A New Ulster 70

ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online)

Featuring the works of Ana Vidosavljevic, Richard Hawtree, Ian C Smith, Sujoy Bhattacharya, Neil Leadbiter, Anne Donnellan, Almona Bajramaj on Milan Kundera, Mark Young, John. W. Sexton, Ria Collins and Michael Boyle. Hard copies can be purchased from our website.

Issue 70 July 2018

A New Ulster Prose On the Wall Website

Editor: Amos Greig Editor: E V Greig Editor: Arizahn Editor: Adam Rudden Contents

Editorial Ana Vidosavljevic;

1. A Wolf’s Tooth Richard Hawtree; 1. Helping Syllables 2. My Tongue 3. The Mountain Calls Down 4. Come Down So Ian C Smith; 1. End Game 2. The End of Lonely Street 3. Last Times Sujoy Bhattacharya; 1. A Dream Dreams 2. A Female Father Neil Leadbetter; 1. Blackbird on a Barbed Wire Fence 2. The Rollright Stones 3. Stand Well Back From The Platform Edge 4. Poem Written on the Back of an Envelope Anne Donnellan; 1. Parent Class 2. Ancient Mourner 3. Final Straw Almona Bajramaj; 1. Milan Kundera, Master of Paradoxes Mark Young; 1. A Line from Emily Dickenson 2. Straighen Up and Fly Right 3. Sorry, but I couldn’t find a bottle 4. A high degree of solemnity 5. Pound Cento XV John W Sexton; 1. He’ll Balance the Sky on His Tongue 2. The Leaving of Myrddin 3. The Half-Eaten Lady

Ria Collins; 1. The Stanhopea and the Mexican Boys 2. Waiting for Swallows 3. Gaia Says 4. Right Back At You Michael Boyle; 1. Finding My Bush Soul 2. Termoneeney Jogger 3. Keeping Count On The Wall Message from the Alleycats Round the Back

Poetry, prose, art work and letters to be sent to: Submissions Editor A New Ulster 23 High Street, Ballyhalbert BT22 1BL Alternatively e-mail: g.greig3@gmail.com See page 50 for further details and guidelines regarding submissions. Hard copy distribution is available c/o Lapwing Publications, 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast BT14 8HQ Or via PEECHO Digital distribution is via links on our website: https://anuanewulster.wixsite.com/anewulster Published in Baskerville Oldface & Times New Roman Produced in Belfast & Ballyhalbert, Northern Ireland.

All rights reserved The artists have reserved their right under Section 77 Of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 To be identified as the authors of their work.

ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online) Cover Image “Summer� by Amos Greig

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. ” Aristotle Onassis.

Editorial 2018 has been a particularly trying year so far, we’ve had pets pass away, health scares power and internet cuts and while they have resolved the internet issue the power problem continues with regular outages. They know what the cause is but don’t know where exactly the fault lies, worse they can’t get permission to dig down to fix it due to lack of officials to sign off on it.

Other issues include my permanent and persistent back injury I’ve attended the Pain Clinic this year and had several tests done on circulation etc the end result is there’s nothing further they can do for me and I’m limited on the pain relief due to having reactions to anything stronger than Codine.

This summer’s weather has been both a blessing and a curse and my thoughts and sympathies go out to the over 200 people killed in Japan and Canada all round the world weather records have been broken and based on global patterns I don’t think this is a good sign I am genuinely worried about the future.

I apologise if this editorial has been all doom and gloom but there’s a silver lining pages and pages of prose, poetry and even an essay we hope you enjoy the work contained within and as always, the work remains the Intellectual property of the artists who produced it...

Onward to creativity!!

Amos Greig Editor.

Biographical Note: Ana Vidosavljevic

Ana Vidosavljevic from Serbia currently living in Indonesia. She has her work published or forthcoming in Down in the Dirt (Scar Publications), Literary Yard, RYL (Refresh Your Life), The Caterpillar, The Curlew, Eskimo Pie, Coldnoon, Perspectives, Indiana Voice Journal, The Raven Chronicles, Setu Bilingual Journal, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Madcap Review. She worked on a GIEE 2011 project: Gender and Interdisciplinary Education for Engineers 2011 as a member of the Institute Mihailo Pupin team. She also attended the International Conference “Bullying and Abuse of Power” in November, 2010, in Prague, Czech Republic, where she presented her paper: “Cultural intolerance”.

A Wolf's Tooth

All the other shepherds returned to the villages long time ago. But it was a nice late August day and Vlado wanted to stay a bit longer on the green slopes of the Carpathian mountains.

Just before the sun started setting, he heard his dog Rorik barking angrily. It was not a regular Rorik's barking. It was getting higher and higher in pitch and Vlado knew that Rorik was getting more upset with every new barking sound. Vlado was listening carefully where his dog's voice came from and when he was on his way to the southern side of field, the barking became growling. Anger mixed with fear. And it didn't last long. After a few minutes, Rorik was helplessly yelping. Vlado's heart was beating fast. He was calling his dog almost in panic.

He knew what was going on. Rorik must have been surrounded by wolves. Vlado was scared.

He had seen them many times. They would appear somewhere in distance, like silhouettes, they would appear and disappear in woods and bring a commotion among the sheep.

This time, Vlado heard terrified bleating. His sheep was frightened of the wolves. Vlado prayed his sheep to stay together. He knew very well how wolves tried to split sheep from their flock. They knew that a sheep was helpless if singled out. Vlado was scared but he tried to remain calm. Rorik was still yelping and screaming as if in fear and pain but Vlado couldn't leave the flock. He stayed close to his sheep holding the stick in his ight hand and looked around. Glowing eyes were flashing from the woods. He couldn't count them well but there were at least six pairs of those devilish eyes. If he had only had a rifle!

He was squeezing the wolf's tooth in his pocket and he thought about his father. That same tooth was his father's trophy. He had killed the biggest wolf in these mountains. No one had remembered seeing bigger and more ferocious creature in the Carpathian Mountains. And the tooth was the proof. It was long and sharp like those that, once upon a time, sabre-toothed tigers had had. People in the village said that that wolf had been hunted and chased for many years by many good hunters and it always had managed to trick them and run away. But Vlado's father had got it. And he had become a local legend in the Carpathian Mountains. His father had died but he had left this tooth to his youngest son, Vlado. And Vlado carried it everywhere and kept it close as if it had been some kind of lucky charm that protected him and encouraged him.

