NORTH WEST WORDS
ISSUE 1 SUMMER 2014
Painting by Lisa Bond
POETRY
FICTION
MEMOIR
INTERVIEWS
ART
North West Words
Summer 2014
Contents
Page
4
Editorial
Poetry
7
Anubis by Monica Corish
8
Heavy Clogs by Kevin Higgins
9
Mother Goddess by Denise Blake
11
For Margaretta d’Arcy by Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons
12
Europe Called by Celine McGlynn
13 The Shed by Eithne Reynolds
14
A Crossroads by Gerard Smyth
16
Veldtschoen by Guy Stephenson
18
Window Seat by Patrick Hull
19
Vigil 5 by Joan Newmann
20
Lace by Imelda Maguire
21
Edgar Al and Po by Malachy Doyle
Interview
23 Jon McGregor by Ann Hull
Features
26 Profile - Pauline Sugrue
27 Profile – Lisa Bond
28
On Organising Workshops for North West Words – Maureen Curran
Fiction
29 Extract from Work in Progress by Mia Gallagher
32 Gull by EM Reapy
33 Binned by Averil Meehan
34 Sing Song Days (an excerpt) by Alan McMonagle
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Non-Fiction
36 Backstage Carpentry by Deirdre McClay
Poetry
38 5:12AM by Jenni Doherty
39 Fish and Chips by Michael Farry
40 Texting God by Edward O’Dwyer
42 Double Cross by Greagoir O’Duill
46 Breakdown by Gavan Duffy
48 Lloyd’s Lighthouse by Winifred McNulty
49 The Reek by Anne O’Connell
50 Beside Still Waters by Kate Newmann
53 May Rain by Clare McDonnell
54 Don’t Tell the Witch by Susan Millar DuMars
55 Pallas Lake by Connie Roberts
Submissions welcome
Please send up to three poems, or up to 2000 words of fiction, or up to 800 words of memoir to
editornww@yahoo.ie by September 1 for the Autumn-Winter (October) issue. Include an up to date
bio and a photo.
If you are an artist or photographer, or reviewer who would like to submit work please contact us at
editornww@yahoo.ie
North West Words will publish three issues a year Autumn-Winter, Spring, and Summer
Editorial team Maureen Curran
Eamonn Bonner
Denise Blake
Copyright remains with the authors for all work in North West Words.
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An Issue 1 of sorts
It’s not the first time there has been a North West Words magazine, just the first time for an on-line
one. The earliest issues were set and printed and copied by Eamonn nearly four years ago, the team
at Tirconail Tribune printed more recent issues which were edited by various members of the NWW
team. These were distributed free in public services centres, cafés, libraries and hotels across
Donegal and a little beyond.
The decision to switch to an online version is about cutting printing costs and reaching a wider
audience. It also means we can spend the donations available to us on running workshops and
promoting live readings. We hope the new website will do what the original magazine did: bring
writing, art, photography, schools writing and arts news from around the north-west together.
So, this is an issue one of sorts and an issue one is daunting thing. Time and again while putting it
together it has occurred to me I am out of my comfort zone. I’m a teacher not an editor, nor a
graphic designer. I believe what we lack in expertise though, we make up in enthusiasm and
commitment to making North West Words the best it can be.
One thing that made it less daunting is the fact that when I asked nicely twenty-nine people gave me
poems and stories and art. They respect our track record and trust North West Words to look after
their work, to bring it to you the reader. What a satisfying thing that is.
Included in this issue are poems by the poets who won prizes in the 2013 Donegal Creameries North
West Words Poetry Prize, poets and authors who have read at North West Words events, facilitators
at our July Writing Weekend.
We have an interview with acclaimed author Jon McGregor, conducted by postcard, and a profile of
local business-woman and hostess of NWW at Café Blend, Pauline Sugrue. This issue includes the art
of Lisa Bond, who is the featured artist at North West Words Writing Weekend in July.
The finest poetry and fiction stops you in your tracks, makes you different for having read it. These
poems and stories did that for me, I hope they do the same for you.
Now that issue one is complete, issue two is keeping me awake. We have set a high bar with issue
one. So, if you are a writer who likes what you have found here, consider submitting something for
our next issue. We want poems and stories that are crafted with care, which resonate and matter.
Happy reading,
Maureen
Please send up to three poems, or up to 2000 words of fiction, or up to 800 words of memoir to
editornww@yahoo.ie by September 1 for the Autumn/Winter issue. Include an up to date bio and a
photo.
If you are an artist or photographer, or reviewer who would like to submit work please contact us at
editornww@yahoo.ie
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Lisa Bond
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North West Words
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Summer 2014
North West Words
Summer 2014
Anubis
A small white dog boards the train in Mullingar.
I'm travelling from Leitrim to Limerick
for the first time since I heard your news.
He jumps into the seat beside me,
I put him out of the seat to find his owner.
He claims no one, no one claims him.
He heads off down the length of the carriage,
into the next carriage, on an adventure.
Off to Dublin, for a day of shopping?
To see the Frida Kahlo exhibition?
I wish he was beside me still, warm beneath
my hands. A dog is good about the house
when death is in the air.
You remember? Your brother, Pat, was dying,
the air was thick with fear. A neighbour
brought a pup to visit, a chocolate Labrador.
He licked death's face and hand, he offered
death the paw, he took the living for a walk.
This small white dog, this gift?
I should have brought him home to you.
Monica Corish
Monica Corish lives in Kinlough, County Leitrim. Her poetry and short stories have both
been shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Awards. Her work has been published in
The Stinging Fly (where she was the Featured Poet in Spring 2009), Cyphers, Orbis, THE
SHOp, Southword, Crannóg, Revival and The Cathach; and anthologised in Works Seven and
Census 3. Her first collection of poetry, Slow Mysteries, was published by Doghouse Books in
June 2012. She has received literature bursaries from The Arts Council, the Arts and
Disability Forum, and Leitrim Arts Office. She leads writing and poetry workshops in the
North-West and in Dublin, and is a trained AWA writing group leader.
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Heavy Clogs
I’m the local schoolmistress
who worked hard to know
the zilch I knew about this.
I’m the Department Inspector
who remembered
the questions not to ask.
I’m the concerned citizen who never
heard their heavy clogs go,
by forced marches, up the Dublin Road.
I’m the editor of the Tuam Herald,
who talked instead about
the Pope’s visit.
I’m the Government Minister whose pink skull
baldly admired the particular yellow
of the roses by the newly whitewashed wall,
and thanked the nuns for their work.
I’m the County Councillor concerned
about the cost to the ratepayer
-per skeleton- of piling that many small ones
of whom no one had ever heard,
into a disused hole in the ground
--one big concrete sarcophagus-no one knew anything about.
Kevin Higgins
Kevin Higgins’s poetry features in the generation defining
anthology Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Ed
Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010) and one of his poems is
included in the recent anthology The Hundred Years’ War:
modern war poems (Edited by Neil Astley, Bloodaxe, April
2014). The Ghost in the Lobby (Salmon, Spring 2014) is Kevin’s
fourth collection of poems. Kevin’s blog is
www.mentioningthewar.blogspot.com
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Mother Goddess
Mother goddess, Universal mother, mother of Persephone,
Demeter, goddess of the harvest, the mother whose daughter
went missing, who did not drink, eat or bathe until she found her.
Mother of grain and crop, the bountiful gift, blessings on
those who looked after her own. The curse of unquenchable
hunger on those who brought harm to the ones she had borne.
Mistress of the home, producer of life, she sent her cubs
through a darkened cave into immortality and a blessed afterlife.
As it was with her it was with my grandmothers and my mother.
Good mother, Blessed mother, working mother, fairy godmother,
guardian angels; the baker of birthday cakes, lovelorn healer,
soother of hot fevers, stitcher of torn hems, night-time story teller
who taught us how to walk, talk, sing, dance, cry a river and then smile.
Or Mother Nature full of fresh berries, wild roadside flowers, lilac
filled fields. A lioness, black bear, white vulture, all present mother.
Watch over my clan, watch over their future, watch over their care.
The Goddess mothers: Anu, Gaia, Toci, Rhea, Durga, my own;
Tooth fairy, Easter Bunny, Glinda the good witch, moody woman, crazy
kitchen-dancer. Mommy, Mummy, Mum, Ma, Granny, a Mháthair.
Creator of cycles, unconditional love and hurricanes. The core of peace.
