Anu issue 16/ A New Ulster

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

Featuring the works of Allen Young, Peter O’Neill, Maire Lecrivain, Paula Matthews,Michael McAloran, Maire Morrissey-Cummins, Rachel Sutcliffe and John Byrne. Hard copies can be purchased from our website.

Issue No 16 January 2013

A New Ulster On the Wall Website

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

Cover Image “Eldritch” by Editorial

Amos Greig page 6

Allen Young; Time Does Not Heal Stumbling Backwards

page 8 page 9

Peter O’Neill; On Cathal Brugha Street The Stinging Fly The Good Chemist Skerries

page 13 pages 14-15 page 16 pages 17-19

Maire Lecrivain; Mercury The Nelson Mandela Blues The Madres de la Muerte

page 21 pages 22-23 pages 24-25

Paula Matthews; Whispers…

Marriage, 2013.

Can we?

page 27 page 28 page 29

Michael Mc Aloran; From- ‘The Roving Eye’

pages 31-33

Maire Morrissey-Cummins; Sun Blessed Stone Blackbird Night Spring Bouquet Bending Ivy

page 35 page 36 page 37 page 38

Rachel Sutcliffe;

tis the season....

page 40

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On The Wall Message from the Alleycats

page 42

Maire Morrisey-Cummins; Maire’s work can be found

pages 44-45

John (Jack) Byrne; John’s work can be found

pages 47-49 Round the Back

Round the back

page 51

Manuscripts, art work and letters to be sent to: Submissions Editor A New Ulster 24 Tyndale Green, Belfast BT14 8HH Alternatively e-mail: g.greig3@gmail.com See page 52 for further details and guidelines regarding submissions. Hard copy distribution is available c/o Lapwing Publications, 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast BT14 8HQ Digital distribution is via links on our website: https://sites.google.com/site/anewulster/

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Published in Baskerville Produced in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

All rights reserved The artists have reserved their right under Section 7 Of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 To be identified as the authors of their work.

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Editorial Everyone at A New Ulster would like to wish you all a Happy New Year. 2014 promises to be an exciting year for local poetry what with the return of The Honest Ulsterman and a new poetry ezine coming out soon called The Incubator which focuses on Short fiction, memoir pieces, one act plays, essays and some poetry.

A New Ulster has in its own way followed the traditional Irish journey leaving these shores metaphorically speaking and taking the words of so many artists worldwide. We are only too glad to provide this journey. As with any Immram we have had our difficulties especially with technology. I’ve lost track of the number of problems we’ve faced together but we have always managed to get the issues out only one issue was actually late.

This issue features a strong example of experimental and local poetry from many voices including a tribute to Nelson Mandela as always the range and skill of these artists leaves us humbled that they continue to join us on this journey. So Grab an oar, lower the sails and aim for the horizon for it is a new year and a new voyage of discovery.

I hope you get as much enjoyment reading these pieces they speak highly of the artists who submitted to this issue and to paraphrase Arthur Rimbaud they show the artist as God. Their brush strokes, words give life to a world we can barely interpret however through their eyes for a brief moment we can walk different lands.

Enough pre-amble! Onto the creativity!

Amos Greig

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Biographical Note: Allen Young Allen Young was an Occupational Psychologist until illness forced a change of life. He now enjoys sailing, walking and writing.

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Time does not heal (Allen Young)

Time heals, they say, the deepest wounds we suffer You’ll see, they say, the pain will go in time.

What seems the end will later seem a passage, A trial that in hindsight you withstood.

The conscious mind accepts this common wisdom.

Plans and projects, daily business, Conspire to brush bad times aside And years can pass in numb denial Displacing ancient hurts, regrets and sins.

But pain will find a way back in The lurking hidden horrors wait to surface When conscious guards are down Defences sleep.

The dark hours of the night weigh heavy, When dawn won’t come and sleep deceives For dreams allow the lurking pain to trample All our careful daytime worthless guards

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As age rolls on regrets pile up.

River’s debris forms its dam And more forgotten pains are caught Ready to relive their past.

I lie and sweat Bare, helpless, no defence, Re-living old defeats and fears More recent gains forgotten, lost.

