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Abridged 0__40: Take Me Home
Michael Gira 5 Paul McMahon 6 Olaf Brzeski 7 Adam White 8 Joanna Grant 10 Adrian Ghenie 11 Gerald Dawe 12 Pieter Hugo 13 Emma McKervey 14 Maroula Blades 15 Adrian Ghenie 16 Gerard Smyth 18 Pieter Hugo 19 Jennifer Matthews 20 Pieter Hugo 21 Benjamin Mitrofan-Norris 22 Olaf Brzeski 23 Stephanie Conn 24 Jane Robinson 25 Adrian Ghenie 26 Helena Nolan 28 Pieter Hugo 29 Barbara Morton 30 Adrian Ghenie 31 Claire Savage 32 Pieter Hugo 33 Daniel A. Nicholls 34 Olaf Brzeski 35 Marion Clarke 36 Adrian Ghenie 37
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Janet Shepperson 38
CROWS ON THE WIRE:
Graphic novel available as a free downloadable app for iPads and Tablets from September 2014
Adrian Ghenie 40 Peadar O’Donoghue 42 Pieter Hugo 43 Joanna Grant 44 Pieter Hugo 45 Aoife Mannix 46 Olaf Brzeski 47 Michael Dineen 48 Cover Images: Olaf Brzeski; Adrian Ghenie; Pieter Hugo
Editorial
I’ll Go There, Take Me Home
We are still here, here where it is time and gravity that
But
we feel the most. In a purgatorial state we orientate
being, after all, the only home we have felt with
ourselves around the notion of escape, everything
our palms and soles. Can weight imagine weightlessness
seeming
without
to
advance
toward
a
great
mythologized
simultaneously
getting
we
resist,
dizzy-sick?
this
The
physical
parasitic
place
social-
flight. But our prospects in this genetic ambition
self insists on its survival, valiantly resisting the
are questionable, specifically because we are limited
notion of its own dissolution in favour of anonymous
to our mythologies alone. The ancient promise of a
transcendence. Behind the rhetoric of our ideals, in
timeless paradise plays on our minds, but here time
the quiet shadows of our mind we cannot but anticipate
is all that we know. It is time itself that gives us
a local homesickness, one for our familiar body and
the sense that we are moving somewhere, waiting for
earthliness. At the prospect of oblivion, all the little
Did I know who I was when I opened up your door?
something to happen. And we wait lifetimes here for
hooks of memory tether our wills to the earth that we
Do you have the right to lay your hands on me?
things to happen. We know the sun, it is familiar to
insist is temporary, we ourselves being creatures of
us. It marks time, reminds us of its cycles, arcing
this temporality. Even as we dream of something other,
itself across the sky every day of our lives. We know
another
the myth of the sun and how it holds us in suspension,
limited. This otherness is beyond our comprehension.
Is this world a place where anything can be known?
though to our old eyes it seems only to draw circles
We can only crane our necks, look up, and move in
Am I free to describe what my imagination denied me?
around the time-space capsule of our world. Either
steepening circles along the mountain paths. In all
Were we born from a mother whose compassion exceeded her greed?
way, illuminating our light-bound static, it encloses
we are at home in our isolation, tribal in our habits,
us. The landscape leans on our senses. Though we walk
unquestioning of our patterns of life that we follow
and walk, we feel our bodies weighted, rooted to the
like water through veined rock or ravines or valleys.
earth. We know ourselves to be of the same stuff as
They are our familial birth gifts that we customarily
Do you love the boy who forced you to your knees?
this greenery, this ground, this solid surface. That
accept with the ease of formula. Yet, churned by the
And where is the choice when my freedom’s described by my fear?
is all we can know as we inevitably drop our knees
diverging
to the earth like magnets and knock our knuckles on
earthly magnetism of memory, we move through them,
Am I so alone that I can’t even read the mirror?
the ground, drumming as children for the comfort of a
collectively, as particles in liquid turmoil, washing
mother. Green is the colour of movement, of time, and
back and rushing forth toward the ultimate obscuring
Did your blood run dry when you looked at yourself in my eyes?
of our short lives blooming on the mountain slopes.
mouth of Oblivion.
Was I wrong to steal what even a saint would despise?
This purgatory is an island, a sea-level microcosm
Thanks to Hugh Mulholland and the MAC Belfast for the
pitching itself toward the zenith. The physical aspires
collaboration with the ‘I Will Go There, Take Me Home’
to
ethereal,
show curated by our own Gregory McCartney as part of
stretching beyond itself to the reaches of human dreams
their Guest Curator programme. We were very pleased to
I will go there, take me home
and imaginings, but in the midday light only really
be able to be a part of the project. This exhibition
Take me home
knowing the blunt weight of its own rocks in bearing
informed the nature of our last three issues. Thanks
the spiked burden of its mountain peaks. This island
also to the artists Olaf Brzeski, Adrian Ghenie and
is our only object, its definite presence in time and
Pieter Hugo. And special thanks to Michael Gira of
space our only certainty. Here we can remember, the
Swans who kindly allowed us to use his lyrics and base
familiar geography signifying our lives to our minds
the exhibition on one of his songs.
the
metaphysical
and
fantasises
the
dimension,
pull
of
another
an
colour,
unseen
our
paradise
dreams
against
are
the
What did the virgin say when he sold his innocence? What did the dead man say when he whispered in my ear?
Is this place a home that will shelter you or me?
Do you love the girl who left you there to bleed?