Give me guidance, nourishment and strength. Help me to hold on
and let go, be present and absent, wise and foolish, their past and future.
Help me to be the mother my own sons need, the person they will cherish,
and the woman who will warm a hollowed soul in those who need a mother.
Denise Blake
Denise Blake’s second collection, How to Spin Without Getting Dizzy, is
published by Summer Palace Press (June 2010). She is a regular contributor
to RTE Radio 1's show, Sunday Miscellany. She is on the Poetry Ireland
directory for Writers in Schools and has wide experience facilitating
workshops for adults.
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Lisa Bond
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For Margaretta D'Arcy
So, I look up to you most familiar of constellations,
tonight at the M of your stars for an answer
because I am stirred by the courage of Margaretta D'Arcy
who refused to sign an order that would
keep her from protest at Shannon,
keep her from raising a voice against war and its profits.
I look for an answer in myths that bind you to a spinning chair.
O, Queen of Ether, bearer of the Laconian Key,
servant of the secret door, circling the lodestar forever;
whose name also means she of shining words,
point our way to secrets and mysteries,
out of bondage
to hope of safe harbour and home,
to peace that comes bright in the morning
in the colours of earthbound flowers
that spring again from stained ground.
Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons
Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons lives in Falcarragh, Co.
Donegal and has 5 collections of poems, much journal and
anthology publication. With her late husband James
Simmons she founded The Poets' House; the first MA in
Creative Writing in Ireland. She received The Patrick and
Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in 2009.
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Europe Called
Europe called today,
asked what we have to give.
We give knowledge
sharpened by discord,
honed with grief.
Beautiful, shining.
We give skills
gathered from mornings,
evenings, days,
in this most beautiful of lands.
We give music,
played to us, in us,
from before we were born.
We give markets, waterways
roads and airports,
our embrace of technology.
We give the drumbeat
of dance in house, hall and stage.
It resonates.
We give the gift of word,
written and spoken,
the coding of the heart.
Celine McGlynn
Celine McGlynn's poetry collection Forged in the Stars was published
by Summer Palace Press in 2011. A member of the Errigal Writers, she
has published two previous books, The Best of William Allingham, and
Sarah Leech: The Ulster-Scots Poetess of Raphoe, Co. Donegal. She is
also a successful artist with several solo exhibitions to her credit.
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Second Place
Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2013
The Shed
Today my father emptied the milking shed.
The last of the hay he fed to the cattle,
well fattened,
he took them to a neighbour’s farm.
Head bowed, I stood and watched him
herd the heifers from the yard.
“A man has no need of a shed, a tractor,
or hay,” he said,
“who has no son to follow in his way.”
Last week I told him I needed a fresh startthat I could not stay,
and had to get away.
He gave me his silent response, emptying the yard,
the barn, the shed, of all he loved.
I had already emptied his heart.
Eithne Reynolds
Eithne Reynolds is a published writer living in Dublin. Her work has been
published in Gods and Monsters of Tomorrow anthology; The Galway Review
anthology; Skylight 47 and The Bohemyth. She has been long-listed for the
Doire Press 2nd Annual Fiction Chapbook Competition, and long-listed for
the Fish Poetry Competition 2013. Her poetry has been read at various
venues including St Ann’s Church in Dawson Street and The National Concert
Hall in Dublin. She has just completed her first novel White Roses.
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A Crossroads
Among the relics that were out of time
the plough that my grandfather walked behind
was left where it settled and ripened
into rust in the garden rain.
And down the lane I thought I heard
his plough horse, a piebald on the trot
trying to find the gate to the paddock
and the voice that used to lead her home
along the way where my grandfather saw
that winter wore its crown of thorns
and the stubble fields were all
like the whiskers on a corpse.
I stand at crossroads where he stood
looking in four directions – this way and that,
a man of the last generation
to blow out the candles, put oil in the lamps.
Gerard Smyth
Gerard Smyth is a poet, critic and journalist. He was born in Dublin where
he still lives and where he worked for over 40 years with The Irish Times.
His poetry has been published widely and in translation. His seventh
collection, The Fullness of Time: New and Selected Poems (Dedalus Press)
appeared in 2010. He was the 2012 recipient of the O'Shaughnessy Poetry
Award from the University of St Thomas in Minnesota. He is poetry editor
of The Irish Times and co-edited If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry
and Song (Dedalus) which was this year’s Dublin One City One Book. He is a
member of Aosdána.
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Lisa Bond
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Veldtschoen
A big fat sonorous word
it intrigued my ten year old mind.
The bumpy leather
the clumpy soles
the ring of the heels on our flagged kitchen floor.
(And the very impressive weight of them
and knowing how much they cost)
He wore them for years
to work and for walks.
Seldom cleaned
sometimes oiled
many times heeled and soled.
He dug with them on
and pruned and hoed.
In my own middle years I wore them too,
and, making my garden, talked to him
through their soles,
one gardener to another.
Guy Stephenson
Guy Stephenson lives in Letterkenny where he writes, gardens and keeps
house and where, for many years, he was a teacher. He is a member of the
writers' group North West Writers. He contributed to Protestants and the
Border, 2004 and has had poems published in North West Words. He won
second prize in the 2013 Frances Browne Poetry Competition and was a
runner up in the 2014 Donegal Creameries Poetry Competition, second prize
in the 2013 Read LK Flash Fiction and third in 2014 Read Donegal Flash
Fiction competitions.
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Lisa Bond
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Shortlisted in
Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize
Windowseat
Nothing really happens out there all day
I just sit and watch the sky give birth to fresh-faced clouds
that billow in the wind and age in front of my eyes
turning grey before their glorious final downpour.
I watch the grass get long, the flowers open,
the rust bloom from the corner of the submerged spade.
I feel my eyelids sag and my toenails lengthen
and the bones in my body start to fuse together.
(‘Dust thou art, to dust returnest’
or something solid, like chalk)
Until I can’t move from the pain,
not of standing, but of being here so long
that I don’t have to move any more.
Patrick Hull
Patrick Hull is a recent chemistry graduate, hailing from
Rathmullan, Co. Donegal. He has featured on RTÉ Radio 1's Sunday
Miscellany and written a science column for Trinity News. He
blogs about obscure Canadian indie music and his own irrelevant
musings at www.imgoneforthesummer.tumbler.com
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Vigil 5
But now, looking down on her –
Everybody watching to see
My lips touch her wax forehead.
I had never kissed Brigid
And Brigid had never kissed me.
Joan Newmann
Joan Newmann has three pamphlets and three collections of
poetry: Coming of Age (Blackstaff Press); Belongings; and Prone
(Summer Palace Press). She was the recipient, after Francis
Harvey, of the C E Award for services to poetry in County
Donegal.
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Lace
for Averil Meehan
In the spaces between,
in the twisted threads,
in the tangents and knots,
lies the beauty.
Where the gaps are,
where nothing fills,
the light comes through,
filtered, gentling.
Nothing in its making
follows the expected path;
turn and change
is what makes this gift.
Threads that are delicate,
easily broken,
hard to repair,
hold this treasure together.
Imelda Maguire
Imelda Maguire's collection, Shout If You Want Me to Sing, was published
in 2004 by Summer Palace Press. She has read at Poetry Ireland's
Introductions and at literary festivals and events around Ireland. Her work
has also been published in The SHOp, Cuirt Annual, Black Mountain Review
and other journals.
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Edgar, Al and Po
A terrifying teddy-bear poem
Edgar is a silly bear - Alan loves him, though.
Alan’s Edgar’s little boy and Po’s just Po.
Edgar’s swimming on the floor when hoover sucks him up.
Alan yells, ‘It’s Ed, inside, Mum!’ Po cries ‘No!’
Mum says ‘Dirty, dusty teddy - in the wash you go!’
Round and round spins Edgar Bear. ‘Oh!’ cries Po.
Alan hangs him on the line. The wind begins to blow.
Edgar flies up in the air. Po gasps ‘Whoa!’
Up and up goes Edgar Bear - as high as he can go.
‘Where’s my teddy?’ Alan asks. No one knows but Po.
Edgar’s there till winter when he’s spotted by Tom Crow.
He picks Ed up and soars so high - then drops him in the snow.
Spring comes, snow melts, Ed falls off. Bump, the ground is hard!
Edgar looks and finds himself in next door’s yard.
Next door’s dog comes sniffing round but Edgar won’t be beaten.
