someone.
I have savoured cigarettes On headlands among men
We cannot speak of ends yet to come, we do not have the will. We do not have the words.
With damn all to say. Ages ago, but still me.
I don’t like it:
the slowness of Nature,
the dullness of life strapped to
her wheel as she grinds.
Now I move between city abridged 0__32
and country with ease,
No part of this publication may be
pretending in each to be of the other. In fact I am
Copyright remains with authors/
neither, heritage
artists.
long ago given away,
abridged is a division of
careless of the past
The Chancer Corporation,
I thought my future could be
c/o Verbal Arts Centre,
plucked from the air, I was wrong.
Stable Lane and Mall Wall, Bishop Street Within,
I don’t like it:
the way I so easily
website: www.abridgedonline.com
talk when I know I should keep
facebook:abridged zero-nineteen
my mouth shut.
Derry - Londonderry BT48 6PU.
twitter: @abridged030 telephone:028 7126 6946 email: abridged@ymail.com
Brian Kirk
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reproduced without permission.
ALBRECHT DURER: Great Piece of Turf
I could have stayed in the street, etched a perpetual summer with an arc of London planes or re-assembled from footprints in a petrified lake, a matter-of-fact rhino, double stitched flapped like chain mail meccano, with posture set to trample and overlook all of this. But the all of this is any corner of any waste patch of ground, with its sprung herbal shape shifters, phosphates spun in a quiet lassitude, an aerosol barrage to risk excommunication or a peeling summons, so that creeping bent, butcher grass, foxtail and promiscuous sawbriar might compose a roof of turf like a moist hoard in a weed sump. So cast aside the sorrow of weeding, there will be time enough to fork at random. Get down chin on the ground
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and take note of how many winters are in this.
Gerard Fanning
Opposite: Astrid Bartl, *Clara_E_18Nov2010_5Uhr38,
Crossed The astonishment of the comet’s hanging light, A frost fayre on the Thames, Skaters in long coats veer and glide on blades of wood or bone Oneiric voices braid long chords of echo Breaths thicken to doppelgangers of haar. On the ice a carnival Bearbaiting, tumblers, hurdy-gurdy, carousing, trade At the Mustique House the common marvels: A moon fish, a twenty-foot serpent, the thigh bone of a gyant, An Egyptian mummy, a remora Amid the squalor of St Giles-in-the=Field The Christmas Eve death of Goodwoman Phillips Has gone unnoticed The red cross on her door soon erased At their new apartments in Seething Lane Pepys and Elizabeth celebrate New Year Fearful only of damp and ague
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It is still the miraculous Before.
Maureen Hill
Opposite: Alastair Philip Wiper, Vigga-Maja in awe of the Ogah-Ogah
Eleven Years, Abandon Another Day You still push the envelopes through the iron rails onto grass seldom cut, leaving the bright papers to wait tiny bird-light, for a possible wind to carry them closer to her front door. It is disaster to push against the cold and watch you. Your gesture is a song and my stale brow is the bag of mice our father threw down the well, punctuating our final summer in his home with something easier for him to say than forget it all. She left her own note, a simple paragraph framed by pink and yellow tea roses. I read the words to you because our father hunched into his own curl of disbelief and remained round in some residue of voice that leaned more into silence than rough cries, which we heard only once, at night. Somehow this matters in the way that cats carry the nearly dead to their kittens as an offering, yes, and a command. We listen on the way back to my house, where I teach you again how not to vanish, for bells from her church to ring the hour, exactly seven tones, all even. This has become home despite his filling with smoke, hers with simple, dark corners, yours,
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always tethered, twin orphans in a terminal made of sand, to mine.
Opposite: Kenneth O’Halloran,
KelLi Allen
from the Fair Trade series.
FAR AND NEAR I drive up Fanad way, along the Swilly shore past rocky downslopes and strands that reflect the coast of Inishowen. Past Rathmullen and Portsalon how close this headland takes me. Bending at Fanad Head, across the bay, I see home, lights in houses that I know, familiar townlands skewed. Sheep dot the gap of Mamore, Leenan with its back to the shore. This is how people here have always seen us. I am both far and near alienated in a place I thought familiar.
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My mother waiting on the other side.
Opposite: Kenneth O’Halloran; from the Irish Dance Championship series
Des Kavanagh
For All the Marbles
In a world that sells ‘earth’ in bags And ‘memory’ in boxes, Bears still wait on stairs for salmon. The day you live and die, My feet weigh heavy in hospital halls. I feel you drum past me – and carry on. Cryptic dreams reveal your location: layered gardens, Suitcases of sugar – honey in the comb. I climb familiar stairs to a roofless room and I see you.
