ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online)
Featuring the works of Heath Brougher, Strider Marcus Jones, Richard Halperin, Dorsaf Garbaa, Steven Klepetar, James Mc Elroy, Brendan Mc Cormack, Matthew Duggan, James Laurie, Martin Burke and Michael Mc Aloran Hard copies can be purchased from our website.
Issue No 37 October 2015
A New Ulster On the Wall Website
Editor: Amos Greig Editor: Arizahn Editor: Adam Rudden Contents
Editorial
page 5
Heath Brougher; 1.
Curriculums
2. 3. 4.
A Bouquet of Universes Evolution of the Fist Water, Mercury
Strider Marcus Jones; 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
My Old Socks Those Leaves on the Pavement I Want What Ordinary Others Want Hopper’s Ladies This Tentative Raft
Richard Halperin; 1. No Abiding Cities 2. The Small Hours 3. Exiles 4. Without Pangur Ban 5. They Got up and walked out of the gallery 6. Magnitude Steven Klepetar; 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Power Li Bo Explains the Law of the Earth The Madman Paints Flame In the Library Li Bo and the Plums
James Mc Elroy; 1. Ornithologies 2. Elias 3. Belfast Sextet 4. You Brendan McCormack; 1. Everything 2. Aftermath 3. Scent
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Matthew Duggan; 1. The Waterfront 2. Ithaca 3. Red Rose 4. Zombie Land 5. Oxi Jamie Laurie; 1. Armageddon 2. Call Me When You Can Martin Burke;
1.
In the Kyrie of Dusk
Michael Mc Aloran 1. Six poems
On The Wall Message from the Alleycats
page 53
Round the Back David Rigsbee; 1. Review of The Dark Pool
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Manuscripts, 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 Digital distribution is via links on our website: https://sites.google.com/site/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 “Guardian� by Amos Greig
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“No man can tell what the future may bring forth, and small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.” Demosthenes. Editorial The 37th issue of A New Ulster represents a milestone back in September 2012 I had an idea and in many was the quote by Demosthenes sums up the resultant venture. A New Ulster is read world wide and submissions are not just limited to this island. We had hoped to live up to the description of a literary and arts magazine and this issue fulfils that ambition. I look back at the work we have done over the last three years and find myself humbled by the quality and range of work we receive each issue. To think that we manage to produce this each and every month without financial backing is amazing and our global audience blows me away. Of course A New Ulster wouldn’t be what it is without the poets and artists who submit their work each month and this issue features some very strong material as well as some first time writers we also have some established names for you. And a review of The Dark pool by Peter O’Neill We have transversions and traditional poetry formats for you to explore I am just a gatekeeper and today the door is open once more. Enough pre-amble! Onto the creativity! Amos Greig
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Biographical Note: Heath Brougher Heath Brougher lives in York, Pennsylvania and attended Temple University. He recently finished his first chapbook, with two others on the way, as well as a full length book of poetry. He is also writing a book of philosophy. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Yellow Chair Review, Of/With, Mobius, *Star 82 Review, Main Street Rag, Otoliths, Gloom Cupboard, Lotus-eater Magazine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Icebox Journal, Third Wednesday, MiPOesias, Red Ceilings Review, Calliope, Stray Branch, Van Gogh's Ear, BlazeVOX, Inscape Literary Journal, and elsewhere.
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Curriculums (Heath Brougher) I am always alwaysing my way through life turnstiling through these days made of illusion and deception the hamster wheel spinneth eternal ...fan rotation and so on‌ until I unlatch from this incessant loop to see that circular paths are false for the Truth lives within the Spiral. to unsnag the grindstone eternally turning one must disconnect oneself in order to stop this massively insane friction.
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A Bouquet of Universes (Heath Brougher) I do not exist which is a very strange paradigm shift due to the fact that I am still alive.
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Evolution of the Fist (Heath Brougher) Violence began as fists fists turned into swords swords turned into guns guns turned into nuclear bombs nuclear bombs turned into masses of dead bodies evaporated bodies leaving only their shadows scorched onto the sidewalk while the actual bodies just turned to ash. So what way of inflicting violence comes next? What insidious weapon comes after the nuclear bomb? For one must know that Yeat’s gyre is still turning and turning faster with every sinking sun.
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Water, Mercury (Heath Brougher) I haven’t been found of a peaceful mind in so long, if ever, truly truly ever I’ve been always at odds with the overall masque the vanity of the modern America with its Manmade realities haunting the populace a society of people who don’t want to explore their minds soon enough Thought will soon be thrown its death, impaled upon the white picket fences of suburbia.
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Biographical Note: Strider Marcus Jones Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and ex civil servant from Salford/Hinckley, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry are modern, traditional, mythical, sometimes erotic, surreal and metaphysical http//www.lulu.com/spotlight/stridermarcusjones1. He is a maverick, moving between forests, mountains and cities, playing his saxophone and clarinet in warm solitude.
His poetry has been accepted for publication in 2015 by mgv2 Publishing Anthology; Earl Of Plaid Literary Journal 3rd Edition; Subterranean Blue Poetry Magazine; Deep Water Literary Journal, 2015-Issue 1/2; Kool Kids Press Poetry Journal; PageA-Day Poetry Anthology 2015; Eccolinguistics Issue 3.2 January 2015; The Collapsed Lexicon Poetry Anthology 2015 and Catweazle Magazine Issue 8; Life and Legends Magazine; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Amomancies Poetry Magazine; The Art Of Being Human Poetry Magazine; Cahaba River Literary Journal; East Coast Literary Review; Nightchaser Ink Publishing Anthology Autumn Reign; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; A New Ulster/Anu Issue 27/29/31/32/33/34/35; Poems For A Liminal Age Anthology; In The Trenches Poetry Anthology; Blue Lines Literary Journal, Spring 2015; Murmur Journal, April 2015; PunksWritePoemsPress-Rogue Poetry; Outburst Poetry Magazine; The Galway Review; The Honest Ulsterman Magazine; Writing Raw Poetry Magazine;The Lonely Crowd Magazine; Section8Magazine; Danse Macabre Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Coda Crab Books-Anthology-Peace:Give It A Chance; Clockwork Gnome:Quantum Fairy Tales; Ygdrasil, A Journal of the Poetic Arts, May/July 2015 Issue; Don't Be Afraid: Anthology To Seamus Heaney; Dead Snakes Poetry Magazine; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Syzygy Poetry Journal Issue 1 and Ammagazine/Angry Manifesto Issue 3.