‘Back off, Gore!’ the small bear shouts, ‘I don’t want to be eaten!’
Dog brings Ed to Spiky Joe. ‘What’s that you’ve got there, Gore?
A stupid soggy teddy bear! It’ll be that kid’s, next door!’
Joe chucks Ed skyward, hard and fast, over the garden wall.
But he doesn’t land on the grass, oh no - just back in the tree, so tall.
‘It’s Ed!’ yells Po. ‘I’ll run and get my friendly spider, Clover!’
So Clover spins a web across, and Po helps Ed back over.
‘You found your way back home!’ cries Al. ‘Well Edgar, aren’t you clever!’
Po’s thrilled, too - ‘Oh Ed, I thought you’d gone away forever!’
‘He’s very mucky, Al,’ says Mum. ‘Don’t cuddle him so tight!
We’ll have to get him clean and dry before you sleep tonight.’
Round and round swirls Edgar Bear. Then on the line again.
And this time it’s not wind that comes but very heavy rain!
So in the drier Edgar goes, all tossed about, so whizzy,
until he’s feeling rather hot and very very dizzy.
Now Edgar’s truly warm and dry, with a cosy, rosy glow,
And soon they’re all in bed together - Edgar, Al and Po.
It’s a happy bedtime story - yes, it’s Edgar, Alan, Po!
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Alan’s sleeping. Edgar’s climbing out of bed with Po.
Look, they’re doing night-time dancing - round and round they go!
Singing… Don’t let a hoover swallow your Ted! Keep him in on a windy day!
Don’t live next door to a dog called Gore! Here’s what to do, okay?
Just love your teddy bear, snuggle your teddy bear, cuddle him any old way!
But don’t let him get too dirty or wet and DON’T LET HIM BLOW AWAY!
Malachy Doyle
Malachy Doyle, who lives on Cruit Island, Co Donegal is a prizewinning and much-published writer for children and young
people. Malachy facilitates writing for children workshops and
children’s writing workshops and is on the Poetry Ireland
Writers in Schools database.
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The Jon McGregor interview
Some background involving George Saunders & Donegal
Unpicking knots of causation and connectivity, tangled strings of chutzpah and hope, I
conclude that I interviewed Jon McGregor because of George Saunders and Donegal. The
New Yorker magazine published Saunders’ The Semplica-Girl Diaries in the autumn of 2012,
and I couldn’t get the story out of my head. Meanwhile, in Nottingham, the acclaimed
author McGregor was offering an advance copy of the collection in which this story was
contained to anyone who would write him a letter. Slightly obsessed by now with the
brilliance of George Saunders, and increasingly drawn to Jon’s entertaining blog that mused
on the creation of a new literary journal (part of his work as Professor of Creative Writing at
the University of Nottingham), I wrote a letter to him. He liked it, I won the George Saunders
book, and the letter also made it into Issue 1 of The Letters Page, a journal that is going from
strength to strength, garnering contributions from Kevin Barry, Eimear McBride, Colum
McCann and, of course, George Saunders.
So, what about Donegal, the other skein of yarn that led to this interview? Jon McGregor’s
second novel (after the Booker Prize- listed debut ‘If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things’
and preceding the winner of the IMPAC ‘Even the Dogs’) called ‘So Many Ways to Begin’ has
a Donegal connection. The adopted main character, David Carter, travels there in an
attempt to trace the woman who gave birth to him.
Lisa Frank, of Connemara-based Doire Press, has called McGregor ‘one of the best writers of
this generation’ and he judged this year’s Davy Byrnes Short Story Award. Lisa thinks highly
of Jon’s novel, recommending it to writers in her fiction-editing workshops.
At the end of last summer, Jon agreed to answer questions about the book. I sent them on
postcards, and he posted back with his replies. A transcription of the interview follows:
Postcard 1 Postmark on envelope 26/8/13, postcard depicts rural scene in Gortahork Co.
Donegal
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AH: ‘So Many Ways to Begin’ opens with an evocative description of a 1930’s hiring fair.
Why did you start the book with this scene, and what drew you to choose Donegal as a
component in the story?
JMcG: To work backwards: I knew David had been adopted during the war; I knew migration
would be part of my story; I knew about Irish young women coming to England for domestic
work...and so I knew David’s birth mother would be from rural Ireland. I chose Donegal
simply because I’d been there-a friend’s family live there now-and so I had a good base to
explore it. The hiring fair seemed like an obvious opening- it’s the start of Mary’s story, & a
startling piece of history for those who don’t know it.
Postcard 2
Postmark on envelope 02/09/13, photomontage of Margaret Thatcher taking a purse from a
woman’s shopping basket above the slogan ‘Prevent Street Crime’
AH: The novel has a strong sense of place (Donegal, Coventry, Aberdeen) but also conveys
the processes and change of history: from the rural scenes of the hiring fair to the boom
years of the Millennium and the expansion of Letterkenny-as a writer, do you rely on
instinct and imagination to get the ‘feel’ right, or is research important?
JMcG: It’s always a tough balance-you want enough detail to make the characters’ lives feel,
well, detailed, and you certainly don’t want to make any glaring errors; but you also don’t
want to write a piece of non-fiction about the place. I did spend a few days walking around
Aberdeen, and I did re-trace David’s journey to Donegal, but I’d say it’s about 70% instinct
and imagination, and 30% fact-checking later. (Plus 1% finger-crossing!)
Postcard 3
Postmark on envelope 03/09/13, postcard depicts painting of Flight of the Earls, with words
‘One Less Petal, One Less Flame’ at the base
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AH: The book is full of strong female characters, and pivots around the mother/son,
husband/wife relationship dynamic of the male main character. You balance this domestic
detail with the historical and social sweep of the novel discussed earlier. How did you
manage to maintain a successful balance?
JMcG: Well, this was always going to be a domestic novel-the bigger, historical
themes/concepts seemed to nudge in later. (Difficult to write about a museum curator, &
adoption, without stumbling over history!) I could have made much more of, e.g. Coventry
as epitome of English industrial boom & archetype of immigration, or of Aberdeen as oil
town/new industry, etc. But I wanted that to stay in the background. I hope it does. You
know, the personal is the political; the domestic is the grand narrative.
Postcard 4
Postmark on envelope 04/09/13. Image on postcard: David Inshaw’s ‘The Cricket Game’
AH: This interview is being conducted by post, in honour of your latest project, ‘The Letters
Page’. Tell us more…
JMcG: Ha! Funny you should ask...’The Letters Page’ is a new literary journal in letters,
published by the University of Nottingham, exploring the idea of letter-writing as a literary
practice & a personal writing form. Our first issue, including letters from Colum McCann,
Magnus Mills and one Ann Hull, can be downloaded from The Letters Page, where you can
also subscribe to our newsletter.
Postscript
This was such an enjoyable thing to do, and I remember the anticipation of waiting for the
postman every day to see Jon’s responses to my questions unfold. He answered thoughtfully
and with attention to detail, resorting to added Post-it notes when I’d left him little room to
reply! Transcribing the interview a year later, turning handwritten, portable, tactile
postcards into digital print & image, I realise the change. They have lost their informality, the
connotations of leisure and holiday they invoke. I have erased the litter of stamp, airmail
sticker & postmark that pleasantly deface our mail on its journey from place to place. The
messy, hand-to-hand labour of communicating like this is sterilised, the makers of the marks
harder to intuit. Perhaps Jon McGregor is drawing our attention to such things in The Letters
Page journal. Similarly, the subtle intelligence he has used to structure ‘So Many Ways to
Begin’ underlines the relationship between object and story, ephemera and substance, the
contingency of birthplace and the reality of belonging, home.
Ann Hull
Ann Hull was born in London to Donegal parents, and was educated at the
London School of Economics. She now lives in Rathmullan with her family.
She is a member of the Garden Room Writers' Group. Her work has been
broadcast on RTE's Sunday Miscellany.
You can find The Letter’s Page on www.theletterspage.ac.uk
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Profile: Pauline Sugrue
Businesswoman & hostess of North West Words at Café Blend
I am happiest when I give it my best effort and it works.
I believe in a happy customer, good food and a golden scone.
The characteristic I like least in people is the inability to make a decision.
One thing I would do differently if I had the chance is serve champagne for breakfast.
My favourite way to unwind is with the Swilly breeze on my face as I head out on my bike.