You wonder at a tear some evening What ancient hurt has surfaced and escaped?

A phrase, a song, an image prompts the memory And locked up pains come leaking from the eyes.

Too late to do what should be done Time does not heal, pain only waits.

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Stumbling backwards (Allen Young)

We stumble backward through a life Butting blind into the new Seeing only what is past Imagining we plan and choose.

And yet the pictured past is false Distorted by our inner eye No more true than we allow No sharper than we bear to see.

A shadow falls across our view Cast by ego, guilt or shame.

Some see the dark with no escape From failures, faults and slights endured.

Some blur the past – retouch the scene Ignoring what would cause distress, Inventing brighter, better days That never were and cannot be.

And though we cannot see ahead

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A truthful view of what has been Gives pause for thoughtful new intent – We lean toward different, better ways.

For he whose past is not denied Who sees the good and knows the bad Can clearer see the trace he leaves And better find a way to live This baffling, backward, precious life.

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Biographical Note: Peter O’Neill Peter O’ Neill (1967) was born in Cork where he grew up before moving to live in France in the nineties. He returned to Dublin in 1998, where he has been living ever since. He has been writing poetry sine the eighties, and has been published in reviews in Ireland, USA, UK and France. His debut collection Antiope (Stonesthrow Poetry, 2013) was critically acclaimed: ‘certainly a voice to be reckoned with.’ Dr Brigitte Le JueZ (Dublin City University). With over six collections behind him, he is currently translating Les Fleurs Du Mal.

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On Cathal Brugha Street (Peter O’Neill)

“Voluptatem praesagit muta cupido.”

Lucretius

Compelling, magnetic, aquiline forms Whose voluptuous contours consistently astonish, Enveloped particularly in jet black hose.

And, adding to the fetishist’s iconography, The boots whose heels pack a metaphoric whip.

There are exquisite verbs to describe your all too visible structures, All commencing, funnily enough, with a serpentine S: Swing... sashay...stride... and swagger.

Locus to another world, you could start a race riot; Your Hellenic charge now animates our streets.

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The Stinging Fly (Peter O’Neill)

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100 000 devout students bent over their desks Before the emissaries of impossible uniformity.

Together they tragically attempt to fight against The invisible tsunami which renders all of their efforts Null and void, they who would tragically attempt to pursue The elusive beast known as... originality! Outside the Creative Writing classes The students drown themselves in whole seas of cappuccinos, Lattes and espressos, all also quite tragically, wholly unoriginal, Being merely American forms of the Italian originals – Whole lives spent living around simulacra! Whoever heard of poets working Together and being state funded, publishing their collective works From the secure realm of a former executioner’s tower?

Some paradoxes are simply too rich to be properly appreciated.

I can hear the father of every father screaming; “Get a real job you bums! Stop hanging around stately, ancestral homes!”

The students blush, they are like tourists chasing after Abominable snowmen, originality being just as elusive.

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II

To find your own voice you must first go through anatomical reinvention; Grow a pair! Become Nietzschean, come very close To experiencing death but don’t die of course, you idiots, Come back and write about it, entertainingly.

The public, for some unknown reason, is quite old fashioned And needs a good laugh, at your expense of course.

Imagine the world of holocausts unannounced or unheralded Driving the motor of sprinkled gold cascading from the multiplicity Of Steinways, playing Mozart’s stolen hordes?

Experience heartbreak, to the point of almost insanity.

Clean toilets, and while you’re at it explore the tiles Like a camera would on the Hubble. Spend many years on foreign shores Learning stranger tongues than your own and experience a rain of humiliation As you do. But, more importantly, see the world anew.

For to be an actor, or poet, you must inhabit every role, To be believable, and in order to be able to do so You must bring to the role, or poem, experience, Which entails a certain kind of imagination; merging the real world With the unreal, as it were.

So, don’t just sit there sucking on that finely crafted writing tool, Go to those bookshelves and rip up every spineless volume which you’ve ever Contributed to.