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MY OLD SOCKS (Strider Marcus Jones) my old socks sheath the feet that fill my boots to walk on land. hard hands, sweating like peat, still break rocks in imprisoned heat born trapped roots in dynasties of the damned. the faded threaddiminishes in duty until dead while famous patterns conceal what really happenstheir reasons behind closed doors gain ignorant applause for wars and poverty rising from floors of serial imperial cruel pomposity.
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THOSE LEAVES ON THE PAVEMENT (Strider Marcus Jones) from bud to life to death membranes of breath rustle and hustle for water and wind in self similarity without clarity doing the wrong thing. each tree, is its own fate landing in landscape rooted in class morphing into towers of steel and glassthose leaves on the pavement rejected with resentment turning brown no history written down. some of those leaves are people we knowbut who perceives why we let them go, after mistakes into what waits with nothing to show when time shakes.
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I WANT WHAT ORDINARY OTHERS WANT (Strider Marcus Jones) i want what others wantsynchronicity and simplicity in life of free willsharing some land i can work with my hands no more slave stilltime trapped. lines tapped. steps tagged. voice gagged. this elite mafia of Orwell and Kafka has built Metropolis on old Acropolisreducing proles to zombie roles in constitutions of constructed evolutions, with blood to dust faiths riding like dark wraiths bullets shredding bombing and beheading the innocents and dissidents to steal their lot and not share what you've got.
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HOPPER'S LADIES (Strider Marcus Jones) you stay and grow more mysterioso but familiar in my interiorwith voices peeled full of field of fruiting orange trees fertile to orchard breeze soaked in summer rains so each refrain all remains. not afraid of contrast, closed and opened in the past and present, this isolation of Hopper's ladies, sat, thinking in and out of ifs and maybes in a diner, reading on a chair or bed knowing what wants to be said to someone who is coming or gonesuch subsidence into silence is a unilateral curve of moments and movements that swerve a straight lifetime to independence in dependence touching sublime rich roots then ripe fruits. we share their flesh and flutes in ribosomes and delicious shoots that release loveno, not just the fingered glove to wear 15
and curl up with in a chair, but lovingkindness cloaked in timeless density and tone in settled loambeyond lonely apartments in skyscrapers and empty newspapers, or small town life gutting you with gossips knife.
THIS TENTATIVE RAFT my muse i choose the intense interlude of mood longing in the swim of flesh and skin to show contentment is the rest meant after making love holding all above. passion rocking and swaying finds ordinary ways of playing back and out those constant streams about tranquill conversations flowing in situations. this tentative raft is piloted deeper and daft surviving hidden sandbars under unreachable starsnot to gain fortune and fame but to be different than the same life inside walls and doors behind closed curtains on false floors. 16
Biographical Note: Richard Halperin
Richard W. Halperin's chapbooks are published by Lapwing. The latest of these is Blue Flower. His latest full collection for Salmon is Shy White Tiger. 'What can I say?' he says, 'My publishers are big taking a chance on me, and so far not many buy my books, even in electronic versions. I buy other poets' books. John F Deane wrote an article years ago in The Irish Times. It was called "The Death of Poetry" The gist was, while you're all out there rending your garments and smearing yourself with ashes because magazines and publishing houses keep going under, why don't you part with a few quid now and then and buy something? I, Richard, add, it doesn't have to be one of mine.'
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No Abiding Cities (Richard Halperin) I think of Arthur Waley this terrible morning. His Po Chū-i, his Genji. The limpidity, the beauty that he found in the English language, which had been there all the time. There are no abiding cities. But there is he. I think of Edward Thomas this terrible morning. ‘Adlestrop,’ ‘Tall Nettles.’ There are no abiding cities. But there is he. Fine poems are always a thousand years old or two thousand. How old is a stream? No abiding cities. David was quite right. But there is he. Thank you, chaps, this terrible morning.
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The Small Hours. (Richard Halperin) With whom does one want To be, during the small hours, When heat is past? With whom Did Jeremiah? I cannot write down here What we used to say during our Small hours, my hand pains. Tip of the iceberg, that. With whom am I this night? An open window. A half moon, Bent and waning, going to Its home. Well done, old lady.
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Exiles (Richard Halperin) A sense – from where does it come? – That one is exile. Brahms is good: The sound in a sonata of rain falling. But rain falling in a courtyard at night Is better – a reminder of Another courtyard, another rain. A sense, in certain psalms – not those Of ‘my’ or ‘hate’ or ‘destroy utterly’ – That one is, again, in a green place, Where glory means simple kindness. Exiled. A favourite song comes To mind, Anderson/Weill ‘. . . we’re Out here lost in the stars.’ Stars Are not bad company. They, too, Exiles.
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Without Pangur Bán (Richard Halperin) Without Pangur Bán I still write. This is the stretch until the end of my life. Without so many who have passed something slipped in me and I write. Without Ireland without America without oceans and their pomps without crayons without the scrawls on Valentine’s Day without George Eliot without you or I’m not too sure about that I still write.
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‘They got up and walked out of the gallery’ (Richard Halperin) A young friend tells me that a passage In Of Human Bondage about weaving One’s own life while others are weaving theirs Changed his whole life. Masterpieces do that. Hundreds of pages hard to get through, Then one’s soul notices. I had not noticed The passage, I had noticed many others: Philip and Mildred, Philip out of work And starving, Philip’s childhood – All carried forward by That Prose.. The I Ching is not the only book alive. There are many. They tell you who they are.
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Magnitude (Richard Halperin) Someone practically in my own lifetime wrote ‘Ash Wednesday’ and ‘Still falls the Rain’ and made their beds and lay in them and lie in them still or not still. Not still. This night here they are, admonishing, singing (yes, singing).
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Biographical Note: Steven Klepetar
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely, and several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press) and Return of the Bride of Frankenstein (Kind of a Hurricane Press).
