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In Memory of Eavan Boland
This is for you, goddess that you are.
This is a record for us both, this is a chronicle.
There should be more of them, they should be lyrical
and factual, and true, they should be written down
and spoken out on rainy afternoons, instead of which
they fall away…
Poem of the Week: “The Pleasures of the Door” by Francis Ponge
Kings never touch doors.
They’re not familiar with this happiness: to push, gently or roughly before you one of these great, friendly panels, to turn towards it to put it back in place—to hold a door in your arms.
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Timbre” by Moya Cannon
A word does not head out alone.
It is carried about the way something essential,
a blade, say, or a bowl,
is brought from here to there when there is work to be done.
Poem of the Week: “The Black Kettle” by Frank Ormsby
Now that the new stove is in place and throwing its heat
the full length of the kitchen,
we have replaced the black kettle.
Postponed: Alan Gillis and David Wheatley US readings
Irish poets Alan Gillis and David Wheatley will be going on a reading tour in the United States from March 30 to April 8, 2020.
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “John Constable, Study of Clouds, 1822,” by Ciaran Carson
‘The sound of water escaping from mill dams, etc., willows, old rotten planks,
Slimy posts and brickwork, I love such things, said Constable.…
Poem of the Week: “Feabhra/February” by Máire Mhac an tSaoi
The weather softened in the last few days.
I took the air for raiment.
Sweet, Jesus, honey sweet the season!
Rocks melt. Nor ice nor reason hold.
Poem of the Week: “The Smell of Blood” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
I wake up, and my hands are sticky
With the smell of blood.
And though there’s not a smudge nor blot
In eyeshot, nor any soul
Poem of the Week: “No More Sea” by Louis MacNeice
Dove-melting mountains, ridges gashed with water,
Itinerant clouds whose rubrics never alter,
Give, without oath, their testimony of silence
To islanders whose hearts themselves are islands;
Poem of the Week: “The Sick Bird” by John Montague
The holidays, more than any other time of year, draw our cultural attention to family, rituals and the cyclical nature of life. This poem by John Montague appears in a group titled “Prayers for My Daughters” and focuses on generational knowledge. Though small, the moments that connect us to our past are valuable. Like the…
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