Blog
Poem of the Week: “That Actor Kiss” by Michael Hartnett
I kissed my father as he lay in bed
in the ward. Nurses walked on soles of sleep
and old men argued with themselves all day.
The seven decades locked inside his head
congealed into a timeless leaking heap,
the painter lost his sense of all but grey.
From “The Butterfly Notebook” to The Magpie and the Child: An Interview with Catriona Clutterbuck
Catriona Clutterbuck’s debut collection, The Magpie and the Child, is out this month, and the book was a long time in the making. Bernard O’Donoghue, fellow Irish poet and academic, interviewed Clutterbuck about moving forward through the act of making poems, the two-way traffic of absence and presence, and the process of transforming manuscript to book…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Rib” by Catriona Clutterbuck
When God took a rib out of man
and made it up into woman,
he left the cage of man’s heart unfinished,
missing one bar, undone.
Poem of the Week: “Other People’s Lives” by Vona Groarke
That letter you promised me writes itself
in a sheaf of streets with their bar hubbub:
bottles poured onto a midden in a lane, the odd jazz riff,
a clasp of laughter, some half-shouted name.
Poem of the Week: “The Interior” by Alan Gillis
There is a bed.
There is a bedside cabinet,
a clock. There are no adjectives.
Whiteness is painted on two walls,
on two walls there is wallpaper
with boats on waves.
Poem of the Week: “December” by Brendan Kennelly
It’s December, presents are lunatics—
spoons, napkins, knives, writing-paper,
classy jars of delicious jam.
Poem of the Week: “Birthday Party” by Michael Longley
I turned eighty at Carrigskeewaun
With grandchildren at the table
And in the townland around us
Wheatears and dapper stonechats
Poem of the Week: “Jean” by Colette Bryce
Because last night and because today,
you fix a drink to steady the shakes.
Poem of the Week: “Crush” by Conor O’Callaghan
It rises, nameless and requited, from the feather of a goose
in grass to the anglepoise’s reflection in the window
still shining after its switch has been pushed to O.
Poem of the Week: “The Globe in Carolina” by Derek Mahon
The earth spins to my fingertips and
Pauses beneath my outstretched hand;
White water seethes against the green
Capes where the continents begin.
Warm breezes move the pines and stir
The hot dust of the piedmont where
Night glides inland from town to town.
I love to see that sun go down.