The Consul's Question
What beauty can compare – huddling squat apothecarial jars filled with slow bubbles of gloopy honey – to that of a cantina in the early morning? Pungent dark urine – treacle fossilising in a cylinder, hardening medicinal amber. One more mescal after the one that’s on its way – a violent, soothing, morning fruit. All twinkling now in peach streams of Dawn Yvonne over undulating glasses, bottles, windows, mirrors coated with thin films of grease and then, suddenly in the half-light,
You leave a trail of peeled shrimp, raw potatoes
the identifiable fingerprints of yourself
And stone elephants –
and the night before – Your volcanoes outside?
In the distance middle ‘C’ plays over and over I follow your bouncy silver locks for miles To a river rock room in your ‘new country’ Where a golden thread sways in the breeze
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And I know
Over: Dominic Hawgood,
Rhonda Jury
From the series, The Conversation.
Dylan Brennan
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You’re the age your father was when he died : So there was no secret after all, no Idyll to consult or sacred text to be opened When he first thought he had sprained a muscle
THE AGE
He possessed the same lame concerns Yet the sand under his feet fell away by the hour His house was full of empty rooms, as is yours He became obsessed with postage-stamps A kind of philatelic pornography ; you are Nipped by a nervous passion for coloured Envelopes. You know well enough that something Will leap out and throttle you by the heart Or oligodendroglioma, as fatal and slow and musical as rhododendrum ponticum, will slither or is slithering upwards in your skull You are your father raking out the ashes Smoking like a chimney and looking As he did, for a windfall, a boon, a gift, a sign That forward is more auspicious than Backward, yet the garden needs cropping The milkman needs paying and the car-tax Is out of date : you are waiting for a letter That says nothing was in vain, none of it, all
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Is not dust and it must soon come ; it must, it must.
Fred Johnston
Opposite: Pommefritz, Mrs. Gabriela
The Stalking It starts not with the ripping of flesh from white bones, You sense it in the hairs rising on your neck, In top notes of moonflowers filling your nose, The heart notes that beat in your ears The base echoes of another’s scent in your dreams. It is not the tearing of clothes from sleep warmed skin. You do not notice the gentle unravelling Of threads slowly pulled at the hems. The soft nibbles like moths in the night, The firmer bites of another’s mouth like a sting. It does not pin you down while you fight, You bare yourself to the pact. You slip on a blindfold of hope, Tasting the heat of its breath. In the dew wash of dawn you push back the night. It stalks you through each day and all the rooms of your life, It is too late to shut windows and doors. Your very organs and bones shift letting it grow. Darkness empties and fills you,
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In the end it is your hand which offers it a knife.
Linda Atterton
Opposite: Mae Ryan, Sister Anne Goldin.
STOP YOUR LEARNING COME DANCE WITH ME IN THE RAIN'
And a closed window And cherry blossoms falling in an empty field A red door And clothes on a wire A glass of red wine delicate and dripping
If it’s raining,
And on television
then let it.
A silent film
The moisture fizzes off you,
downstairs
droplets running zigzag down your face.
The leaves crunching
I resist the urge to lick them off,
Snow castle-stones now dead
with difficulty.
And cars moving And children singing softly
Our umbrellas, poised like shields
Littered beer cans
against the squally wind,
And kisses, gravel cigarettes
we marvel at how we manage to stay upright,
And rocks jutting out
straining to hear leaf-blown conversation
from the waves
tossed this way, and that, and out along the harbour.
And musk
It is misty out there, the colours have run.
And dusk Wooden walls
At home, I imagine the fog horn is bleating-
And two white pillows
the clouds flocking to a corner of sky like startled
layered
by the loud barks of wind, the hands of the sea. The lonely sound rolls along the water, one long Mexican wave back to you and me – after coffee, you walk me to college.
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It’s still raining. Your red runners invade puddles with great intent and accuracy, ruining the suede. I don’t realise it then, but we are only noisy ships so utterly at sea.