Even this time, when fear crept through his body and paralyzed his legs, he squeezed the tooth and whispered: “I'm not afraid of you.�

He dug deep into his pocket and took matches. He had to make a torch. He grabbed one

of the greener sticks he had and coated the end of the stick with the bark from the tree nearby under which he had been resting earlier. Then, he took off his T-shirt, tore it off, and one piece of it started wrapping around the end of the stick until it created a bulge in the cloth and tucked in the end of the cloth. It took him few minutes to light his torch since his torn-off T-shirt was a bit sweaty. It was hot outside and he had worn it the whole day. When finally, he managed to light the torch, he started running towards the woods where he had seen those scary eyes. And he saw them again. They were kind of moving but they didn't seem scared by him and his torch.

The villagers talked that there were those wolves which were not scared of men. They were demons. The villagers believed that they could devour within minutes a grown-up man.

Vlado was slowly approaching the woods holding the torch high over his head. He knew he was not supposed to leave his flock alone. He had to stay close to it and protect his sheep.

He was waving the torch around hoping to make the wolves back up. But they were not backing up further. On the contrary, one of the wolves, with the hunger in his eyes and sharp canines protruding out over his lower lip, slowly approached the flock. The sheep started moving backwards. They were petrified. The sight of an approaching predator made their blood run cold. And while the other sheep were moving in the opposite direction from the wolf, one of them remained motionless. It seemed as if the wolf's glowing eyes had paralyzed it. Vlado started yelling and running towards the wolf. He yelled so loudly that the whole mountain echoed. He grabbed a rock and threw it with all the strength he could gather directly at the wolf.

But it was late. The wolf attacked the sheep and grabbed its rear leg. The poor sheep was whirling and bleating desperately. For a moment Vlado felt hopeless and tears started filling his eyes. He squeezed the wolf's tooth so tightly that it almost cut his palm.

And then, all of a sudden, Vlado heard the sound of rifle fire. The wolf fell back down.

But then it stood up again and leaped towards the woods. The bullet probably just wounded the wolf.

But it was not a deadly wound.

Vlado turned around and saw his brothers running towards him. His oldest brother, Stevo, carried the rifle. He asked Vlado if he was all right and when Vlado nodded, they hurried towards the wounded sheep. The middle brother, Anton, was already there and he was holding the sheep. “It will survive, but not sure what will be with its leg. It is totally destroyed.” The blood was dripping down the sheep's leg leaving the red spots on Stevo's blue T-shirt and khaki pants. “Maybe we can save it. I will take care of it when we get home.”

Vlado looked at his brothers and the tears of relief ran down his cheeks. He was ashamed of crying in front of them, but they understood how it felt to be surrounded by those ferocious animals. Stevo patted Vlado's back and tried to calm him down. “You did well. You managed to save all the sheep. And I am telling you, there were more than six wolves out there. They could have devoured not only the sheep but you as well.� But Vlado was afraid that he couldn't save Rorik. He headed toward the place where previously he had heard Rorik sad yelping. When he came close to the place, he saw the bloody traces on the ground and just few meters further, Rorik was laying helplessly. He knelt and touched his dog. Rorik's body was still warm, but his heart was not beating. Vlado couldn't save him. His heart ached. Rorik had died in pain. But he had tried to protect Vlado and the sheep. Vlado breathed in deeply and then breathed out a sorrowful puff of air.

Only then, Vlado realized that he was still squeezing tightly the wolf's tooth. He released the grip and took it out of his pocket. He was grateful to have it. But he was more grateful to have his brothers.

Biographical Note: Richard Hawtree Richard Hawtree's poems have appeared in literary magazines including: The Stinging Fly, The Honest Ulsterman, Banshee, The Penny Dreadful, Scintilla, and Tales from the Forest. He is a Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Brighton.

Four Poems

Helping Syllables

When the Sean Nรณs singers strayed northward they added their own helping syllables to each rime-dusted palace and Wi-Fi point.

So when they steered homeward in their top-heavy ship, frothing with spirit and herring for ballast, those lithe and glittering mariners saw this: a green light shifting with lengthened tongues out in the archipelago. How they gazed as each macron blade tip stirred the eddic waters of Stockholum.

Richard Hawtree

My Tongue after the Old Irish Instructions of King Cormac

When I was young I’d watch out for the thrum of stars, breathe in the wooded silence round my head.

High on the hedge of childhood – shy of boundaries – the riverbed seduced my tongue to what I’ve left half said.

Richard Hawtree

The Mountain Calls Down

To set each stanza limber on its feet I sound the drift of tanka, swishing the stippled whooperswan currents while above us the mountain calls down to the valley: five, seven, five, seven, seven – until, lover, no tally will ever fathom our beat.

Richard Hawtree

Come Down So following a seventh-century Irish prayer

Come down so to reach for us, perfect centre, gatherer up.

Come to hallow chosen knowing, come as friend at our frenetic grazing in elite arenas.

Come freely spoken love, come silence, shoaling tacit skeins of wonder – no halt now for rest in secrets, hue and cry towards the hidden turtle doves inside your nest.

Richard Hawtree

Biographical Note: Ian C Smith Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in, Antipodes, Australian Book Review, Australian Poetry Journal, Critical Survey, Prole, The Stony Thursday Book, & Two-Thirds North. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island, Tasmania.

End-game

I lurch awake with a cry, heart a horse galloping through a windswept night surrounded by dread.

Sleep in abeyance, I assay Google, type a school friend’s name, learn he is long dead.

The raw name, dates, stun me in cemetery records, a place where I last knew he competed in sport, our other boyhood connection, chief concern then of prodigal warriors, fear of darkling days nought.

Digitally hunting men with uncommon names, picturing a photo, our muscle-clenched school team, I find a Life Member (dec’d); another owned a store, succumbed selling sports gear, never far off-theme.

In Images a veteran cop honours a comrade killed, a chubby-faced lad grown tall, stooped, lean.

Our blood pounded in juvenile joust, now his face wreathed in sorrow mirrors foul wrongs seen.

From grave news to bed, fixating in the dark on private, perfect things, whiff of cut grass, tiny replicas of men before their smiles fade, helter-skelter times too soon come to pass.