Am I alone in this room if I’m holding myself in my hands? When my poison blood dies, then where will our memory be?
and bodies. This is the archetype of existence, and circling feet and carved a history by the pressure of
abridged 0__40
our memories. This peculiar island rock coiled alone
No part of this publication may be
on a singular stretch of ocean is our life paradigm.
reproduced without permission.
How we exist here is all we know about how to exist at all. In an Alcatraz of the soul we compulsively project our memories. Purgatory is when the sensory present cyclically aligns itself with the landscape of the past. This is our condition as far as time allows us to remember. It is a self-contained cycle.
Copyright remains with authors/ artists.
Published by Young God Publishing administered outside of North America by Mute Song. Used by permission.
abridged is a division of The Chancer Corporation, c/o Verbal Arts Centre, Stable Lane and Mall Wall,
We fantasize the prospective rupturing of this cycle,
Bishop Street Within,
an ultimate explosion into the linear and rocketing
Derry - Londonderry BT48 6PU.
toward a culminating oblivion, a restorative cure for our spiritual homesickness.
website: www.abridgedonline.com facebook:abridged zero-nineteen twitter: @abridged030 telephone:028 7126 6946 email: abridged@ymail.com
Michael Gira
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here we exist. We have sculpted this mountain with our
Shooting Star
I spent a long time in darkness. I had come too far, the distance ahead too far away. I hummed a long, silent serenade to the cats in the alley below wailing in intercourse like children teething. I lie here, bent like a question-mark, under a whiskey-soaked duvet. Unkind voices wash freely over my driftwood-skin. I can’t shake off the awful feeling that it is all just a preparation, a squaring up; nothing more than a few encouraging jabs to entice our frail footsteps further out into the woods, the deserts and the seas, where we won’t hear the sirens and the alarms that have already been called for us. Where all our ghost-guides, dead relatives, enemies, judges, allies, onlookers and speculators stand hopelessly way off, too confused in the certainty of the crush that sends us scattered towards the infinite, obliterated before perfection. The wick simply lowered to its end, bringing its horizon in, and like all shooting stars that blaze a trail across the sky,
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is enveloped by the unfathomable darkness.
Paul McMahon
Opposite: Olaf Brzeski, Breath, bone soot, 2009
Mare Nostrum for the captain of the Leonard Tide
North-westerly course out of Tripoli.
Now, international regulation
(Re)Provision of foodstuffs and water
on sea rescue proscribes such persons
to the offshore rig Zagreb 1,
be repatriated to the nearest port,
fifty miles (nautical, mind) off the coast
which meant a U-turn to Tripoli,
of Libya. Routine operation
but some demanded I tow them
really, until one of my officers
to Italy, and the whole boatload boiled over
spyglassed what looked to be an agitation
to a frenzy when I had to refuse,
of gulls over a small craft.
threatening to fling themselves into the sea.
On consultation I gave orders
Considering women and small children
to tack and when we closed and saw
were in the hold, the middle ground
it was men hailing us with their shirts,
was to bid them board the Leonard Tide.
yelling in the unintelligible,
Water, chocolate bars and first aid
sent my second in command, an Egyptian,
could thus be duly administered.
to sound out the crew in Arabic.
Some of those we treated for pussy bullet wounds and knife cuts, just blushed
Well I saw ants once, when I was a child,
like men showing us their private parts;
eclipse a slice of apple let fall
the more mouthy there raged at paying
on the front stoop of our building,
thousands of American dollars for passage
and that is what it was:
to Europe and being abandoned
one hundred and fifty souls overcrowding
in the middle of the Med like a pail
the deck of a fifty-foot wooden vessel,
of kittens. Evidently there’s money
and as many again squatting below
to be made in promising a man
between the boards, I learned subsequently.
some crackpot impracticality
That they badly lacked water and food
he has fantasized, or had put in his head.
was relayed to me, and were parched for petrol,
so adrift under a big midday sun,
are henceforth patrolling the zone
and not a rudiment of navigation
in the likely event of further rescue
nor a lifejacket amongst them.
operations being executed.
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I note Italian battleships
Adam White
Mist
I ride in the back of a taxi thinking of heaven. To the right of the highway, an exit— off the ramp, the funeral hall— where my friend the farm boy from Oklahoma who married a Korean woman saw her father’s body burnt before his eyes, the blackened skeleton crushed to chips and ash while the mourners sang. What was left in a little box tied up neat with string. But perhaps not all, I think--surely some of the burning flesh drifted up and out the chimneys in the crematorium smoke, the fine particulates silting into the furrows turned over with last season’s stalks, there by the ditch where the patient beetles roll their balls of dirt and dung and eggs, there where the cows mull, chewing their cuds by the lopsided sheds, there where the paddies meet the sudden crazy crags here in this country of extremes, that body, all those beloved bodies, now a part of this forever, the one he watched get burned, and him, the strange new family, and me, in my taxi, too— Part of it all, this raw, soft early spring mist hanging
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like sweet woodsmoke and cloud at dusk. Heaven.
Opposite: Adrian Ghenie, Nougat 2, 2010, Oil on Canvas, 220cm x 200cm,
Joanna Grant
Collection Verdec Courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp.
Via Dolorosa ‘Nobody in the world knows where I am’ John Berryman, Dream Song (355)
Groggy with the height and wind in his ears and, for all we know, the sound of the mother going on at him, poor Mr. Bones decided he’d had enough and was off, a lurid flight, away from those who loved and in return were loved, with no rhyme or reason why but for the busted-up bits and pieces of the past, Mr. Bones, all heart, cried his goodbye and was spotted only once, a ghost already,
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in the resistless fall down to the river’s demented dark.