Layers
A sheetless bed Water dripping in the kitchen And quiet hands And mouths A balcony and rain A dent in the sofa And burned lashes And white socks A blue sweater And a broken bench in a shaded garden And coffee mugs And seashells And I don’t know where
Victoria Kennefick
you are now
Melony Bethala
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sheep, scuttling in one direction, spooked
ARE WE THERE YET? ‘he who invokes history is always secure’ Czeslaw Milosz
In those days everyone carried an ice cube in his pocket in defiance of state power, the evidence always shifting and nothing to declare. It was a time for cool hands and a debonair air - a dream-kick delivered in a slipper. There were three roads out of town which met in a T where the scaffold stood. Markets sold lilies and roses and in cages flashy birds repudiated song. It was nowhere in particular that evening before the presidential address and the order to move out after some homicidal Moses with a basket of cucumbers on his head, promising tea and sandwiches (according to the scriptures) in a clearing with men in white jackets pouring sunlight into glasses. On the wet sand children draw houses and animal shapes,
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the women in shades apply sun block and never look back.
Hugh O'Donnell
Opposite: Astrid Bartl, Dragana_S_25Nov2010_7Uhr293
Lock Down
I walk the board-walk between reeds and bulrushes, avoid a jitterbug of midges. Sharp intake as I slip through surface blue-green algae. Suspended, at first, I thrash and splutter, make stuttering progress. Prone to setback, as when a swallow skims close by, plunges me into cloudy depths. Adopting different strokes
Climbing Mount Fuji
Weeks passed… Deep cosseting snow came and went from the blue mountain on the eastern horizon. Buds on the old ash tree grew plump, ripe thumbs that plucked at April’s restless air.
I regain composure. And when the shore is reached
Her favourite cherry idled into flower, unseasonably late, pale tissue
I stand on a confusion of pebbles and look beyond the lough’s confined basin
blossom chased by errant winds,
to where I might retire under a rowan’s
blown into the littered base of the white currant.
red-blood berries, inhale its changing seasons, And still no letter… or, cast a line from the fishing stand, fritter away days until trout or pike succumb, grace my plate.
She had written to him as the first grey
Yet, I know I will return tonight
flakes fell, about nothing in particular,
swim within the bounds of the lough’s waters, just the humdrum nature of his work, the diaspora as if pulled by this moon,
and his delicate new liaisons.
on the corrugated roof of a bungalow
Inside she’d tucked a small poem which told
between two drumlins.
of the exquisite agony and constancy of her love a giddy puff-ball poised to explode, imagining he wouldn’t mind.
Ray Givans
Over: Jack Reed, Untitled, from the series, Poledance
Sue Morgan
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light glinting
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Betrayal An empty can grows two ring-pulls in the train window, poised open-winged in a parallel world. There too, the gap left by a metal tongue pushed down. Into this thin-silvered darkness: dried flesh, taste of stale fizz, tide-marked lips – that waking to the red of a known mouth to find another’s echo has crawled in, embedded its forked hiss
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into numbed silence.
Sarah James
Opposite: Astrid Bartl, *Vanessa_H_25Nov2010__7Uhr07
PILGARLIC Our parish lengthsman, years retired, has taken to spending these hot days in his garden shed. I hear a tap dancer’s hammering, discordant notes limbering up like old man Stockhausen, so when he soft shoe shuffles downtown, he has more than base metal to scan the gutters or clear the drains from a long winter slumber, more than a baton to tap the morse on his fontanel, and if he tips his cap, he is making for that other home, where hymn is an amalgam of flutter and whisper, where rhymes
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fall in with their echo and his music scans the tension of sound.
Gerard Fanning
Opposite: Pommefritz: Mr Vanni
Fire Season Driving to the Santa Fe Opera, even Faust seems tepid juxtaposed to the sunset’s backlit inferno and the smoke-wreathed foothills. Eleven years after Cerro Grande, the wind ignites Las Conchas fire, and in a recurring nightmare, surrounds Los Alamos nuclear labs, scorches sacred Parajito ruins in Santa Clara Pueblo to the north, and, like a serial killer, returns south to the scene of the crime. In Albuquerque, the July night is hot, smoke-filled, and eerily quiet, with no firecrackers or bottle rockets to spook the neighborhood pets;
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only a cat yowling in heat, sets dogs barking, forces my window shut.
Opposite: Stephen Gunning:
Denise Weaver Ross
Folsom Street, San Francisco.