(Ian C Smith)

The End of Lonely Street

Lyrics memorized, he strains, since my baby left me, wailing Presley covers, a quid a song, train, train, band blitzing him, for he can’t sing, can’t play.

Week’s work done, the Frankston pub crowd vibrates.

He loves the cool strut, needs money, and more.

Pay piss-poor in a chicken processing plant, classroom quit at fourteen for a colourful life, he avoids the line’s sickly stench, toils in the freezer trekking icy Arctic wastes in a blizzard of songs, in out, in out, massive doors always slammed shut.

That kid, who has two of his own, works his way up, squalid jobs, each paying ten bob more than the last in stained brick districts, smell of cement after rain, caravans, bungalows, a dwelling behind a shop, thirsting for learning, sorrow waiting in ambush.

His origins cowled, he embraces language, ideas, lectures, libraries, posters of Leos: Kottke, Sayer, his new zeitgeist the death of old music, old marriage.

Permed women click by, skirts aswirl, caressing leather.

His papers earn credits, arrows pointing to success.

On holiday deep in forgetful years, sea view superb, he talks with a young friend who learns the guitar, impressed by the intricacies of this endeavour.

His old strummed prop, his past, arrives, unravels him, a long black train coming round the bend.

(Ian C Smith)

Last Times

Never regretting the bustle of many accrued addresses I eventually put down roots to place, to happiness.

The years jostling, time won out. This idyll ended.

Sometimes the ends of phases in our lives register.

Other finalities swoop past, an unseen rush of wings sensed without proper notice taken as days die.

I resisted a return to what I remembered, adrift in the present that was only a blur back then.

A late winter’s morning luminous as summer urged me to drive, just go, expose myself to the pain of this universal idea, this walk in seething silence but for bees in blossom.

An archaeologist dusts tesserae, memory’s held breath.

A self-centered man jogs, trail overgrown now, fitness vanished, too, as if down that deep dank pit he dubs Dragon’s Lair, delighting his children, also grown now, living in the thicker part of life perhaps not realising last times are flying past.

Nostalgia, sentimentality, false emotions, I know.

I should quit trying to touch the past, deal with the wonder of life whirling by, unstoppable as wind, but I was so close ducking below branches,

heart a fist at the school bus stop shelter, reaching for the intangible separating me from what I loved.

(Ian C Smith)

Biographical Note: Sujoy Bhattacharya .

Sujoy Bhattacharya is a nature poet of India. He loves to write on the strangeness of human psychology. He worships humanity and adores poetry as a living deity. Some of his works have been supported by magazines of global repute.

A Dream Dreams (Sujoy Bhattacharya)

‘ Voyage to dreamland' the lucrative offer made their journey jeopardized.

Is it a crime to dreamto keep languid mind away from the drudgery of daily life ?

Devils of illusion were grinning hanging molten hues of glee on their murky lips .

A featherless sparrow was singing a doleful elegy to squeeze out her congealed sorrow .

Wooden horse of Troy got enlivened by the virtue of meditation of the Hellen at the gate of paradise .

Chopped hands of the proletarian martyrs garlanded the wizened neck of democracy that stooped to the arrogance of capitalism .

A well-clad sophisticated beggar was counting gold coins to support the stability of global gold standard .

Hungry aliens were feasting on the minified carcass of the dynastic dogmatism .

The Gregorian goblet was overflowing pasteurized nectar to offer to the cosmic connoisseurs .

Wells of aromatic zygotes supplied lifesaving probability to decaying flora and fauna .

They were searching fanatically for the magic fluid to rinse their dreams out of their blinded eyes .

A Female Father (Sujoy Bhattacharya)

She blushed crimson when the flurry fluid of the strange proposal melted into her pinna .

She was a she- man ,with active lactic gland and a full- fledged penis of a salubrious male .

She felt her queer gender symptoms at her adolescent period .

Normal breast growth and male puberty coexisted in her body .

Upper portion o part f her body was thirsty of being cajoled by a masculine lust .

And her lower part of the body had a staunch desire to enjoy close vicinity of female limb .

The sun and the moon had been shining side by side in her sky .

Fire and water amicably coexisted in the same container !

She was a peculiar mingling of two souls – female and male .

She had to fight with two contradictory impulse apparent in her body .

She was not unhappy with her dual – being .

But she could not immediately give her consent to comply with her sister' s proposal .

The husband of her sister was a barren man .

He had some congenital defect .

He had no capacity to father a baby .

He instigated her wife to place the proposal to her sister .

A strange proposal that had not been made in the past .

She was begged to by her sister to sow seed in her fertile field .

She was entreated to make her sister taste the palate of motherhood .

A sister was to make another sister pregnant !

What a mischievous game to be played by their whimsical fate.

At long last she agreed to gift her sister with a baby .

She fornicated her sister several times and ultimately her sister conceived and gave birth to a normal baby in distant future .

Biographical Note: Niel Leadbeater

Neil Leadbeater is an author, editor, essayist, poet and critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short stories, articles and poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals both at home and abroad.

His books include Hoarding Conkers at Hailes Abbey (Littoral Press, 2010), Librettos for the Black Madonna(White Adder Press, 2011); The Worcester Fragments (Original Plus, 2013); The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives (Poetry Space, 2014) and Finding the River Horse(Littoral Press, 2017). He is a regular reviewer for several journals including Galatea Resurrects (A Poetry Engagement) (USA), Contemporary Literary Review India (India) and Write Out Loud (UK). His work has been translated into Dutch, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish.

Blackbird on a Barbed-wire Fence

There are 13 different ways of looking at him.

From the side, the air, the ground, obliquely, full on‌ Stevens can give you the run-down – his beak full of bird chatter opening and closing but now I want you to listen to Blacher his sound world from the gramophone and how, at 45 revs per minute, a blackbird on a barbed-wire fence can pierce you with his song.

Neil Leadbeater

The Rollright Stones*

How far did they roll to get here, or were they just here anyway?

Suppose they had rolled right into position or gone the wrong way needing to be coaxed back on track – maybe they were destined to go right instead of left because of the weight inside them but what if they had rolled off-centre?

That might be the subject of a further poem.

