Issue 11 - The Green Door

The Green Door

Editor: Adam Rudden

THE GREEN DOOR 11 Editor ADAM RUDDEN

© Copyright THE GREEN DOOR/Lapwing Publications 2012

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Ethos/Submission Guidelines.

THE GREEN DOOR is a free association of international artists intent on focusing on work rather than on ‘personality’.

THE GREEN DOOR sees the spiritual (individually defined rather than collectively expressed) the creative and the erotic as three expressions issuing from the same source. Apart from this no statements will be made. No manifestos issues. No dogma adhered to.

From time to time issues of the magazine will be devoted to individual artists –as such, submission of a full portfolio of work is encouraged.

The magazine has no fixed publication schedule. You will be informed when a new issue is available on the website –due shortly.

Submission can be made directly in English, French, or Dutch; other languages are welcome but must be accompanied by an English translation.

Visual work is encouraged All artists presented here can be contacted via the editors All submissions, inquiries, or suggestions should be mailed to editorsgreendoor@gmail.com

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Contents THE GREEN DOOR 11

Editorial.................................................................................................9 About Lapwing ...................................................................................11 Introduction........................................................................................13 Kate Ashton

Poetry

THE CONCOURSE OF VIRGINS.............................................................14 PAX.......................................................................................................15 QUASIMODO........................................................................................16 IX..........................................................................................................17 DESIDERATA.........................................................................................18 Mary Noonan

Artwork

FARMER'S DAUGHTER .........................................................................19 Helen Soraghan Dwyer

Poetry

CONNEMARA.......................................................................................20 WORKAHOLIC......................................................................................21 DRAMA................................................................................................22 GUILTY..................................................................................................23 KASHMIRI ROSE..................................................................................24

Sophia Dimmock

Artwork

SKY-PARTICLES...................................................................................25 Gerry Mc Donnell

Essay

JEWS AND GENTILES..........................................................................26 Adrian Fox

Artwork

RUBBING REALITY...............................................................................29

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Contents THE GREEN DOOR 11

Lynne Edgar

Poetry

VIEW FROM A TEA ROOM WINDOW..................................................30 DRIVEN...............................................................................................31 DERRY AIRING....................................................................................33 PEACE BRIDGE....................................................................................34 THE SUMMING UP..............................................................................35 Conor O'Malley

Artwork

BIG TREE.............................................................................................36 Marie Gahan

Poetry

MY MOTHER'S HAND.........................................................................37 THE FRENCH POLISHER......................................................................38 GLIMPSE OF GRANDEUR....................................................................39 AFTERNOON DELIGHT........................................................................40 BAG OF TRICKS...................................................................................41 Maria Walker

Artwork

PAPER PATTERNS................................................................................42 Sarah Maria Griffin

Essay

INDICATIVE OF HOPE...........................................................................43 Joe Kuehn

Artwork

PAPER CUT..........................................................................................47 Christine McEwen

Poetry

MILLKNOCK FELL................................................................................48 NO CASTLE.........................................................................................49 NORTHUMBERLAND..........................................................................50 Contents THE GREEN DOOR 11

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BESIDE HER BED.................................................................................51 LADY JANE..........................................................................................52 Frank Gillougley

Artwork

SCHRODINGER'S CAT..........................................................................53 Gary Allen

Poetry

SHADOWS...........................................................................................54 WHEN WE ARE GONE.........................................................................56 PLAYHOUSE.........................................................................................58 FLIGHT.................................................................................................60 TWO STOPS FROM BELFAST...........................................................................62 Paul Haydock-Wilson

Artwork

THE WILDERNESS IS BE.......................................................................64 Deirdre Kearney

Essay

PEN TO PAPER.....................................................................................65 Anonymous

Artwork

ARATEA...............................................................................................68 Paul McCormack

Poetry

PHOTOGRAPH, 1957...........................................................................69 WHEN THE PENNIES DROP..................................................................70 TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH....................................................................71 ALL SWORDS ARE DOUBLE-EDGED.....................................................72 AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING............................................................73 Kari Bert

Artwork

THE PIRANDELLO.................................................................................75

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Gerry McDonnell

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Poetry

I...........................................................................................................76 II..........................................................................................................77 III.........................................................................................................78 IV.........................................................................................................79 V..........................................................................................................80 XX........................................................................................................81 XXI.......................................................................................................82 XXII......................................................................................................83 XXIII.....................................................................................................84 APOLOGIA...........................................................................................85 Sean Rudden

Artwork

BRAILLE LIPS IN THE DARK..................................................................86 Kathy D'Arcy

Essay

LAPWING PUBLICATIONS: A BAPTISM OF FIRE...................................87 Helena Egri

Artwork

FOLLIE.................................................................................................92 Niall McGrath

Poetry

GENESIS...............................................................................................93 EXPULSION..........................................................................................94 AFTER THE HORSE LORD......................................................................95 HOLY LAND..........................................................................................96 THE OTHER SIDE..................................................................................97 COVENANT..........................................................................................98 NAME CALLING...................................................................................99

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Dennis Greig

Artwork

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BEAUTY TREATMENT.........................................................................101 Clifford Ireson

Poetry

JUAN ADOLESCENT............................................................................102 FLYING SORCERERS............................................................................104 PURSUIT.............................................................................................105 DON JUAN IN THE UNDERWORLD.....................................................106 EPILOGUE..........................................................................................107 Conor McCabe

Photograph

PLAYGROUND....................................................................................108 Michael O'Sullivan

Short Film

STRANGER IN THE HOUSE.................................................................109

Adam Rudden Editorial

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What has been wonderful about editing this Lapwing edition of The Green Door, is that it brings together a shared philosophy towards literary publishing. Lapwing’s standpoint on publishing has arisen out of a deep sense that mainstream literary organisations/publishers are failing to recognise and represent a lot of alternative voices that add legitimate value to Ireland’s overall cultural landscape. (Of course, Lapwing has long since extended its scope beyond Ireland.) The Green Door was founded in Belgium, born out of similar conclusions about the cultural environment it found itself in.

THE GREEN DOOR sees the spiritual (individually defined rather than collectively expressed) the creative and the erotic as three expressions issuing from the same source. Apart from this no statements will be made. No manifestos issues. No dogma adhered to.

This quotation is taken from the first issue of The Green Door, which was launched September 29th, 2010. I think it beautifully captures the editorial spaciousness needed for truly alternative voices to flourish. Lapwing and The Green Door share a kinship in terms of how they view their roles as editors. One major task of any editor is quality control. But if an editor has too narrow a notion of what a poem/literary piece ought to be, quality control becomes an overly disempowering force. All editors have preconceived notions and preferences that submissions must filter through. But Lapwing and The Green Door’s skill has been their willingness to meet submissions at the level of the submitted work. It is out of this context that they decide whether or not they deem a work publishable. Most publishers practice the opposite approach and demand that submitted works meet the publisher, where the publisher is at.

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Adam Rudden With regards my own role as editor for this issue, I am not attempting to give you an example of Lapwing‘s published work. Even though the work on display is a sample of material published by Lapwing, the term ‘example’ infers ‘a thing characteristic of its kind or illustrating a general rule.’1 This type of worldview is reinforced whenever a publisher demands that those submitting work to them, ought to buy previous publications by them, in order to get a sense of the type of work they publish. Lapwing does not function like this. Instead, I am attempting to give you instances of Lapwing, single occurrences of Lapwing.

This issue of The Green Door may give you a taste of Lapwing. But a taste of Lapwing is a distinct experience from feasting on Lapwing. In its brief history Lapwing has published over two hundred poets. It is in this sense that Lapwing is a feast or celebration of those poets and their contribution to the poetic tradition we collectively share and inherit.

My aim, as editor, is to utilise The Green Door as the medium to set up an experience of Lapwing. I have invited Dennis Greig, Lapwing’s co-founder, to choose ten poets to feature. I have also invited four poets to write articles reflecting on their personal experiences of Lapwing. Fourteen pieces of artwork also appear in this issue, along with a short movie ‘Stranger in the House’ by Lapwing poet Michael O'Sullivan.

I think all these instances of Lapwing reveals its continual commitment to providing a genuine platform for the alternative voices in poetry. Both The Green Door and Lapwing are communal in terms of their trajectory and goals. I feel that in many ways The Green Door is Lapwing’s unofficial ezine. I encourage all Lapwing poets and readers to nurture this bond by sending submissions and subscribing to future issues of The Green Door and aid its flourishing.

1

Oxford Dictionary Website, See entry under 'Example' www.oxforddictionaries.com

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Dennis Greig LAPWING PUBLICATIONS

ABOUT LAPWING LAPWING PUBLICATIONS emerged from Belfast’s Poetry Collective at the renowned Giro’s alternative cafe and music collective in Donegall Street, Belfast. GIRO’s continued for some years to provide a venue for some of Belfast’s alternative music scene as well as a range of facilities for people not at war with each other.

Since the late 1980’s (1989) LAPWING has continued to provide a non-commercial POETRY PRESS for local writers and those beyond Belfast. Although Lapwing was supported in the past by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, it is not now in receipt of any public funding. It is impossible to publish all the poetry that Lapwing receives, but we do our best.