Opposite: Pieter Hugo: Casmiar Onyenwe. Enugu, Nigeria, 2008, from Nollywood series © Pieter Hugo.
Gerald Dawe
Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg & Yossi Milo, New York
Comet
Coasting the reel of golden thread to the realm of the dead, suspended in air from that line of faith came the inheritors of the stars;
The Lodge
Leave me alone to wallow in my algae-green room, narcoleptic, in a state undone.
but the windlassed fall remained unfixed,
Snow crystals melt
the dark flight of meandering over-shot orbs
under the heated magnifying glass. Spring’s arrived in a split second of time
strobed in cosmic dust: the yellow of iron,
on the metallic window ledge.
the violet of calcium and the splattered cadmium red For that moment, of nitrogen and oxygen- each pin pointed
I am a goddess,
mote of this ephemeral rainbow-
empowered to change the seasons. The Bunsen is raging,
remained, despite disintegration,
a Terpsichorean flame fans out.
significantly larger than an atom.
Caloric waves catch my eyes as I stoop, listening to the hiss of water.
Nearing Earth these objects unspooled, Intervention is vital until
targeted in trajectory and curve of light,
the sun appears to thaw the silence. the thread unguided and lost, leaving the glistering frayed remnants
Dishevelled I wait to embrace the warmth.
to be ground into the weary clay.
Keloidal tissue forms in the mind. Hibernation eludes me unlike the bear. I am not free like you, robin in this cedar tree before me with half a slug pinched tight in your beak, or the playful black Labradors, running in snow coats that flake off like transient moments. Gaiety bound to nature’s form. Out on the waterfront, the sea kicks in twilight.
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pivot in a snow-laden sea. The dark enters and straddles itself, a shadowy void appears. Grey smog smothers. The cold has claws, snow-ice forms again on the window sill. I cave in, as the neon tube-lights flicker on in this room.
Overleaf: Adrian Ghenie, The Blow, 2010, Oil on Canvas, 35cm x 65cm, Private Collection
Emma McKervey
Courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp
Maroula Blades
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Three orange buoys
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OXMANTOWN
(Baile Lochlann – Scandinavian Homeland)
Through Oxmantown I walked but saw no ancient lights or herdsman with his fattened cattle, no trace of those who were founders of the place, who had to cross the watery divide, build on soft ground.
And now new blow-ins have arrived but there is still some vestige of the days that time works hard to obliterate.
An old Dane haunts the parish, a renegade from the annals whose axe broke stones on the stony road.
That Old Dane, a mad-eyed stranger in wolfskin and a mask, came to taste the Liffeytide in Anna Livia’s mouth and stayed to live a second life, abridged __ p.18
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perfect the art of exile, cunning, hatred.
Opposite: Pieter Hugo: Chigozie Nechi. Enugu, Nigeria,
Gerard Smyth
2009, from Nollywood series © Pieter Hugo. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York
Homeland Security The highest law is home, and a man got to protect his young. A fist can feed, I mean, it can catch a catfish— and the best meals, believe me, are the daddies. Their bodies are big tongues, they sense your hand in their nest before it connects. Be ready, he don’t wait for you to get at the eggs. He strikes first, charges through mud, jaws clamp down on your arm to draw blood. He’ll fight—you got to be strong enough to pull him out the river, throw him on the bank, fins gaspin and flappin. Mind you, this is the old way, but if it ain’t broke... when you’re home, get your hammer and nail the head to a post in the yard. Skin him, strip insides out. Your lady can roll his flesh in cornmeal and pepper, fry it up for a nice family dinner. I can nearly mark a calendar from all them spines lined along the fence, months of keeping our Fridays holy. Only problem we got now— when it comes to night when me and my family are all tucked in, to them that gnaw on bones,
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there’s something in the rotting stink, it calls no matter how clean I cut him.
Opposite: Pieter Hugo: Patience Umeh, Junior Ofokansi, Chidi Chukwukere. Enugu, Nigeria,
Jennifer Matthews
2008, from Nollywood series © Pieter Hugo. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York
Remember The Deed, Remember
A new present creeps and leaves – a wave that takes flesh from my bones and returns it, quietly. Every few seconds I become anew and walk through pasts, appraising landscapes. Remember; we turned south, from door to door. After, we stayed sitting and made some satisfaction in catching different dialects; as though nothing could remind you that that was not your home. A bird breaks my sight, severs skies in two, and although unchanged, the river’s grown smaller.
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Suddenly, we’re old.
Benjamin Mitrofan-Norris
Opposite: Olaf Brzeski, Dream Spontaneous Combustion, 2008.
The Last to Leave
Student
Out in the yard
I would throw up my hands
Dimmed in smog of L. A.
they are selling our lives,
and release them all;
she’d been away for so long,
and the gavel drops –
clutter the sky
the wrapped-toffee river of cars
while he sits inside
with island parts
cutting through memories,
stoking the fire,
and name them
orange groves, live oaks,
fixated on the flame.
one by one.
chaparral. Blood of coyotes pierced by inventions, bright
When the time comes,
Not just the Plough
men exploding atoms
he steps into the boat
but the sickle and scythe,
or the next great idea.
without looking back –
the pitchfork and hoe,
Her shades insufficient
and sits by my side,
the threshing mill.
to shrivel the glare of history,
not saying a word.