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Power (Steven Klepetar) comes from the barrel of a gun from the factory from buying paper by the ton ink by the gallon buying time by the million dollar minute the monopoly that owns generators oil fields wind that uproots trees swallows coastlines sends an ocean careening down streets lists of names numbers that tell what the stock market will do tomorrow the hand on your thigh electric prods CCTV certain kinds of silence money talk talk talk and whatever it is that bullshit does
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Li Bo Explains the Law of the Earth (Steven Klepetar) “Evil is equated in his mind with naked force which wins against the desires of our heart, and when he discovers that this is the law of the earth, he hates the law of the earth” Czeslaw Milosz Law of the Earth states E = MC Square on the jaw. Law of the Earth states there will always be Nazis— Nazi cops, teachers, bosses, politicians and bureaucrats, surface order spit polish clean, boots and fists and smoke below. Law of the Earth states schedules are more important than starving children or bone-beat women hauling groceries through ice-slick streets, or sick men leaning against bricks. Glass bank palaces, insurance steel towers, billionaire stadiums, gleaming domes are more important than houses or clean water or streets where drug deals go down. Oil is more important than blood. Law of the Earth says you need a facelift, you better lose weight, you need a personal trainer, you need to learn respect, gotta hold your fork the right way. And you better speak English cause nobody’s gonna learn your language. Law of the Earth reminds us it is better to be beautiful than kind, better to be thin than generous, better to be rich than anything. Law of the Earth was not written for you. It was always designed to crush desires of the heart.
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The Madman Paints Flame (Steven Klepetar) "All things, O priests, are on fire..." Buddha Orchard grass heaves with flame, orange rivulets, great river lava flux, hot and molten earth rushes a smashed debris south, to the raging, burning sea. Olive trees burn from the root, dull yellow flame, spiced with streaks of red, where the heat shrieks, trunks twist and struggle in their agony. Leaves burn green, shaped like flame, great cotton-candy balls of jagged, burning fire-leaves, scorching branches, melting the nearest clouds, searing sky white. All things are on fire with the fire of passion, with blue flame and red, rivers of flame and yellow islands of heat, smoke white as glare-sun off whitehot sand, desserts and orchards aflame, colors swirling blue into orange and yellowbrown green blaze, and the sky a thick, baking paste, white, blue-green flame, burning, burning.
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In the Library (Steven Klepetar) I met Death in the library. She was reading “Death of a Salesman,” I think, or maybe “Death in the Afternoon,” something American with “death” in the title anyway, which struck me as odd and maybe a bit narcissistic, but then I figured it was kind of “An Appointment in Samarra” kind of thing, my time up, no use to run or plead, so I held out my hand, but she shook her head. “No, not yet,” and smiled back into her book, so maybe it’s just we both like libraries, book dust and squeezing through the stacks, looking at titles, sampling a little, turning pages in the quiet while we still have time.
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Li Bo and the Plums (Steven Klepetar) He visits me with a bagful of plums. They gleam red-gold when we wash them in the sink. We wipe them dry, set the fruit out in the jade-green ceramic bowl I bought last year at the lemonade fair from a woman whose palomino hair shone in the July sun. The plums feel cold in our hands and we bite through resisting skin to savor sour-sweet flesh. We lean over the table so dripping juice won’t soil our shirts. Such flavor! Our glands constrict; it’s like lemons and honey. Outside rain has begun drumming the roof and street. Cars send shoots of spray onto soaking grass. We listen to this tender symphony, sit silent and glad as a new door opens. We enter lives far from the realms of men.
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Biographical Note: James Mc Elroy
James Mc Elroy grew up in Belfast beforemoving to America where he teaches at the University of California
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ORNITHOLOGIES (James Mc Elroy) And in those days the ptarmigan will become as white as driven snow ‌ Stirs a few speckled ovals @ high elevation and promises shell-shock, survival. Each egg is as seismic as it gets inside a world of dwarf willows, lichens, mosses -- moorland fruit. And, then, in a splitsecond or sidelessness of oval, the difference between being born and unborn becomes a moot point. The taste of having been elsewhere, of being preterite, means next to nothing at this high elevation where everything starts from scratch. In the dead of winter the very same birds will turn into white apocrypha with black lores and listen (on the QT) to the sound of their impending echo.
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ELIAS (James Mc Elroy) Once in a while (Or is it ‘Once and a while’?) It's important to skip the PC thing and stop yourself Going all Prius Like the rest of the gang. Think John the Baptist Lost in the wilderness. Think going it alone – Being Scantily clad And becoming nothing More than a footnote To this, that, and these. Tell it like it is. Take no prisoners. Shout if you have to shout. Curse if you have to curse. Do a round of violence If you must. But whatever you do, Make sure you get things done When everyone thinks Your head’s cut. Well, that's it, Go ahead and declaim What’s what. Wade into the alluvial Downstream of a Jordan And wait for those
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Who'd like to do you in Because they think Looks can kill and fear You might cut Them to the quick Without a single word Passing between you. So, yeah, there it is. All of it printed in a clean, Bold, font Running down one side Of an orange colored Onion bag stretched Flat out on a patch Of barren ground With the word Elias -Not Elijah, mind -Featured Clear as day with no Explanation given, And no expiration date Stamped thereon.
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BELFAST SEXTET (James Mc Elroy) A wee teenager options Both her hands, freezes, Then rubs her boyfriend’s Fifth of sperm across a dirty old rag In case it soils her mother’s best linen sheets, Or, even worse, begins to muscle in On all that that adolescent leg room.
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YOU (James Mc Elroy) You, because you hate darkness but despise light. You, because you hate weakness but despise strength. You, because you hate war but despise peace.
You, because you hate death but despise life. You, because you hate lies but despise truth ...
The truth, The whole truth, And nothing but the truth, So help you GOD.
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Biographical Note: Brendan McCormack
Brendan is a poet and writer based in West Cork. He is a writer for a local magazine, 'Clonakilty Living', and has published two collections of poetry, 'Selling Heaven' and 'Phuckle'.
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Everything (Brendan McCormack) The universe catches everything Within it Even these words Are caught Like trembling flies Unsure As to why their wings No longer Have the effect Of flight
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Aftermath (Brendan McCormack) The kitchen is empty The last line of coke not taken Cigarette butts soak in the sink Empty glasses The walls are shattered With the screams they hold A ghost ship No one here All who sail in her Sleep Above in red hot beds Moving Through storms
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Scent (Brendan McCormack) Soft fires as some unknown figure Sets ablaze the hills And departing funnels of smoke Lay siege to the sky all around The animals will be taken soon To the slaughter There are hungry mouths To feed She says I am a hungry mouth She says The clouds will bunch up Later And quench all that smoulders Still In the quiet numbness of the night New life Will grow again Out of the blackened soil Tomorrow the sun Will rise And a smell Will haunt us for a while.