Neil Leadbeater *The Rollright Stones are a complex of three Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monuments near the village of Long Compton, on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. [Source: Wikipedia].

Stand Well Back from the Platform Edge (for Alice Pero)

Two trains are coming in opposite directions: one is a passenger and the other is freight.

The first is travelling wind-whistle fast at 125 m.p.h. ‌the other, sluggish, at 70.

Given that they are both 30 miles away from the North Bound Signal Box and it is now 10.00 o’clock at what time will they pass each other and will we be able to wave hello?

You have three minutes to work this out.

Neil Leadbeater

Poem Written on the Back of an Envelope

This poem fell off the back of a lorry.

It took me by surprise because it cost me nothing but came off the cuff tailor-made.

Neil Leadbeater

Biographical Note: Anne Donnellan Anne Donnellan lives in Galway. She is engaged with human rights advocacy works in Age Action. Anne attends the Kevin Higgins poetry workshops at the Galway Arts Centre . She was longlisted in the 2016 Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Competition. Anne has been published in the Galway City Tribune and ROPES literary journal NUIG. She was shortlisted for the Poems for Patience Competition 2018 at Galway University Hospital.

Parent Class

As you govern your care , In the absence of accreditation Reminisce in discernment , sensitise And navigate the authority - resistant budding brain Visit the corridors of confidence deficit Release the shutters of shame Patrol the bullying backstreets Acknowledge the aches of nurture Mind merge with your fledgling again.

Scan the contemporary context Steer clear of the stampede of sameness The ruthless brigade of self betterment And let empathy become beacon and bar code For arrival acceptance and accomodation Be present with your progeny.

Dream of tomorrow and acquiece with eternity Know that the passage of your issue Is not yours to ground Parenthood is your paradise Your paradise found.

Ancient Mourner

It seems unfair to be alive Mourner at the sanctified plot For four score years When the hour old bundle Casket carried between palms Is layed on the white drape

Unblemished being Interred amongst the decomposed Innocence surrendered to soil Future deminished to dust Hope consumed by clay .

Anne Donnellan

Final Straw

When I attend Dublin meetings I become a farmyard four prong fork Steeped in oral gunk I prod the slime pile of conceited conjecture Scrape the formica off seminal supposition Strip back sleek suited borrowed backgrounds Toss pink skinny ties in the slurry pit

I stick my spike in skulls Shake out the lodged stalks Watch smoke rise from the rot And when dung is flung on the white board It is no shock

With my thick timber handle I keep reverent distance Pitch the final straw.

It might make a difference.

Anne Donnellan

Biographical Note: Almona Bajramaj . Almona Bajramaj is born in Tropoja, Albania, on July 2, 1985.

She is a lawyer and a poet.

In 2003: She was the Winner of the First National Prize in the poetry, in Albania.

She has published two poetry books: “Epicrisis” 2006, “Me shohin sy te Vjeteruar” 2003.

Milan Kundera, Master of Paradoxes “When I was a little boy in short pants, I dreamed about a miraculous ointment that would make me invisible. Then I became an adult, started writing, and wanted to be successful. Now I'm successful and I'd like to have the ointment that would make me invisible.

‘A talk with Milan Kundera, Olga Carlisle interview, New York Times, 19851.

*** I exclude myself from the ones thinking that literature is a hobby, passion, entertainment or alternative activity. I think literature is something essential, up to some point not being in the eternity of becoming ordinary.

Even though is not easy to become such, in relation to the system of dilemmas and uncertainties, a possible process from which comes out the feeling that always there is something more to add, do and not be relaxed. It resembles to continuous improvement of self or eternal displeasures of the artist with its work.

Exactly in this wonderful attempt, after many years of reading pause, I recalled to my memory with the hope for evocation of any ex lovely book of mine and had to find something dear that could turn easily into love. Like a bolt of lightning came Kundera, something between Politics and Eros.

At the time, it was unclear if this author had won the Noble prize, rare fact to serve in choosing a book. The Noble seemed worthless to be included in the spell of his magic, so seducing to me. And against my wish, at the house where I lived, there wasn’t any book from this author, thus being obliged to find them quickly.

To clarify, this thirst for Kundera didn’t come as an internal devotion to review my cultural knowledge but was an imperative of the unfettered mind for a long time, in its attempts to relax and generate humor or healthy sobriety.

In fact, Kundera’s book never made me laugh, despite their vertical antagonistic titles and content to one another. “The Joke” was a tragedy that encouraged me to think, highlight, note, sleep with those thoughts of Kundera, translated in characters’ lives, which in none of them, in any case, never seem arranged or invented to legitimize literary or life situations... as for a writer as Kundera this would be insulting. Neither “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” had any relation to ignorance besides the void of being happy inside it.

I believe that his characters are Kundera himself, even though he denies it. In one of his interviews he had said: No character in my novels is a self-portrait, nor

1

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/kundera-talk.html

are any of my characters the portrait of a living person. I don't like disguised autobiographies. I hate writers' indiscretions2.

I also believe that women are past unfulfilled relations. I’m not that feminist to believe Kundera was misogynous for the fact that his descriptions on women are vulnerable to the man they love who want to own them, when they warmly absorb the content of pleasure, insulting and minimizing the importance of their presence.

For me, the women of Kundera are transparent, full of amusement and misery, free to dissatisfaction and incredibly beautiful in the incompleteness of the ideas they carry. They are everyday and frightened women, whom a man's shadow clarifies. As he writes in “The Joke”, he sees and loves his women through the eyes, without attempting to functional their presence, but placing them in front of men as pragmatic dynamics.

When I found Kundera's books, I began to remember Prague. I had visited it three years ago and still think it's the city where I could never live. Plenty of terrible beauty where even the cemeteries were deeply artistic. I had two visions for it.

Prague, according to Kafka, looked like a city caught by a giant spider web. My naive impression from this city.

Prague according to Kundera resembled the pinkish face of Juliette Binoche's face.

I wanted to keep this Prague in mind but it was exactly this Prague that betrayed me and it was that the sighing of the sun in the winter season, like a balloon that just broke and disappeared into the wind.

In Prague I had seen the house, the museum of Kafka, the restaurants with the name of Svejk, tried the Czech beer somewhere beneath the foot of the Charlie Bridge, observed the castle, the astronomical clock and nowhere found a trace of Kundera’s eye, this son of the Czech Republic equally legitimate as Kafka.