One thing I have learned is a cup of coffee is a whole experience for a customer with the
aromas enhanced by copious amounts of love.
The things I value most are my lovely husband, my wonderful children and my health.
The last book I read is Anyush by Martine Madden, a fascinating book set at the end of the
First World War citing the events of the Armenian genocide.
A poem or story means a lot to me when it is read and shared with great feeling and
enthusiasm, for instance at North West Words.
Cafe Blend is every beat of my heart.
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Profile: Lisa Bond - Artist
Contemporary painter Lisa Bond (B.A, Grad.Dip,) was born in Ballyshannon and now lives in
Letterkenny where she has her studio. Lisa has worked as a musician, teacher and
workshop facilitator.
Working with mixed media, Lisa has created pictures with enormous energy, passion,
texture and contrast. Movement, colour and shape are important to her, leading her to
comfortably sit with abstraction. Lisa often ventures into figurative and landscape work. Her
paintings can act as a catalyst so that the observer automatically develops their own
narrative, making each work uniquely personal.
Emotion is a fundamental element in Lisa’s art which has led her on a journey of the
imagination around opposing elements that co-exist within a work.
Lisa held her first solo exhibition in 2005 and now exhibits nationally. Lisa welcomes
commissions and appointments, contact bondwithart@eircom.net
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On Organising Workshops for North West Words
When I began writing a few years ago I was lucky. Monica Corish ran a series of workshops
in the Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny, Denise Blake ran the series in which I met the
people who would become the Garden Room Writers and Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons
offered weekend and one day workshops at the Poets’ House in Falcarragh. Since then I
have gone to the Irish Writers’ Centre, the Patrick Kavanagh Centre, and festivals around the
country to take part in workshops.
I like the group dynamic; I like the sharing, the debate, the challenge and the support of
working with other writers. There is dialogue and problem solving and organic growth.
Recently at a workshop when we were talking about outcomes the facilitator added
‘Everyone leaves a workshop with something,’ meaning the facilitator too draws a value
from the enterprise.
The results of a good workshop are tangible. It might be that a tricky line is resolved, an
awkward poem needs to lose a little weight, realises it is trying to do too much, is prosey. It
may be that a story has become unstuck, a character is invigorated or a world is rendered
more credibly and fluidly.
Moreover a good workshop instructs beyond the pieces examined on the day, a writer
leaves scaffolded a little and reaches higher. Surprises emerge. Workshops for me are a
concrete way of engaging with the conversation all writers are part of and of discovering
new writers to read, new theories to explore. They can be where you discover the writer
you are, or could be.
Conscious of the wide interest there is in the North West we decided to offer a programme
of workshops to stimulate the new writer, support the emerging voice and engage the
published writer. We aimed to address fiction, poetry and writing for younger readers.
We wanted facilitators who are practitioners but also experienced workshop leaders. We
wanted people whose writing we like, who are learned and well-read but wear it lightly,
who are listeners, willing to read work in advance of the workshop and tailor their approach
according to the specific group in front of them. We wanted writers who have been
recommended to us by other writers we trust.
With this in mind I asked Susan Millar DuMars, Kevin Higgins, Averil Meehan, Malachy
Doyle, Mia Gallagher and Gerard Smyth to lead the workshops this year. This issue features
poems and fiction by these writers. We are delighted to offer such a strong programme and
we are looking forward to an inspiring and rich weekend of readings and workshops.
The flyer with facilitators’ details, individual workshop descriptors and booking details is on
the main www.northwestwords.com website and on our facebook page.
Maureen Curran
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Extract from a novel-in-progress by Mia Gallagher
The city is bustling, full of traffic and people. In the sky, across its pale blue, the snail-trails of
aeroplanes. David’s eyes are hurting again.
He goes into the first chemist’s shop he sees, on the corner of a busy road that appears to
be leading into the centre. The earnest young bespectacled woman behind the counter
speaks only German, and with a heavy Bavarian dialect, but she slows down when she
realises he’s lost. David squeezes out bits of German, trying to recall what he learnt at
evening class. She nods and hums; somehow they manage to understand each other. She
passes him the aspirin, wrapped in a green paper bag, along with his change.
‘Also,’ she says suddenly. ‘Wollen Sie ein Bisschen Wasser?’
Water? Does he look that ill? ‘Eh – yes. Ja. Ja, bitte.’
She disappears into a little chamber at the back of the shop and runs a tap while he tears
open the packet. She emerges and hands him a glass. He sips, swallowing the aspirin. They
nod at each other, as if acknowledging a job well done. He appreciates that, he later
realises, more than anything else on that trip. No pitying smile, no cautious skirting around
the unspeakable; just that small, courteous acknowledgement.
As he exits the chemist he still feels shaky. But he trusts the bitter taste of the aspirin;
something inside him is doing its work, dissolving the smell that’s been clinging to him since
he woke. Tiny changes in chemistry, big changes on the outside. The clock tower over the
main entrance to the university chimes. There is still forty-five minutes left before the
second session. Networking time. The vibrant exchange of ideas, as Fuchs, the conference
moderator, might call it. David knows the right thing to do would be to pull himself
together, stride back in and face the music. But the thought makes him feel ill again; not
being sure who has heard what, what half-truths and misunderstandings have been filtering
through the Firm without his knowledge. The idea of so many people inflicting their
ignorance on him, wrapping it up in all that pity – does he deserve such pity? – makes the
prospect even more intolerable.
On the corner, an olive-skinned man in green overalls the same colour as the bag the aspirin
came in is scrubbing at a wall, removing a poster. It looks like one of the posters from the
protest that morning. The brush scrapes at the faces of the dead and incarcerated, removing
them in bits and pieces like stubborn nail varnish. David thinks of Aisling’s fingernails, naked
and grey against the ruffled white of her satin coffin-lining, the jet rosary beads her mother
had got blessed specially wound around her wrists, her fingers clasped in prayer to the
mutter of the sorrowful mysteries.
Sorrowful, luminous, joyful, glorious. His teacher in the night class said that Germans have a
fifth set of mysteries, but David can’t remember what they’re called.
He’s been numb since she went. Shock, people might call it. Understandable. But he knows
what he’s feeling, what he’s not feeling, is not understandable. All it is, is wrong.
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The man in the overalls has dark hair and a bushy moustache. Turkish? Gastarbeiter.
David’s shoulder flicks, drawing him to the right.
He moves towards the centre, past the sixties’ towers, the five-story Kaufhof and into Alte
München. Beer-kellers, restaurants promising schnitzel, wurst and sauerkraut, bookshops,
ticky-tacky purveyors of lederhosen and pewter steins. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen so
many women before in the one place wearing such heavy make-up, such tight trousers,
carrying so many bags. If it wasn’t for the bags, he thinks, they could be prostitutes. Food
halls, clothes shops, a record store. The crowds swarm, then clear, revealing a cobbled
square, at its back the cathedral, its twin domed towers, half a foot in the difference,
jabbing at the sky. The Frauenkirche. David looks up, craning his neck.
The women’s church. Frailty they name is—
Pain shoots into the back of David’s skull. His chest tightens. Black dots dance in front of his
eyes; his lungs are filling with sand. He staggers, wheezing, reaches for support.
A bollard comes to meet him. He clings, hyperventilating. His legs are shaking. His teeth are
clenched. He gasps; thinking, if he could see himself from the outside he’d be reminded of
someone, but he doesn’t know who. His father? Georgie? He tries to unclench his teeth but
they don’t budge. He realises they’ve been clenched for weeks. No; months. No. Years. He
wonders how ridiculous he must have looked, smiling at everyone through clenched teeth.
Why didn’t anyone say anything? Why didn’t Georgie? How ridiculous he must have looked
this morning to that family of engineers from the Firm, as claustrophobic in their gossip and
petty rituals as the family in Clonmel he ran from in 1955; how stupid he must have seemed
to Morgan Lloyd and Stephen Flitch, he of the unshakeable convictions, and those two
unnamed engineers in the toilet who know nothing, nothing at all.
He shakes his head. Something pushes through the grit in his trachea. He gulps in air,
drinking it in bursts, then forces himself to slow down. The pounding in his head decelerates
to a heavy beat; that smoky, musky smell is back now, worse, lying over him like a front of
low pressure.
When he looks up, he sees Helen, the American woman who shared his table in the hotel
restaurant at breakfast. She’s standing with her back to him, in front of the cathedral doors,
hands on lime-green hips.