Yellow iris, saltmarsh, turf,
or was it industry, taking life,
He can’t meet my eyes.
stonecrop, bracken, inland cliff. taking on shape, machine-
My own eyes fall
My manx shearwater,
driven, bulging with pistons,
to the thick wooden slats
black headed gull,
circuits, the whole business.
and the iron bolts
arctic tern and eider duck,
Watching a movie of sunsets
that keep me afloat,
stock dove, gannet, lapwing, nest.
refracted from particles:
above the currents
Schoolhouse, cottage, garden gate,
glossed in, unable to scream.
swirling on the Sound.
boatman, teacher, daughter, son –
She had felt like a woman in a greenhouse, impossibly
If only it were night,
the children,
large, unpeeling rose-tinted
I would look to the stars;
all of our children.
beauty. Experiments
the stars my father named for me
Cassiopeia,
leap-frogging one on another,
sixty years ago or more,
what have you lost?
shining P-thirty two
lifting me onto his shoulders
Oh Cephes, who ties
so I could touch the sky.
their daughter to a rock?
on her face, method lately
But the sun is high,
to fish in the drains,
the stars have gone out
the odd alligator.
and the boat is set to tip,
She had felt like a wallet
so I drop the Copeland
left out in the weather, notes,
pebbles, one by one,
lips stuck together, fading
and watch them sink.
identity nibbled and bent. Alone in the desert, she had only one vision, a ghost-ridden motorbike, leaving, quiet at night.
Stephanie Conn
Overleaf: Adrian Ghenie, Flight into Egypt, 2008, Oil on Canvas, 200cm x 340cm,Titze Collection.
Jane Robinson
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abandoned because of its danger
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Benediction Today, I am visited by an improbable moon Cut by laser disc, so huge and whole, a wafer Stuck like some galactic stamp On a pale blue envelope of sky Before slipping into the mouth of morning Echoes of forgotten sacraments Strong hands wrapped in heaven’s cloths Raising the monstrance with its glassed-in heart Gold spikes caught in the cloudy trails of An incense burner on its shifting chains The sky is suddenly empty
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A hole cut in a page
Opposite: Pieter Hugo: Abdulai Yahaya, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana,
Helena Nolan
2010, from Permanent Error series Š Pieter Hugo. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York
A traveller, shy and curious, considers a childhood. Black and white images, composed and careful, Intricate orchestration, variations on non-colour, At once mysteriously isolated, frighteningly crowded, And lightened, or darkened, by the slow pass of time. He watched constantly, waiting for something to happen. Then he went out and walked, passing without minding
Bode
The leaning tall narrow houses, and smelling Without tasting the cities famous café pastries. The mind’s wheel swiftly calibrated, he sees musicians Sit cross-legged. He imagines a viola. He hears a mandolin On a pastis-tinted morning between rush hour and lunch hour. Thoughts lead him to the river; he thought about counting The bridges, thought about removing his shoes to walk In wool-stocking soles, so clean swept were the boards. He turns a coin. He stands motionless. The man in charge Of the life-station tells him: No one ever jumps off at night. A crescent moon. A winter sky. Everything overwhelms him. Dark silhouette of a tall man in a dark blue-green loden And equally dark black bowler hat faces with his back To the onlooker, and also to the traveller ~ he speaks Urgently, refers to various means of transport, requests
There may be
Flying machines.
There shall be
Riders on horseback.
Barbara Morton
Opposite: Adrian Ghenie, Pie Fight Study 8, 2009, Oil on Canvas, 38cm x 33 cm, Cyril Taylor Collection U.K.
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The facility to move precisely from one locus to another—
Spinning Shadows
Bright as a fresh-minted sixpence, her swollen form hung solemn, gleaming, radiant, as dusk danced into the trick of night like a child caught in faerie magick – sinfully innocent of a landscape lit darkly by dying stars. A silver hare flashed before me through the trees, trailing translucent breadcrumbs in his wake as he crossed my path but spurned all hope of helping me home. A sharpness iced the air like a blade of the damned – a weapon which could slice through stars. Goggled by guarana-berry eyes, my blood froze under the twitching gaze of suspicion. I tripped and followed my white rabbit swiftly through the myre of leaping shadows and compressed space – where black dogs galloped through prison of stars. She spun destinies from the scourge of our souls, lightly laced them with the hearts of our desires. Deftly, keenly, her fingers hummed misfortune;
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in her eyes tumbled a universe of stars.
Opposite: Pieter Hugo: Gabazzini Zuo. Enugu, Nigeria, 2008, from Nollywood series © Pieter Hugo.
Claire Savage
Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York
god of the dead
the failed things had drawn to me not as if I’d wanted them
burnt-up dewdrops pooling on the kitchen floor
not as if I’d chose this estate
creaking with my forebear’s weight
tried moving once
tried to construct a hideaway
Ikea-square
slid in snug among the apartment rows
struck straight with bare white walls
thin walls you could drive a man through
walls that would not hold a nail
insubstantial planes
thinner than the flock of spectral crows and
the creeping leak of old ghosts
that sought out my new home
tried to be a normal woman once
to take my daily latte in the morning’s strip-mall café
put the sugar-dusty sugar cubes in
without a creamy splash
but Charon, hands-on, found me
started ferrying things across
knobby knuckles
taciturn stirrer
steam-devils in the froth
I had asked them I had pleaded finally sought to speak sense
but
you know what whispers slip back
from the lips of the abyss.
