A poem from my project on Place and Displacement which is supported by a SIAP Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the National Lottery.
Category Archives: Poetry
Poem in Places of Poetry anthology
My poem ADMISSION, ON LEAVING THE PORT OF BELFAST, 1988 has been selected for inclusion in the Northern Ireland section of the anthology Places of Poetry: Mapping the Nation in Verse.
The book will comprise 180 poems arranged in 8 sections: Wales; England divided into 5 regions; Scotland and Northern Ireland. Each region will open with one or two famous (out of copyright) poems from that area, followed by poems from the Map. Continue reading Poem in Places of Poetry anthology
Poem in Community Arts Partnership Anthology
My poem ‘The Landing Window’ has been selected for inclusion in the Community Arts Partnership’s Poetry in Motion Anthology, entitled “20:20 Vision”.
The anthologised poems are eligible for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing.
Damian Smyth, Head of Literature and Drama at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, has stressed that, ‘The Seamus Heaney Awards, as offered by CAP, are the only awards in the world to carry his name.’ Continue reading Poem in Community Arts Partnership Anthology
Poem in #73 The Interpreter’s House
Woolworth’s Employee, Reid Street, Belfast, 1965
WOOLWORTH’S EMPLOYEE, REID STREET, BELFAST, 1965
My father — stockroom-man, Store Fifty-nine —
Knew how Christmas ought to look,
Loading emptied shelves afresh each day
With shiny things; with holly colours;
All that brought the outdoors safely in —
Electric stars, snow in a globe
And plastic icicles. He could afford
Red tape and Blanco whitening.
Voilà! A wintry window, many-paned,
Its left-hand corners blizzarded.
My father wanted us to feel secure.
Here we are, in the flash-photograph
He took through the window from outside; my teethy play-along
Bleached by the bulb-pop, my mother’s hair
Combed long for effect. His family. His idyll.
Some of it was fake. Not all.
At least he tried to make a Christmas for us.
His high-point, a Stewart’s grocery manager
But, pro-trade union and the wrong religion,
Soon purged. A Merchant Navy
Cook before that; formerly a steward, a cabin boy.
A life of feed, fetch, carry.
Coronary. Just short of fifty-nine.
Review of Will Johnson’s poetry collection
https://www.walesartsreview.org/poetry-my-speaking-tongue-by-will-johnson/
Review of ‘Heartland’, Parthian Books
Poem in The Ogham Stone 2019
I am delighted to have a poem in this journal produced by students on the MA in English and MA in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. The 2019 edition has a particularly thoughtful and coherent design which draws the contents together visually by simple and appropriate means. The foliage motif (below) combines with an on-page ogham-style vertical element in an elegant colour scheme. The 2020 edition is underway.
TWO AUTUMNS
Beyond the classroom window
The young tree burns, orange against drab,
Its loosened leaves drifting like languid fire-flakes.
I am ten and I try my hand at a Pearsean ennui,
Picked up from Palgrave’s ‘Anglo-Irish Supplement’:
O, the sorrow of the world is on me
And I’m tired with life…
I am as old as the wind that ferrets in the trees,
As the hidden sun and the pale and empty sky.
Today I’m sixty-one and beyond the window here
My acer shoots from its crown
The green stars of its year’s new growth
Skywards on arching scarlet rods.
Between trees – more than fifty years, the Irish Sea.
I could die now: spouse companioned through the turbulent years;
Children reared; grandparents in their graves.
Wasn’t it the solstice yesterday? A shortening of light
But, I predict, tonight we’ll be astonished once again
At the landing spotlit by a seven-eighths moon
Lancing through the toilet window.
What is it that I’ve learned? Windows are good and I
Should get out of my own light.
NADOLIG/CHRISTMAS
NADOLIG
Nos
Seren
Addewid
Cyflawniad
Twyllwch yn llawn lleisiau
Diwedd unigrwydd.
CHRISTMAS
Night
A star
A promise
A fulfilment
Darkness full of voices
An end to loneliness
Christmas
CHRISTMAS
The smallest words mean the most
Joy
Hope
Love
These things
Not things
May you receive them all
A star of particular promise
A light that has sought and found you
The child of your heart
Arrived
Waiting beyond the door.
Christmas Stars
CHRISTMAS STARS
The stars, a rowdy, cheerful crowd,
ran to their places, prompt to the call,
and how they sing! since then,
a nightly choir.
Only the comets − their slow tears −
betray the sorrow underneath that steadfastness,
for haven’t they seen it all?
− what we do down here,
warping the darkness that they love
into sly coverts for our filthiness.
Poor stars. Don’t grudge them their reprieve
each year, when their paragon,
their Star of stars, leader of kings,
sets out once more and triumphs;
finds his place, finding the child,
perfect as every new-born.
Here! the Star declares to each of us,
Surely you see – surely – that you
are a Child Awaited, you
arrived − naked and loved − and you,
gift-bearer of nothing,
can stoop under this lintel,
step clean through the needle’s eye.