‘Poppa?’ Her voice is plaintive, yet cajoling. Against the lime-green, the lines of her
underwear stand out like sine waves. ‘Come on, Pop. We gotta….’
In the gloom, David makes out a small figure. Her father, the old violin player; stooped like a
question mark, placing his foot on the Devil’s Step.
‘Poppa, we’ll miss the train if we don’t….’
Helen not-of-Troy bends towards her father, hands on her hips, imploring.
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It was the first; the model, built in 1933. Work makes you free.
People disappear all the time, he tells himself. They don’t turn up and nobody wonders or
asks where they’ve been or tuts at their disappearance. People make mistakes; nobody is
always there, nobody is always right.
His hands are sweating. A low giddiness has begun to bubble in the pit of his stomach; an
echo of that strange joy he felt on waking. He may as well be a boy again, the same boy who
used to sneak into his father’s garage and stare for hours at the beautiful black Plymouth
lying under its green tarpaulin; the same boy who figured out that being good at sums could
earn immunity from beatings, once you picked the right thug to do dealings with; the same
boy who skived off early from extra Latin on Tuesdays to work secretly in Peadar Hearn’s car
repair shop on the Fethard Road, a thing that would have broken the heart of his poor,
demented mother if his sister Maura had ever let her get a whiff of it; the same boy who
peered through the bathroom keyhole, seeing onkh-shaped fragments of his sisters as they
drew lather and doused water across their wide shoulders and down their freckled thighs. A
boy with a world of possibility opening in front of him.
This sensation, he knows, is completely inappropriate, not least because of where he’s
intending to go today. But that just makes the giddiness worse, like trying to bite back
laughter in your own sitting-room, where people are gathered like vultures around the
funeral meats.
He states his destination. The ticket-seller nods, takes his money.
The work from which this extract is taken was developed with the kind assistance of the Arts
Council of Ireland.
Mia Gallagher
Mia Gallagher’s award-winning fiction has been published in Ireland
and internationally. Her debut novel HellFire (Penguin, 2006) was
widely acclaimed and excerpts from her second novel have been
published in the US, UK, Ireland and (forthcoming) Italy. Mia has
worked professionally as a freelance editor since the early 1990s and
as a coach/mentor for fiction writers since 2008.
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Gull
The start of the argument - unknown. But it once it begins, it escalates pretty quickly. He
walks me to the bus station. We become one of those cringe inducing couples, enraged on a
busy street, oblivious to and avoided by other pedestrians. I can’t help it. I’m mad. He’s
mad. I won’t back down. He won’t back down.
I want to cry and scream and hurt him and hurt myself.
His face is red and he keeps spreading his fingers through his hair.
‘You’re not listening.’
‘No, you’re not listening.’
I bite down on my tongue.
In the middle of the space where we battle, it crashes. A big seagull smacks the ground
between us. It sprawls ungracefully on the footpath, its wings limp, its head to the side.
‘What the -?’
The gull’s white breast has trickles of blood.
We look at each other, like this has been a sign. Hurtled from the sky.
‘I’m leaving you.’
‘Then go.’
We stomp our separate ways.
Later, I lean against the bus window, mournful. It wets my face.
*
At night, the scene replays. Over and over. I think about the bird and realise we didn’t check
if it was alive.
I wonder if it fretted its wings against the street, trying to get upright. If many others passed
on by, not noticing its struggle on the damp-grey, gum-speckled footpath. I wonder if it
suffered or figured out how to heal itself?
And when I’m spread across our bed alone, I hear its shrill cries.
EM Reapy
EM Reapy has an MA in Creative Writing from QUB, edits
wordlegs.com and is currently working on her debut novel RED
DIRT. Visit www.emreapy.wordpress.com
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Binned
Mickey must be somewhere in this flaming bin. I’ve never seen so much rotten potato
peelings. Chips and more chips. Mam makes them when Buster brings his friends round
after the pub closes.
Leaning on the edge of the bin cuts into my stomach as I reach in, push stuff about. I’m
careful my feet don't bang the side of the bin, don't want to wake the tosser up.
I'm too far down here. Mickey wouldn't be past this rhubarb. We had it before Buster flung
him in.
Buster's got it wrong anyway. Mickey isn't a teddy bear. Well, he is a bear, but not a
baby’s teddy. Of course I’m too old for that, but how does he expect me to sleep without
Mickey? He hasn't a bleeding clue.
Hey what’s that hidden in the cabbage clippings? Mickey’s blue jersey!
There’s a slurp when he's pulled free. I hold him at last, all soggy fur. Ugh, the stink of him.
He'll have to be sneaked out to the bathroom and washed.
Hugging Mickey close, I climb back in my bedroom window. When Mam gets fed up getting
out of bed to make chips, I hope she dumps Buster in the bin.
Averil Meehan is a computer lecturer who enjoys the fun and
challenge of writing flash fiction. A founder member of the
Errigal Writers, her writing has won awards / been shortlisted in
various competitions including the Fish competition. As well as
flash fiction, she also writes radio drama (RTE Radio One) and
poetry (Until Stones Blosson by Summer Palace Press). Averil
was the winner of the Donegal Creameries North West Words
Poetry Prize 2012.
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SING SONG DAYS
(an excerpt)
For Laura and myself these were sing-song days. Days of river walks and idle chat. Days
spent on high stools sipping from dark glasses. Days spent in search of empty spaces,
chasing the precious moment. There were easy silences, but mostly we talked. We talked
about songs we liked, choices we were glad to have made, places we would like to see. We
spoke of blues, pop and rock ‘n roll. Between us, we couldn’t carry a tune to save a life, but
after many drinks we belted them all out. Sometimes we just spoke the words of songs.
They sounded differently then, took on meanings we could scarcely feel, let alone explain.
But the sound of our voices to each other was enough. It took us out of things, and kept the
next day away. It closed down the spaces between us, brought us closer together, closer to
that precious moment we craved. In the candle-lit bar we forgot time and drank the rent.
Shielding our eyes in the morning light, we skipped down to the pier and fed the swans.
Through sleepy fog we tiptoed home across the bridge. We told each other we’d stay awake
forever. At this hour there was no one about. It was our time we decided and the town,
including all the water that came with it, belonged to no one but us.
To keep us afloat, Laura put in a few hours at the literacy centre, and I compiled the death
notices for a local free-sheet. But we never allowed these distractions interfere with our
time. As far as we were concerned we were living a complete existence. We were young and
gullible, led each other easily, and fear had not attached itself to our vulnerabilities. We
were reckless and it was too soon to be rueful. We were on the edge of something and
never knew it. We had no need of protection.
In spite of her best efforts, Laura would eventually close her eyes and sleep. But I stayed
awake, conscious now of an absence beside me, as though something had been lost,
something incommunicable, as though I was trying to retrieve or preserve something that
had never existed in the first place. A sword, perhaps, or a shield, that I had fabricated and,
without any knowledge in the matter, willed to some future point in time, to a point when
its appearance was vital and I was ready to avail of the protection it offered.
For now we made do with the miraculous in the ordinary. From a great height seagulls dived
for the water. Eerie winds whistled across the cliff tops. A little boy and girl dared each
other to the edge.
Sometimes, when I wasn’t sleeping I got up and went down to the Harbour Bar. The place
was always full of people, drinking. Mostly, they were men. Men who hogged the open fire.
Men who claimed the precious high stools. Men who showed up to unveil their latest
notion. Men who sat, in silence, through it all. Once inside the bar, the nights were long and
the year-long wind whistled through the gaps in the flimsy door. The rains came too,
knocking incessantly at that same door, pelting the rickety window, turning the roadside
gullies into gushing torrents. Sometimes it came down in a heavy mist. Sometimes it was
soft and settled harmlessly, like pieces of clear snow, almost. Once or twice, it even stayed
away. But often it sounded like furious applause. And, taking their cue, the men would start
to drink seriously then. They shook the near-empty glasses they had been nursing, banged
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their clenched fists off the wilting counter and demanded another round. It seemed the only
answer to the relentless barrage.
Come winter thick soupy fogs settled upon the docks. They used to say a man could lose his
way in this fog. You can hear voices inside the fog, they would say. Cries for help. Futile
appeals. Forlorn raps, even, upon some primitive door. There were nights no one wanted to
step outside the pub. So we waited for the fog to lift. We waited and we drank. We drank
until we thought it was safe again. Until the barman threw us into the clear light of next day.