Certainly, it was Prague and other cities of Czech and Slovakia that gave their souls their works, one (Kundera) as the genius of reality and facts and of the other (Kafka) as a genius of abundant absurdity. The land defines their essence in exchange of the gone fatefulness.

The missing traces of Kundera in Prague relate to its history, the eve of the late spring of Prague, as a beloved secret writer and then stopped and disappeared from bookstores.

Kundera is present in this non-material city since 1975 he immigrated to France to naturalize and recognize France as the chosen homeland, not hiding the desire to be a French writer. This has upset the Czech-Slovak reader. Because it is partly true, because as Kundera he claimed, the construction of his work was anchored in Czechoslovakia and closely linked to the drama of the hollow universe. His individual is as hedonistic as the Frenchman, but while his mission is to memorize history, a French hedonism could be enjoyed in its purity. And from this view of

2

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/19/magazine/a-talk-with-milan-kundera.html?pagewanted=all

claiming that Kundera is French is the same as saying that Einstein was American or Picasso French.

The paradox remains the relationship with his hometown, intricate intellectual report. Kundera is dubious in his perception of guilt over Prague, the destruction of which came from outside. But at this point, he is deeply human. In retaliation for expulsion, forbidding his books, stigmatization as a traitor in his homeland (due to a spying history in which Kundera was believed to have participated), Kundera for a certain period did not allow his works to be published / staged in Czech Republic. He even refused any formal invitation to visit his homeland, and even the few times he went were incognito. Like his hero Ludvik, he was no nostalgic to come back to where he seemed to attract nothing more...

Kundera will suffocate his memories of his homeland, his youth being harmed, his memory of it bothered, it hurt and he cannot afford patriotic sentimentality. In the face of the current Czech Republic, he will be as indifferent as it is a hamlet to which he belongs. He loves things that do not belong to him anymore and he has never been able to! And as any man is helpless in this sensation, just as in the will to control the human destiny that often little carelessness can crush.

In this report a great joke arises, a rally of love and hatred, precisely because perhaps once, strong love was followed by a bitter disappointment. It is ridiculous to believe that Kundera, the architect of Czechoslovakia's memory, forgets its origins, as it is a typical example of the hero that is exactly where it is absent, where it is not (I understood my real country is here precisely because I didn’t belong to these views, says his character at “The Joke”). So his presence is undeniable, but not heroic, because this tall, handsome man will have no connection with the heroes that seem to belong to the human race.

His revenge for the hometown is served through the cold passion, giving it the greatest honor, the telling of its history all over the world. More beautiful than he, perhaps no one has documented state-organized forgetfulness. The one who instead of the word love uses nostalgia more easily and instead of collective depersonalization he seeks to find the magic of individual freedom within a system that seeks to sterilize everything, the mind firstly.

But has he betrayed the Czech-Slovak counter intellectuals?

In his rare interviews, one of them in the 1980s with Philip Roth, Kundera says: "... "Then they expelled me from University. I lived among workmen. At that time, I played the trumpet in a jazz band in small-town cabarets. I played the piano and the trumpet. Then I wrote poetry. I painted. It was all nonsense. My first work which is worthwhile mentioning is a short story, written when I was thirty, the first story in the book Laughable loves. This is when my life of a writer began. I had spent half of my life as a relatively unknown Czech intellectual.”3.

For the Czech-Slovak audience, Kundera was familiar because he was a Liberal Communist who was excluded from the Party and wrote poetry about Stalin.

Czech literary critic Milan Jungman has reacted to Kundera's statement:"Those who knew Milan Kundera in the 1950s and 1960s can hardly recognize it like this 3

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(as the author himself suggests). The self-portrayal has been retooled in such a way that Kundera's true appearance has disappeared. Everything essential that formed the image of Kundera as the intellectual leader of the last decades of Czech history has been suppressed. In Czechoslovakia from 1950-1969, Kundera was a liberalizing force in the official Czechoslovak communist literature. Even after the publication of “Funny Love” and “The Joke”, which have been seen by some as a greeting of the opening of the anti-totalitarian staging of Kundera's writing, in December 1968, four months after the Russian invasion, in an article published in “Listy”, Kundera sees himself as “a person that belongs to the world of socialism (communism) and criticizes Vaclav Havel that he is using the arguments of a person who never accepted communist ideals”4.

Petr A. Bilek, professor of comparative literature at Charles University, said: "His fellow dissident writers have long tried to dismiss him as someone who writes intellectual pornography for mediocre Western readers.5” But Kundera is mindful that he will be a great source of controversy, from the moment when he was talking about the descent for which his friend and partner Vaclav Havel in 1979 said: “... we never decided to become dissidents. We were transformed into such, without knowing how; sometimes we ended up in prisons without knowing exactly why. We just went ahead and did some things that we felt they needed to do, nothing more or nothing less6”.

This is one of the most brilliant and exhaustive definitions of dissent and I think it involves Kundera. The measure and the quality of the dissident contribution remain controversial. Kundera never attempted to wipe out the stains of the political student past, saying among other things: “If you write a love story and there are three lines to Stalin, people will talk about three lines and will forget the others and would read the rest for its political implications or as a metaphor for politics7 (Kundera, 1984, NYT)”.

The then regime allowed Kundera and Havel to leave their country, Kundera left and Havel stayed there contributing, that does not mean that resuming life without Kundera's drama at Montparnasse was a fact to be despised. Not at all, Kundera was a man and not a monument of sacrifice (now I think after his death, his apartment in Paris will return to the museum and Kundera will later be perpetuated as a French writer for generations to come, perhaps uninterested in totalitarianism. It does not have a second home in Czech Republic, probably like Freud with a museum house in Vienna and another in London...).

In the momentum of his controversial inability to be objective, Kundera believes that the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia defines human and national fates. In his essay “The Central European Tragedy” published in 1984, he claims that after 1945, Europe was defined in the Western, Central and Eastern Europe.

According to him, Central Europe (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary) was synonymous with the concept of the West because it belonged to Roman

4

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Christianity; was more than a geographic area, centralized geographical entity, culturally in the west and politically in the east.