Whilst the main task of Lapwing is to publish New and Emerging Poets from Ireland, north and south. We have published some of Ireland’s best known authors; the late James Simmons - founder of the Honest Ulsterman, Padraig Fiacc - winner of the AE prize in the 1950’s Robert Greacen - the Elder Statesman of Ulster Poetry, Padraig O’Snodaigh founder of the Irish language press Cosceim, Deirdre Brennan - her first major collection in English translated from Gaelic, Michael Fanning - Director of Feile na Bealtaine, Dingle, Des O’Grady Ezra Pound’s help mate in his later years who also helped get Akhmatova out of Russia, John Liddy - leading teacher and poetry ambassador in Madrid, Sam Burnside - the dynamic Derryman who got the Verbal Arts Centre up and running, Jean O’Brien - once voted the most beautiful legs in Ireland and now one of our leading poets, Niall McGrath - editor and founder of Black Mountain Review, Fred Johnston - the Galway based Belfastman running the West Poetry Centre, Maurice Harmon - Poetry Ireland, Gerry McDonnell - poet

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Dennis Greig and playwright whose recent work focuses on the Irish-Jewish community, Jack Holland - novelist and journalist who bid farewell to Ireland on Shankill Radio 1994.

These are only a random selection of our incredible poets who kept a light lit during Ireland’s greyest years and many who had kept that light burning during Ulster’s darkest hours.

In the course of Lapwing’s brief years, it has resisted censorship and petty politics that would silence those ‘still small voices’ . Where then liberty and freedom when the liberal arts are shackled to some dictat?

No wonder that even Stalin should remark that: ‘Poets are the engineers of the human soul’.

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Dennis Greig Introduction It has not been an easy task to pick poets never mind poems from Lapwing’s extensive and eclectic list of publications. These are examples and are anything but exhaustive in range and style.

I must apologise to those omitted, it is not intentional but a case of reasonable limitations.

For the purposes of the Journal I have almost randomly picked the following; Kate Ashton, Helen Soraghan Dwyer, Lynne Edgar, Marie Gahan, Christine McEwen, Gary Allen, Clifford Ireson, Paul McCormack (published as Frank Gillougley), Gerry McDonnell and Niall McGrath.

I chose these for several and different reasons, the main being a representation of how poetry goes beyond the parochial and yet always the drum beat of local and individual life throbs in the back-ground.

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Kate Ashton Kate Ashton is a ‘retired’ writer, journalist and editor. However, none of us really retire until the ink dries in our blood. As a writer of modern poetry rather than her novels, Kate draws on the European Renaissance which takes her a distance from her themes, and very nicely too. They do relate to her working past as in this and others from her short eponymous collection The Concourse of Virgins III The Concourse of Virgins Some of us took the veil; some bedded others of their kind. In walled gardens we grew into our vows, cowled and nodding promises like prayer. Sometimes we nursed the sick, until their wounds reminded us of how we’d strayed and every hungry hurt clamoured for love like one betrayed.

Counting the pulse was chaste, but lesser tending paced the ward. The men watched our approach with knowing eyes, alert to want unsated by their wives. We bit our lips. We smiled. Some higher calling eluded us: in the refectory, the chapter house and court laws were uncovered and explored, while month by month the moon sent her curved claw through thinning skin to clutch at claimed dominium. We smiled no more, disowned the art of anamnesis, signature and herb, known cure that thrives nearby the cause.

The barren cell bewitched stood stalled. All freedom passes into dread, the place beyond the portico, unsheltered and unled.

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Kate Ashton VI Pax

His face the face of the prodigal, wearing his wanderings like forbidden history, sand-spun anteroom of Bedouin birth, indigo-swept sunset of nomad smile at sudden death of day, as if he lay down once and let his soul float free of gravity, the caravan that sways against bedazzled topaz spies his whiteness in sparse submission to the sky. The one he dreamed he was in life offers a kiss, a sip of wine, a wafer pale as betrayal and many ways to turn away, and in his eyes hot rage and terror of exile. I take him thoroughly in who stood and begged before all doors – see what he makes of me – his gaze the veil which shimmering reveals the seen to its own self, so that I tremble into life charged by asymmetry, conceived in the Prophet’s caress, engendered mouth to mouth and born as difference into this flesh. And given in a glance with wisdom of the wound comes timid faith in frail undress with arms out-thrown to catch the nail or bless, embrace with bloodied frown the one who searched: the perpetrator and the found.

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Kate Ashton VIII Quasimodo

It’s when he weeps the wildness wakes in me - the wailing that he makes, it’s not like mine. The beast in him coughs up gusts of grief – black corbie cries that mount the magma red till far beneath us lies the rift, the bed, the little death. I cower from his fractured face. I stare. What ravishment is there? The towered keep is locked upon the hall, I watch the rocking of the walls. Another mistress rides his chest, presses the anguish from his pores – where he breaks temperance beaks into being like a bird posing as charnel child that wakes to night with fluttered lung and vellum shuttered sight and uttering unearthly song. His bare nape awaits the breath of blade, back bowed that bent to plough allows the flail, and in his side the splinter rests like love, painlessly in the flesh. Such blundering in extremis, sudden composure neither birth nor death – it robs the world of doubleness, straight plot and scribe – leaves he replete with suffering and chary of nomenclature, who shrinks from touch, afraid of tainting with reproach sublime encounter clothed in awe.

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Kate Ashton IX

I ask him who he is, he says no name embellishes his nakedness, not now, not ever. Father, brother, he whose hand homes uninvited to my breast? He shakes his head. Earth lies unpressed beneath his tread. Such sorrow shrouds this place; the hour devours its own shadow. He faints upon his feet! How cravenly I waver, how wantonly the rock hoards heat – it sears low lesion scented yet with myrrh and cauterises reason.

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Kate Ashton XI Desiderata

Make me whole again. I am a milky pool held hard to winter forest’s heart. The birch dips her white toe in cloudy underskirts. How stiff I grow. All the quiet places locked in lull, aghast at their own dwindling, ransack tomorrow for rare nurseries of wraiths, truant tumble and wildwood wade, rough parting of the way where mooncalf gropes, sleepwalking shade, for shrunken sun clung round with hungry heliotrope. Little absences crowd the glade – cowslip, mullein send sulphurous tirade from dimming bank and soft as ever overstep the edge. Cradled in complicity, new loss bereaves meadow and hedge, and who will know bold Stramonium when night terrors seize the bed, who bind physick and herb when destitution blinds the world? Shake me sound again, white child, you rush to meet me seeming to outrun your age. Only orphan, your snowflake handprint brands the breast so lately fled – you see, no birthdays are remembered here (foundlings swarm in your wake), no deaths, but every brow is smudged with sage. Wake me, remake me, pity me… the moon hangs captive in her monstrance as a lamb, unleavened, lucid, lost for time, awaiting alteration beyond blood and wine.

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Mary Noonan

Farmer's Daughter by Mary Noonan

This piece was used for the cover of Doll by Bridget T. Lally ISBN 9781907276866

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Helen Soraghan Dwyer Helen Soraghan Dwyer has been intensely involved in literature and art almost all her life it seems yet these poems articulate a concerned and discerning woman at home and abroad. These poems are from her recent collection from Lapwing Beyond.

CONNEMARA

She grew up in Connemara To the crash and hush of ocean waves And constant calls of seabirds.

He came from mid-west America Found her, fell in love And took her home to the States To give her a better life.

She still lives there So far from the sea Raising children Working hard For the better life He promised her.

Now her days are always busy And her eyes are always sad.

She wakes early every morning To her radio alarm And memories of sea sounds And seabirds calling, Seabirds always calling.

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Helen Soraghan Dwyer WORKAHOLIC

When she moved out of his house She cleared her china collection Off his mantelpiece And left it bachelor-bare.

Though to give her credit And some grace She never forgot The look on his face As she hurried out the door.

She took Sundays too, Past, present, future, And bundled them into her car.

As she drove away, She never turned to wave Or speak.

Now he works on Sundays And every day of the week.

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Helen Soraghan Dwyer DRAMA

I gave up my drama club To marry you, She’d often shout When they had a row.

Drama, he thought to himself, Always drama.

It was her bouts of silence At last that broke him.

Alone in his room Gazing at the television screen He knew he had to tell her It was over.

No more word battles Followed by months of silence.

It was his turn to give up drama.

When he left she kept the house He had built with his own hands And acres of his father’s land.

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Helen Soraghan Dwyer GUILTY

I danced last night For the first time in years And caught a glimpse of my reflection In a mirror.

I saw my smile so clear, So bright, The light in my eyes Shining like new.

Then I thought of you, As the music Whirled me away – You, lying cold, Beneath Cold cold clay.

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Helen Soraghan Dwyer KASHMIRI ROSE

Then they took your daughter Before your eyes And held you back With rifle butts As you listened to her cries.

And how can you And how can she And how can anyone know How to mend the petals Of a butchered rose?