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Biographical Note: Matthew Duggan
Born Bristol 1971 Matt Duggan won the Erbacce prize for poetry 2015. His poems have appeared in many journals and magazines such as The Seventh Quarry, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, The New Ulster, Section 8, The Dawntreader, Roundyhouse, Poetry Quarterly, Illumen, Yellow Chair Review, Jawline Review, Carillon, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Vagabonds, Lunar Poetry Magazine, The Screech Owl, Message in a Bottle, OF/With, IANASP, The Stare’s Nest, The Cobalt Review, Sarasvati, Expound, Ex-Fic, Trysts of Fate. Matt created and hosts a spoken word evening at Hydra Bookshop in Bristol U.K called ‘An Evening of Spoken Indulgence’and is also the co- editor with Simon Leake of a political poetry magazine called ‘The Angry Manifesto’. Matt can sometimes be found scribbling poems on bar-matts in the dark shadows of some Bristol pub or wandering the Quantocks for the perfect view.
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The Waterfront (Matthew Duggan) On Saturday I watched the echo in the river with fast rain, a slanted line of spears piercing the muddy red pinpricked surface while a changing sky controls light from blemish, Along the waterfront I walk; open windows - mulled wine and German markets screwed up betting slips piled in empty foamed glasses, cigarette stubs trail to boisterous plastic tables, a homeless man sales ‘The New Scientist’ beside a busker strumming on a waterproof guitar, day-walkers and afternoon drunks journey home before evening begins its quest. The fat rain comes in short bursts as we huddle in shelter and shop entrance running for that space of dry and bare land, before the greyish colours turn to a midnight black.
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Ithaca (Matthew Duggan) Trojan bronze and coin embedded in Ionian turquoise blue; Where metal black crows span above a man spraying spittle over weaved baskets in strips of long bamboo - skinned. I suckled on Tzatziki and lamb Kleftiko consumed a carafe of Grecian wine; saw the stars of Ithaca dance with mountain songs bells chimed like the after-dinner shrill from deranged sirens. Gazed like the God’s at amber and crystal blue boxes jarred along a shark bitten tail shaped bay prickled fruit – decaying pomegranate peeling red flesh inside the opened draining of day. I travelled on the navy blue albatross wooden fin splicing through Hellenic water; Triangles in translucent green reflections from the feverish and mad the faces of those who had come before me. Half sunken Byzantium shaped ships moulded into yellow cliff - Crescendo of beach crickets surfing on the sound buckles of Poseidon wrists, I swam in the strong currents – mangled in storms Tumbling through rotten ship masts lined with dead pine trees; My lungs filled with salt while white snappers nibbled at my blue flesh, my limp body awakened and dragged to the surface of a unfamiliar sea. A beautiful woman with olive skin and tarantula coloured hair held me I peered down into the depths of clear ocean, noticing she had dolphin heads as human feet her complexion and breasts as smooth as soft whale skin In an ancient tongue she pointed to the rise of sun a pink centre of valley - shining marble from the caves of the nymph; as I swam closer I saw the chipped face of Odyssey shaped in the marbled mountain in green cypress print – Inside the cave Penelope weaved her twenty first shroud.
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RED ROSE (Matthew Duggan) Blood is returning to a stem in fading red petals of a rose cleansed- a dying head, you will see it appearing in a shade of velvety blood carefully look inside the bud see that smear of putrid blue, delicately dripping – fearful and leaving this rising earth. Insurgency of this returning rose a glorious rebirth – What nature truly imposes is that the rose once again will be RED!
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Zombie Land (Matthew Duggan) Diachrome bloodstream – bar code wrapped with pulsing veins square box replaced our modern fane tramline vision fixated like choreographed sunbeams, our muted and exploited constellation a circle we repeatedly spin, mirroring our appearance – through doctored magazines. Identity and blood lay at the alter of visual castration! Cutting flesh moulding our uncertain self, creating a cloned detachment of celebrity asphyxiation. Destiny enshrined in western addiction – the want! - the admiration! the pressure to be on that popular shelf. A smiling tanned jester - Brilliant white teeth – square jaw – sucked in botox Everyone will want to be YOU!! You the popular – the imitator – the regurgitated walking cliché for the true and humbled self is vacant - lost – confused.
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OXI (Matthew Duggan) I stand with my Greek brothers and sisters capitalism that decaying beast – the eye of the cyclops, one sighted view into mans greed - our embryo of democracy. That once idolised structure of order now filtering worldwide, into the pockets of the ruling few. I rage with my Greek brothers and sisters blinding the eye of this cyclops – bleeding us of funding stripping assets - defrauding us our liberty, our pursuit and progress. Stand tall my brother and sister austerity has no answer as our anger ripples across this world. When we rise and hold our metaphysical swords gutting that blinded beast, I stand tall with you my Greek brothers and sisters.
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Biographical Note: (Dorsaf Garbaa & Peter O’Neill) All transversions by Peter O’ NeillL Twenty four winters have passed since I first saw the light of day and I can still only see myself reflected back through my many uncertainties. Born in Tunisia, I grew up living with a man, my father, who was still under the spell of Hannibal of Carthage, because of this I am used to inhabiting multiple worlds. My relationship with time is also spatial, imbued with visions of the Sahara and the Mediterranean, all helping to possibly explain my innate surrealism. For example, when I see cigarette ends littering the earth, and the scent of tobacco enters my nostrils, I can almost immediately recall the nursery rhymes I learned in BiZerte. This ancient port and city is the most northerly point in North Africa, and it arouses, for me, all of the dreams of my childhood. It was in this place that all of the delights of the French language entered my blood, It was here where I spent four years of my childhood, There I was caught between the verdant fields and the aZure of the sea, so calm in its tidy little corner. It was here that I played all of those childish games among the Sisters dressed in our little blue skirts, which reflect back those souvenirs to savour. A tenderness returns as I pull on the cigarette which dies between the corner of my lips, as I try to hang onto these childhood memories. I started writing as soon as things began to reverberate in my head. I spent nine years filing notebooks in a sea of words, words which oscillate Across the blank pages as alternating as my many moods, Like some lunatic character, marked by what she has read. For years I devoured books, and I always imagined myself leading some kind of literary life. Both my parents too loved books. Both studied law. Ah, my dear father with his love of history! Speaking with him was always like plunging into some bloody film Conjured by images from the Punic Wars evoking Carthage, with its Columns of Hercules; Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia. He had the full weight of history behind him, I had my poems. Such is my inheritance, perhaps it is my benediction. I see it all, sometimes, like some fantastic orchestra, as it works in the same way; There are the same lights and sounds, the same subtle sonorities, playing suddenly in great musical shifts. It is a perplexing homogeneity which is first grounded in the desert shades before exploding then under the torrid Tunisian sun. Finally, I wish to speak about my books, the white walls of which are filled in my Spartan room.