The revolts against authoritarian regimes in Central Europe, according to him, are fundamentally, primarily cultural. Due the people of these countries with roots and western orientation, at the time of endanger and destruction of their identity and culture from the great pressure of invading powers (Russia), reacted to selfdefense up to the point that culture returned to supreme survival value.

Identity according to Kundera equated with culture brought the great revolt of Hungarians in 1956 and started by a group of writers; the revolt of students in Poland in 1968 began due to the ban on the stage of a work by a Polish writer and the Prague Spring flourished precisely from philosophy, literature, theater and film (the fields in which Kundera had contributed).

Kundera's central idea of disaster in Central Europe puts Russia with its desire to homogenize any other people.

In the context of Russia as a foreign and different thing, the legacy of which offers nothing to Europe, Kundera also expresses on Russian literature, while it says that this literature frightened him that, still today, he was horrified by some novels of Gogol and everything written by Saltykov-Shchedrin (who was known as the great Russian satirist) that he would have liked to have never known, that it would be better if the world had not existed at all (Central European Tragedy, 1984).

Paradoxically, Kundera attacks Russian literature without paying attention on insulting Russian identity and above all not distinguishing between Russian power and people. But even here Kundera is personally free.

In the context of cultural intolerance with the Russians, he tricked Dostoyevsky with no mercy. First of all, I am Dostoevsky's steady reader, who for me is more than a Russian writer, is the saint author of the human soul that I always loved.

In 1985, Kundera published an essay titled: “An introduction to a Variation” in which he speaks of Dostoyevsky: “What irritated me about Dostoyevsky was the climate of his novels: a universe where everything turns into feeling; in other words, where feelings are promoted to the rank of value and of truth8.

It goes on to explain that around 1968, when his small country was occupied by Russians and consequently his books were removed from circulation, Kundera was forced to face the need for survival after barely gaining daily bread until someone to help him financially proposed the elaborate deployment on stage of a part of the Dostoyevsky’s Idiot. Kundera says that he re-read the work and that even if he died for bread, he could not settle for it. He did not hesitate to say that Dostoyevsky's work was disgusting, that he had a universe full of inflated gestures, atrocious depths and aggressive sentimentality.

But even this time, in contradiction, he explains that this attitude was not the result of an anti Russian feeling because he continued to love Chekhov. Also in 8

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the interview with Philip Roth he said: “I like Tolstoy very much. He is much more modern than Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy was the first, perhaps, to grasp the role of the irrational in human behavior. ”.9 Kundera believes that reason should prevail over feeling and that feeling can not be given the status of absolute truth as it can generate horror and brutality; cruelty can be committed in the name of love. In reinforcing his idea, Kundera in the above-mentioned essay refers to Jung, who according to him said that feelings are superstructure of brutality.

I think this is a diminished Kundera's deficient attitude as well as a great surprise of his profile as a writer. The scheme that builds Kundera is: reason/thought that generates feeling/then action.

Dostoyevsky is another thing: feeling/thought/action on the boundaries of fatality/repentance and then returning to the initial sense/ till to Lord.

In response to this attitude, Kundera provoked the most controversial polemics that aroused the attention of the Western press, the writer Brodsky reacted.

He rejected the claim that crimes were committed in the name of sentiments by saying that crimes were made by historical necessities. According to him, Kundera is uncertain in his confrontation with Dostoyevsky and it is unclear in the definitions of geography and history by distorting Dostoyevsky's work. It casts the idea that Kundera is simply jealous, saying that Dostoyevsky's work is not about feelings but about their hierarchy and that he is very complex and not easily manageable.

Brodsky raises the question: if Kundera raises the pedestal of rational thought, does it permit the reason for making real discoveries on its behalf? Can we discover the human spirit based on reason? Dostoyevsky in his work has this particular mission, to reveal through the sensation, the irrational, and the limiting parameters of the spiritual entity. Dostoyevsky's personality is subtler than that of Kundera ... Dostoyevsky sheds light while the one of Kundera is in the discovery of the light of existence. Brodsky among other things says Kundera wants to be more European than the Europeans themselves, because he has lived long in Eastern Europe. I give due, with the dilemma of having any inferiority reminiscence of Kundera, in this case, but that's a whole trivial thing. *** After these quick and incomplete notes, I had a desire to read again “Testaments betrayed” that I remember reading recently on one of my trips to New York ... I was afraid of being sure that there would be inaccuracies in the impressions my own for Kundera ... the great intellectual that every time, after every revelation, appeared to me differently, as an endless master of paradoxes and mysteries.

This great tutor of his translations and privacy!

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This lover of nostalgia and not love!

Almona Bajramaj Athens, November 2017

Translated by: Piro Tanku

Biographical Note: Mark Young

Mark Young's most recent book is les ĂŠchiquiers effrontĂŠs, a collection of surrealist visual poems laid out on a chessboard grid, just published by Luna Bisonte Prods.

Due out later this year is The Word Factory: a miscellany, from gradient books of Finland.

A line from Emily Dickinson

If you're looking for a quick cleaning tip that is going to change your life, I have no smarts on the topic. Instead I live a porcelain life, am a perfect example of great dramatic timing, a pictorial representation of inanimate objects or foodstuffs recycled from some lunch leftovers, then bonded on to the underglaze & refined in silverpoint.

(Mark Young)

Straighten Up & Fly Right

If — even as late as this morning — someone had said to me Nat King Cole, asked me to name who went before, who came after, I would have responded Ray Charles after, Art Tatum before.

Could also have rattled off the antecedents of the latter, the stride pianists, most of whom I do not like — but lists learnt young are often not forgotten. &, with a bit more time, I could have

provided the names of those who I thought had followed on, what I had learnt through listening to them, tracking the jumps, bridging those infamous degrees of separation. But

that was before I played this economy-priced two-CD collection of tracks by the King Cole Trio from the late forties / early fifties, & found in them an alternate set of lines, bits borrowed

from the beboppers & distilled into what would turn up with further distillation in John Lewis' work with the Modern Jazz Quartet & on beyond that. It's like finding a point where the homology

of the past & future share the same space. A consensus sequence, or one flower that bears the seemingly disparate characteristics of many flowers, growing where you least expected it.

(Mark Young)

Sorry, but I couldn't find a bottle

Try not to read too much into it. Certainly, elephants are rare in these parts, & elephants giving birth even more so. But remember that here you're on the main road from nowhere to nowhere; & at the somewheres in between anything is a possibility.