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Sophia Dimmock

Sky-Particles by Sophia Dimmock

This piece was used for the cover of Sky-Particles by Sophia Dimmock ISBN

9781907276392

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Gerry Mc Donnell JEWS AND GENTILES

In 2000 I was in Paris giving poetry readings with poets Fred Johnston and Robert Greacen. I had been writing a series of poems in which Jews of 19th century Ireland spoke about their lives from beyond the grave. They were well received and I was looking for a home for them.

Robert Greacen recommended Lapwing, an independent press in Belfast which has been publishing poetry since 1988 when it was established by Dennis and Rene Greig. I sent the collection which I called Mud Island Elegy to Lapwing and they agreed to publish it in 2001. Mud Island is the old name for present day Ballybough in Dublin. The first immigrant Jews settled there outside the city boundaries marked by the Tolka River. The Jewish theme attracted the attention of the Jewish community in Dublin and the artist and gallery owner Gerald Davis wrote a foreword and arranged a launch in his premises in Capel Street. The actor Brendan Cauldwell read the poems better than any poet could. Dennis and Rene came down from Belfast for the launch which turned out to be a very memorable evening.

That wasn’t the first time I met the Greigs. Before the book was printed I paid a visit to Belfast to meet them. Up to then we were corresponding by email and post only. We met at the train station and they took me on a tour of the inner city, down the Shankill Road and on to a pigeon club near to where they lived in north Belfast. On this visit our intention was to put the book to bed. Also, I wanted to suggest that the book should have a spine, since bookshops aren’t too keen on displaying stapled collections of poetry. We sat in the pigeon fanciers’ bar, going over proofs while Dennis had a ‘wee swallee’. Old men in cloth caps sat in dark corners. I felt a bit nervous being the only Catholic there. However, Dennis assured me that there was courtesy and respect shown to those who may be guests from ‘the other side’. We settled on a final proof and decided to have lunch

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Gerry Mc Donnell in a pub named after the poet John Hewitt but when we got there they had stopped serving food. I had a sandwich on the train back to Dublin musing on the black mountain which looms over the city of Belfast; the close proximity of Catholic and Protestant areas separated only by the ‘peace wall’; and the openness of Dennis and Rene. There was no standing on ceremony and no four course lunch. I needn’t have worried about the presentation of the book; it looked good and still feels good in the hand. Lapwing has published five of my books. Following Mud Island Elegy, and in keeping with the Jewish theme there was Lost and Found in 2003, in which a homeless Jew wanders around the Phoenix Park in Dublin. Then came Jewish Influences in Ulysses in 2004. Mud Island Anthology, in which gentiles speak from beyond the grave, was published in 2009 and is a companion book to the ‘Elegy’ poems. It was launched in the foyer of Liberty Hall, formerly the site of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union and of the Irish Citizen Army, as part of the Five Lamps Festival in Dublin’s north inner city. On this occasion I had to pay a second trip to Belfast to collect books in time for the launch.

Dennis had assumed, quite reasonably, that the books which he posted in Belfast on a Monday would reach Dublin by the following Friday, the day of the launch. However, there was no sign of the books on Thursday so, somewhat panicked, I went up to Belfast, collected a parcel of books at the train station and got the next train back to Dublin. Such is the nature of launches.

Following the printing and the launching of books, comes the difficult task of getting them into shops. The big chains don’t want to know unless you are a big name. I content myself with placing copies in a few bookshops in Dublin – Books Upstairs on College Green; Hannah’s in Rathmines and recently the Rathgar Bookshop. As with most books of poetry there is a trickle of chance sales. I remember talking to the actor Donal O’ Kelly and in the course of the conversation he mentioned that he was reading a book of poetry on the Jews

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Gerry Mc Donnell in Ireland. It transpired that it was Mud Island Elegy. On another occasion, at a launch of Lapwing titles in the Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin, a group of American writers turned up. I got talking to one writer from Colorado who told me he had bought a book of mine online from Lapwing. Recently I was pleased to collect a cheque from one of the bookshops, for a not insignificant amount for sales going back over the years.

Lapwing has published a huge number of poets. Not funded by any Government body they are free to publish whoever they choose without any purse-string hindrance. They have been publishing poetry since their founding in 1988 and the long list of poets includes James Simmons, John Liddy, Padraic Fiacc, Robert Greacen, Mary O’ Donnell and Fred Johnston. They have also published translations from Irish, French and other languages. The poet Brendan Kennelly once asked me, “What gang are you with”? I think he was implying that to prosper or even survive in the poetry world in Ireland you have to attach yourself to some grouping. I haven’t tried to attach myself to any gang. I haven’t the temperament for it and fortunately enough I don’t need to, since I have a publisher like Lapwing who is interested in my work. In 2011 they published my latest book called Ragged Star. It is a series of poems about the relationship between father and son, which in my case was a difficult one. I sent twenty poems to Dennis which he liked. However, he suggested that there were more poems to come and not to rush it. He was right. I wrote another twenty to complete the series and dedicated the book to my father. Dennis sent me the striking cover for the book which was simply a paper mask discarded by his grandchild. He had seen it lying on the floor; an image of ragged laughter.

It has been very rewarding to see my work in print. Not many writers do and there would be even fewer if it wasn’t for the industrious, independent, small press that is Lapwing!

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Adrian Fox

Rubbing Reality by Adrian Fox This piece was used for the cover of A Kill House by Adrian Fox. ISBN 9781907276323

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Lynne Edgar Lynne Edgar is from Derry and her poems give a powerful personal glimpse of people in that city. In many ways they capture the sadness of that sad city. The poems are from her first collection by Lapwing Trapeze.

VIEW FROM A TEA ROOM WINDOW Ann’s day began with a medley of stirring irritations; life to the bruising beat of challenge.

Young Callum clung, dummy, or thumb, no comfort.

Even he knew a storm brewed when his usually drunken dad was too subdued.

Frayed to a bloodless muddle, Ann dismounted the bus on Princess Street.

From the Tea Room window she was viewed by leisured ladies, as a blight.

One noted how her pastiness perfectly accessorised her beige coat and red edged eyes.

Another how her glumness slithered off her lumpy form onto her disgruntled runt, who wore his inheritance like an uneasy apprentice. …All this in whispers – a noiseless poison, whisked with Latte Macchiato.

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Lynne Edgar DRIVEN

At forty six, my cup is stuffed with copious corporate chic ensembles, care of Harvey Nichols; a house in Richmond that’s really a stopover in a row of other occasionally occupied abodes; an apartment in Southsea, I rarely see, which seems to please my siblings and their offspring; and abundant friends on an online blog I log on to between cities and meetings.

Oh, and shards of glass ceilings.

At base I am the subject of suggestive speculation.

Colleagues care if the ass I lick on my bang on budget business trips is doormat or fat cat, masculine or feminine.

I am far from clueless, and inclined to fuel their interest, for amusement.

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Lynne Edgar Back home my father fills the privilege places with my famed certificates and graduation pictures.

Until she died, my mother grieved my drive and prayed that one day, some man would curb it.

Back home, at the odd helium filled festivity, I feel like a left-over, lurking.

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Lynne Edgar DERRY AIRING

Just call me John Doe, for who knows what I’m called.

I’ve two names they say, and a split personality.

Yet, though my ancient walls weep and wail, I’m not mad, nor bad. …Are you orange or green lad?

Which flag do you wave?

Will the doctrines of bigotry mean a thing when you’re deep in indifferent clay?

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Lynne Edgar PEACE BRIDGE Derry/Londonderry, 30th June 2011

We are the Lowry-like figures on early proposals; as on the blueprint, the sun even shines.

This path is a happy place, faces are illuminated.

A busker plays.

A cyclist sways past a pedlar selling ice cream.

A couple with pouched baby, limboed, choose a shrouded Guildhall backdrop for a telling family shot.

By the seats facing the marina, a huggling of extreme fringed teenagers; looking back at Craigavon Bridge, two elderly men reminisce.

In the distance a runner sprints on deck.

The artist beside me winks.

We are the living, breathing dream – the steel, the suspension, the hope.

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Lynne Edgar THE SUMMING UP

It seems the growing small of her desire, M’Lord, had beat a hard and cruel retreat.

She played the field, with consequences dire – his last text tells her what you sow you’ll reap.

We have her claim that she, who, slowly starved of space to breathe, skedaddled to a place where he had no dominion. But he carved, when he caught up, a bloody line that traced a path from her wedding ring to her heart.

The facts are dark and hardly known. It seems she struck the fatal blow, then fell apart.

Who knows? She still believes it was a dream where havoc’s hammer slammed on all they built. … Ask this, should wretched victims bear all guilt?

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Conor O'Malley

Big Tree by Conor O'Malley

This piece was used for the cover of Invisible Mending by John O'Malley ISBN 9781907276972

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Marie Gahan Marie Gahan’s Dublin poems in The Margarine Eaters shed a little light on living in a city in a country economically depressed. The ghosts of Kavanagh, O’Casey and Joyce linger on. It is always possible to edit the person out of a poem, however, for me the totally abstract and impersonal poem is like porridge without salt or a piece of music that has no tune.