I would loose myself slowly in their illuminating tints, all transparency having been lost by their chrystalliZed shades.
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Placidité (Dorsaf Garbaa & Peter O’Neill) Et c’est quand, sur son corps ,elle glissait La petite robe noire à pointillés Que sa peau tournait en prodigieux écrin, Renfermant des trésors aux milles et un parfum. Les arômes qui s'en dégagaient de les envoûter sans permission, Eux , ces hommes de mer...ces soldats d’enfer Ceux qui pudiquement ne se lassaient De s’aligner aux orbites de ses sphères... Les emportant vers les vallées des délices... Respirant...la vanille, la rose, le jasmin, le pain d'épice... Et tant d'autres qui leur incitaient à la consommation. De part ses courbes subtiles, Elle les rendait instantanément fébriles. Elle , enivrante de ses longues jambes de satin ...les attisait sur un tango d’évangile, Les courtisant de son regard angélique Sans pour autant être ni sage, Bien autre que docile... Dans ses ébats amoureux... De ses collants en muette dentelle Elle se révèlait au nid des hirondelles Dévoilant sa sensualité de reine Un dévorant plaisir fougueux ..charnel. Toute femme à ses secrets bien dissimulés Mais pour elle c’était bien différé avec sa petite robe noire à pointillés Elle... des lèvres des marrés Jaillissait tel un nectar aux saveurs brisés Dotée d'un cœur qui étincelait pour que l'on flatte. À ne la point prendre pour autant vulnérable, Car elle avait certainement En ces creux inabordables Cette détermination de femme ... inexorable.
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‘Placidity’ – The Mothership (Dorsaf Garbaa & Peter O’Neill) It is when she slips into that little black shimmering dress that her skin becomes transformed into a prodigious vessel, birthing the cargo of a thousand and one perfumes. The aromas which escape entrancing , without having her permission, the fishermen in the port, those poor labourers some of whom, due to modesty, could not even conceive of any alignment of spheres, there in the sumptuous valley where blossom: vanilla, ginger and jasmine... the scent of roses... And many more besides, which could incite the urge for consummation. All of these mere fragrances, not even having mentioned her ingenious flanks, which, once gleamed, merely prolong the fever. But then to further intoxicate and inflame, dear reader, contemplate if you will her two aquiline limbs, like Doric columns, breaking into an envangelised tango, casting a further spell on those few still remaining in the port with any semblance of reason, for they too will also be finally unhinged, our made sheepishly docile. And, if all of this should not suffice, imagine those two legs enveloped in stockings, stitched together with mute lace, and whose lucious whisperings call to only you with every scissors like movement. Such is the revelation, which swam freely through the open nets of the fisher kings. This Queen of sensuality, 48
passing over the waves of their collective imagination, whose very storehouse of images finally rupture through the firewall at the thought of such carnal pleasures... Every woman, God knows, has her secrets to conceal. But, she was different, particularly when she was dressed in that little black shimmering dress, Bearing her lips on the tides awash with all of the nectar induced from broken dreams, those the shipwrecked, and she endowed with a heart, which craves only a good word. And yet, on no account be taken in that she is one so vulnerable, for deep within her, behind this prohibitive hollow, there moves also, the determination of inexorable woman.
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La Fille d’Heraclyte For Dorsaf Garbaa (Dorsaf Garbaa & Peter O’Neill) She is a young woman fantastically feminine Who loves to wear skirts which embrace her voluptuous body, And who wears opaque tights which absorb all luminosity, But which reflect the sunlight through those shimmering Diamonds of Christ, aqueous upon all troubled waters. She is a young goddess who wears sublime shoes, Both Achilles heels superbly encased in black leather. She is a beautiful young woman Who also knows about Carthage And who can appreciate his strategy of encirclement; Letting the enemy believe in their strength, through vanity, Allowing them to penetrate deep beneath her lines of defence Until the critical moment, when their supply lines have been cut off By the celebrated twin-pincer-movement, And they are finally helpless, encircled, And can be massacred with impunity. She is a young woman who loves her father And who, in exile, thinks of him, often, while she prepares her coffee; His essence being evoked by a mere aroma. She is a woman who reads Baudelaire And who has also read the Koran, Talmud and the Bible, Yet who is Buddhist, and who, like fire doused in water, Can disappear among the elements. She is, The daughter of Heraclitus.
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Biographical Note: James Laurie
James Laurie is a UK based poet walking the line between Shadow and Destruction. www.facebook.com/ShadowThePoet
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Armageddon (James Laurie) I slice my forearm from the soft white part of the inside of my elbow down to my wrist I feel the razor sliding sharply through my skin raising a bead of blood in its trailing wake Warm, the red line lies juxtaposed against the white skin beneath And somewhere in my fucked up mind chemicals bond to receptors and my crosslinked brain simultaneously registers a mixture of relief and ecstasy I watch from a safe distance as I contemplate another stroke Another slice from the soft white part of the inside of my elbow down to my wrist Deeper and more assertive this time In control In control of this life that is running out of control Like the bison running wildly westwards across golden plains Cutting swathes through the tall pale grasses of a disappearing nation To escape the onslaught of the untempered power of a new nation Foretelling a future in which the destructive power of all nations might destroy whole worlds and deny my very existence Which I now contemplate destroying.