And when he did the unpitying wind drove everybody mad.
I made lists of occasions that dragged them to the bar. Because they wanted to go drinking
there was an occasion for everything. Fagan is dead, they said. And they would go to the
bar. Jimmy Slice’s wife has run away again, they said. And they would go the bar. It is the
first Monday of the week, they said. And they would go to the bar. Getting money was
never a problem.
As best I could I listened to what was talked about. There were plans people had, ambitions
revealed under cover of a lock-in, dreams that would suddenly emerge out of a bottle and
fist-held promises to fulfil these cast-iron certainties. There were denials too, but whenever
they raised their ugly head we would simply rub the neck of that bottle once again, and gaze
with dizzy rapture at the genie that came pouring through.
Everyone had a story to tell. Many I have forgotten. Some I wish I could forget. They were
funny and sad. True and awful. Some invited reaction and consequence. I was constantly
intoxicated, from the drinking, sure, but also from the waves of anticipation that endowed
each drinking day, from the matchless rush upon entering the bar, from the relentless
enthusiasms never marred by the cold light of that same next day. The early hour was a
special time. Everyone opened his heart, spread it all out like a map on a table. Then, one
bright sunny day, a man called Diamond appeared with newer maps and a bigger genie.
Overnight, it seemed, everything changed.
Alan McMonagle
Alan McMonagle is an award winning writer based in Galway. He
has performed at many festivals at home and abroad, and his
stories have appeared in many journals including The Stinging Fly,
Southword, The Penny Dreadful, Grain, and Prairie Fire. His first
collection of stories, Liar Liar, appeared in 2008 and was
nominated for the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award. The title
story from his recently published second collection, Psychotic
Episodes, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Earlier this year, his
radio play, Oscar Night, was produced and broadcast by RTE.
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Backstage Carpentry
When my great-aunt moved into a nursing home, her house and adjoining shop in
Carrickfergus were chipped apart, numbered, and rebuilt in the Ulster Folk Museum at
Cultra. Now it’s the shop there. The staff, in costume, serve treats from glass jars; they fill
sweet- fattened paper bags weighed out on old-fashioned scales.
My maternal Grandmother was from Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim. She was reared with eight
siblings in that house squeezed between a corner shop and a builder’s yard in a street called
Irish Quarter West. It was a while before I visited the folk museum to see the reconstructed
buildings along with my husband and children. And, it was like a homecoming, albeit an odd
one. Seeing it again was an unexpected joy.
As children, my siblings, cousins, and I, spent many summer holidays in Carrickfergus. Our
family slept in attic rooms in another great-aunt’s house in Nelson Street, but everyone
gathered in Irish Quarter West. It was the ceili house. Why, I wondered? For the adults, no
doubt, it was a hub of conversation on family affairs. But, the children - we loved the yard.
Maybe it was the secret garden above it, or even the air-raid shelter beneath it? Or,
perhaps, it was the old carpenter’s workshop on stilts?
To reach the secret garden, we crossed the silent builder’s yard, and climbed two steep,
stone steps into a large greenhouse. The greenhouse was L-shaped, with raised planting
beds, and floors tiled from the left-overs of the house. There were tomato plants, vines,
peach and pear trees, all dropping fruit. At the lower end, there was a door with coloured
panes, like a hall door except it opened onto a tunnel. Beyond it, steep walls rose either
side of a stone staircase fringed with foliage.
We would run the length of it, galloping the steps in twos, and making for daylight. Above, a
garden of little pathways and flowerbeds was in full bloom. We played, out of sight. The
outer wall was a piece of the ancient town walls of Carrick. Below us, the stout, Norman
castle squatted on rock; it was a fortress from the liquid light of waves and shifting skies
overseeing the broad arms of Carrick harbour that stretched out into Belfast Lough.
The carpenter’s workshop, and air-raid shelter, were central to the yard, but out of bounds.
We would beg regularly to see inside of both, and were allowed only once that I can
remember. The workshop was like a mezzanine on stilts, and we climbed loose, wooden
steps to access it, afraid for our lives of a well-warned structural collapse. Pockmarked
benches were strewn with tools, and wood shavings left like leafy drifts. Everything was in
dust. It seemed the workers had finished up one day, and then we came to look many years
later.
However, the air-raid shelter was creepy. The steps went down into darkness from a door in
a small brick structure. The day she showed us, my Grandmother went first with a torch,
then my mum, then us children. We gathered at the bottom, in a tiny space. It was rank with
rot. The torch spotlighted the walls, and the floor, and settled on a single object - a chaise
longue. The upholstery was ripped with woolly clumps of exposed stuffing. The violence of it
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scared me, like a body with guts spilled. A few of us screamed, and fled. My Grandmother
laughed.
When I finally visited the house at the folk museum, and entered the shop, it was the
adjoining door to the house that drew me. I wanted to go through into the house, walk
past the talking adults, and off to explore the yard again. But, the counter-staff wouldn’t let
me in. We’ve had this before, they said - it disappoints. And, I knew that.
A few months before, my youngest brother had visited, and insisted, and the staff had
allowed him to pass through and into the house. He told me that behind the door was a two
storey space with supporting beams. Backstage carpentry held upright only the skin of the
house. A façade: just right in the outer detail, but the home was gone, and of course none of
the yard remained. And, I wondered then, if a void might be easier to bear than a
remodelled home as a public space. So, I asked again for access - just to see for myself.
That inner house and yard live in my memory, like furniture arranged there for the dead.
Deirdre McClay
Corner shop, Ulster Folk Museum at Cultra,
originally from Irish Quarter West, Carrickfergus,
Co. Antrim
Deirdre McClay has published stories and memoir pieces in the UK
and Ireland, including in the Sunday Tribune, Irish Times, Crannog,
Boyne Berries, Wordlegs, Ranfurly Review, The Linnet’s Wings, The
Weary Blues, Number Eleven, and Friction Magazine. In 2011 she
was a winner in The Lonely Voice Short Story Competition, in 2012
was Highly Commended in Doire Press International Fiction &
Poetry Chapbook Competition, and in 2013 was longlisted in The
Over the Edge New Writer of the Year. She was nominated for the
Hennessy First Fiction Award in 2005. She is a regular contributor
at NWW Arts nights, a member of the Garden Room Writers and
blogs regularly at http://gardenroomwritersdonegal.blogspot.ie
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5:12AM
Lovers and insomniacs,
keepers of the secret hours –
tilt your heads and listen,
hush now, glisten...
For the swish of curtain soul
tugs strings open, spilling all
tilted ledge of paint-stripped heart
pained and pinned,
erotic, smart.
And those velvet folds of night,
satin shapes pull cashmere fall,
draws to cotton sheets of morn
clean and bright as flesh reborn.
Yet my spells are dreamed away
in harsh corduroy of day,
but I shall sleep to wake again
live like ghost-lace to touch you then...
Jenni Doherty
Originally from Greencastle, Co Donegal now based in
Derry, Jenni Doherty’s background ranges from
publishing, journalism, bookselling and the public library
service to facilitating creative writing workshops,
organising literary events and performing poetry. Her
debut collection of poetry and prose Rain Spill was
published by Guildhall Press in 2012. Jenni is a recipient
of the Support for Individual Artists’ Award from the Arts
Council of Northern Ireland and winner of the inaugural
Noelle Vial Tyrone Guthrie Centre Poetry Bursary Award
2013. She runs Little Acorns Bookstore in Derry and
works for Guildhall Press publishers.
Photo by Declan Divin Design Photography.
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Fish and Chips
Camouflaged, incognito, plated
for innocence they crack and crisp,
gold-masked to hide the bitterness
of grim water, sour soil, backbreak
of hunters’ drudge, gatherers’ ache.
In Sligo we looked ours in the eyes,
our frozen fingers slit, set them
in spring soil-beds, picked and pitted
at bitter year end; on weekday summer
evenings after school speared worms
on hooks, battered captive heads
on stone, at home slit their bellies,
removed the sloppy bits and blobs,
fed head to cat, cooked the rest, ate.