My Mother’s Hands

They were working hands unused to revelling in creams – coarse and calloused, with tight-clipped nails that never knew the glamour-touch of varnish, around the cuticles French Polish stains that no amount of scrubbing could erase.

Yet they had the gentlest touch, deft with paintbrush as with shammy, removing splinters, bathing cuts, creative making shadow pictures on my bedtime wall.

They were diligent in soapsuds.

Clumsy with a needle, they prodded on through years of hems and buttons.

I was guided by their strength and never felt their anger.

Rosaried and idle, in death they seemed ill-at-ease.

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Marie Gahan The French Polisher

She smoothed the surface of our lives as she did with finest sandpaper, buffed up bruised egos with the lightest shammy.

Filled gaps in our emotions as fully as with beeswax, glossed over misdemeanours.

Marriage cracks concealed as deftly as in rosewood, she kept flammable spirits in control.

Matched moods as carefully as inlaid mahogany, always going with the grain.

Took pride in finished products.

Truth was the only thing she left unvarnished.

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Marie Gahan Glimpse of Grandeur

She took me with her on a ‘nixer’ once, tools of trade in a shopping bag, cotton wool wedged between French Polish and shellac.

‘Don’t touch a thing,’ she warned, as we mounted granite steps to ring a doorbell in Rathgar.

From a brocade sofa in a room bigger than our house I watched her arm lovingly outstretched along the wood and smelt the polish.

The chiffonier restored stood on newspapers, a parlour maid served tea on a silver tray.

The pearl-throated lady surprised her with a sherry, then added ten shillings to the price they had agreed and pressed a shining sixpence in my palm.

I held Mam’s strong hand and skipped along beside her to the bus.

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Marie Gahan Afternoon Delight

All the while she worked, filled in, concealed cracks, matched colours, mended, or made do. Dipped into polish pot, created colour out of drabness with each stroke.

Stopped now and then to quell a teacup storm or wipe a tear with cotton wool.

Alphabet propped on a walnut music stand, we sang our ABCs. Learned time on a rosewood Grandfather, played duets on back-to-back pianos, rocked rag dolls to sleep in a foot cradle.

Filled colouring books on a Davenport, napped on a mahogany chaise-lounge, were as familiar with the ‘Blue Boy’ as the ‘Sacred Heart’ at home every afternoon from two to five.

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Marie Gahan Bag of Tricks

In a corner of her empty room my children found the shopping bag that held her tools of trade.

I fingered sandpaper and pencil brush. Dusted work-stained labels on each pungent bottle – methylated spirits, varnish and French Polish.

Unstoppered time, retouched my world with love and laughter, camouflaged the cracks I’d never seen.

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Maria Walker

Paper Patterns by Maria Walker

This piece was used for the cover of Paper Patterns by Angela Topping ISBN 9781909252035

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Sarah Maria Griffin The Lapwing is a bird, in Irish lore – so it has been written – indicative of hope.

If hope is a thing with feathers, hope is a Lapwing.

Sarah M. Griff

I stood outside the Crane Bar in Galway, after a poetry slam, smoking cigarettes with a poet called Sarah Clancy. It was wintertime and we were freezing cold, the pair of us. She’d only just brought out a collection with Lapwing, and when I mentioned that I figured I’d enough poems myself to put together into something like a book, she said, ‘Go for it, they’re great, sure worst they can say is no.’

I mulled this over for weeks; wondering was it too early for me to be putting poems into a book for people to see. I wanted the poems and stories I’d written that year to all be put together, so that I could document what twenty two had been for me. It was a time of flux and change and growth and poems and I felt it was important to stick them all together somewhere and make them available in an official, formal way, for other people to see. Maybe other twenty two year olds might see it and think, oh, I understand what she’s doing there - I feel that, I understand that. I’d name it Follies, almost as a warning to readers: don’t be expecting any answers to all the problems in politics or questions about the universe this time. This is a book about being young. I wasn’t sure if any publisher would be interested in any of these things. I wasn’t sure if any reader would be, either.

When the time came to cast my fate to the wind and click the send button on my cover-letter with my manuscript to Dennis, it was around midnight. I was sitting up at my kitchen-table, and my partner sat facing me. I’d only the tiniest inkling of hope really, budding away behind all the knowledge of publishing house rejection statistics. But,

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Sarah Maria Griffin hope was definitely there. While I dithered around, avoiding doing it, Ceri said to me, ‘Worst he can say is no.’ On that, I hit send. I finished my drink and went to bed then, trying not to hope too much.

The next day, when I did my daily inbox check, my jaw nearly fell off me with the shock of seeing Dennis’s reply. It had arrived in at six in the morning. I’d learn, over the next year, to become fond of Dennis’s small-hours working patterns.

Follies appeared within three months. When the books arrived with their cream covers, and all the easter-egg like typos of a first edition, they came in a box that had once contained raspberry cool-pops, all taped up and bolstered with newspaper. Taking them out of the box was something akin to unwrapping the gift you’ve been waiting your whole life for: as though all the ideas and hard work and hope I’d saved up somehow materialised into that exact moment.

The editing process was a tennis-match of e-mails. Dennis was always straightforward with me and confident about what he wanted Lapwing to stand for: “I want to retain your present 'style' of doing things rather than imposing conventions - I am not interested that much in squeezing 'new' writers into Ireland's literary convents.”

Later, quite near to going to print, after much thought, I elected to replace two poems. I was quite nervous asking about this, but Dennis was more than happy to help - “Lapwing isn't a dead poetry society embalmer, we go right to the last minute - because we can.’

Sarah Maria Griffin

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Throughout this correspondence it became entirely clear that Dennis knew fully well the identity of Lapwing, and also and more importantly the reach as well as the limitations that come along with the changing climate of modern publishing - “In terms of literature, distributors are de facto redundant in the age of the Internet. so, anyone in the world with a computer and Internet will have access to Follies in some shape or form! A bigger shop window than some poxy shop that almost grudgingly will take one or two copies of a local poet's book.”

Dennis has hope. He has a lot of it. For publishing, for new writers, for people trying to do new things. He had it for me: a kid barely out of her masters who just wanted to write about what it was like being just that. He has it for all of us, trying to make things up and write them down and hopefully reach out and touch people in some way with those little pieces of art. He wants us to succeed: he has hope for us and believes in us and our courage against the often fortress-like hierarchy of the publishing world.

“Peter Finch stated many years ago that poets themselves will sell more of the own books than any shop. Even Michael Longley mentioned that Ireland could only absorb 200 or 300 copies of anybody's work. There are always exceptions. Michael mentioned that, at a time when the internet was in its infancy (here) and when only the well regarded academically-linked writer had any chance of publication. Even so, John Hewitt told me he could paper the walls of his house with rejection slips. So, what you and the other younger writers have done is very remarkable.”

Only in reading back over our correspondences now, I am shocked I didn’t say it to him then: young writers will always write and work and try and burn down the fortress but what Dennis has done with Lapwing that is truly remarkable.

In the front cover of Follies, amongst copyright and contact information, there is a note. It reads, ‘Since before 1632, the Greig

Sarah Maria Griffin

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sept of the MacGregor Clan has been printing and binding books.’

Then, on the back, at the very bottom of the cover, the last words on the book read: ‘The Lapwing is a bird in Irish lore – so it has been written – indicative of hope.’

Long may they continue providing this platform to new writers doing something a bit different. Long may they continue giving new writers hope.

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Joe Kuehn

Paper Cut by Joe Kuehn

This piece was used for the cover of Hear Silence Speaking

by Peter Sragher ISBN 9781909252011

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Christine McEwen Christine McEwen lives in Hexham near England’s North East border with Scotland. Here place and some knowledge of events and people help draw poetry into being. I mention this because ‘place’ has always been a powerful influence in poetry and literature. McEwen’s Place and People remind us that should not plead some special case for one people and place over another.

MILLKNOCK FELL

On Millknock Fell with its distant views of a Roman Emperor’s folly the upturned bowl of the sky is vast and a breeze steals gently through the grass, or stabs like a whetted knife.

No outward sound disturbs the quiet but the song of the sea in the pines, then the sharp cry as a buzzard flies wheeling and circling overhead scanning the land below.

A curlew calls on its stiff winged flight and lapwings tumble through the air while somewhere, somewhere high beyond the sight of human eye a sky lark beats his breast and sings.

And sometimes when I’m far away in some city’s noise and hard paved streets Wordsworth like I close my eyes and walk again on Millknock Fell.

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Christine McEwen NO CASTLE

There are no triumphant pennants, no flags to snap and flutter in a passing breeze.

This is no elegant fairy castle that perches high upon a soaring crag, with tall and lofty ivory towers or gleaming spires to pierce a crystal sky.

Just grey stone walls that wrap around the hearth, unimposing, battered by winter gales that roar and punish like the wrath of God. It’s name borrowed from an ancient town now only rubble and half buried pathsgrass grown-once trodden by an alien race.

Vindolanda, this small bright place, mis-named shelter from storm. No castle, just my home.

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Christine McEwen NORTHUMBERLAND

The fell, loud with the gurgle of snowmelt, unfolds beneath an endless sky.