After all there are still supposed sightings of the Tasmanian tiger & the local version of the yeti / sasquatch. Yowies they call them here. Just say to the Tourist Bureau on your way out of town that you saw a pachyderm. Anywhere else they might be astute enough to ask if it was Indian or African & get suspicious when you can't tell them where the tusks were relative to the ears.

Here they'll just record it as an unconfirmed sighting & include it in their next brochure as another reason to visit North Queensland. &, hopefully, someday someone out there in the Great Beyond will see the tourist brochure, recognize the hand behind the inherent absurdity of the claim, & say "So that's where Mark Young is living now."

A high degree of solemnity

Annoyances are grouped by topic—the ravages of

central heating, moth damage, the fact that lithium

batteries can no longer be carried in checked baggage,

that badgers are a protected & valued national species.

(Mark Young)

POUND CENTO XV

We have had to dig a new ditch, two miles wide, & perfectly legal, in the marsh

down here under Mantua.

Water still black in the shadow, a regiment of guards in, to

keep order. A boat came, one man holding her sail, bright welter of wave-cords.

The light now, not of the sun— the gold gathers the light against the tesserae of the

floor & the patterns. They put it all down in writing.

(Mark Young)

Biographical Note: John W. Sexton John W. Sexton lives on the south-west coast of Kerry and is the author of six poetry collections, the most recent being Futures Pass (Salmon Poetry 2018). Under the ironic pseudonym of Sex W. Johnston he has recorded an album with legendary Stranglers frontman, Hugh Cornwell, entitled Sons Of Shiva, which has been released on Track Records. He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem The Green Owl won the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.

He’ll Balance the Sky on His Tongue for James Anthony Kelly The cats in and out through the railing weave ribbons from the street to the park; and the sparrow’s sweet cheep of a hailing keeps the day in place before dark.

He pulls poems from clouds and from starlight, and bundles them deep in his coat; and his pockets are bursting with daylight, while songs fill the flute of his throat.

He’ll sell you a book of bright pages that’ll turn your grey into white, and whisper the secrets of mages that’ll topsy the turvy of night.

He’s there any time you’re not looking, but gone when you hope he’ll be found; while the sun in the sky is still cooking, his shadow swaps dreams with the ground.

John W. Sexton

The Leaving of Myrddin dedicated to the memory of Steve Sneyd (1941 – 2018) Myrddin dwells in his house of air, abode invisible.

No thrush or blackbird enters there, its walls unbreachable.

Myrddin sleeps in his chair of rain, a rain not spendable.

His doors are held with a moonlight chain, a chain unbreakable.

Myrddin dreams all the ages to come, his dream unwakeable.

And we are the dream that followed from the unforeseeable.

Myrddin holds our fates in his mind, to us unknowable.

His house descended at Bardsey Sound, all else ineffable.

John W. Sexton

The Half-Eaten Lady for Knute Skinner “Come into the jungle”, said my good friend Knute.

“We can smoke a cigar, or perhaps even shoot.

There are birds of paradise, quails and hens, whose blood, if scattered, won’t separate friends.”

I knew in that moment this wasn’t Knute, but a blaggard or scoundrel that was tempting dispute.

So I ran through the foliage, not caring direction, until I came to an overgrown railway station.

A train stood rusted, tight to the tracks, and a hidden bird screamed - aaxxx, aaxxx-aaxxx.

I froze to the spot, for what lay before me, dressed in torn silk, but a half-eaten lady.

She woke in that moment, and stood with a start; and out fell her mind, and out fell her heart.

I gathered them up, as a gentleman would, and put her together, as well as I could.

We got on that train that had nowhere to go, and sat there talking until the night came slow.

John W. Sexton

Biographical Note: Ria Collins Ria Collins worked as Director of Nursing for many years. Now living in Galway, she has read at Clifden Arts Festival and Galway Library open mic events. She has been published in Skylight 2016, shortlisted for Over the Edge New Writer of the Year 2016 and longlisted in 2017. She was shortlisted for Poems for Patience 2017 and in 2018. She attended workshops in Galway with Kevin Higgins and Dublin Writers Centre with Mark Granier, Jessica Traynor and Adam Wyeth. Most recently she has performed a collaboration of her work with music at the Cuirt International Festival of literature 2018.

The Stanhopea and the Mexican Boys

In the shade of a tropical garden under a sherbet sky, the Stanhopea orchid stretches purple daubed petals emitting its scent, vanilla and chocolate peppermint.

Hundreds of orchid bees lured from twenty feet by two blood maroon eye spots beneath the belly of the sepals suck the essence for propagation in the sweet seduction to follow.

Twenty yards away in parched streets, young boys caught, waving guns, drawn to crimson sorrow, fall with a kiss of gunshot while the Barons watch.

The Stanhopea ripens, in one short burst.

Like the Barons the bees will leave when the petals fall.

Waiting for Swallows (Ria Collins)

Through slits I watch shapes cast as twigs and bracken are gathered, the eaves of my house transformed, learned preparation of new beginnings stored in memory of wings.

In my quantum world the landscape changes daily, no geography here to keep no limits to constrain or contain the chattering populus.

This parallel world has layers that wrap around me light as gossamer filling the winter gap in me.

Today, bunches of mint and thyme bloom on the window-ledge.

They mask the waft of manure that slips in with the wind where shadow hares comb grass and the flash of magpies scavenge with the ravens to feed.

This haven feeds my marrow comforts me with earthenware while I prepare a feast with flavours of the East to Elgar`s cadenza.

I choose and measure cumin, cayenne curry leaves and saffron, grind them in pestle and mortar, the bones of flavour to be dressed with lime and coriander.

Tomorrow I will join my lover in a new creation, our tongues will taste the meal I prepared as we douse the naan in the dhal sip wine, talk through the night.

Lying together he will read aloud to me, then silence will breathe on my shoulder steal my longing with alchemy until swallows return and I am whole again.

Gaia Says (Ria Collins)

I am a dewdrop suspended in morning light, mist that drifts to the sky, I gather and grumble in an overhanging cloud purple on grey, or as rain, I trickle or flood like the blood that flows through you.