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The Good Chemist

For Barry Lanigan & Harish Nunkoo (Peter O’Neill)

He opened the door smiling, And when I placed the packet of condoms Down upon the counter, Instead of an attack of Catholic guilt, I was hit with Hindu clarity On phallic thrusts, from the figure 1, Reaching for the infinite, the orgasmic zero, And I left the place, feeling like a cosmic hero.

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Skerries (Peter O’Neill) I

This is the moment. This is the picture. This is the film. This is the book, this space. Step outside into the light- the sandbanks, the islands, the sea. Digits probing carefully up and down the horizontal. Every breathe an astonishment. Take a cue from the Oystercatcher, but first, do you want love or murder? For, be very careful as it can all happen here.

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Ashen, mercurial earth. The expanse of sky and ocean with seemingly no perceptible trace of interruption, and to create all of this? Over six million years of uninterrupted, volcanic activity. (Do you hear me Michael O’ Leary?)

We are but a blip. Shhh, listen to it... slight sliver of silver, caught up in the almost imperceptible rolling of the waves. It is infinity, eternity in a day.

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III

Now, walk down onto the sand and pebble, imagine how a geologist sees it?

An open laboratory. Read aloud the stories in stone. You come here and switch off from humanity with its drowned voices and tiresome footfalls, and erect a fourth wall- the one which covers the stage from the public, bricked up by an absolutely, smooth indifference; as smooth as a sail. Walking through the landscape with your umbrella, spot a crow sent careering against the light. And a trawler, more verb than noun, is squashed there like a fly out on the horizon.

Dogs frolic and splash for their masters, who are all women, walking furiously By the shoreline. Mountains painted above them, like placid giants, remind you of Vico and his theories on the origins of all language. You walk on, out and up, upon an open stretch of scree, salted with the thorn strips of pubic weed left lying there. And above them the dune where the marram tufts embrace a bed of Venuses which are waiting only for high tides. Their movements create goose bumps on the sandy floor. There they repose beside the prints of paws and claws...Pause to reflect back over the whole scene. An almost opaque mist descends, hanging in the air like some weird webbing. And then the bell tolls, upon an hour past perfectly.

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IV

The town is generic: the free Carnegie library with its Edwardian bric –a brac, Presents itself humbly beside the monstrous church. Unfortunately, the stairwell inside in not open to the public. I had imagined holding a volume, of perhaps Lowell or King, before descending with the worlds of their words resounding in my mind. But, it was not to be. Instead, I borrowed a film by Truffault and came back out to view the islands, once again.

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The tide is fully out, leaving a sandy pathway all to Shenick. I search the lonely mound with its solitary Martello, which evokes Napoleon, Bethoven & Hegel; two centuries passed. Turning to its companion out on Red Island, I watch the isolated figures of a man, boy and a dog. Metaphysics of space. When you are inside of the walk, as it were, always keeping to the centre, like orbiting the sun, its gravitational pull. Rockabill recedes gently now, its lighthouse fading in a watercolour mist.

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Biographical Note: Maire Lecrivain Marie Lecrivain is the executive editor-publisher of poeticdiversity: the litzine

of Los Angeles, a Pushcart Prize nominee, photographer, and is a writer in residence at her apartment. Her words and art have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including: Cuib Nest Nido, Edgar Allen Poetry

Journal, Haibun Today,The Los Angeles Review, The Poetry Salzburg Review, Spillway, Tree Killer Ink, A New Ulster, and others. Marie's newest collection of poetry, Love Poems... Yes... REALLY... Love Poems, (Š 2013 Sybaritic Press), is available through Amazon.com. She is also the editor of several anthologies, including the upcoming Near Kin: Words and

Art inspired by Octavia E. Butler (Š 2014 Sybaritic Press). Her avocations include photography; meditation, alchemy, marmosets, H.P. Lovecraft, the number seven, and the letter S.

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Mercury (Marie Lecrivain) We joke about you in winged retrograde and wearing assless chaps, your quicksilver nature that dissolves or solidifies a mortal’s destiny in an instant.

Why gambol about like a fly in the face of an oncoming train?

Mercury, there are more than a few of us who understand you’re the arbiter of the sacred and the profane, and in the grand scheme our lives last as long as the turn of a dime.

We yearn to capture more than a fleeting glance of your winsome face, to us, a blessing and a moment of grace.