A lark rises, each perfect, sobbing note lifting her to ecstasy.

The lone curlew passes, stiff winged, adding its melancholy cry to undulate and echo in the emptiness.

As Lapwings tumble and swoop, caught in the updrafts, grazing sheep raise their heads to watch as I go by.

In the distance the sun glitters, glints on the broad Tyne as it slips between fields, by-passing towns, rolling onwards to greet the wild North Sea.

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Christine McEwen BESIDE HER BED

A scatter of magazines that slither with every closing of the drawer.

Sticky bottled cough mixture, a forgotten, browned off apple core.

Tissues in a fancy box, ointment in a squeezed out tube, water in a dusty glass, photos in a perspex cube.

A paperback wanting to be read, a clutch of biro’s devoid of ink, a book for jotting night time thoughts each page a vivid Barbie pink.

The largest pot of vaseline, a pair of mismatched cotton gloves, a pamphlet of Victorian verse, each declares undying love.

An old pair of reading glasses lenses fogged with a finger smudge, and adorned with kilted piper a box of whiskey flavoured fudge.

A tape measure, a cotton reel, a picture postcard of Galway Bay, a diary full of empty pages reflects her life of empty days.

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Christine McEwen LADY JANE

If this must happen, let it happen quick before my heart explodes and bursts within my chest.

Hope greets the morning sun, despair lies with me at night.

It is written in the swirl of stars that this would be my fate.

Would I have dreamt at seventeen before the spring I’ll die?

The executioner waits beside the block and black ravens stand idly by.

Black ravens stand idly by, the executioner waits beside the block and before the spring I’ll die.

Would I have dreamt at seventeen that this would be my fate?

Its written in the swirl of stars.

Despair lies with me at night, hope greets the morning sun and bursts within my chest.

Before my heart explodes let it happen quick, if this must happen.

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Frank Gillougley

Schrodinger's Cat by Frank Gillougley

This piece was used for the cover of Notes from the Life of a Wall Dweller by Frank Gillougley ISBN 9781907276781

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Gary Allen Gary Allen and his brother Joseph are both from Ballymena, county Antrim in Ulster and both exceptional writers. It is Gary’s poems I select from. These poems articulate an otherwise unspoken Ulster, these are not the pleasant artistic fictions that work their way into popular acclaim. These are the hard shadows we live beside. The Next Room collection of poems is a place many of us here inhabit.

SHADOWS

This is my grave I pieced it together from those who have died here is my father, broken inside looking out from the window of a back room wondering where it has all gone and then again, a child in the hazel wood Ah well, he sighs, standing behind me what of two sisters still covering their faces with cloth in death too young to die they seem to say, It’s lonely here each day in the shadows growing dimmer

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Gary Allen and those friends without features and limbs – so many of them who speak to me quietly of how they were butchered and lie bone to bone in the killing clay; come up, young nephew you shouldn’t be there so soon and I will climb down to lie among them instead in the good quiet earth – In time, his purple lips articulate, There will be room, and more.

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Gary Allen WHEN WE ARE GONE

It’s a day for a funeral everything dripping with rain wet shiny streets sooty coal lorries parked up on the pavements the lights of the thrift shop switched on though it’s only afternoon migrant shift-workers sheltering under the railway arch sorry looking.

It’s a day to remember – damp secondhand rooms with empty fireplaces rat infested hot- presses no more the gaudy collection of shoes the smell of your clothes hanging in line counting holes in trouser pockets stumbling through a shiftless future, We will never think of this, you said as we watched the rain plummet in the broken yards.

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Gary Allen A dirty day on a sectioned hill the new dug grave the diggers stopping the drop from a foot below to lower the coffin into the rain filled ditch without splashing – no, no one will think of this.

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Gary Allen PLAYHOUSE

So how did you feed them one loaf of bread to last three days and what comes first in the order of things to be paid? how copper stretches across the kitchen table but is never enough to go round – better send them to bed empty and save the meter shilling.

The night is long everything that is normal is amplified the dog in the yard barking a child crying out in sleep the dust settling in a cold hearth the starlight in the window is bright enough the frost hard on the ground you can sew together a stitched scar the holes in their school jumpers

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Gary Allen cut insteps for their shoes from cardboard boxes move the pennies to another pile – if you had a clock you could listen to it tick the hours: your father was a cabinet-maker your mother spun yarn and you have gutted chickens but ends still never meet and no one told you how to keep a house raise children from nothing to conjure bread and fire – to become a girl again.

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Gary Allen FLIGHT

How my aunt longed to escape from drudgery in the big houses parents who saw sin in everything.

In the summer evenings he longed to walk with her in the country lanes talk of the serene peace above the clouds the sun a rim of light around the earth promised he would return when the war was over take her gliding silently over the Downs.

The long months coming home from work to a father’s scorn and then the letter – from an English solicitor what puritanical ignorance or fear of authority made your father throw it unopened

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Gary Allen to the back of the fire? where the flames curled slowly round it, as round the wreckage of a burning fuselage.

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Gary Allen TWO STOPS FROM BELFAST This is an ugly town two up two down terraced houses with dirty flyaway curtains roller blinds she has no pride no one visits a long gallery a bare flag pole an empty carriageway row after row of secondhand cars no bells on Sunday wooden market stalls covered over factory lights going out one by one open-ended question-marks the dead find no rest in vandalized ground and the trains that pass before the last star of morning, are sleet like a man smoking in an archway from the rain lovers leaving a park shelter –

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Gary Allen silver planes glide thousands of feet above bog water sucks insects below, nothing much happens even history doesn’t stop here anymore.

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Paul Haydock-Wilson

The Wilderness is Be by Paul Haydock-Wilson

This piece was used for the cover of Keeper of the Creek

by Rosy Wilson ISBN 9781909252004

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Deirdre Kearney PEN TO PAPER

My name is Deirdre Kearney and I am originally from Omagh in Co Tyrone. I lived in London for about 10 years and then moved to Galway in 1983. My people for generations have been poets, songwriters, artists and musicians, but it wasn’t until I was in my early fifties that I felt any urge to put “pen to paper”. I attended a prose Creative Writing class and quickly decided that I for one, did not have a novel in me. My teacher, Susan Millar DuMars suggested I might like to try my hand at poetry and told me about the poetry workshops being facilitated by her soon-to-be husband, the poet Kevin Higgins.

The workshops took place in Galway Arts Centre at 47 Dominick Street in a building now owned by Galway City Council. It seemed fitting that it had once been the townhouse home of Lady Augusta Gregory. Kevin and Susan also ran the Over the Edge poetry readings in Galway City Library and after the featured readers, there was always space left for emerging poets to read at the open mic. I decided to give it a go and after a short time began to find that I had a flair for poetry and I began to find my own voice. But still...

Over time and with the encouragement of Kevin, I began to submit poems to various magazines and while there were the inevitable rejections, there were also a trickle of acceptances. I was like a child, nervous with excitement when my first poem The Day of the Bomb was published in Crannóg, a local magazine which I am happy to say has just celebrated its fiftieth publication. Over time my work was accepted in poetry publications both in Ireland and abroad. Poems were accepted in a wide variety of magazines, periodicals, newspapers and journals. The Ulster Herald, a County Tyrone newspaper published Peacefire a poem about one of the Ceasefires in Northern Ireland which I had been mulling over in my head for years.

Treoir, the magazine of Comhaltas Ceoltóiri Éireann published

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Deirdre Kearney Art O’Cearnaigh a poem about my late father. Tintéan, an Australian –Irish magazine published Eurosaver and Welcome to my Country, satirical poems about Ireland in the “Celtic Tiger” years. I was published in on-line magazines like West47 online, Words on the Web and the Over the Edge blogspot. Other poems were accepted for Ropes, the annual magazine of NUIG MA in writing graduates. Other pieces appeared in THE Shop Magazine, Southword, and The Stinging Fly. A poem Osgar about my golden Labrador was included in the Salmon Anthology “Dogs Singing”. But still...

I was asked to take part in readings and read at numerous places throughout Galway City and County. I was a featured reader in the Over the Edge readings in Galway City Library and have read my work at Clifden Arts Week for the past few years with my workshop group who have evolved into the Skylight Poets. I have taken part in readings in Westside Library, Galway, and The Galway Arts Centre Studio in Nuns’ Island Galway and have been shortlisted for the Cúirt New Writing showcase. Other events included Poets for Oxfam and North Beach Poetry nights. During Galway Arts Festival I read at an event put on by An Taibhdhearc the Irish language theatre in Galway.

For that event I translated some of my poems in to Irish. Among others on the same bill was Michael D Higgins, making one of his last poetry readings before he was elected President of Ireland! But still...

Towards the end of a series of workshop sessions, participants were encouraged to send out their work and were given a list of publishers and magazines and off we went full of enthusiasm and good intentions. But as is often the case, the good intentions got subsumed into everyday occurrences and it was some time before I got round to sending any work out. Amongst the people on that list of possible publishers was Dennis Grieg of Lapwing Publications in Belfast. I dutifully sent off a manuscript of about twenty poems and then put it to the back of my mind. Within a couple of months I had an e-mail from Dennis saying that he thought I had enough for a small

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Deirdre Kearney collection! Suddenly all the reservations and the doubts evaporated.