I form pools or lakes for you to see a reflection and know I am a mirror, you dance and sing muscles taut limbs tied to the earth with feet of clay while my tides turn under a guiding moon, the waves I create continuous as your life, rising, falling like fountains that bubble and spill.

When I dress in white the north or east wind whips me to the highest peaks.

Dive to the depths of me, sit on the back of the turtle, swim, play before our breath is scorched by the angry sun.

Right Back at You. (Ria Collins)

Once you said you loved me and gifted me the sea gathered in a jam-jar, then you left.

I should hate the sea but am drawn to it a mercurial osmosis, relentless still unharmed.

A tide drags me off a sand-bank, I sink, it rises.

They pump the sadness out of me.

In an unexpected outburst A swell sucks the roll of yacht with boom submerged

shrouds plummet as the keel rises, transom torn and mast hangs crooked to the sky.

Oceans can be dangerous if you ride the current or choose to sail into the storm.

Now round the world the race is on but you store colourless salt water

until the boat is dipped and you cannot swallow your voiceless scream.

If you return I will bottle the sea you gave me in ribboned jars from the Indian Ocean

or with bamboo string from the China Sea. There will be a special edition for true love

but everything is gravitational, I throw a boomerang and it flies right back.

I skim a stone and the stone sinks.

Biographical Note: Michael Boyle Michael Boyle grew up in the historic town land of Drummuck in the parish of Lavey. South Derry.

He now lives in St John's NEWFOUNDLAND. His poems are publish widely in Canada and elsewhere.

FINDING MY BUSH SOUL. For Sean B. (Michael Boye)

An old Irish philosopher once said.

When emigrants return to the house they were born that they should come un-announced and walk the last mile alone.

They need this time to breathe deeply and to saturate the soul and to listen to the silence of what is happening.

Once I tried to do this.

I was being driven home from George Best Belfast Airport in a teaming heavy downpour.

But I had a plan to find my bush soul And as the green fields and pebble dashed farmhouses

marched past the car window.

As we neared home I asked my brother Sean to stop his rented car by the stream at the ash tree I knew this spot marked the border between Mayogall and Drummuck.

Everyone paused as the car slowed down long enough for me to open the passenger door and let my left foot touch Drummuck soil.

Those in the car wondered And did not understand what I was doing.

I still regret that day the elements conspired against me in finding my Bush Soul.

But before I die I will try it again.

TERMONEENY JOGGER. (Michael Boyle)

Panasonic and invisible like a May corncrake.

A barn owl never heard or seen.

Took no chances of running in daylight and

jogged barefoot at early dawn long before people heard Clark’s factory horn.

In winter nights climbed Mc Grann’s hill just as the Angleus bell rang through the valley.

Stuck to grassy hills in August ploughed through barley fields. never ran on tarmac country roads Kept his head low as a Larne Catholic when he scrambled over the hay meadows of Lower Drummuck.

Stuck to the chapel path through Tannavolley and Dernanure.

Climbed the dark dense Drumnaghlessa forest.

Like an ancient Fianna warrior

or a winged Pegasus he jumped seven foot hedges waded through deep moss holes and swam into the flowing Clady river.

Galloped across fields of potato drills, Vaulting over sheughs, leap frogged over drains and high hawthorn ditches.

Stumbles as he never tied his black running gutty slippers

He wore white football shorts and white vest - a Spirit from another world.

He was ghost one winter evening at the Rock Lane as he jumped and sprinted from the top of Irwin’s wall steads.

Frightened the Ballymena workmen laying drainage pipes.

Today, many joggers are on the Scribe road and

others make their way between Cuilear and Carnaman.

And back to Drummard and Gulladuff.

In the countryside today Today in the modern way

Barricaded High steel farm gates

and razor sharp electric fences make joggers stick to the road.

Animals roam no more on country lanes.

No point- to- point horse racing as the new landlord class drive people away.

No hounds chase for hares or foxes.

And with no turf cutting in the moss It becomes a new jungle even in our life time.

Ancient right a ways are fenced up and gone.

Be like the ancient Termoneeny jogger and walk the old school path to Dreenan school or Lavey chapel .Farewell

Our Termoneeny jogger ran his last race was on that Sunday of January 30 1972.

That Sunday our world changed-----------Farewell to all the joggers who ran across the fields Now they run across the skies.

The lone joggers of the past who jumped smelly lint dams and ran the moss lanes. no more -Today on Sunday mornings we have packs of multi colored vested runners clogging the country roads.

Spandex, heart monitors listening on I phones to rap music from foreign land.

So Farewell now . to the Termoneeny jogger so far from the far back hill.

Keeping Count.

(Michael Boyle)

Jimmy came to Philadelphia from far off Mayogall and he never ever went back home at all.

He kept imaging every day that he was only a stone’s throw from cow dung.

Part of him still clung close to the old moss lane.

My uncle Barney told me of Jimmy’s reading habits.

How he devoured the Coleraine Constitution for news of cattle prices in Kilrea and pig trade in Maghera?

And how much lambs were making in Draperstown fair?

Then, Jimmy updated that final score sheet in his dingy North –East Philly apartment.

A nail held faded yellowing newspaper sheets.

With a smudgy black biro he circled the obituaries he kne, of those who died in Lavey Parish since he left there so many years ago.

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July 2018’s MESSAGE FROM THE ALLEYCATS:

We cannot get over just how hot it is Well, that’s just about it from us for this edition everyone. Thanks again to all of the artists who submitted their work to be presented “On the Wall”. As ever, if you didn’t make it into this edition, don’t despair! Chances are that your submission arrived just too late to be included this time. Check out future editions of “A New Ulster” to see your work showcased “On the Wall”.

We continue to provide a platform for poets and artists around the world we want to offer our thanks to the following for their financial support Richard Halperin, John Grady, P.W. Bridgman, Bridie Breen, John Byrne, Arthur Broomfield, Silva Merjanin, Orla McAlinden, Michael Whelan, Sharon Donnell, Damien Smyth, Arthur Harrier, Maire Morrissey Cummins, Alistair Graham, Strider Marcus Jones Our anthologies https://issuu.com/amosgreig/docs/anu_present_voices_for_peace https://issuu.com/amosgreig/docs/anu_poetry_anthology_-april https://issuu.com/amosgreig/docs/anu_women_s_anthology_2017