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“Call Me When You Can” (James Laurie) “Call me when you can” The text jolts me Into action “Call me when you can” Bad news again, it Can’t be going well “Call me when you can” Another appointment More disappointment “Call me when you can” It’s still not real I can feel him here “Call me when you can” Then I remember That night again We choose flowers Prepare Readings “Call me when you can” It’s just another update On his funeral plan “Call me when you can”
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Biography: Martin Burke
Though born and Ireland poet & playwright Martin Burke lives in Belgium from where he has to date published sixteen books of his work, the latest being BLAKE/LONDON/BLAKE by the Feral Press (USA) & IEPER by Lapwing Press (UK)
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IN THE KYRIE OF DUSK (Martin Burke ) “to regard Greek reality without the prejudices which have reigned since the Renaissance” Odysseus Elytis Temenos Islands and gracious waters I am singing, I am being sung. Starlit sensations, sacred night – fortitude of the soul and earth under such gravity in a landscape which does not deviate from the stars. * The sun ancient and new, stones its witness, the sea virginal – the horizon waited for us with the patience of shells from which one gull arrived with embalms of antiquity. * White sails of blue and red boats – the lemon tree above the stripy table cloth – a seductive voice saying “I am yours but you are mine” – our fate cast by the sun, cast by the sea – we water children where precedence was ours to embrace. * Cassandra, the whorl of the shell speaks you name, the women whisper it to one another in awe – your vision of a white and amber world took root with echoes the prophets desire to know – the thunder of mountains trembles in your words, the sea saturates your verses. * Eternal afternoon, and the destiny of the fig tree – two girls softly singing and in the womb of one a third rehearses its entrance – she will come, the singing, dancing one of the future – sacred be her day eternal as sky, sacred be the sky. * Sun and sea an alphabet of praise calling across the blue of morning – children playing with the stones of Thrace, Sparta, and Troy – thyme and rosemary growing in perfect quietude – so sing, or be silent with waters’ psalm, dance with the earth – sing with the sun and be silent with the shadows. * Night’s shadow on the tapestry of her skin enticing as orchard fruits – sheen of her breasts on the waves and the longing of waves – night’s fire for signalman and lost – cry of the watchman like the first hymn, like an inheritance of landscape, history and memory. *
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Beauty – in the lustre of blue air tangible as the first and third kiss – in her smile – in ripe figs and green waves over stones – in her hands serving lamb and rice – in the Kyrie of dusk – in whispers and half whispers – in ripe fruit the juice of which still sugars my mouth and mind. * Irrefutable, night’s equivalent of the day star – voices in expectation, laughter in a familiar alphabet – what island will the ferries visit? in the courtyard flood lit and the plants silent (whose shadow is that among the bushes and shrubs?) cool and cooling wind, no nostalgia for the moon – against the naked breast of night I press my mouth. * The eternal and Helen walking beside us in the form of the woman we love – history amazed and shattered when that one bird became a flock – the destiny of love creating a path to the sea – and it is morning, morning eternal and new, history amazed and vivified. * The end of nostalgia and the beginning of love should be sung and distributed to the priests – I stepped behind the iconostas to the intonation of sacred verses where if water was a dream then I was the water-dreamer, the one who carried the icon of the risen one to its home within a wave. * Hands, beautiful, beyond metaphor, under a sky like the future come in visitation – a music that was a mountain’s proclamation of creation’s first day – an olive grove mastering time, a broken jar Odysseus might have tossed away – a greening plant surviving its life in the present – and my poor language like a beggar at their door hopeful of alms. * Secretive wave fold me in your folds for I have heard your call to ‘struggle, love, and liberty’ – nothing more beautiful where the heart is unsatisfied and calling for more – liberty replied like a peacock’s call to its mate and dolphins rose like translucent embalms – and a speckled dove flew into my heart filling me with the surfeit of the world. * As if I survived several wars each of which left an indelible mark – I was wounded but I was golden, thyme and myrtle comforted me, the invisible traced its signature with sharp claws and beak across my heart – ‘You are a bird, a wild bird’ I said, and it flew away but would return – that’s the way liberty arrives like a swallow to depart as an eagle leaving its shadows on the stones. * How can I give you the bread of love and not of suffering? – in winter I maintained a silent hibernation so that spring would not find me unprepared – and now it is April with resurrection, devotions, chorus and antiphon – the mind asking nothing that cannot be answered by this sky, by this music in our hearts. * 56
A sparrow in the lemon tree courtyard, a flock of crows like escapees from the Oresteia, a peacock’s screech as the wailing of Electra – and the self passes in and out of every form as a haiku of more syllables than one lifetime can utter – and my lifetime no more than what the lemon tree allows – to which the sparrow returns as if to unfinished achievements. * Under the fierce and precise wind of God I bowed before the seven sorrows and the seven joys – candles delighted in tears of flame, charcoal perfumed the air – I knelt at the Kyrie and rose up at the Sanctus, emerging from Byzantine light to the greater light of Greece – the wind had become a cooling breeze charging me to ‘struggle, love, and rise’ – I accepted and walked towards a precipice – to fly! to fly so as to struggle and rise! – these were the sorrows, these were the joys – an endless number – my life a narrative of sevens played out in endless succession.
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Biography: Michael Mc Aloran
Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976). He is the author of a number of collections of poetry, prose poetry, poetic aphorisms and prose, most notably 'Attributes', (Desperanto, NY, 2011), 'The Non Herein' & ‘Of Dead Silences’ (Lapwing Publications, 2011/ 2013), 'All Stepped/ Undone', ‘Of the Nothing Of’, 'The Zero Eye', 'The Bled Sun', 'In Damage Seasons',(Oneiros Books (U.K)--2013/ 14); 'Code #4 Texts' a collaboration with the Dutch poet, Aad de Gids, was also published in 2014 by Oneiros. He was also the editor/ creator of Bone Orchard Poetry, & edited for Oneiros Books (U.K 2013/ 2014). A further collection, 'Un-Sight/ Un-Sound (delirium X.), was published by gnOme books (U.S), and 'In Arena Night' is forthcoming from Lapwing Publications. 'EchoNone' was also recently released by Oneiros Books, and a further project, 'Of Dissipating Traces', is also forthcoming...