SOMEBODY thought my work was worthy of publication! All the “But still... is it a poem?” and the “But still... is it poetry?” misgivings faded.

SOMEBODY was going to publish a book of MY POEMS! Dennis and Rene Greig who founded Lapwing Press in 1988 really believed in me and my poems and were going to put them in a book – a real book with a spine and a shiny cover, an ISBN number and my name on it!

And so began a series of e-mails back and forth, some new poems added, corrections made here, adjustments made there. And always a little bit of personal news from Dennis – a story about his dog, family illnesses, chores to be done, grandchildren to be picked up until I had an image built up of this generous far-sighted man and his family. I began to feel as if I knew this man and still do. Never once did Dennis cast aspersions, never lost his patience with last minute changes or an addition to the blurb on the back cover just as the book went to press! He gave in to my request to put a photo of my dog swimming in Galway Bay on the cover because he too is also a dog lover. He gently and kindly assisted with the development of a motley bunch of poems into a book entitled Spiddal Pier, of which I could rightly be proud of. Thank you always Dennis and Rene. Thank you for having faith in me and I wish continued success to wonderful Lapwing Press.

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Anon

Aratea by Anon

This piece was used for the cover of Orion

by Rosie Johnson ISBN 9781909252042

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Paul McCormack Paul McCormack, published as Frank Gillougley, is, maybe, a Scottish writer but there’s no hint of ‘Oor Wullie’. Irish-Scots, maybe, his sense of identities remind me of Hewitt’s poem Once Alien Here. Some of us are forever alien in our own homelands where ever they may be.

PHOTOGRAPH, 1957

Still to be conceived, my clan smiles into the lens and who knows, it may well be, that while undetected by photographic film, I was floating around in absentia like some angry Caliban, while this charade was going on – and yet, looking at this image now, there is a strange comfort in that I am not there, that there is no mark, or stain of me; my voice unheard and still to touch, or to be tainted by those whose genes are still to beget me.

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Paul McCormack WHEN THE PENNIES DROP

Only it’s a bit too late – thirty years too late in fact.

Still, she knew me like an itemised till receipt: this, is what I had bought and this, is what I had not and this, is what I had to suppress and that I in my unchoosing way could only crumple it up, putting the change in my pocket – a far worse crime it would seem than shoplifting I suppose, or so it feels like it, when the pennies drop.

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Paul McCormack TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH

It’s an ugliness I crave – a dour grey turned-over muck shoveled across the page; of earth, smelling after rain and blackened quick of nails.

Let me see what’s there beneath the dull leaden weight of this dank crumbling clay and not have it dance, or bear fruit before my eyes, as some winsome figurine transformed from some fancy polyglot loam.

I want to grope beneath the surface of things, and howk up repulsive words: not exonerate, mystify, or mollify, but to spill my viscera like sludge, splattered across this pure white paper.

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Paul McCormack ALL SWORDS ARE DOUBLE-EDGED

With their worshipping of false gods, their misuse of language and their obliviousness to fear, it is eleven-year-olds who terrify him the most, but what could they possibly fear anyway? Of becoming bald and toothless old farts bereft of humour, just like himself? Or, indeed, of what he finds truly frightening, when he cynically observes, like his father once before him (aye and there’s the rub), when he drivels at the telly, ‘they’re all just in it for the money,’ and other such urbane profundity.

Only, there he was, as his son is now, thinking of his own dad and of how he could be so un-idealistic and here he is now, so un-enamoured by the world, thinking Christ! Was it nearly thirty-odd years ago, his first crusade of love?

Surely no father’s naiveté could have foreseen, his son now become like him, knowing no salvation in love, ideology, or creed, but just like any other man and boy, redeemed by the knowledge that all swords are double-edged.

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Paul McCormack AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING…

As an exemplar of Scotland’s socio-economic malaise, the small Ayrshire town of Ardrossan merits a brief footnote in a few post-industrial indices for its past export of coal, iron and chemicals. However, the expedience of this history and other texts neglect to mention the sheer demographic exodus of economic migrants that passed through this port from Ulster at the end of the 19th Century without as much as a simple headcount. It can only be true to say that cattle faired better – they at least were accorded a mark.

At the harbour, an obstinate Victorian brick building remains as if to blunt the forces of change in burying this past in the common grave of time. On the building, an incongruous hoarding reads: Leisure Opportunity, Marina-side Bar & Restaurant, but, try as they might, it just doesn’t fit with the script – for the Firth of Clyde, read the Gaza Strip.

Duly reciting their rosaries as they alighted at Eglinton dock in 1891, God alone knows what my forbearers first thought when they were stranded here, with not a pot to piss in. This is it. What you see, is what you get. There is nothing here, or anywhere else for that matter. There’s only you and thousands of others, just like you.

Bundling onto railway carriages, they rumbled on past the pier-head junction box to be housed in Glasgow’s miserable tenement streets. No longer at home in Ireland, the lost tribe of Israel searched for their souls, but their lips no prayers could utter, no suppliant psalm. Requiesce canton pace. Requiesce canton pace.

As if to doubt which side of the water they were on, they even converted their birthright from McCormick to McCormack, but no cosmetic of one lowly vowel could erase the mark of Cain.

They would still feel the cut of humiliation: Listen son, ‘Ah’ll be honest wae ye, we don’t employ cathlicks here.’

Knowing my voice was never Scots nor Irish, I came to understand that I was descended from the true sons of Levi, from Counties Tyrone, Down and Antrim, who, from three generations back disembarked here, taking their chances as

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Paul McCormack miner, iron-driller and haberdasher. As was common, a rune-like X is a great grandparent’s signature on an Irish birth certificate that I have.

It is from these past people, that I have come to understand what has made part of me; et tu alien, in this desperate land.

Sicuterat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum.

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Kari Bert

The Pirandello by Kari Bert

This piece was used for the cover of The Pirandello

by Kari Bert ISBN 9781907276712

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Gerry Mc Donnell Gerry McDonnell is a fully paid up Dubliner. Ragged Star was a tough autobiographical collection of poems for Gerry to write in that his ouvre had to this point been somewhat distanced from the personal by his work on Joyce, the Irish Jewish community and other works. Here though is a Dublin lad become a man and hopefully through these poems the shadows of the past have lost some of their burden in the light of publication. Rather than select individual pieces I have picked two short sections to give the reader an indication of where the poems came from and got to. The work is in two parts or sections.

I

I must have gurgled and balled in the house on leafy heights bought for cash one hundred foot garden greyhounds, pony and trap Bedford van and Austin Cambridge business thriving workers stuffing fivers down their bras.

A family photo with me on his lap neither very happy.

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Gerry Mc Donnell II

Then a climb down to a modest, terraced house under a ragged star Easter eggs cooling on the window sill squeaky wrapped and ribboned to bring in a few bob.

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Gerry McDonnell III

Then further down crossing the river to the flood line.

The move at night horror at the thought furniture on horse and cart What’ll the neighbours think?

He sat up on the cart.

I walked with her.

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Gerry McDonnell IV

The house was old and damp reclaimed from the sea.

One time haunt of pirates and highwaymen.

He had a troop of handy men to keep decay at bay.

Mad Joe for rotting floors and poisoned rats.

Keltch for mismatched wallpaper.

A gardener watched over don’t forget that bit there.

A painter for maroon or grained hall door a shake in his hand.

Nixers settled in the pub.

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Gerry McDonnell V

The house backed onto the river.

I being sickly slept in the box room the gulls craving sunlight buttering lace curtains convalescing for days at the top of the stairs in fear at night with just the landing light or worse crying out a kerfuffle in the hall a diagnosis, the bulb is gone.

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Gerry McDonnell XX

I only want you to be happy.

Gulping against walloping plaited tides school and home respectively.

A truce we’ll cut the grass don’t forget that bit there.

I baulked at the verge had enough, walked in vertiginous.

You never finish anything.

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Gerry McDonnell XXI

It wasn’t The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance with Jack Palance, no regarding the family lore – gruff, tough tears leaked from him in the sentimental darkness of THE STRAND. It might have been The Greatest Story Ever Told?

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Gerry McDonnell XXII

He called my name from a blind place.

Delirious one night I’m going home tried to drips pulled from arms.

It seems it’s common with the dying.

Glad it wasn’t only him.

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Gerry McDonnell XXIII

He left me alone I told the cirrhosic night gotcha stoking his stolen fire on my way home.

Not at all!

He’s watchin’ over ye!

The house held memories close to its chest in spite of drink and drug venting.

Oh to be a Communist to count the workers friends and all.

Subsiding into atavistic fears somewhat righted by the Brandenburg Concertos and The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist.

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Gerry McDonnell APOLOGIA

I could have done without you dropping out of the favour hard won closed-shop printing trade words not dough in hand what you craved.

I could have done without the bomb-shell hearse to sell art from get that thing out of here with your nancy-boy friend.

I used to worry in the dark did you bend?