Daniel A. Nicholls
Oppisite: Olaf Brzeski, Final Weapon, ceramics, l-100cm, 2008
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Waiting for Jodo Enveloped in the fog of the ordinary, amidst discontent and idle rumour, our existential disorder thrives. We strive for the extra-ordinary, the additional, the supplementary, inviting disharmony, beckoning apocalypses. We sit in chaotic darkness, hit the Morning Bell Chant wait for the White Lotus to deliver us to the Pure Land,
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where we will be extinguished.
Jodo Shinshu is a school of Pure Land Buddhism, founded in 13th century Japan by Shinran (1173-1262)
Opposite: Adrian Ghenie, Pie Fight Study 4, 2008, Oil on Canvas, 52cm x 52cm, Private Collection Courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp
Marion Clarke
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just a short step from Nirvana,
BABA YAGA’S CHILDREN
3.
1. I am the witch of legend, Baba Yaga.
shivering, at the turning point. The trail,
You are my children, launched like spiderlings
no longer crumbs but hoofprints, forks in three.
into the hostile or indifferent air,
Which will you follow – the red horse of sunrise,
feeling the chill that separation brings.
whose drama flares and burns triumphantly
Now it’s up to you to slink away,
then fizzles out – or the white horse of day,
find a vacant hearth and call it home.
a flat calm radiance like a stagnant pool,
Human parents who won’t understand you.
or the black horse of night that drags you further
Veil the mirrors. No reflected gleam
away from daylight, shriveling your soul?
to lure you out into the dangerous moonlight.
To choose is risky; not to choose is death.
Stay in. Stay in. Until the piled-up days
But in the end, all choices are the same.
topple and threaten to crush you with their weight.
You can’t get out of here until I free you;
Scuttle out from under them, crawl away
the pounding hooves of daylight, midnight, flame
into the welcoming whispering sheltering forest.
all go in circles. So do you. Your dreams
A maze of paths; you take the one that’s nearest.
close in, you’re sleepwalking, the darkness seems
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You feel at ease, here in the purple shadows,
to smother you. Gnarled roots and branches clutch,
sheltered from daylight with its cold demands
sharp twigs and pine needles. Your hands are caught.
until you realize it’s gone too quiet.
Dark channels open in your wrists. Blood seeps.
Where are the laughing and singing, where are your friends?
You raise your hands skywards to help it clot.
When did it get so dark? And lost, lost, lost
For some of you, the sky itself’s a threat,
drips from the scratchy branches. Are those crumbs
you burrow under leaf mould, pull the roots
scattered on damp pine needles round your feet,
over your heads; you feel dark waters rise.
stale leavings from your parents’ empty rooms,
You choke, you drown. Some of you struggle out,
dropped there to guide you out, or deeper in?
follow the glimmer from half-buried skulls,
Is it a trap or a trail? It gleams in the dusk
candles in long–dead eyes among the stones.
with the dull mouldy sheen of dug-up bones.
You make for the edge of the woods, the fields beyond,
Your guts are rattling like an empty husk.
shivering as you pass my house of bones,
Your screwed-up eyes are aching. Hunger drives
- not knowing it was I who dragged you out,
you on until each one of you arrives,
into the darkness. Through it. Into the light.
Janet Shepperson
Overleaf: Adrian Ghenie, Air Raid, 2008, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 220cm x 185cm, Weco Group AS Collection.
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4.
2.
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Granada.
(After the film by Michael Smith and Neil Bianco)
I’m drowned out by opera, I’m listening to a foreign language, it’s hardly child’s play -except for children, tormenting the shopkeepers every corner a different race and we won them all, ‘til Tesco did. Somebody looked after everybody, everybody looked after somebody, but nobody looked after nobody. Always a dog to follow you home, feed it scraps, Nessun Dorma and Chicken Korma, seven shades the next day, we all kept singing, Wops, Jocks, Paddys, Pakis, They say all black now, or Muslim, you know what I mean? The dogs bark, they were born in this street, being born is important, no control, but best be dropped in the right street. Racism? It’s all about arrival, the beginning of it, not the end. We can’t fuck off home,
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this is our home now.
Opposite: Pieter Hugo: Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara, Ogere-Remo. Nigeria, 2007, from Gadawan Kura’ - The Hyena
Peadar O’Donoghue
Men series II © Pieter Hugo. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York
Spam I never seen a black before, says Johnny Kang, I thought was Draculas. Some shit like that. He learned his English from the Marines. You can tell. Write that shit down fuck, he says, when I forget something on one of his many lists—Dinty Moore beef stew. Spaghetti-Os. Frozen TV dinners buy one get one free. Orange gummy candy. I know the things I buy for him are technically black market. But I don’t care. Sometimes we sit and eat American junk in the lobby of the New Seoul Hotel and he tells me things. Then this Dracula come up to me, he says, and give me candy. Chewing gum. Spam. We have nothing then after we get out of Seoul. Everything blown up. Where you see roads now nothing. Bomb holes. Big Dracula Marine, Lieutenant Colonel, sat me on his knee. I was baby then. Fed me Spam. Budae jjigae, I try to say. I try out new words on him. It makes him laugh. Yeah, Army stew. Spam, hot dog, noodle, pepper paste, whatever you got, Johnny says. Put that slice American cheese on top. The Draculas made that. Some real good shit. Spam, I say. I remember eating that. Long time ago way way back when. Sometimes we don’t understand what the other’s trying to say but we can talk about food forever and a day. Spam sandwich, I say, we used to put potato chips in them. He’s amazed. I can’t believe you eat weird shit like that, he says. Me? I say. What about you? At least it was my native food! We laugh. All over Korea I ride with my Dracula, Johnny says. He want to take me home with him. My mama, she say no. Of course she did, I say, why would she want to give you up? I might have been a real American boy, he says. I used to want that too, I say. He looks at me strange. You wanted to be real boy? Never mind, I say. I don’t really get it either. I still eat this food and think of him, he says, my Dracula, though I know he dead long time ago. Makes me think of my dad too, I say. He dead long time? The midnight murk settles in, all neon, low fog, old grease, mothballs. I head up to bed, but not before I promise. Tomorrow. From the base commissary. Next day. More Spam. Low salt. Candy cherry, by which he always means orange. Razors. Right kind this time. And don’t forget the Spam. Fuck the ration. I might just buy one extra. For myself. And we might just slice one up and eat together, potato chips or no, And sit. Swallowing preservatives, and salt. Tasting the past. Don’t forget now. Write that shit down. Good night.