Michael Farry
Michael Farry was selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions 2011. In
2009 he was awarded third prize in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry
Competition and was shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Competition
(UK) and longlisted for the Plough Poetry Prize (UK). His first poetry
collection, Asking for Directions, was published by Doghouse Books in
2012. He is also a historian and his book Sligo, The Irish Revolution 19121923 was published in 2013 by Four Courts Press. Michael’s Blog is at
http://michaelfarry.blogspot.ie/
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Commended in
Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2013
Texting God
I came by God’s number
in the cubicle of a filthy pub toilet,
crudely scrawled on the inside of the door.
His message saw into my soul,
asking “Are you feeling all alone?”
and it was only when He asked it
I realised I was.
Knowing I’d have questions
God etched “Call me!” into the wood.
I added Him to my contacts,
gulping with guilt
at the inner admission of how long
we’d been out of contact.
All that time I’d not even thought
about God, I suddenly realised
I’d missed Him intensely.
I did want to call
but instead spent evenings
staring at the name and number.
What would I say to Him
after all these years?
I thought maybe a text would be better,
so I typed it up,
my fingers slow with the words,
as though carving them
in stone slabs.
“Hi God. Got your message.
You’re right, but what should I do?”
Message sent.
Cont’d
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I waited for God’s reply,
but three days passed and nothing.
Getting no text back from God
isn’t like getting no text back
from the girl you’re mad after.
There’s always other girls you’re mad after.
I tried sending it again.
Maybe there was a technical glitch.
Something up with the network.
I wondered if God was out of credit.
Had I taken the number down wrong?
I was feeling more alone than ever.
Text me, God,
text me, I thought.
Tell me to fuck off if you want,
tell me you don’t care,
just let me know you’re there.
I was doing okay, God,
living in denial of you.
I don’t think I can go back to that.
Are these your mysterious ways?
Edward O’Dwyer
Edward O’Dwyer’s poetry is published in magazines, periodicals and
anthologies throughout Ireland the UK, the USA and Australia. He was
selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series in 2010, later that year
he edited the Revival press anthology, Sextet. He has since been shortlisted
for the Hennessy award for Emerging Poetry, the Desmond O’Grady award,
was nominated for a Pushcart prize and a Forward Prize. His first full
collection, The Rain on Cruise’s Street, is published by Salmon Press. He is a
member of the Committee for Cuisle Limerick city International Poetry
Festival.
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North West Words
Summer 2014
Double Cross
Take my body back with you and let it lie in ... Murlough Bay.
A plinth of concrete is all remains, squared off, neat and solid,
almost hidden in sparse growth of whin and heather, coarse grass.
Security requires a clean anonymity – this was the base
of Casement’s memorial cross built
where he asked his body should be laid
before the hempen noose in Pentonville.
Quicklime left no body for his partitioned ghost estate
though some remains were claimed, like Yeats’,
and at last transferred to the successor state;
a large Celtic cross overlooked the Moyle, Kintyre and a channel never still;
his love of Irish was chiselled deep, but less was said of Congo, Putumayo,
H.M. consular service and his other loyalties. A patriot, his different facets
ensured his cross, destroyed by enemies,
was not replaced by footshuffling friends.
Black diary entries in their diplomatic leak, their controlled briefing,
stilled the voices for remission of a traitor’s gibbet death; whispers
tidied up the bombed debris but did not rebuild.
Casement, at the Gaelic college built three fields away, walked shortcut
through the bog to the barley field, to this, then new, cottage,
where I write, two-roomed Teach Shearlaí. The bog he walked
now bears a sheared-off plinth, foundation for a large new building,
a new dream, equally his monument: a family home in Celtic Tiger time.
Orange plastic waste pipes protrude in penile upward thrust
from darkskinned concrete, but money’s scarce,
the dream a folly, the children grown and gone,
the grants a sunset clause, faded with the language.
No cross, now, or statue, no house will be erected
on the tattered flapping plastic of the damp proof course.
Contd.
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Small hooves of passing sheep erode the hard cement.
Whin, the heather, coarse grass, here, too,
are slow agents of decay. The plinth remains,
passively awaits the passage of the real traitor, time,
an Ozymandias end.
Gréagóir Ó Dúill
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Summer 2014
North West Words
Summer 2014
Feall ar an bhFeallaire
Take my body back with you and let it lie in ... Murlough Bay
Níl fágtha faoin am seo ach plionta suiminte, daingean, cothrom, cearnach,
comhair a bheith faoi cheilt i bhfásra gortach aitinn, fraoigh, broimfhéir.
Ar son na síochána is gá anaithnidiúlacht iomlán – nó is é seo an bonn
faoi chrois phléasctha chuimhneacháin Mhic Asmainn, san áit ar iarr sé é a
adhlacadh
seal goirid sular feistíodh an rópa cnáibe fána mhuinéal i bPentonville.
Níor fhág an t-aol beo corp don taibhse-eastát críchdheighilte sin a bunaíodh,
ach – macasamhail Yeats – bhíothas sásta taisí bochta éigin a aistriú
fá dheireadh chun an stáit a tógadh.
Ardaíodh crois Cheilteach os cionn Shruth na Maoile, os comhair Chinn Tíre,
ag amharc na farraige sin nach mbíonn riamh ciúin.
Greanadh go snoite sa chloch a ghrá don teanga,
ach ba bheag a scríobh an siséal
faoin Chongó, faoi Putumayo, faoi sheirbhís chonsalachta an Rí,
ná faoi na dílseachta eile, an díol grá a chleachtadh sé.
Ba thírghráthóir é a thuill ardú croise ag a chairde mortasacha,
a thuill a leagan ag a naimhde, moill atógála ag cairde éiginnte.
Scaip na dialanna dubha a gclúmhilleadh cúramach agus mhúch
sin an tonn fá choinne trócaire; níor leor craos fola chipí lámhaigh na Cásca;
Ba mheasa dar leo a bhrath, agus crochadh Mac Asmainn,
tréas an fhealltóra ag baint an urláir amach faoi. Ba iad na dialanna céanna
a ghlan suas plionta na croise, gan a thógáil in athuair.
Thagadh sé chun na coláiste Gaeilge a tógadh fad trí pháirce uaim,
shiúladh aicearracht an phortaigh, bealach ghort an choirce
chuig an teach seo – ina scríobhaim - Teach Sheárlaí mhuintir Amhlaigh,
a bhí, an tráth sin, úr, lán teaghlaigh aigeanta.
Sa áit a shiúladh sé tá plionta glan cearnaithe, dúshraith
do theach mór, bonn do chuimhneachán eile Mhic Asmainn,
teach mór teaghlaigh aimsir aisling an tíogair cheiltigh. Aníos ón dúshraith
gobann píobaí oráiste go graosta ón chraiceann dorcha coincréide,
ach tá an t-airgead gann, scaipeadh fís na brionglóide,
d’fhás na páistí agus d’imigh leo, gearradh na deontais,
chúlaigh an teanga féin siar le luí na gréine.
Ar lean
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Crois ná dealbh ní thógfar anois i Muirloch, ná teach féin anseo, agus eitlíonn
an plaisteach dubh taisdhíonaithe sa ghaoth.
Ídíonn crúba beaga géara na gcaorach an tsuimint,
síneann fréamhacha aitinn, fraoigh, broimfhéir isteach sa phlionta
ionas nach bhfágfar faoi dheireadh, le himeacht cianta aimsire
Ach críoch sin Ozymandias, rí na ríthe tar éis fheall mhór an ama.
Gréagóir Ó Dúill
Gréagóir Ó Dúill’s recent selected verse in Irish, Annála, was
followed by Balla an Chuain and a second collection in English,
Outward and Return, (Doghouse) in 2012. Gréagóir won the
Oireachtas prize for best collection, 2010, and Duais Cholmcille
(best poem in Irish or Scots Gaelic) at Strokestown, 2013. He has
also published biography and a collection of short fiction and
translated from the Scots Gaelic. He divides his time between
Dublin and Gortahork in the Donegal Gaeltacht and has taught
poetry and creative writing in the Ulster University and the Poets’
House. He has read widely from Stornoway to Palermo, from Boston to Berlin.
Currently Gréagóir is preparing a face to face edition, with poems from his original dozen
collections in Irish facing versions in English, translated by himself and other poets.
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North West Words
Summer 2014
Commended in
Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2013
Breakdown
I remember pride.
I remember that morning with its pompous sun
the careful little shove and a promise
to bite hard on all that was typical.
We took turns describing where we lived.
I spoke first in a voice as thin as paper,
not lying exactly, just shuffling the truth.
I told about our father’s home,
how the houses stare at each other
across the narrow street.