COMPANION PIECE A face you’d never get tired of slapping. You couldn’t love him if you reared him. Buggerlugs, watch him watching you with Lowry eyes sarcastically blinking, mocking, moving his lips in a parody of silence. So, schlock-horror, gag him and put him in his place, your case. He’s a piece of work: eyebrows raised, cracked mouth, the guttural syllables through green teeth ready to disgrace you, speaking while you are mute. Croons rugby songs; tells nasty jokes when you are out flying your kite. Moons from the window of the empty house, barely shifting his ass to talk through it, to hear nothing but himself – racist, sadist – so possessed by a wide-eyed hate he can put the fear of God into any gullible audience. Doesn’t listen. Sticks his tongue out. Cheeky fuck, using that silly Northern Ireland pro-golfer accent as if there’s a little bit of America he can’t leave alone, or somewhere mid-Atlantic he has made his other home. Anyone else and he’d be out the door in a thrice, or in the lake; a Great Lake, Erie or Huron. Scary biscuits. Puppet and his meister. Throw your voice and he retrieves it. Dog and bone. A reward? Cat got the cream? Muppet. What does he think this is? So help me, he can whistle Dixie – otherwise, moot point –
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wake up with a crowd around him, his head lying at everyone’s feet.
Howard Wright
Opposite: Kevin Ballance, Jo and Dru ‘Dog’
esse est percipi to be. is to be. perceived i.e. what you see is what you get
the eye of a needle. the way white fixes you the way some other unfolds you. a lilac sash fornenst a fall of near-turquoise. the oriental alphabet. all those characters. all particular and painstaking. notwithstanding. a gesture arched. nay. curious. nay. puzzled. nay. bored a direct gaze. an informal posture. look I am dressed-up. look. I am ready for elsewhere. make me. something fantastic. she says. while for distraction he wonders. is there warm broth for supper and seasoned with thyme. and thickened with barley.
the tension.
is absolute
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striking.
the tension. is
B. A. Morton
Opposite: Pommefritz: Mr Alessandro
Motor Pool Kandahar, Afghanistan
They repurpose things here. How do I know. Parking lots full of ghosts. Old flaking decals nobody ever bothered painting over, just a paper permit to mark the change. They don’t strip old bumper stickers. They leave the vanity plates. Just hang another lucky charm on the rearview. Let the moon dust take the rest. When I go to teach my class I still wear a dress. That’s what we were taught. Dress to show you’re serious. Then they will know it’s serious. It’s time to learn. I wear a dress but I throw on my desert boots for the long hot walk down All-American Boulevard. Dust devils whirl down the strip like in some kind of Western. The fine fine dust mutes all the colors here. The engineers’ safety orange. The kitchen workers’ purple. Dimmed. You can run a fingertip down your own cheekbone and it comes away brownish gray. My bright red skirt darkened down like some old scab. Out here you’re never what you used to be but you’re never different either. You can’t stay. You can’t go back. Can you help me, my student Larry asks. You see I can’t sleep anymore. They studied me and they think I can’t sleep enough to dream. So you see I can’t forget. And I can’t remember cause I can’t forget. Can you help me learn. I don’t know, I say, but I’ll do my best to try. They got it secondhand, the bus, its old German route still stuck up on the front,
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The night bus rolls him off to bed where he will try to force himself to dream. its old last stop it’ll never reach again.
Opposite: Susan Barnett;
Joanna Grant
Crown of Thorns from the series Not In Your Face
BALLAD OF A QUIET MAN If he listened he could hear a pin falling through space long before it touched down. It was hell, he explained, waking to a frosty morning and having to endure an hour of thaw; or leaves in autumn – the click of dispatch, then that hazy descent through crisp air, the bounce and crash. Even his mother’s tears played in his head every time he left the house, the whisper of them rising to a sigh as they broke. He was wearing mufflers when they found him in the basement where he worked on sound images for a low budget corporation developing the soundless scream as a firewall against aural overload and insufficient proofing, research that had taken him to the edge of whatever went ‘ping’ in the beginning, the first note of lament like the e-eek of a buried nail
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dragged from its bed then the scatter of tiny feet.
Hugh O’Donnell
Opposite: Shelley Rae: Perseveration #3
Lockjaw
A Glass of Vinegar
It’s the year my father lays crazy paving
A glass of vinegar in my hand
or plans to, at least. He stacks the jagged slabs,
warmed a few words of Latin
like gnawed slices of toast, in our back garden
from a cold classroom far below
then prises up the patio to find
my frontal lobe. I wondered if tang
a family of baby field mice –
might stem from tangere, if touch
tiny and pink as cocktail sausages –
& taste were linked by sound,
shivering underneath. He cuts each one
if the words themselves touched
in half with his spade. The mother’s run
like lovers in a daze and stuck.
off, he says. She won’t be coming back.
My tongue clove to my jaw when meeting your eyes ticking over
It’s the year I get tetanus
some page to misread casual for causal
in the back of my knee from hanging
& I wonder now how god appeared
upside down on the rusty climbing frame.
to those before. This world of sense is all
My leg locks like a weld, so he carries me
I know. Sacred and scared play around
round – in my red and pink dress – in his arms.
on my tongue, overlapping like a ghost. I fear for our bewildered fathers
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in what will be the loudest winter for years.