I could have done without you railing hammering madness and us bereft in the echo of the end the last nail.

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Sean Rudden

Braille Lips in the Dark by Sean Rudden

This piece was used for the cover of Braille Lips in the Dark

by Adam Rudden ISBN 9781905425716

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Kathy D'Arcy Lapwing Publications: A Baptism of Fire

Nearly three years ago, I decided to send what I thought of as my first collection to Lapwing press. I went about it Hamlet-style, with lots of angsty procrastination followed by ill-advised but uncontrollable haste. It worked well; following a tentative request and an encouraging reply, I sent a number of variously botched emails and finally managed to actually send the manuscript.

It was only recently that I had begun to think of my work as maybe publishable, but by the time I sent it I was proud of it and, unexpectedly, remain so – I have never opened the book and grimaced or cringed, or had a moment's regret about any of the words printed on the pages. That said, the decision of Lapwing to publish the collection changed my life. Although the self-belief we Irish scorn and deride while secretly coveting is meant to come from within, I can't describe the validation I felt when I picked up the first copy of Encounter. After years of toiling through writers' block in all its drainwater-grey forms, my writing since the book was published has flowed easily and happily out of me – a state I aim to pass on to other fledgling writers in the various workshops that I run.

Encounter was launched in 2010 in UCC by Dr. Lee Jenkins, and in Dublin at the Irish Writers' Centre. I read from it at an International Women's Day event in Cork – my first time reading in front of strangers – and through that act met poet and novelist Tina Pisco.

Later that year Tina and I founded the poetry ensemble Catch the Moon along with award-winning poets Shirley McClure and Jane Clarke (whose poetry has just appeared in the Irish Independent's Weekend Review), and the traditional harp player Anja Bakker. Catch the Moon have since performed at literary and arts festivals all over the country, and are next invited to appear at the Boyle Arts Festival this July.

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Kathy D'Arcy I also read from the book at the collaborative Cork arts festival The Trash Culture Revue, which led to an interview and several appearances as a reviewer on RTE Radio One's Arena arts programme.

At this stage I felt ready to begin facilitating writing workshops. I wanted to pass on the encouragement I had found in Lapwing to other new writers, and it has seemed to work. I specifically try to work with writers who feel unheard, who have something to say but no way to say it or to be listened to. Because I know myself the affirming effect of seeing your work in print, and of reading from your book, an intrinsic part of these workshops is generally the production of a small book. One of my groups has produced three slim volumes of work since its inception. The books have been named Pen to Paper by the group because that's what they feel they gain in the workshops – the ability to actually put pen to paper and write. The group sell the books (which we put together on a shoestring, without funding) to raise money for the Cork Simon Community, again their own choice. Coincidentally, I have just been invited to do writing workshops with residents of the Simon Community too, and these are going spectacularly well.

Being a youth worker by profession, I also began facilitating writing workshops for children and young people, which has been extremely rewarding and eye-opening so far. My friendship with Tina Pisco led to my increasing involvement as a consultant on youth projects with Tigh Fili Cultural Centre for a time, and I was appointed writer in residence there this year. I designed the 2011 workshop tour promoting and gathering childrens' poetry for their long-established Eurochild anthology of childrens' poetry and art, and introduced the idea of an anthology of teenagers' poetry from all over the world which would be edited by the young people themselves. In May this anthology, Stealing Shakespeare's Pencil, was presented to President Higgins in Áras an Uachtaráin. As with my adult groups, my aim is to

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Kathy D'Arcy give those who don't have a voice the ability to speak up. I am currently in the middle of a series of workshops with children living in one of Cork's asylum seeker centres, which I hope will raise awareness about the conditions we apparently find it acceptable for them and their families to live in for years. Out of the mouths of babes...

As well as all of these opportunities, the residency with Tigh Fili gave me further validation and encouragement to write, and Bradshaw Books in Cork have just published my second collection, The Wild Pupil.

Through a series of coincidences I have never met Dennis Greig, the man who gave me my chance and who, though he probably does not know it, I think of as my mentor, my literary father. In the beginning I communicated with him about the book, back and forth with drafts and advice, via email. It being such an important part of my life (and I suppose I having no restraint in the face of any encouragement), these emails slowly became about me pouring my heart out.

Without fail I would receive, in prompt reply, an extensive tract detailing how life, and its corollary, art, work best. It is from Dennis's emails that I have learned to take the establishment with a healthy pinch of salt, to look for art where it isn't necessarily sanctioned or accepted, and to try as hard as I can to stay self-sustaining and true to my own beliefs. Just as all the artistic opportunities I have enjoyed in the past three years have been as a direct result of Dennis taking a chance on my work, so my whole practise as an artist and a supporter of other artists has been informed by his advice and the unflinchingly genuine example he has set. I often recount to friends and students who ask about my experience with Lapwing the story of how, after defeatedly writing to him about my plan to set myself up in a bare field somewhere in the countryside and to live off the land, away from unbearable Society (because it worked so well for Yeats of course), Dennis got back in touch almost immediately to ask was I all

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Kathy D'Arcy right, and to say that he was worried about me and (gently) that it probably wasn't the best idea.

Soon after Encounter was published, Dennis asked me to go to the Dingle Festival to represent Lapwing. Another Lapwing poet, Emma Sharn, would be there also, and Dennis felt that we would get on well.

Nervous and alone, I found Emma at an open mic event. I spoke soberly about Lapwing, and Emma and I read very proper, inoffensive poems. Then I was asked to read again and I asked the audience – including a busload of Ohio tourists – whether I should read a nice poem or a rude one. 'A rude one!' shouted the gaelgeoir portion of the crowd. So I read 'Cunt' to a mixture of whoops and pinched silence. Emboldened by this, Emma revealed the heart of her work – beautiful, bright poems about surviving terrible experiences, which she was willing to give for free to anyone who felt they needed them.

A queue of people, possibly even a third of the audience, followed her away from the stage.

Being involved with Lapwing and with Denis Greig has been such an education for me. I have such respect for their way of working, the purity with which they choose the more difficult but truer-to-self route through the arts. I will always try to emulate what I have seen in Lapwing in my own arts practice. I have begun to have first-hand experience now of how, if you don't take the 'talking to the right people' approach, even these days, you can expect doors to be closed in your face no matter how good or useful your plans – how 'the right people' are in fact often blind to those with whom they have not shared the right glass of wine. Without the knowledge, experience and advice that has been so readily and generously passed on to me, I would probably have grown discouraged a long time ago. With it, however, I am just more intent on carrying on.

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Kathy D'Arcy In Belfast for the Hanna's House Peace Project last year, I arranged to meet Dennis and Rene outside the university after the day's events.

Somehow we missed each other. In Belfast again earlier this year to launch a translation of Spanish poetry, I plain forgot to tell him I was coming. Half-cut, I phoned from Heuston Station and he chatted to me on the phone as though I was a relative, but we did not meet again.

I wonder these days of it is best to leave it this way. I have been so open and so affected by his communications that I am unsure how it would be to actually meet in the flesh. Even if we did meet, I would be unable to express my gratitude in anything like the right way.

Kathy D'Arcy The Wild Pupil will be launched in Hodges Figgis, Dublin, at 6.30pm on September 20th and in Cork soon thereafter: see www.kathydarcy.com for details. Encounter is available from Lapwing Press.

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Helena Egri

Follie by Helena Egri

This piece was used for the cover of Follies

by Sarah Maria Griffin ISBN 9781907276699

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Niall McGrath Niall McGrath in Who I Am succinctly answers his own question. He is totally rooted Ulster, in Ireland and those roots go deep down. Again, sections are given to indicate the cuttings through the sods of history. This collection to me is very significant and I beg the readers’ pardon for going beyond the allocated five piece selections, I could cite the whole book and it is worthy of the top accolades many of our poets are denied.

I. GENESIS Beyond the memory of man‌ Whiteness. Emptiness.

Comfort giving way to chill. Contentment transfiguring in another pattern as permafrost becomes slush and bog, dries to meadow and drumlin.

Saplings stretch in brightness.

Barrenness eases to temperate; overcomes aridity. Branches droop, drops quench loam and peat.

Tribes spread from the dark heart, where the survivors dwelt.

An oligarch of adventurers stray: encamps where undisturbed salmon leap, deer and hare hop, wolf stalks.

They clear pastures, turn soil to cultivate strips of fodder.

From the east: seed that spreads rampant crops across the land.

A foothold is secured; the island of youth is explored.

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Niall McGrath II.

EXPULSION

Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people…

Nomads, settling in a valley of plenty.

One son tills soil, produces wholesome grain, the other corrals livestock, supplies neighbours’ lust for comfort.

He is bestowed with the riches he craves, regardless of the karma they carry.

Be careful what you wish for…

Righteous anger overspills, spills blood.

Repentant, self-loathing exiles the agriculturalist amongst untouchables.

Relishing newfound ease, the parents are distracted from their sorrow and from their goal, indulge in the carnal, no longer see each other as two halves of the same kernel.

They snatch time selfishly, fret over appearances; sup the juices of the vine till their faces are bloated red as the earth, red as their offspring’s blood fertilising the once virgin garden.