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# …in-dreamt capacity/ trades meat for absent shores/ given less/ shadowed no/ nothing dreamt of furtherance become yet it cannot/ furtherance of which in else of other lessened/ meat trade in opulent unsound it trace nothing/ unsound retrace un-meat of fallen ash/ of prism pillage traces/ yet drains of/ there or other/ collapsed purpose unfelt in an un-sky of shatter-glass abattoir/ distances that never were unforgotten/ in stench reek to abound one step shit flow in veins/ it is cold it is not/ collected from/ wayward sentence as flies gather in/ if said what once was never once/ opulence/ circling skulled veins what matter (the) vultured teeth of it/ scar tissue un-livid/ naught a closed wound apathetic/ apathetic stretches boundary tint/ collapse still yet nothing pressed to the bone’s collision/ unspoken of… # …echo erased that never heard was not of a/ design utter violet sheer/ cold cast a bitter a/ longing stretched/ meat solace of which of eye in-dream/ else collision solace final/ redeem non-touch meat cold as ever was before lapse eye a sleight of hand/ nothing to follow yet cannot/ etches from out of nothing furtherance undone resolve forgotten/ rotted meat a blister here/ solace fracture/ another’s density/ tomes cast dead no sentence in only of ever-like fettered resound/ yet cannot sense/ un-sensed/ a locket/ in-breath of sarcophagus eye given to fall/ 60
long foreign hours never to be proven/ yet what what longing/ else of none/ till dense approximate/ crumbling measurements/ trace cold dead teeth a sneer at the unutterable/ pressure point of long non-stir/ into utter/ cold meat as ever was before/ before having‌ # ‌tastes eye whip of bitter sting of ever unto/ cannot ever of nor other than an ever if/ resigns through which utter utter not a sound of/ gallows then out from/ depth occurrence nothing there or ever ever/ silenced meat occurrence/ chain mail scattered vocal as of shrapnel/ stitch here done in not/ beyond what if in trace of/ reeks pulls teeth/ sky what else of here or ever in of other than exhale into vortice having never/ spits into gait what have you/ switches from one shoulder to another/ corpse meat done/ corporeal songs of silenced aftermaths/ yes best of luck it murmurs a tune unknown to eye or other cross-hair/ pokes with a dead stick/ closes down to silence/ meat rests aside collapses from bone tries no not a die/ eye bitter whip trace lost all in foreign longing lost upon/ diameter eye/ scald rot/ buggers off‌
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# …of some beyond/ measured out in droplet blood/ scar tidal passes through an itch rebort/ abort climb nothing to be seen/ meat drown foreign recourse of foreign/ trace of unbecoming unbecome/ says that there must/ silenced ever-silenced/ knuckles cracked snap-snapping vertigo hollow design cast bodies of to sun light unto rot/ night’s abandon/ exiled purpose shredded/ a-gleam a final tear frozen in an eye’s breach a broken overture/ (this is where the…/ this is the…)/ skinned once more hence never truly in/ a rotted symphony/ sky-glance/ abhorrent/ utterance dense useless fettering/ skull crack and meat’s exhaustion/ echoes from out of some desire/ a soldered room/ a broken lock/ measured out for some non-beyond/ cannot utter of it/ merely other than what if unto another/ graven by design... # …non-step ill-forward sentience/ cleft from what scene devoured something other than dissolved/ by/ not a/ solid meat drains into the eye unsung devour of promise/ little or les/s to be known unseen/ drag pelt bores steadily into solace never/ it scream reduct shadow what/ livid else/ non-else but livid else/ (we all fall down)/ sharp trace cuts smooth meat skinned of purpose/ sever severance an ache without longing other than/ drifts down-stream given unto follow/ yet not of a/ nor a/ bite wind grace trace of an unknowable gesture given from unto/ still yet it devours what dark/ what light/ static carves away of it/ 62
of here or hereafter/ (lays down and…)/ final as/ citric head in vice occultish laughter what circus/ what sickens breath/ meat no longer if nor none nor else/ nor of in becoming/ yet becoming… # …back then from forage taken from obscure/ yet stone slab occurrence/ eversevered nothing left to/ other than/ (it is said)/ here or there advantage present seeps what will expels what only can other than eye what collision collapse/ dust clouds to kick from out of stitch terse wind road un-sensed by/ exigent no/ kicks no un-scream/ as if naught could scream then out/ silence only/ film across eye subtle as/ if/ other than no other than/ believes it cannot/ believes in in it cannot/ bleeds no longer/ meat no further flesh/ as of sunk teeth of desire by which to or other than reprieve from flesh/ meat cast to scattered dust landscapes/ locks jaws utter privation/ singing yet/ collapse/ unto/ delves deep into a nothing that ever was without/ traipse proven or unproved/ shite for sustenance/ bone chimes/ exhalations of it…
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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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October 2015 MESSAGE FROM THE ALLEYCATS:
It’s our birthday and there’s cake yum!. 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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Biography: David Rigsbee
David Rigsbee is the author of the forthcoming Not Alone in My Dancing: Essays and Reviews (New York: Black Lawrence Press). In addition to his ten volumes of poetry, he has written critical works on Carolyn Kizer and Joseph Brodsky. This fall he will be an external examiner for the M.A. program in creative writing at NUI-Galway. He lives in Hudson, New York
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The Dark Pool by Peter O’Neill mgv2>publishing ISBN: 978-1-326-22697-8 Reviewed by David Rigsbee
I read once that a group of Scottish school children were asked to write down three images that occurred to them when they heard the word “America.” The most common were a cloud, a butte, and a trailer. Readers not from Ireland (as I am not) might come away from Peter O’Neill’s The Dark Pool with the impression that Ireland consisted of bars, rain-drenched streets, and urban detritus, the stuff of Eliot, filtered through Joyce, where “frailty, vice, and innocence are all being borne away/ on Anna Livia’s languorous scales.” I say filtering, but it would be closer to the truth to say that O’Neill channels the Greats, starting with his stern maitre, Baudelaire, with whose work he has been involved for many years, making admirable translations (which he prefers to call “transversions”). It is a singing school that owes little to Yeats, and yet it courses back to the home territory, by way of Beckett (another Franco-Irish expat), Mahon, and Kavanagh. The Pantheon doesn’t stop there. Trained as a classicist, O’Neill also brings on board Homer, Virgil, Horace, and company, giving his poems a rich sense of culture and the presence of the past. As a result, he is keenly aware that the community of letters provides shape and context to what would otherwise be a narrow world of monads. So what is it about the lonely crowd with which his poems are peopled? Every night you’ll find them in the many bars, drinking themselves silly in a futile attempt to clear the smoldering stacks unbidden from their minds. (“The View from Salthill”) Is it not a paradox that self-medicating pub patrons, in their regrets and ennui, find themselves on that “fucking rock in the Atlantic,” which is to say at the end of the world, and yet at the same time are made somehow central to all that it means to be, er, human? “I have come to love my Hellenic learning,” he says in “Nike of Samotrace.” It’s not just an aside. 68