Emma Must
Stephen Connolly
ALL CLEAR In the scanner, a fat tractor-tyre of a thing you’re counting off the tattoo of banging like a spoiled brat let loose on a drum it’s gone onlocking your head and there’s nothing you can do so when there’s nothing sinister in those shots of gaps and curves and patches you want to scream for a second opinion so much has remained undetected that may well come back to haunt you a sneaky lust for the girl in the Credit Union the Polish lass in Lidl who smiled on a day when there was nothing to smile about images like what’s left after an atomic blast outlines and hints and innumerable tumours of hurts and expectations, hatreds too vicious to expose in full colour, a tint of guilt, leftovers from an ingestion of anger : an unsigned snapshot down the blouse of the young nurse who gave you the all clear you wish there was a war so that you might kill cleanly some vague outlined enemy or peek again at those photos of your mother in a bathing-suit in Atlantic City one bed across, a younger man dries his eyes they’ve seen inside his head too but fixed like a pilotless drone on the ambush waiting under cover of his corpus callosum
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they’ve tagged the rounded instinct nudging itself through, armed to the teeth not like a thought, not imagined but itself as clear as day, as if the woman in Lidl had leaned over and kissed you in front of the entire queue, the shock would rattle you like a mobile ‘phone ringing at a funeral.
FRED Johnston
Opposite : Astrid Bartl, +Annemarie_S_25Nov2010_17Uhr15
What day and night will make of you What day and night will make of you
Bios Kelli Allen’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies
In the centre there is the bed, an intimate area: a retreat and refuge,
in the US and internationally. She served as Managing Editor
rest and recreation oasis, but at the same time the origin of the
of Natural Bridge and holds an MFA from the University of Missouri.
beginning and end of existence.
She is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at
t
a t t d d a d a y a y y a a n a n d n d d n n i n i g i g h g h t h t t w w i w i l
m a k e m a k e m a k e o a k e o f k e o f e o f y o f y o o f y o u f y o u y o u w y o u w h o u w h a u w h a t w h a t w h a t d h a t d a a t d a y t d a y
a n d n d n d n i n i g n i g h i g h t g h t h t w t w i w i l w i l l i l l l l m l m a m a k m a k e a k e k e o
n i g i g h g h t h t t w w i w i l i l l l l l m m a m a k a k e k e e o o f o f f y
w i i l l l l m m a a k k e e o o f f y y o o u
y o u y o u y o u w o u w h u w h a w h a t w h a t h a t d a t d a t d a y d a y d a y a a y a n y a n d a n d a n d n n d n i d n i g
w w h h a a t t d d a a y y a a n n d d n n i i g g h h t
o f
l
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w i l i l l l l l m m a m a k a k e k e e o o f o f f y y o y o u o u u w w h w h a
d a y a y a y a n a n d a n d n d n d n i n i g n i g h i g h t g h t h t w t w i w i l w i l l i l l l l m l m a
o f f y y o o u u w w h h a a t
t d d a a y
y a a n
h t
t w
Lindenwood University. Allen gives readings and teaches workshops
Melony Bethala holds an M. Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity
throughout the US. Her full-length poetry collection, Otherwise, Soft
College Dublin as well as a BA in English Literature from Emory
White Ash, from John Gosslee Books (2012) was nominated for the
University. She has published poems in the anthology A Thoroughly
Pulitzer Prize. www.kelli-allen.com
Good Blue and has read her poetry and been interviewed for an episode of The Works on RTE that aired in 2012.
Linda Anne Atterton was born in Scotland and her first poem, ‘Anerley Memories’, won the junior competition in Lallans, when she
Dylan Brennan’s poetry has been published in a number of Irish
was seventeen. She studied Psychology and Philosophy in Aberdeen
and international journals such as Agenda Broadsheets, Poetry
and Cambridge and is a practicing psychologist who now lives in
Ireland Review, New Binary Press Anthology of Poetry, The Penny
Norfolk. She returned to writing poetry in 2012 and her poems ‘Topiary’
Dreadful Magazine, Revival Literary Journal, The OFI Press,
and ‘One Question’ were recently published by Poetry Scotland. A
Arabesques etc. He has also collaborated with the Fundación Juan
further poem ‘Hands’, will be published in May.