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The Nelson Mandela Blues as Composed & Conducted

by James Gautier (Marie Lecrivain) On a Wednesday, I told James you’d died, and I won’t blame it on Mercury Retrograde.

The world was already in mourning as they counted each breath and the seconds in-between.

The reports began to trickle down through strands of the Web. It was difficult to believe you’d died; you’ve been the True North of the world’s moral compass.

James took his turn at the mic, looked long into our collective third eyes and told a story about a faraway day in Oakland, California, where he’d spotted a line of well-dressed sages and scribes who’d come to hear you speak, to document every word and breath you shared; it was that kind of an occasion.

And while we were caught up in James’s tale, he pulled out his harmonica and started to compose his grief into music.

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He plugged into the blues, the bittersweet magical current that reminds us there’s a kernel of sorrow at the center of victory.

As the blues rained around us, we learned the secret you’d taught James as he led us in six soulful exhalations:

N ...

E ...

L ...

S ...

O...

N...

The next day, you still breathed.

I hoped you’d heard, or at least felt the magic.

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The Madres de la Muerte (Marie Lecrivain)

(to my friend M.A.R. )

The copal smoke wraps around our shoulders as we enter the chapel of Madres de la Muerte, the First Mother in her various guises to whom we owe our first and final allegiance.

To my left stands the Skinny Girl in pink elizabethan dress, the ruffle of her lace collar one shade whiter than her smile.

Next to her is the White Lady, bridal veil drawn over her joyous expression.

I then gaze into the sightless orbs of the Most Powerful Lady, her verdant robes a reminder that we’re all equal beneath the earth.

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In gold raiment, La Blanquita shines bright her bony feet hidden beneath a shower of coins.

I pause before My Friend, robed in the stainless blue of an ageless madonna in whose heart I want to dwell.

In her left hand is the scythe, a kinder weapon than the sword, and her right hand holds the balances where our sorrows are measured.

I leave her a poor token of five small thank-yous.

We walk into the sunlight, grateful for our mortality.

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Biographical Note: Paula Matthews

Paula Matthews was born in County Down and Educated at Queen’s University of Belfast and the University of Ulster. Currently employed as a social worker, she is working on her first collection of poems and undertaking a mentorship programme with an established poet through LitNet NI. Paula is set to begin the creative writing pathway of a Masters in English Literature at the University of Ulster next year and lives near the Ards Peninsula with her husband and two children.

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Whispers‌ (Paula Matthews) And whispers unendingly fade into darkness, eulogy for one who inhabited this bed.

My breath, his breath, my breast on his.

My heart pounding with his heart, sounding what was never spoken.

Whispers and vapours are left.

Silent comforts, my body remembers, tracing tear tracks on my cheek, sweetening bitterness of sleep.

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Marriage, 2013.

(Paula Matthews) If one voice carries like sound on water, pitches itself above the others, it unbalances the music.

Hear the choir, not the singer.

Many voices, this is textured, a fugue, not a solo, layered.

Movements of melodies, richer for complexity.

No one owning the words.

No one not owning them.

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Can we?

(Paula Matthews) Can this road rise to meet us?

Can we walk uneven paths?

Can sunlight warm us?

Can the wind be at our back?

Can order come from despair?

Can we find strength?

Can we focus?

Can we inspire?

Can we be graceful?

Can we be kind?

Can we be fruitful?

Can we be new?

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Biographical Note: Michael Mc Aloran Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976). His work has appeared in various zines and magazines, including ditch, Gobbet Magazine, Ygdrasil, Establishment, Unlikely Stories, Stride Magazine, Underground Books, etc.

He has authored a number of chapbooks, including 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'Final Fragments', (Calliope Nerve Media) & 'Unto Naught', (Erbacce-Press). A full length collection of poems, 'Attributes', was published by 'Desperanto' in 2011. Lapwing Publications, (Ireland), released a collection of his poems, 'The Non Herein' in 2012. The Knives, Forks & Spoons Press, (U.K), also released an ekphrastic book of text/ art, 'Machinations' this year. Oneioros Books has also released 'In Damage Seasons' & 'All Stepped/ Undone' in 2013. A further collection 'Of Dead Silences', was also published this year by Lapwing Publications...

