Category Archives: Poetry

Poetry: A Year’s Mentoring from Glen Wilson

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I am so thrilled that the poet, Glen Wilson has chosen to mentor me for a year. The aim is to compile a collection.

Glen’s collection An Experience on the Tongue has just come out from Doire Press. He won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing in 2017.

This amazingly generous initiative was sparked by Matthew C. Smith of Black Bough Poetry.

Words at the Seamus Heaney Home Place

I’m particularly pleased that it is a poet from Northern Ireland and a poet from Wales who have been instrumental in giving me this wonderful gift as I have a project on Writing in Wales and Northern Ireland with the Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations at the University of South Wales.

The North at The Irish Literary Society

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The Irish Literary Society hosted the London launch of  issue 61 of The North magazine on February 25th. Published by The Poetry Business it is devoted to contemporary Irish poetry:

“119 poems by 106 fantastic poets”.

The Irish Literary Society is a child of the Irish Literary Revival of the late nineteenth century. Among its founders were WB Yeats and Douglas Hyde. Since 1892 it has championed and promoted Irish literature and facilitated discussion of and engagement with it. Continue reading The North at The Irish Literary Society →

Poem in the Winter edition of the Bangor Literary Journal

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SHOOT

Winter came early for that girl
When the unreturning brother –
The endlessly prevented youth –
Was thrown first in a ditch
And then a grave.

She was the Winter’s girl,
Wearing its icy dress,
So when she saw one parent
Smash the other’s face into a wall
She wasn’t fazed. She understood how well
The rounded skull fits to the palm;
How deep the need to make pain visible since he
Had been hooded when they tortured him.

But she − to Mammy and Daddy both −
She had become
As faint as frost on glass.
Then even the mirrors emptied.

A neighbour, meaning to be kind,
Had asked her to help him set December bulbs,
Late possibilities. She’d cupped a Winter White,
A cranium, papery-skinned and primed,
But when his back was turned
She’d plunged the bulb in upside down,
Cursing it to torment itself
In growing towards the dark.

Since she was a murderer too
She sentenced herself to drink till she was sick
On school-nights out beyond the playing fields.
Thirteen,
And only the cold would do.

But a long dormancy
Can keep something alive.
Forty years on, even the Winter tired
Of cold. It dis-adopted her,
Heading for Spring
When she shouldered her dying mother
And felt how well that heavy head
Fitted the hollow below her collar-bone,
In that embrace sensing
A possibility, though late.

 

Image: Claire Loader

Poem for Epiphany

Blog, Poetry 
 I'm indulging myself by re-posting this poem of mine as it has Epiphany
 allusions.
The wonderful image is of a capital in the Cathedral of Saint Lazare, 
carved by Ghislebertus of Autun in the twelfth century: an angel awakens
 the Magi.

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.

3 Poems for Christmas 2018

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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.      

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 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.

3 poems by Angela Graham 2018

Eborakon: Gwyneth Lewis – Henaint/Old Age

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Gwyneth Lewis – Henaint / Old Age, a double pleasure in Welsh and English.

Pleasure despite excruciating pain. I find myself recommending a tormenting thrill. Gwyneth Lewis’s Welsh poem Henaint and her translation of it into English, Old Age are excellent examples of the wonderful double enjoyment that a poet working in two languages can offer. Continue reading Eborakon: Gwyneth Lewis – Henaint/Old Age →