And so paradise eludes them, too; banishment prevails.

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Niall McGrath V.

AFTER THE HORSE LORD

Disparate settlements have been named in honour of this Celtic prince so famed…

Brian’s brother Ectigern begot ten tribes, both Irish and Scot: McGovern, McCloy, McKennedy, Eachan, Heffernan, Cafferty, Stead, Steadman, Ahern and the sons of Craith.

Aughrim, Aughinish, Duneight, Donaghanie, Eachlein, Lemanagh, Leamanach, Tuaghy, Eochaidh’s Lake, Ballymackilough, Strachan and Keoghville commemorate the man; all these places and all the clans McGrath.

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Niall McGrath VI.

HOLY LAND

Sixmilebridge to Sixmilewater their domain, across provinces and generations.

This is the land of lovers and saints: the country where desire hangs on the air like apples on the crabtree, waiting to be plucked or falling to the ground, to be snatched and carried off to some chieftain’s lair or some devotee’s cell, where they count and store each salvaged fruit with care, awaiting the feast day with such great hunger.

This is the land of the all-attractive diva: where clansmen training in hilltop forts, farmers ploughing in valley meadows, craftsmen sweating in crossroads forges, sailors aboard their lilting boats, druids counselling the afflicted in forest glades, millers grinding in glens and gorges, all pine for a glimpse from earthly shadows of the elusive Macha before the shimmering vision fades.

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Niall McGrath XVII.

THE OTHER SIDE

A churchyard with scarcely any other name on the headstones than theirs, huddled within the wall, all neatly tended, no weeds sullying this plot. They have become almost native now – the big Viking frame got beefy on plenty; blond hair fretted white.

Still martial, still stumbling each Twelfth to the moan of their own drum, swords blinding silver in summer light, high-hedged country roads resonating with the sound of their self-aggrandisement, insects and vermin briefly scurrying aside as they tramp, celebrating survival, till nature prevails.

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Niall McGrath XXII.

COVENANT

Picture Carson in Edwardian frock coat stooped at the table signing, a quarter of a million men joining him. And a quarter of a million women had their own Declaration, some using their blood as ink on the Covenant.

In the Public Records collection I locate my grandmother’s signature and, beside it, her mother’s.

It must’ve been a special day in Stranocum, banners fluttering against azure sky, a time of celebration.

Cassie was a stripling, of course, knew nothing of what lay ahead: how she’d be in O’Connell Street, one of the bemused as Pearse unscrolled his declaration, read and the world shuddered on its pivot.

How, at a dance, she’d meet a freethinking lad, vow to be his wife; learn other shades of green; and that pledges made in the heat of the moment don’t always ring true.

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Niall McGrath xxx.

NAME CALLING “Sticks and stones may break my bones…”

It was a teacher in England who kept badgering me, “So that’s a Catholic name?”

It was an Ulster novelist who pointed out over a pint there’d been a trend among upwardly mobile Prods in the era of his prime, the Sixties, to give their offspring Irish names.

There was the policeman Dad would have a whiskey with, who did point duty at Carlisle Circus, who gave his son the same name;

and the archbishop’s doctor son I saw interviewed on TV once.

The time I was helping a neighbour shift cattle on conacre land in North Down, a well-to-do farmer helping us there, on hearing my name, commented, “like Niall of the Nine Hostages.”

When I acknowledged the legend he demanded, “How do you know about him?”

I was unable to articulate then

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Niall McGrath my history-buff father’s enthusiasm after a trip to Tara.

I’d learn how MacNeice considered himself ‘A Protestant with a Fenian name’.

Perhaps not quite the same for him in peacetime or at boarding school across the water as for me growing up during the Troubles, one side suspicious because of the name, the other at first open, then clamming up on discovering you weren’t ‘one of them’.

But my sister-in-law, reared within the Pale, beats Banaher: preparing for her Baptism, the priest refused to refer to her by the first name her mother chose, called her, in his Jansenistic wisdom, by her saintly middle name, ‘Anne’, rather than use the pagan ‘Deirdre’.

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Dennis Greig

Beauty Treatment by Dennis Greig

This piece was used for the cover of Ragged Star

by Gerry McDonnell ISBN 9781907276835

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Clifford Ireson Clifford Ireson: I have chosen to illustrate that Lapwing goes beyond ‘the oul sod’ in this choice. The Silken Ladder is a treatment and translation of parts of the Don Juan ‘story’. It may be an old story but very contemporary if the current gossip mills and kiss and tells are anything to go by.

Ireson’s previous collection from Lapwing spanned the years 1941 to recent years. He is a Professor of French retired to France with his family. His daughter Jane Ireson teaches in England. Once again, another neglected writer of considerable emminience. This publicationis due out within a month of this Journal entry. It contains illustrations and has pictoriated capital letters on most page head words.

JUAN ADOLESCENT

Juan had longed for many days, The true sad stomach-kick of love Each time the window framed a phrase Of dance to which a girl may move.

I suppose her grace was chance, The reflex of the animal, Yet Juan felt her wanton stance Intentionally rhythmical.

Behind the balcony of bone The clapping heart its encores hurled, And from the face and female tone Juan breathed a bubble world.

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Clifford Ireson She held a hamster in a hand That touched his in the afternoon.

Reptilian the fingers spanned And crisped his senses like the moon.

The hamster forced the fusing spark Across the space where bodies turn And Juan idling in the dark Six days later saw it burn.

She spoke and went. The bubble burst And sprayed its soft platonic dye, And Juan understood, the first, The image scarlet in the sky.

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Clifford Ireson FLYING SORCERERS

Five of them came And swore they would give him The imperishable freshness of organs, Unchanging hair, unfailing sweetness of kiss and thrust And the marine swell and struggle towards orgasm For ever.

Juan looked out over the near red clouds, And certainly thought of Masha in her flat, Sliding sly looks from her Egyptian eyes, Treading her prurient scented mime; And although the filmy promise Rasped in his head, And although he seemed to sense A drenched pungent trail, He thought of the stupid spinning of the sphere, The damn fool roundabout of the moon, The orchestrated swing of satellites, And he said, ‘No thanks, I’d better take my chances in the ordinary dark.

But thanks for coming all the same.’

Would he ever know What they would have wanted In return?

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Clifford Ireson PURSUIT

What is in your mind, Don Juan, Your boots by the bed for a quick getaway, Your frilled lawn shirt dropped over the covers More by the accident of passion than design?

What are your thoughts in this pallid darkness With that fine Spanish profile close to your eyes And that superb body nervous under your hands?

The penetration of that rim, The gliding in that private sea Will this complete or comfort him Or pierce a being’s mystery?

She rarely sleeps in these contrived encounters, Fearful of vengeful surprises, sudden eruptions of light And the snarl of dogs at the door.

Enthralled and joyless, do the visions of a thousand sleepless nights Run like pictures on a pornographic screen?

Surely, surely, somewhere under the rooftops Of Sevilla, Granada, Madrid or Compostella Lies a girl, siren and saint, Temptress and redeemer, Enticing as Lilith, maternal as Eve, And fit to send you rock, rock, rocking On the green salt waters of Paradise?

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Clifford Ireson DON JUAN IN THE UNDERWORLD After Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal

Don Juan comes to cross the stream, Ten beggars are his ferrymen.

Behind him phantom women scream, And he is mocked by phantom men.

He steps into the fatal bark And leaves the livid limbo realm.

They row into the storm-lit dark.

Don Juan stands beside the helm.

Elvira, Queen of wifely vows, Ill-dealt by sharp ontology, White on the water at the bows, Sobs out her sad doxology.

Gripping the bar with graven hand, Grim shape by sculpture fixed for good, Steering towards the further land, A stone Commander rules the flood.

Still with a bending swordsman’s grace, The hero, posed with a rapier, Smoothes the fine tension of his face, Studies the wake and does not stir.

The trip is paid for. Many eyes Have fixed upon this ride to Hell, And all may venture to surmise The brain’s sad flicker in the dandy’s shell.

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Clifford Ireson EPILOGUE

Fables, fables, fables.

Do not look for him there In the realms of moral chastisement.

From the mortality and darkness now A floating play of pictured avatars Is what remains of that Don Juan, who, in his time, A source of scandal and temerity, Opened the gates to record-breaking sin, And showed the generations in his wake A sexual freedom that was called Romantic, laced with a heady brew Of multiple adventure.

Dandy and aristocrat, Egomaniac, chivalrous, conscienceless and vain, Unequal in the end To forces of requitement that now seem To have faded in a technocratic age.

Don Juan Tenario, Seville sixteenth century, Died mysteriously.

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Conor McCabe

Playground by Conor McCabe

This piece was used for the cover of Playground

by Paddy Glavin ISBN 9781907276668

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Michael O'Sullivan Short Film STRANGER IN THE HOUSE is a 29 minute film which recently won the Film Director's Prize at the Irish International Film Festival 2010. This film explores the nature of the creative process, with specific emphasis on the friendship between Orson Welles and Micheal MacLiammoir. http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi3481667865/

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