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From- ‘The Roving Eye’ (Michael Mc Aloran)

(…eye of clear eye of wishful eye of bled eye of focused eye excretion eye of turning

eye of bleeding eye reclaimed eye of following eye of the recede eye of nothing eye of all eye alack eye of breath eye of sun’s light eye egg eye bollock eye of silver eye sliced across know eye have forgotten eye eye of sunken eye a-dream eye of rot eye of cataract of eye of silenced eye eye eye roving in the darkness of I…)

…from out of step/ the roving eye/ occluded/ in the meld of skull and ash/ snapped/ the deep red of meat of and the quivering hand/ stretched out a vast landscape of nothing/ mocked alight/ what matter/ stillness in the cracked lung’s bellowing here now or forever the break/ broke silence silentee/ absentee/ words cataracts of the roving eye’s stillness/ bled or no/ from out of step/ (step alone)/ yet ever vast the appeal of semblance/ nothing more of it/ traceless the eye’s whisperings…

…steel-held in incommunicable lights/ eye foreign/ desolate the eye unknowing/ given to reach/ a subtle collapse of boundary/ perhaps a stairwell/ eye cascades into the dark once more/ heaves then nothing/ brittle the bone break of shadowing/ locked to the cortex of some violent disregard/ headless yes/ head of powdered blood/ no terror in all terror of/ blindness/ yes or no…

…pupil of death pupil sky of black/ lessened as if to disregard/ step one the eye cannot step other than once/ in gleam of burnished steel/ the vapours rise up to skin the eye’s recall/ a deft wind/ caress of/ bleak light silenced lights utter dark/ unsettled/ some mask some collapse of/ (as if to pluck it out)/ the roving eye garrotted/ the eye turns inwards/ into all the solace of a coffin full of/ shit…

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…dry them/ set aside/ set them aside/ a mortuary silence/ clasped forgotten/ eye of this or that or of the want of/ broken bodies of words and the claim of eye upon them/ less or more/ the words warp in an open palm/ the eye abandons/ sleeps in drunk ditch silences/ through the speech of the pulse/ locked under/ murmurs from the depths…

…piss-rake and the solace of skinned earth/ buried somewhere or other/ yet ever night/ a candle lit in silent bankruptcy upon a corpse/ eye recalls/ registers none/ aches/ roving all the while/ some distancia/ bled out with tears to follow/ yet opening out the skyline/ subtle then/ until foreign/ knocked upon without answer/ speech worse than dead…

…rove/ rove away/ the reflection in/ seen/ dry lock of furtive breathless/ as the eye breathes also/ some dusts/ yes/ a plague of desire and the given flesh of/ oceanic/ rock-a-bye/ the distant bones of the inward looking eye/ birthing no solace/ the bind tight of wire and scuttling escaping blood/ for which forever there will be a taste…

…(eye unrelated chasm, it whispers)…

…the frozen cracked eye/ no marrow in/ through/ give or taken/ dissolves then/ gouged by speech or the of until/ laid to rest/ the roving eye will ever seed the night with acrid colours/ some scattering of broken glass/ perhaps/ some solace neither/ never forgotten/ ashen walls of drought/ concaving in/ flexed/ headless but for the/ obliterate of ice/ dead pelts/ eye/ I/ nothing claimed/ the crux is the filament of/ settled/ never settled/ dissolves then/ in sleep never ceasing…

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‌and so to the bones of the eye/ none less for tomorrows/ blood-flecked/ the eye teeth-baring unto the grip of flesh/ the none of it/ embers to taste/ shattered the pupil gazes as if to/ not a sound visible/ in the casket unseen of the silenced/ stone upon stone upon nothing/ raking the excrement of/ till taste of ash recedes it cannot recede/ the eye pisses upon itself/ it is never redeemed‌

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Biographical Note: Mรกire Morrissey-Cummins Mรกire is Irish, married with two adult children. She lived abroad for many years, working in Holland mainly and Mรกire lives between Wicklow, Ireland and Trier, Germany at present. She loves nature and is a published haiku writer.