Opposite: Pieter Hugo: Yakubu Al Hasan, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana,
Joanna Grant
2009, from Nollywood series © Pieter Hugo. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York
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Johnny asks. Yeah, I say. He dead. Long time. It’s late late at night.
Children Of Lir
Hailstones bounce Mexican jumping beans, kamikaze pilots crashing against the windscreen as we speed down the M1. In these days of snow and sunshine, frost on the tulips, white daffodils, flash floods, I remember the shape changers. Falcons and stags, story makers reborn. The old man in the pub singing with his eyes closed, his hands held on either side as they wind him up. The clocks of heartbroken myth, the earth refusing to receive a father’s smashed body. A boulder pushed up a hill. Lost lands, underground people, waves of invaders. These quests wander the globe, they belong only to the teller, changed each time in the telling, the reincarnation of history. I know the accent doesn’t matter, but still I can’t decide if this is a gift or robbery. Why the incongruence of the guitar bothers me, the politeness of churches as a setting for pagan butchery. My heritage is big on revenge, not forgiveness. The ghosts whisper this is not our language. I have lost mine and feel all the discomfort of the changeling. Even my name comes from the sea, the fostering of a culture. read me the story of the swans. When you think about it, wasn’t it the Christian bell that killed them? Transformed them from beautiful birds united in their suffering into ancient withered men and women ready for burial. Do I really want to be turned back into a human?
Aoife Mannix
Oppisite: Olaf Brzeski, Snoopy, fiber glass, h-40cm, 2004
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As a small child I cried the first time my father
Short Love Poem
Contributors
Maroula Blades is an Afro-British poet/writer living in Berlin. The
Stephanie Conn’s poetry has been widely published. She was
Our love is an embarrassment of furniture,
winner of The Caribbean Writer 2014 Flash Fiction Competition
shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Prize, highly commended
a shuffling of newspapers,
and Erbacce Prize 2012, her first poetry collection “Blood Orange”
in the Mslexia Pamphlet Competition and selected for
a tick tock century of minutes.
is published by Erbacce-press. Works have been published in
Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. She is a graduate of the
Thrice Magazine, Volume Magazine, Kaleidoscope Magazine, Trespass
MA programme the Seamus Heaney Centre. Stephanie is a
Magazine, Words with Jam, The Latin Heritage Foundation, Domestic
recipient of an Arts Council Career Enhancement Award and
Cherry, Blackberry Magazine, Peepal Tree and other anthologies and
recently won the inaugural Seamus Heaney Award for New
crumbs on the table,
magazines. Her poetry/music programme has been presented
Writing. Her first poetry collection is due to be published by
a text message that reads
on several stages in Germany. Her debut EP-album “Word Pulse”,
Doire Press in Autumn 2015.
Our love is a crossword uncompleted,
Havavision Records (UK) can be found on I-Tunes and Amazon. Gerald Dawe’s most recent collection, Mickey Finn’s Air is
‘Be home later x’
Olaf Brzeski, b. 1975 in Wrocław, Poland, sculptor, author of
published by Gallery Press. The Stoic Man: Poetry Memoirs and
from the atrophy of late afternoon
installations and films. Between 1995 and 1995 studied at the
Early Poems will appear shortly from Lagan. ‘Via Dolorosa’ is
Faculty of Architecture of Technical University in Wrocław
included in Berryman’s Fate: A Centenary Celebration in Verse,
and from 1995 he studied at the Faculty of Sculpture at the
edited by Philip Coleman and published by Arlen House.
to growing warmth of evening.
Wrocław Academy of Art and Design. He defended his diploma work in sculpture in 2000 at the prof. Leon Podsiadły’s studio.
Michael Dineen is a poet from Cork based in Dublin. He works
He has shown his works at individual and collective exhibitions
in data analytics and has been published in Southword, The
both in Poland and abroad. In 2009 he was nominated to
Shop, The Penny Dreadful and Weary Blues journals. He was
participate in the “Spojrzenia” / “Views” (award of Deutsche
selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2015.