Brodsky asserted that time is greater than space. He meant to suggest that poetry gives us the keys to time, ushering in meanings vastly more significant than the keys to space have done. For time is related to the metaphysical, and so it is that present and past not only coexist, but carry on that “conversation of mankind” that stands to imbue even the smallest moment with diversity, as Blake knew. This is O’Neill’s via negativa, to find fullness in emptiness, victory in loss. While there is at first glance the specter of death in life, there is also, on reflection, life in death. The past, as Faulkner yelled, “is not even past!” As O’Neill says in “Nostalgia, for Andrei Tarkovsky,” “All have hidden significance.// All are underlined with meaning.” In “The Book of Being,” he likewise notes, The self is nothing without first the total acceptance Of another, first act to being oneself is already To be found in the acceptance of another, One’s other Other, call this union love. What this comes down to in another, perhaps more familiar way, is the capital credo, “Poetry, poetry, poetry all.” Now lest the reader recoil at this burst of special pleading, it should be followed by the equivalent claim that poetry consists not just words only, but what lies beyond their notational reality (“The words are not symbols or signs/ but rather the things themselves.”) Rather. And this, move, this gambit, assigns language to a place in the world of facts and phenomena. The poetry (which means, of course, a making) is, you might say, the mindfulness that results from that making: Lose yourself in sheer being, The momentous gravitational pull of sheer presence! Now, you see you are no longer reading— At least as far as you used to understand the term. However, there is a price to this game Expect more now, from all things! (‘Rimbaud’s Illuminations, or the Death of Books”) This accepting more from things comes to us courtesy of old-school Symbolism, the legacy of (again) Baudelaire and “correspondences.” In the wrong hands, such 69
claims (this visible thing corresponds to that invisible one) lead straight to twaddle (see: Madame Blavatsky, et al.) But O’Neill knows this and sidesteps the trembling veil: You look to each phenomenon as if trying to decipher a code. Like a woman they resist you. You can only press against the grill like a shark. (“Nostalgia, by Andrei Tarkovsky”) In “The Masochist,” he likewise writes, “I picked you out of the crowd like choosing a good knife.” As Brigette Le Juez points out in her introduction, the title refers to the Gaelic name for Dublin (Dubh Linn = dark pool). A version of that pool becomes emblematic straightaway in “The Drinker,” where a glass of wine does stand-in for a crystal ball. But far from hinting at a bright future, it more boringly suggests repetition, which I note in passing, is the basis of Dante’s take on hell. It’s, in other words, the same old, same old, and I quote it in full: A glass of wine rests on the counter in which a miniature world is being reflected back to the viewer, all of his contained. It comprises a roof, a window and the bartender, who appears and disappears, floating in and out, like a goldfish, trapped, in this liquid cell. In “The Barman,” the bartender speaks of “ the enormity of their [customers’] selfimposed exile.” Meanwhile, in “Leo,” 70
There is an old man sitting alone inside an empty bar. His thoughts are spinning inside his mind like pennies upon the counter. But in spite of the darkness baked into the title, the poet doesn’t spend all of his time gazing at the horror vacui. “The Ninnies,” he observes, In public bars old men cling to their spirits, god’s tears of laughter, like children with toys. The clocks on the shelves announce tedium with a tick and all manner of danger with a tock. We are always, despite ourselves, in the realm of the divine. It is precisely in locating that realm in such dreary moments that O’Neill finds his matter, and in doing so he enacts an old feat of ancient ambition, which is to marry earth with heaven. This is a fancy way of putting it, when distrust of language these days edges so much of discourse. But the cycles of violence and song, of drunken self-immersion, and clinging spirit comprise, you might say, the Matter of Ireland, and that is, all by itself, a version of the matter of the North. O’Neill’s poems provides ample evidence that this is the case. The Dark Pool is the first volume of a triptych, but it is also, massively learned, hopeful, but cleareyed, an integrated volume by a poet who has returned from years abroad to offer his presentation piece, which is also a powerful reunion of familiarity to exile, of man to native speech. The energy is palpable, the urge to get it down, fervent. In America, we have often looked to the Irish to find accents richer than our own demotic flattening, and Peter O’Neill is a poet who works the mythical city of Modernism in ways we do not often see enough. As he writes in “Homage to James Douglas Morrison,” “More than twenty years on, just exiting the dark pool,/ and I have finally made my peace with the Northern School.” Here’s hoping that school is likewise welcoming.
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LAPWING PUBLICATIONS RECENT and NEW TITLES 978-1-909252-35-6 London A Poem in Ten Parts Daniel C. Bristow 978-1-909252-36-3 Clay x Niall McGrath 978-1-909252-37-0 Red Hill x Peter Branson 978-1-909252-38-7 Throats Full of Graves x Gillian Prew 978-1-909252-39-4 Entwined Waters x Jude Mukoro 978-1-909252-40-0 A Long Way to Fall x Andy Humphrey 978-1-909252-41-7 words to a peace lily at the gates of morning x Martin J. Byrne 978-1-909252-42-4 Red Roots - Orange Sky x Csilla Toldy 978-1-909252-43-1 At Last: No More Christmas in London x Bart Sonck 978-1-909252-44-8 Shreds of Pink Lace x Eliza Dear 978-1-909252-45-5 Valentines for Barbara 1943 - 2011 x J.C.Ireson 978-1-909252-46-2 The New Accord x Paul Laughlin 978-1-909252-47-9 Carrigoona Burns x Rosy Wilson 978-1-909252-48-6 The Beginnings of Trees x Geraldine Paine 978-1-909252-49-3 Landed x Will Daunt 978-1-909252-50-9 After August x Martin J. Byrne 978-1-909252-51-6 Of Dead Silences x Michael McAloran 978-1-909252-52-3 Cycles x Christine Murray 978-1-909252-53-0 Three Primes x Kelly Creighton 978-1-909252-54-7 Doji:A Blunder x Colin Dardis 978-1-909252-55-4 Echo Fields x Rose Moran RSM 978-1-909252-56-1 The Scattering Lawns x Margaret Galvin 978-1-909252-57-8 Sea Journey x Martin Egan 978-1-909252-58-5 A Famous Flower x Paul Wickham 978-1-909252-59-2 Adagios on Re – Adagios en Re x John Gohorry 978-1-909252-60-8 Remembered Bliss x Dom Sebastian Moore O.S.B 978-1-909252-61-5 Ightermurragh in the Rain x Gillian Somerville-Large 978-1-909252-62-2 Beethoven in Vienna x Michael O'Sullivan 978-1-909252-63-9 Jazz Time x Seán Street 978-1-909252-64-6 Bittersweet Seventeens x Rosie Johnston 978-1-909252-65-3 Small Stones for Bromley x Harry Owen 978-1-909252-66-0 The Elm Tree x Peter O'Neill 978-1-909252-67-7 The Naming of Things Against the Dark and The Lane x C.P. Stewart More can be found at https://sites.google.com/a/lapwingpublications.com/lapwing-store/home All titles ￡10.00 per paper copy or in PDF format ￡5.00 for 4 titles. In PDF format £5.00 for 4 titles.
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