Mรกire retired early from the Financial Sector and found art and poetry. She is really enjoying the experience of getting lost in words and paint.

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Sun Blessed Stone (MĂĄire Morrissey-Cummins)

On sun-blessed stone memories flash white amid leafy noonday shadows.

Murky secrets flicker in the light settling within red brick walls, neatly layered, cemented in.

I will leave these troubled times in summer’s shade to fester, long after I am gone.

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Blackbird Night (Mรกire Morrissey-Cummins)

Perched on a lamp post, a lone blackbird chants the moonlight thrilling the darkness with his plaintive tune.

I pause in the stillness beneath a crescent moon, the sky awash with stars.

I gaze in silent wonder, this frosty Winters night.

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Spring Bouquet (Mรกire Morrissey-Cummins)

Sparrows spice an April noon, slice a path through the cedar pepper virginal skies, beaks sprouting with nests.

Wings unzip a tart breeze rise over water logged fields, the zing and zest of cinnamon feathers flash through budding branches.

Wild garlic stings the moist air, reeks through lukewarm crevices, innocent bells on long loopy stems emerge from pine scented forests.

Snow trickles the mountains streams below buttercup fields, scenting the wings of a marsh butterfly sprinkling a new spring to life.

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Bending Ivy (Mรกire Morrissey-Cummins)

A corner of my garden is forever Autumn.

Wind-blown leaves collect in the crook of a burly ivy at the south-side wall, crisp and turn mold into a mound monthly.

They gather from trees all around, maple, beech, oak and birch, stirred by the zephyr winds burned by a thousand suns.

They twist and spin settling in the cranny, crunching crooked for warmth.

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Biographical Note: Rachel Sutcliffe Rachel Sutcliffe has suffered from a serious autoimmune disorder for the past 12 years, since her early twenties. Throughout this time writing has been a great form of therapy, it’s kept her from going insane. She is an active member of the British Haiku Society and the online writing group Splinter4all, has her own blog @http://projectwords11.wordpress.com. She has been published in various anthologies and journals, both in print and online, including; A New Ulster, Prune Juice , Every Day Poets, Shamrock, Lynx, The Heron’s Nest and A Hundred Gourds

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tis the season....

(Rachel Sutcliffe) Christmas shopping glad it comes just once a year Christmas Eve hanging a holly wreath on her grave struggling to fasten my belt Christmas reaching the last chapter new year countdown new year resolving to lose the bathroom scales snowflakes hit the high street January sales

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If you fancy submitting something but haven’t done so yet, or if you would like to send us some further examples of your work, here are our submission guidelines:

SUBMISSIONS NB – All artwork must be in either BMP or JPEG format. Indecent and/or offensive images will not be published, and anyone found to be in breach of this will be reported to the police.

Images must be in either BMP or JPEG format.

Please include your name, contact details, and a short biography. You are welcome to include a photograph of yourself – this may be in colour or black and white.

We cannot be responsible for the loss of or damage to any material that is sent to us, so please send copies as opposed to originals.

Images may be resized in order to fit “On the Wall”. This is purely for practicality.

E-mail all submissions to: g.greig3@gmail.com and title your message as follows: (Type of work here) submitted to “A New Ulster” (name of writer/artist here); or for younger contributors: “Letters to the Alley Cats” (name of contributor/parent or guardian here). Letters, reviews and other communications such as Tweets will be published in “Round the Back”. Please note that submissions may be edited. All copyright remains with the original author/artist, and no infringement is intended.

These guidelines make sorting through all of our submissions a much simpler task, allowing us to spend more of our time working on getting each new edition out!

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January 2014'S MESSAGE FROM THE ALLEYCATS: Can you believe its Jaanuary again?

Once again we have some lovely haiga the combination of art and haiku impresses. We alleycats enjoy January there’s so much food leftover from Christmas we never know were to begin. We need to wake up the ogre he’s been sleeping on the job again.

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”.

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Biographical Note: Mรกire Morrissey-Cummins Mรกire is Irish, married with two adult children. She lived abroad for many years, and bides between Wicklow, Ireland and Trier, Germany at present. She loves nature and is a published haiku writer.