Rulfo on two of their recent publications El gallo de oro (2010) and Juan Rulfo: Otras Miradas (2010). In 2006 he featured in the Poetry Ireland
Kevin Ballance born in Bangor Co.Down, bought a slr of a school
Introductions Series. He lives and works in Mexico.
friend at the age of fifteen for a good price (he thought the built in light meter was broke - it was’nt) I don’t use that camera now but have
Stephen Connolly is from Belfast and a PhD student in the Seamus
been taking photos ever since, very semi-professionally and mostly
Heaney Centre for Poetry. He runs The Lifeboat reading series and
non professionally. I took this image in new zealand were I lived for a
is an editorial assistant with The Yellow Nib.
few years, but not with these guys. Susan Connolly lives in Drogheda, Co. Louth. Her first fullSusan Barnett: When George Harrison arrived in New York for the
length collection For the Stranger was published by Dedalus
Beatles’ historic visit he carried a Pentax Spotmatic as he descended
Press in 1993. She was awarded the Patrick and Katherine
the airplane steps. Susan Barnett, then 13 years old, soon bought
Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry in 2001. Susan Connolly’s second
the same camera and began photographing her everyday life. After
collection Forest Music was published by Shearsman Books in
a formal education in Art History and a 30 year career in New York
2009. Her chapbook The Sun-Artist: a book of pattern poems will be
galleries, Susan again picked up the camera – this time her father’s
published by Shearsman in June 2013.
Leicaflex. Her current project “Not In Your Face” has been acquired by The Library of Congress and has won Critical Mass Top 50 this year.
Gerard Fanning was born in Dublin in 1952. He publishes
The portfolio is handled by Clampart in Chelsea New York and has
with Dedalus Press and his latest collection appeared in
been exhibited in solo and group shows in the US and internationally.
2011, Hombre: New & Selected Poems.
Astrid Bartl was born in Vienna in 1970. In 1988 she was educated
Ray Givans has been published in four poetry pamphlets, including
as a photographer in Vienna. Since 1995 she works freelance
two from Lapwing. His first full collection, “Tolstoy in Love” was
as a photographer in advertisement, photo-journalism and work
published by Dedalus Press.
independent projects. These photos were taken in the premises of the obstetric- and palliative-station immediately after the birth and death
Joanna Grant’s work has appeared in Guernica, Verse Monthly,
respectively of a human being. There are no people visible but their
The Southern Woman’s Review, The Southern Humanities Review
traces they have left by coming and going. In the obstetric premises
and elsewhere and was nominated for inclusion in the volume Best
it is all about life. The traces we can see are caused by violence, a
New Poets 2010. She currently serves as a Collegiate Associate
brutal intervention of blood, excrement and effort. The rooms which
Professor and Wandering Scholar for the University of Maryland
are furnished for dying are filled with peace and silence. The traces which remain include unopened biscuits, a bottle half full of beer and
Susan Connolly
obsolete slippers. These rooms are not for staying in but for transition and intermediation. They seem to be hotel-rooms, soberly designed.
University College, teaching soldiers English, speech and humanities courses at various sites in Afghanistan.
abridged __ p.49
w h h a a t t d d a a y y a a n n d d n n i i g g h h t
Bios
Monthly Award (March 2011). He received an honorable mention in the
Jack Reed recently completed a BA in photography from Nottingham
Art of Photography show San Diego 2011 and a portrait entitled Olive,
Trent University, He is currently taking on various commissions
selling dresses has been selected for exhibition at the National Portrait
including editorial work for The Telegraph. He is currently exhibiting
Gallery (Taylor Wessing 2011). He received an honorable mention in
‘My Middle Class,’ as part of the Spectrum Photography Festival
Lens Culture International Exposure Awards 2011 and was winner of
at The New Art Exchange in addition to The Bohunk Institute. This
the Terry O’Neill/Tag Award 2011.
body of work investigates how we view the British middle class through photography. www.jackreed.co.uk
Pommefritz are an artistic duo born in Mantua (Italy) in 2003, Thanks to the intuition of Massimiliano Boschini and Mauro Manuini, the
Mae Ryan is a Los Angeles-based visual journalist currently working
Stephen Gunning was born in Limerick and is currently based
Victoria Kennefick work has appeared in The Stinging Fly,
aim of the artists’ coalition has been to create and promote activities
for KPCC - Southern California Public Radio. She received a B.S.