Bank Foundation) organised by the National Gallery Zacheta
Other interests include triathlons, Guinness, gigs and film.
solo exhibitions include: Tender Look, Gallery Labirynth, Lublin, 2015 Everyday I split , Brno House of Arts, Brno, 2014, Amigdala, TMOCA, Tehran, 2014, At Heart, Raster Gallery, Warsaw, 2013, Self-seeker, Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2013, Shine, Gallery Arsenal, Białystok, 2013, From My Eyes Only, Gallery Awangarda, BWA Wroclaw, 2012, The Fall of
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the Man I Don’t Like, Contemporary art Gallery, Opole, 2012.
from the University of Art and Design, Cluj, Romania. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at museums including the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2012–2013); Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kuns (S.M.A.K.), Ghent (2010– 2011); and National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (2009–2010). His work has been included in exhibitions at the Palazzo Grassi, François Pinault Foundation, Venice; Tate
Marion Clarke’s work has been published in literary journals
Liverpool; Prague Biennial; San Francisco Museum of Modern
including Burning Bush II and The Linnet’s Wings, as well as
Art; and Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, among others.
international haiku titles such as The Heron’s Nest, Frogpond
Ghenie’s work is held in a number of public collections,
and Modern Haiku. In 2013 she was longlisted in the Desmond
including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of
O’Grady Poetry Competition and was recently one of the final
Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum van Hedendaagse
twenty-two poets considered for the Seamus Heaney Award
Kunst, Antwerp; SFMOMA; and S.M.A.K., Ghent. In 2005,
for New Writing organised by Community Arts Partnership’s
Ghenie co-founded Galeria Plan B, a production and exhibition
‘Poetry in Motion’ programme. In the schools section of this
space for contemporary art. He lives and works in Cluj and
project, she received a Seamus Heaney Award for Achievement
Berlin. Ghenie joined Pace in 2011. Recent shows include:
for her poetry facilitation services to the overall winners,
Adrian Ghenie, CAC Málaga, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo
Grange Primary School, Kilkeel. A lover of short form poetry,
de Málago, December 12, 2014–March 8, 2015. Adrian Ghenie:
one of her haiku received a Sakura award in the Vancouver
Golems, Pace London, 6 Burlington Gardens, June 12–July 26,
Cherry Blossom Festival, 2012, and her entry was shortlisted
2014. Adrian Ghenie: Berlin Noir, Galerie Judin, Berlin, May 1–
in The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Awards for Individual
June 28, 2014. Forthcoming shows include: Adrian Ghenie, 56th
Poems, 2013. She has been twice commended in the Irish
International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Romanian
Haiku Society’s annual competition and was awarded third
Pavilion, Venice, May 9–November 22, 2015. I will go there, take
place last year. Seven of her haiku featured in Bamboo Dreams
me home, The MAC, Belfast, May 8–July 26, 2015.
– an anthology of haiku from Ireland published by Doghouse Books, Tralee. Marion lives around the corner from the beach in Warrenpoint.
Michael Dineen
Adrian Ghenie (b. 1977, Baia Mare, Romania) graduated in 2001
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in Warsaw. He lives and works in Berlin and Wroclaw. Selected
Michael Gira is an American singer-songwriter, musician,
Emma McKervey is from Holywood and has worked in
Helena Nolan has been selected for the 2015 Poetry Ireland
Gerard Smyth has published eight collections of poetry,
author, and artist. He is the main force behind the group
community arts, music and teaching although her first love
Introductions Series and will read as part of the International
including, A Song of Elsewhere (Dedalus Press 2015), and The
Swans and fronts Angels of Light. He is also the founder of
is always poetry. She has had work published in Incubator, A
Literature Festival on 18 May. She won the Patrick Kavanagh
Fullness of Time: New and Selected Poems (Dedalus Press, 2010).
Young God Records.
New Ulster, and The Galway Review, among other journals and
Award in 2011, having come second in 2010. She was shortlisted
He was the 2012 recipient of the O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award
anthologies.
for a Hennessy Award in 2013 and has featured in a number
and is co-editor of If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and
of competitions, including Strokestown, Fish, The Kilkenny
Song ( Dedalus Press ) which was Dublin’s One City One Book
Joanna Grant is a Collegiate Associate Professor and Wandering Scholar for the University of Maryland. She
Paul McMahon’s poetry has been widely published in
Broadsheet, Anam Cara & RTE/John Murray Show. Her work has
in 2013. He is a member of Aosdána and Poetry Editor of The
teaches writing and humanities classes to American service
journals such as The Threepenny Review, The Salt Anthology
appeared in a range of publications including; The Irish Times,
Irish Times.
members deployed overseas. To date, she has taught in Japan,
of New Writing, The Montreal International Poetry Prize Global
New Irish Writing, Poetry Ireland Newsletter, The Guardian, The Daily
Kuwait (twice), Afghanistan (twice), Djibouti, and South
Anthology, The Moth, Hennessy New Irish Writing, Southword, Ambit,
Telegraph and literary journals such as Abridged, The Stinging
Adam White is from Cork, but lives and works in France. His
Korea. The poems in this issue were inspired by her time in
Orbis, Crab Creek Review and The Poetry Saltzburg Review. His
Fly and The Moth, as well as online. She has an MA in Creative
first collection of poetry was published by Doire Press in 2013,
the ROK (Republic of Korea).
prizes for poetry include The Ballymaloe International Poetry
Writing from UCD.
and shortlisted for the Forward prize for best first collection.
Prize (2012; judge Matthew Sweeney), The Nottingham Poetry Pieter Hugo (born 1976 in Johannesburg) is a photographic
Open Competition (2012; judge Neil Astley), The Westport
Peadar O’Donoghue is the co-editor of PB magazine. His
artist living in Cape Town. Major museum solo exhibitions
Poetry Prize (2012; judge Dermot Healy), The Golden Pen Poetry
debut collection Jewel from Salmon Poetry was described by
Abridged Personnel:
have taken place at La Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson,
Prize (2011; judge John Harding), and second prize in both The
Jim Burns in Ambit Magazine as ‘one of the liveliest and most
Editor: Gregory McCartney. Had a sense it couldn’t last.