Mรกire retired early from the Financial Sector and found art and poetry. She is really relishing the experience of getting lost in literature and paint.

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New Year Countdown by Maire Morrissey-Cummins

Sarah by Maire Morrissey-Cummins

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Still life Abstract by Maire Morrissey-Cummins

Village by Maire Morrissey-Cummins

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Biographical Note: John Jack Byrne John [Jack] Byrne lives in Co. Wicklow ,Ireland he has been writing for almost 6 years mainly poetry; Traditional and Japanese short form and has had some published success in UK , USA, Ireland in Anthologies, Magazines ,Ezines /Journals his blog can be found here: http://johnisleoftheharp.blogspot.ie/

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Dreams by John Byrne

Airport by John Byrne

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Decree by John Byrne

All in Heaven by John Byrne

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Deep Winter by John Byrne

Tears by John Byrne

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January sees a new year and new poetry competitions two such events are:

Grey Hen Poetry Competition 2014 | Closing Date: 30-Apr-14 Details: Competition for women over 60. Poems up to 40 lines on any theme. Judges: A C Clarke and Eleanor Livingstone. Prizes: £100, £75, £25.

Entry Fee: £3.00 per poem, £10 for 4 Contact: Rules and entry form (essential) from www.greyhenpress.com or write for further details to Grey Hen Press, PO Box 450, Keighley, W Yorks BD22 9BG

Earlyworks Press with Circaidy Gregory: Poetry Collection Competition | Closing Date: 30-Jun-14 Details: 1st prize £100 advance and royalty contract for a collection published by Circaidy Gregory Press. In first instance, send max 3000 words or ten A4 pages of poems.

Entry Fee: £15.00 Contact: Full entry details on the competitions page at Earlyworks Press: http://www.earlyworkspress.co.uk/competitions_poetry_collection.htm

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LAPWING PUBLICATIONS RECENT, NEW And FORTHCOMING TITLES 9781907276798 Martin Domleo The Haunted Barn: A Novella 9781907276804 Helen Soraghan Dwyer Beyond 9781907276811 Richard Brooks Metaphysical Flaw 9781907276828 Martin Burke For / Because / After 9781907276835 Gerry McDonnell Ragged Star 9781907276842 James O’Sullivan Kneeling on the Redwood Floor 9781907276859 Una ni Cheallaigh Salamander Crossing 9781907276866 Teresa Lally Doll 9781907276873 Lynne Edgar Trapeze 9781907276880 Paul Tobin Blessed by Magpies 9781907276897 Laurence James Deliquesence of Dust 9781907276903 Marc Carver London Poems 9781907276910 Iain Britton druidic approaches 9781907276927 Gillian Somerville-Large Karamania 9781907276934 Martha Rowsell Another Journey Like This 9781907276941 Kate Ashton The Concourse of Virgins 9781907276958 Martin Domleo Sheila 9781907276965 Tommy Murray Swimming with Dolphins 9781907276972 John O’Malley Invisible Mending 9781907276989 J.C.Ireson The Silken Ladder 9781907276996 Mariama Ifode Senbazuru 9781909252004 Keeper of the Creek Rosy Wilson 9781909252011 Ascult? Linitea Vorbind hear silence speaking x Peter Sragher 9781909252028 Songs of Steelyard Sue J.S. Watts 9781909252035 Paper Patterns Angela Topping 9781909252042 Orion: A Poem Sequence Rosie Johnston 9781909252059 Disclaimer Tristan Moss 9781909252066 Things out of Place Oliver Mort 9781909252073 Human Shores Byron Beynon 9781909252080 The Non Herein - Michael McAloran 9781909252097 Chocolate Spitfires Sharon Jane Lansbury 9781909252103 Will Your Spirit Fly? Richard Brooks 9781909252110 Out of Kilter George Beddows intro x Jeremy Reed 9781909252127 Eruptions Jefferson Holdridge (out soon) 9781909252134 In the Consciousness of Earth Rosalin Blue 9781909252141 The Wave Rider Eva Lindroos (out soon) There are other new works in various stages of preparation.

All titles £10.00 per paper copy Or In PDF format £5.00 for 4 titles.

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