I told them we grew up there.
My roommate went next, whispering of course,
he named them all, parents, pets, sibling,
I could see them as he spoke, father kicking
the square shin of the table leg, mother viciously
cleaning the crumbs from its surface, brother
closing the hall door behind him.
The music lover refused to speak,
he just sat there caught in his faint little tremble,
like a clock with its arms restrained.
One of the whitecoats wrote it all down.
His eyes were strange
as if he were searching for his reflection
in a mirror.
The older man who sits by the door went last.
He spoke longest, hated to bother us
but what other friends did he have.
He warned about family,
about routines slamming into one another,
about the need to keep one foot in the past.
He finished suddenly, by looking my way,
by hoping his death would be worth the wait.
Gavan Duffy
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Summer 2014
Gavan Duffy lives in Dublin with his wife and family. He has been
writing poetry for the last twelve years. He is a member of Platform
One writers group and has been published in Crannóg ,The Stony
Thursday Book, Boyne Berries, Poetry Porch, South Bank Poetry Journal
and has placed or been commended in various competitions.
Back to Contents
Lisa Bond
47
North West Words
Summer 2014
Commended in
Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2013
Lloyds Lighthouse
Kells, Co Meath
Between courses of guinea fowl and salmon,
asparagus tips au gratin and the cook’s concoction
of hare in red wine, the guests marvelled
at the lighthouse built inland.
As if the fields were sea.
Nothing would take root that year. Soil shelved
in waves, ridges shifted to the ditch, tides
carrying crops as dark and slippery
as seaweed.
The light turned on its slender tower. The storm
tossed bodies into silt, fingers stained with grass
and wild sorrel. The wind carried sounds
of timbers split, in ships cast on false hope
by smugglers, grain in their bellies, snug
as seed in a dry bed.
For years no one put words
on their tongue. Hollow sounds,
stick in the craw,
like a dry crumb.
Between the courses of guinea fowl and salmon,
asparagus tips au gratin, the guests asked
“Why didn’t they eat fish?”
As if they had boats, the dying, or strength
to hoist a sail, and only the one lighthouse
in the whole county.
Winifred McNulty
Winifred McNulty is co-author with Heike Thiele of High Shelves and Long
Counters, a book about the last of the old style shops in the North West, in
2013 she was joint winner of the Boyle Poetry Festival and with actor
Margot Jones she wrote and performed a play, At home with Everina about
Mary Wollstonecraft in Ballyshannon for the Allingham Festival last
November. Winifred was shortlisted for Listowel poetry collection prize
2014. Originally from Leicester, Winifred lives in Mountcharles, Co Donegal.
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North West Words
Summer 2014
Shortlisted in
Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2013
stone
feet unite on
thousands whose
to be summit; I, one of
last time but it’s not enough, it has
and further, quarter way once, half way
before us. I have been up to the first station
have a companion tell how the hills were formed
to view - sky, sea, islands, other peaks beyond. To
experience the distance from bottom to peak. A clear day
for the challenge – to make it to the top, know in my body’s
I have promised to climb The Reek, not for pilgrimage or holiness
The Reek
Anne O’Connell
Anne O’Connell graduated with an M.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) from
Lancaster University in 2002. Her work has been published in The Stinging
Fly, The Stony Thursday Book, Cyphers, Aesthetica and other Literary
Journals and Anthologies. She was short-listed for the Hennessey Award in
2000 and her poems won First Prize in the Kerry Arts Festival Samhlaíochta
Chiarraí the same year. She was highly commended in the iYeats Poetry
Competition 2012 and performed at the Yeats International Summer
School. She has a first collection ready to submit for publication.
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Summer 2014
Beside Still Waters
in memory of Michelle Sparks who died in April 2012
We had both walked the same primary school corridors,
their red-tiled tolerance mingled with threat.
We had both been ordered to zip up our mouths
and put our heads down on our desks.
We had been led, two-by-two,
clutching our purple-painted egg boxes with alligator eyes.
Tiffany told us the doctor said
she had to bathe her stye with her own urine.
We were all under ten back then.
We believed that when Cromwell came here
he drowned a woman
upside-down in a barrel of buttermilk.
The river Lagan, soundless and slow with decency
restored the reticence, washed away all scandal.
Dromore on a Sunday
a soft-pedal dampening our spirits.
At night a tied dog howling for comfort
might have been a banshee.
And we were all under ten back then
and believed that that meant someone would die.
But nothing foretold how all these years
later you’d be found fatally wounded
as though somebody had hit you
on the head with a punch hammer.
No one taught us, Michelle, of that want;
that lethal longing to be loved.
Kate Newmann
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Kate Newmann compiled the Dictionary of Ulster Biography when she
was a fellow of the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University,
Belfast. She has three collections of poetry: The Blind Woman in the
Blue House; Belongings (a joint collection with Joan Newmann) and I
Am a Horse (Arlen House). She is co-director of the Summer Palace
Press.
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Lisa Bond
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Summer 2014
May Rain
Out to the new morning:
the wind buffets my face,
ruffles my hair,
anoints my skin with rain.
Everything is verdant,
luxuriant, lush with fecundity,
dripping, seeping, unfurling.
Wild air plays with fragile
new-made leaves on soft boughs.
Ferns uncurl, virile shoots
and vivid buds push upwards,
reaching for light, for life;
and all the saturated,
miraculous morning
is vibrant birdsong.
Clare McDonnell
Clare Mc Donnell was born in England of Irish parents but has long been
resident in Co. Donegal. Her first collection of poetry, Feeling for Infinity,
was published by Summer Palace Press in 2006. Clare has had poems
published in Poetry Ireland Review, the SHOp, and several anthologies.
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North West Words
Summer 2014
Don’t Tell the Witch
after Anne Sexton
Don’t tell the witch, but we’re alright.
The cat, he chases milk bottle tops;
the sly, fat mice thrive out of sight.
Gangly grass and dandelion clocks
waggle and giggle, front and rear.
Don’t tell the witch – we’re flourishing here
in our big cracked house, red onion skins
autumn-crackle under stockinged feet.
Teabags plop like rotten teeth from the bin’s
laughing mouth. By husband’s seat –
heels of brown bread toasted black,
stanzas scribbled on the phone bill’s back,
apple skewered on a kitchen knife.
No spell stronger than this loved life.
Susan Millar DuMars
Susan Millar DuMars has published three poetry collections
with Salmon Poetry, the most recent of which, The God
Thing, appeared in March, 2013. She also published a book
of short stories, Lights in the Distance, with Doire Press in
2010. Her work has appeared in publications in the US and
Europe and in several anthologies, including The Best of
Irish Poetry 2010. She has read from her work in the US ,
Europe and Australia . Born in Philadelphia, Susan lives in
Galway , Ireland , where she and her husband Kevin Higgins have coordinated the Over the
Edge readings series since 2003. She is the editor of the 2013 anthology Over the Edge: The
First Ten Years http://susanmillardumarsislucky.blogspot.ie
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North West Words
Summer 2014
Shortlisted in
Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry prize 2013
Pallas Lake
For David
I could have lived the rest of my life in that Sunday,
a John Hinde sky painted on a stone bowl of stilled water,
a phalanx of starlings flitting in and out of
a marquee of greenery, the Kerry Blue chasing
a thrown stick in the rush-mired marsh,
my espadrilles and his steel-toe brogues side by side
on the blanket; in the wicker basket,
brown-bread turkey sandwiches growing warm,
a thermos of tea, cold. If there was a fisherman
in thigh-high waders and camouflage hat trying to
lasso a rainbow trout, we didn’t see him.
Connie Roberts
Connie Roberts, a County Offaly native, emigrated to the USA in 1983.
Her poetry has been published in journals in the United States and
Europe, most recently in the Autumn 2012 edition of Poetry Salzburg
Review. In 2009 she was nominated for the Hennessy X.O. Literary
Award. In 2010 Ms. Roberts was awarded a space in the Poetry Ireland
Introductions Series. Also in 2010 she won first prize in the Dromineer
Literary Festival Poetry Competition and her book-length manuscript,
Not the Delft School, a collection of poetry inspired by her experiences
growing up in an industrial school in County Westmeath, was awarded
the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award. In 2011, she received a Literature
Bursary Award from the Irish Arts Council. Ms. Roberts teaches creative
writing at Hofstra University, New York.
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Lisa Bond
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