The Hague Museum of Photography, Musée de l’Elysée in
Basil Bunting Poetry Award Competition (2012; judge August
provocative poetry books I’ve read for some time’. His second
Watched the wonder wander past.
Lausanne, Ludwig Museum in Budapest, Fotografiska in
Kleinzahler), and The Salt International Poetry Award (2013;
collection, also with Salmon, The Death of Poetry, is due out
Stockholm, MAXXI in Rome and the Institute of Modern Art
judges Chris and Jen Hamilton-Emery), among many others. In
later this year.
Brisbane, among others. Hugo has participated in numerous
2014 he was Highly Commended for both The Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Collection Award and the Fool for Poetry Chapbook
Folkwang Museum, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, and the
Competition. He was awarded a Literature Bursary for poetry
International Poetry Prize in 2014.
São Paulo Bienal. His work is represented in prominent public
from The Arts Council of Ireland (2013) and was selected for
and private collections, among them the Museum of Modern
the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series (2014) and for the Cork
Art, V&A Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
Spring Poetry Festival Pre-booked Readings (2015).
Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, J Paul Getty Museum,
anthologies, as well as in arts ezine A New Ulster. In June 2014, one of her poems was also performed in Belfast as part of the
and Huis Marseille. Hugo received the Discovery Award at the
novel. She has been poet in residence for the Royal Shakespeare
Reading and Writing for Peace project from Queen’s University
Rencontres d’Arles Festival and the KLM Paul Huf Award in
Company and BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live. She has a PhD in
and the Community Relations Council. Claire’s short stories
2008, the Seydou Keita Award at the Rencontres de Bamako
creative writing from Goldsmiths, University of London.
have appeared in The Incubator journal and Blackstaff Press website, with another due for publication in The Lonely Crowd
Benjamin Mitrofan-Norris is a poet from Bristol, England, whose
magazine this summer. In July 2014, Claire received a grant
work regularly appears in journals and collections on both sides
from the Arts Council NI to support her in writing a collection
Jennifer Matthews was born in Missouri (USA) and now lives
of the Atlantic. He is the author of two short collections, and
of poetry and short stories.
in the Republic of Ireland, where she has made her home
is the poetry editor of Zymbol, a leading poetry and literature
for over a decade. She writes poetry and book reviews, and
magazine.
Janet Shepperson has published poetry widely, most recently in Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, Crannog, The Stinging Fly,
is editor of the Long Story, Short Journal. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Stinging Fly, Mslexia,
Barbara A Morton is published frequently in Abridged, and
Literary Miscellany (Ulster Tatler), The Shop, Causeway/Cabhsair,
Burning Bush 2, Revival, Necessary Fiction, Poetry Salzburg, Foma
abroad. White Porcelain Bowls is available from entropiebooks.com
and I have six poems in the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s
& Fontanelles and Cork Literary Review, and anthologised in Dedalus’s collection of immigrant poetry in Ireland, Landing Places (2010). In 2012 she read at Electric Picnic with Poetry Ireland, and had a poem shortlisted by Gwyneth Lewis in the Bridport poetry competition. Her poetry was recognised in both the 2013 and 2014 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competitions. In 2015 she was chosen to participate in Poetry Ireland Introductions series.
Icarus, Abridged and Belleville Park Pages.
has appeared in the 2014/15 NI Community Arts Partnership
Aoife Mannix is the author of four collections of poetry and a
the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012.
the Co-Editor of Icarus magazine and has poetry published in
Claire Savage is a writer from the Causeway Coast whose poetry
Walther Collection, Deutsche Börse Group, Folkwang Museum
African Photography Biennial in 2011, and was shortlisted for
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of English Studies in Trinity College, Dublin. She is currently Jane Robinson lives in Ireland and won the Strokestown
Troubles Archive. My two full collections are THE APHRODITE Daniel A. Nicholls can most often be found declaiming poets
STONE (Salmon Poetry, 1995) and EVE COMPLAINS TO GOD
and poetry on Twitter (@nomopoetry). His work can be found
(Lagan Press, 2004). Her short stories have appeared in many
online at Agenda Poetry, Honest Ulsterman, Open Letters Monthly,
outlets including Fortnight, Passages, Blackstaff Book of Short
Compose Journal, Specter Magazine, and elsewhere. From 2010
Stories 1 and 2, the Irish Press and Sunday Tribune (both of these
until 2012, he was Writer in Residence at The Starving Artist in
stories were shortlisted for Hennessy Awards.) Originally
Keene, NH. He now resides in Arizona.
from Scotland, she studied English Literature at Aberdeen University and moved to Belfast in 1978. She has worked as a trainee journalist, primary teacher, Community Service Volunteer and creative writing tutor/facilitator for Poetry in Motion, Creative Youth Partnerships, Queen’s University Lifelong Learning, WEA, the former Maze Prison, National Deaf Children’s Society and many others.
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group exhibitions at institutions including Tate Modern, the
Editorial Assistant: Susanna Galbraith. Is in her third year
I will go there, take me home
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Curated by Gregory McCartney
Olaf Brzeski Pieter Hugo Adrian Ghenie 8 May - 26 Jul This exhibition has been made possible with the generous support of the John Ellerman Foundation. Image Credit: Pieter Hugo David Akore, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana 2010, copyright Pieter Hugo. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York.
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Cover: Pieter Hugo: Abdulai Yahaya, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2010, from Permanent Error series Š Pieter Hugo. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York