in Dublin. He holds qualifications from both Limerick College
Southword, Wordlegs and The Weary Blues (forthcoming). Her poetry
focused on photography and art: a group project where the individual
from Stanford University and is a graduate of the photojournalism
of Art and the National College of Art where he was awarded
has been shortlisted for The Sentinel Quarterly Poetry Competition
contribution adds more to the final result, and therefore gaining
and documentary photography program at The International Center
the MFA Virtual Realities in 2003. He has exhibited widely both
(Dec 2012) and The Cúirt Poems for Patience Competition 2013. She
more value. During the years the group has gained visibility and
of Photography. Clients include TIME, The Wall Street Journal, NPR,
in Ireland and abroad. Some selected solo exhibitions include
was longlisted for The Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize
received global acknowledgment. Among the most important are their
The Fader, CNN, MTV, Architectural Record, Elle China. Awards
Monster Truck, Dublin; Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; Mothers
2013 and has also been selected to read her work as part of Poetry
participation at the Biennial of Arad (Romania, 2005), Hong Kong
include: 1st Place POYi News Multimedia Story in 2011 - Editor
Tankstation, Dublin; The Lab, Dublin and Context Gallery, Derry.
Ireland’s Introduction Series in early June, and at the inaugural Writers’
(2005), Sofia (Bulgaria, 2007), Cuenca (Ecuador, 2007), Madeira
of The Uprising for TIME Lightbox; Eddie Adams Barnstorm XXIII
Other selected shows that Gunning has participated in include,
Salon at Listowel Writers’ Week.
(Portugal, 2008), Caserta (Italy, 2008), Ballarat (Australia, 2009) and
2010; Getty Emerging Talent 2010-2011; 1st Place Los Angeles
Liverpool (UK, Independents Biennial, 2010), Castelvetro (Italy, 2011,
Press Club Award: Best Short Video Profile - Modesty Modern; 1st
Video Festival, London, Optica, Festival Audiovisuel de Paris;
Brian Kirk has twice been shortlisted for Hennessy Awards for
Biennial of the Absurd) and Porto Santo (Portugal, 2011). Their works
Place National Entertainment Awards: Best Short Documentary -
Rencontres Internationales, Paris/Berlin. MIVEAM International
fiction. His poems have appeared in Southword, Abridged, The
were also shown at the following photo festivals around the world:
Transactivations.
Montreal Biennale; Tulca Galway and EV+A Limerick City Gallery.
Burning Bush, The Stony Thursday Book, Revival, Boyne Berries,
in the Asian Festival of Photography (Bangladesh, 2006), in the
https://vimeo.com/gunning
Cancan, Bare Hands Poetry, Shot Glass Journal, The First Cut and
Rome Photography Festival (Italy, 2007), in the Festival de la Luz in
Denise Weaver Ross is a poet and artist living and working in
various anthologies. He is selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions
Buenos Aires (Argentina, 2010), as well as in many events such as
Albuquerque, New Mexico. She works with disjointed, fractured, and
Series 2013.
Rintracciarti in Mantua (Italy, 2005), BoxShock in Milan (Italy, 2009),
layered images that swim in memory about a particular time, place,
Dominic Hawgood’s practice is conceptually driven and digitally
Kunstfestival Begehungen in Chemntiz (Germany, 2011) and Photo-
or event. Her first book of art and poetry, Midwest by Northeast by
College of Art and in 2012 completed an artist residency at
Sue Morgan lives in Newry with her husband and two children. Her
Soup (Mexico-City, 2011). At the same time a fervent activity within
Southwest is available on Amazon.
Centraltrak, Texas. He was recently nominated for Hyeres 28E
work was shortlisted for the 2013 Fish Poetry Prize and she is currently
art galleries has flourished, thanks to some exhibitions organized by
Festival de Mode et de Photographie, and continues to exhibit both
in the final shortlist of three for the 2013 Venture Poetry Award. You will
Sellars Project Space in Denver (USA 2008), by Lanterna Magica in
Pauline Thomas
nationally and internationally.
find some of her poetry in Crannog, Wordlegs, the Southword Journal
Palermo (Italy, 2008), by Infantellina Contemporary in Berlin (Germany,
experience designer living in Paris. She’s working currently on
and Abridged 0_28.
2008), by Galeria B&B in Bielsko-Biala (Poland, 2009) and by Brucie
two bodies of work around the Self through the lens of illustrative maps
based. He is currently studying a Photography MA at the Royal
Collection in Kiev (Ukraina, 2011). It is not a brand-new concept, it
and singular portrait photography. Gorgeous has been awarded 6
Barbara A Morton’s writing is published in The Yellow Nib, The SHOp,
draws inspirational lymph from the theories about “the death of the
times and exhibited in New York (curated by the Whitney Museum
Sarah James studied French and linguistics at Trinity College,
The Stinging Fly, An Sionnach, Burning Bush II, and previously in
author” which were elaborated in the Sixties until reaching our days
and Biennale curator, Elisabeth Sussman), Sydney, London, Berlin,
Oxford, and is currently in my final year of an MA in Creative Writing
Abridged. She is recipient of a Tyrone Guthrie Writers’ Bursary, and in
in an evolved and modified form. The collective offers a plural identity,
Paris, Kiev and Edinburgh.
at MMU. She has been chosen for the 2013-2014 Room 204
2011 was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. Further
behind which many real identities are hiding: what matters is what it
Writing West Midlands Writer Development programme. Her work
divers pieces may be read at www.userdesigned.co.uk
is represented, not what is hiding behind. A concept similar to a plate
Alastair Philip Wiper is a British photographer based in
Maureen Hill is a Belfast based poet.
of French fries. Massimiliano Boschini and Mauro Manuini started
Copenhagen. His work deals with the eccentricities of human nature
Rialto and Lung Jazz: Young British Poets and her first collection Into
Emma Must lives in Belfast where she is studying for a PhD at the
from this assumption, from which the collective’s name is derived, to
and the wondrous achievements of mankind.
the Yell, (Circaidy Gregory Press, 2010), won third prize in the
Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University. She won second prize in
synthesize the key theme of their production: interchangeability. As
International Rubery Book Awards 2011.
the 2013 Strokestown International Poetry Awards.
every single French fry differs from the others for little and insignificant
Howard Wright lives and works in Belfast. Recent poems in
details, but to whom eats them their form or weight do not even matter,
Cyphers, Magma and TLS. His first collection, King of Country
Fred Johnston born Belfast 1951. Has published poetry widely in
Hugh O’Donnell has published three collections of poetry, the most
so Pommefritz collective’s photos could have been indifferently taken
appeared from Blackstaff Press in 2010, and a pamphlet, Blue
both English and French. Lives in Galway where he is Director of the
recent with Doghouse (Tralee) 2010, ‘No Place Like It’. A collection of
by Boschini or by Manuini, with the viewer not noticing.
Murder was produced by Templar Press in 2011. He recently won
Western Writers’ Centre. Most recent publication is ‘Dancing In The
his haiku appear in ‘Bamboo Dreams; an Anthology of Haiku Poetry
Asylum,’ a collection of short stories (Parthian UK - 2012.).
from Ireland’, ed. Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Doghouse 2012.
has appeared in journals and anthologies including Magma, The
abridged __ p.50
is an early thirties french artist and digital
the 2012/13 Bedford Open Poetry Prize. Shelley Rae was born in Flint, Michigan, USA and received a MA in Fine Art from Central St Martins College of Art and Design in London.
Des Kavanagh is a native of Inishowen and lives in Galway where
Kenneth O Halloran was born in the West of Ireland, and is a graduate
She has exhibited her photographs internationally in Germany, Italy
he has worked as a dentist. Since he has put down the drill he has
of the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dun Laoghaire.
and the United States. Shelley lives and works in London, UK.
taken up the quill. His work has been published in various poetry
Based in Dublin, he is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Art (MFA)
anthologies and literary magazines.
Photography at the University of Ulster in Belfast. His project ‘Tales from the Promised Land’ was shortlisted for the Terry O’Neill Award 2010 and
Abridged Personnel Project Coordinator/Editor: Gregory McCartney: On some wild idea
Rhonda Jury received her BA in creative writing from Vancouver
a portrait entitled Twins: Puck Fair was shown in The National Portrait
and a big white bed.
Island University, in BC. Trying to exist in the present moment is her
Gallery in London, as part of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2010. He
Editorial Assistant: Susanna Galbraith: Settled cosily in Dublin as the
main goal in life - and she is grateful to have the opportunity share
has recently received third prize in the Portrait Stories category of the
end of the first year in Trinity College approaches. Watching, listen-
her words and outlook on life with others.
World Press Photo awards and is also the recipient of the Focus Project
ing and absorbing as much as possible (Coffee dates with Blake and Ginsberg becoming a regular occurrence.)
abridged __ p.51
\’Turn to Red\’ FLOOD Dublin; Tenderflix Experimental Film and
Conor McFeely Weathermen
Artlink, Fort Dunree, Inishowen, Co. Donegal T. 074 93 63469 www.artlink.ie
13.07.13
Tomorrow’s Almost Over
abridged __ p.56 Cover Image: Pauline Thomas, GenevieveP, from the series, Gorgeous