A co-op of online writing
adrianpfox8@gmail.com

Maura Mc Keag

LOST

She couldn’t see her face

Hard though as she looked

It wasn’t there

Smells

Touch

Knowing facts

All were there

But no face

She knew her love

But had lost that too

With her face gone

So was he

Staring at a mirror

Nothing stared back

Willing it

Wanting it

Crying with frustrated hopelessness

Screams of anguish from the pit

Only known by her

Gone was her face

Gone was her love

Vanished

Unexplained

Unresolved.

BETRAYED

Love becomes, not the passionate,

interlocking of body and soul

In sublime, blissful, emotional bonding

But

The hungry clasping of love lost

In a fierce instant gratification of lust.

Adrian Rice

IMAGE

In the darkened room

He lies underwater –

An image negative

Dipped by unseen hands –

And holds his breath.

He emerges, steps out,

            And dries himself off,

A fully developed man.

- Adrian Rice

blackwater poems

Luke Heffernan

Fr maw

You beat me till i fell

On the floor but i got 

Up but you beat me 

Back flat on the floor.

You caned my skin 

Till it was numb with

Pain. No tears shown

To your hurt and pain..

You served god with

The devil inside. Bullying,

Beating children till your

Rage subside. Your soul 

Rotten to the core.

That child hid inside the

Man for years till the child 

Was comforted and its 

ghostly soul released.

From à man to à boy 

And back again never

To bear beatings ever

again..

© Luke heffernan 2014

Gene Barry

Sunday's 'Healing' poem.

Remembering

Throughout the dark days, days 
After you had pulled life’s blinds
Tightly shut, I lit my life with
Memories of you sitting by our
Kitchen fire, the worries of the baby
You were carrying hidden
Between the lines of your stories.

Above our mantle the flaming
Torment looked down on us,
At a mother whose sacred heart
Would one day deny me and
Leave our world Dead Right.
We knew you to be the only God.

Who did you need to please so
Much that you circled the wagons,
Emptied the wells and taught your
Harvesters to reap and leave the
Sowing to the fraught-filled drones?

Now when I walk with you
I set our pace to the
Timing of your clicking needles,
And although I find your love
I still feel the stinging of the pricks.

©Gene Barry

I walk, sometimes thinking for myself, 
sometimes listening to the Passenger. 
The grass moves stealthily away beneath my feet,
pretending to be a lizard.
It rustles surreptitiously 
like the pages of those old calendars you find
wrapped in cobwebs
and nailed to cowshed walls.
Those old calendars
that have lost all interest in time.

Mike Absalom

WHEN I FALL

Why is it that the path

Has to mist before

We see ourselves,

Cracks and roots exposed

To an empty ditch

To reveal a broken stem;

Vulnerable, collapsing

Covered in isolation

And open to pain.

Maybe it is necessary for us

To suffer occasionally -

For compassion to remain;

Like a stunted tree, a trapped

Fly, before we can see

Through another’s eye.

My path has been mostly clear

Or as far as I can see

Alone, but never lonely.

Not intentionally

Do I fail to notice

A troubled mind,

If you fail to see me

When my mist approaches.

I won’t think you unkind.

                                          HELEN HARRISON 2013

WORDS

It was really aggression

When it came to it

You burnt anger as fuel

And blamed the excess

On me.

I tried to oil your mood

But it caught fire,

The road I watched,

Willing it to clear -

Was my splitting head

Afraid to block my ears,

I held a barrier that bounced

Off the steering wheel

The dash, the roof

Through windows

And gaps.

I shuddered but it didn’t

Stop, it kept rolling

And rallying, raging;

my inner world. 

                                            HELEN HARRISON 2013

Deirdre Cartmill

Katey

I think of the guerilla gardeners, straining

to dig deep, camouflaged by night,

spreading seed pellets that dissolve in the rain,

flowering concrete, setting road islands alight,

never worrying if the smog blocks the sun

or if that slash of colour lasts,

because that poppy jutting through paving stones

is a declaration that life will out.   

And so with you; what does it matter

if you faded before you could grow,

if they glanced your way momentarily

before moving on, because what’s been sown  

never truly dies. There’s that latent spark,

those roots digging in, aerating the dark.

                                                           

                                                                                    Deirdre Cartmill

                                                           

                                                                                    

www.deirdrecartmill.com

Deirdre Cartmill is a Belfast based poet who has published two poetry collections The Return of the Buffalo (Lagan Press, 2013) which will be published on 24^th September and Midnight Solo (Lagan Press, 2004).

The Return of the Buffalo deals with grief and loss, and attempts to make sense of the seemingly meaningless, but this is always weighted with how suddenly, unexpectedly joyous life can be. Midnight Solo is written from the perspective of a generation who grew up through the conflict in the north of Ireland and their struggle to envision a new normality in a post-conflict society. Love, loss and a restless search for identity are recurring themes in her poems but her work is ultimately about hope and the possibility of redemption.

She received an Artists' Career Enhancement Scheme Award from the Arts Council in 2011 and spent a year affiliated with the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University. She received Literature Awards from the Arts Council in 2012, 2008, 2003 and 2000. She’s previously been shortlisted for a Hennessy Literary Award and been a finalist in the Scottish International Open Poetry Competition.

Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and have also been widely published in magazines and journals. She has given many poetry readings at events and festivals, such as at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, the Belfast Festival at Queen’s and the Belfast Book Festival. She was a Writer-in-Residence at the Belfast Book Festival 2011 and this autumn she will take up residencies at An Creagan, Omagh and MacNeice House, Belfast.

She holds an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing from Queen’s University.

She is also an award winning screenwriter and has written for film, television and radio. Her short film Two Little Boys was selected for The Belfast Film Festival 2013.

Ail na Searrach; 
The Leap of the Foals 
(AN EXTRACT)

Seven of the Tuatha de Danaan, sought retreat in a cave near the Cliffs of Moher in Co. Clare. When they emerged they had become horses. They were seen to gallop off a cliff within sight of Doolin, to gather again in the 5th province; the province of the imagination. This cliff is Ail na Searrach; the Leap of the Foals.’

I

This is it.

Bones.

The order of muscle, of limbs and bones. Conformation.

A pelt. Colours –

Bay, Black, Steel Grey,

Dun, and the roans  - a Blue Roan, and a Red-Strawberry Roan,

And finally, rare and thrown-back, as if Lahinch –

the liver-chestnut.

Bone, I keep returning to a vision of bone and flanks.

We have no expectation of wings,

That belongs to another time, and to some other island.

II

I am trying to recover night vision

I have done as you advised; I have made time

We are gathered in the holding place that is this cave,

In need of rest, in need of the dark

In need of concession, giving-in, permission,

To be allowed.

Half-light is bearable,

The day is something to retreat from.

I wonder how I might create a self that ‘disappears’ me – 

And one that will go on stage in my place, sweeping the back yard if necessary –

A walking talking ‘sunny’ one – one

For the light, one who will buy me time – a worker,

So that all along, or for a while, I can stay in the dark,

Close to the cool earth, out of the light,

In communion, for however long  is necessary.

III

I discover what I am become

When I see for new the other.

I look into your eyes and notice

After stillness and close examination

How far my neck will reach

What has become of my limbs

How I have shifted shape

In the cool, in the dark.

How I am now ready

Rest-less.

OLIVE BRODERICK


Deux Ex Machina

On the horns of a dilemna,

Tantalus is standing on his hindlegs

surveying the situation.

A length between his mouth and 

the leaves of the lowest branches.

Not long after, taking shelter 

from a rain-shower, Tantalus 

keeps a look out from the barn.

Is it possible that the weight of 

falling water will offer a solution?

AINE MACAODHA

OMAGH, NORTH IRELAND, IRELAND

Writer/poet,avid photographer with a great interest in Celtic Myths, the beauty in the Irish landscape and a proud mother of three grown up children. I live in Omagh North of Ireland where the Sperrin Mountains are my inspiration in any season. I have two poetry books published titled 'Where the Three Rivers Meet' and 'Guth An Anam ~Voice of The Soul~ You can find my links at top of my blog.

I wrote this in 2007 inspired by Seamus Heaney's poem 'The Tollund Man. I was glad to have met the poet a few years ago and hear him read his work with great back story to them, I was in awe. he will be missed.

Old Croghan Man *

This island is a living carpet,

worn by clans of cousins who

weaved into the land

a pattern not for the

the untrained eye.

Old Croghan man,

baked in this oven of peat,

symbolizes our spent lineage

of boundaries and fields.

Beheaded and tortured,

he stood tall as a pine tree.

Who was this nameless lad?

A high king, killed in ritual,

or killed in a jealous rage?

Was it a warning to other youths

who may yearn for the new,

denouncing the old?

I wear a leather twang like his,

woven with love on May Day.

The hands of Croghan man

hold no labourers welts,

but groomed nails; ideally

cleaned.

He joins others that came before:

Meeybradden Woman and

Gallagh man.

They come to remind us to read

the bog

chapter by chapter; learn from

ghosts of the past.

Seekers of truth

Truths like crystals lie buried under earth
beneath ancient oaks and long forgotten pathways
leading to the ocean.
In the songs of yesterday adrift on the spring mist
as I gaze out over the hills.
In layers of prayers petitioned
to the universal spirit.
In cosmic shifts of a soul’s migration
from way before birth
to beyond the end of life.
We seek it in books
in passing thoughts that nudge us
towards a face in the crowd.
In the faces of the old.
With others on the journey
truth emerges out of the dark
returning as the light
within.

phoetry

Malachi O' Doherty

It makes no difference, your title, your name,
In the sacred circle, we are all the same,
Healing voices, a healing beat,
To take the anger off the street.

Centres of energy, North and South,
Remove fear and remove doubt,
Centres of energy, East and West,
Unite us all in living zest.

It makes no difference, your money, your fame,
In the sacred circle, we are all the same,
Bang your drum to a healing beat,
Put life and love, back on the street.

©Maggie McD 2013.

GEORGE WEIR

Selected Poems 

Published by Liberties Press

Moyra Donaldson has assimilated the powerful 
influences of Yeats, Hewitt, Hughes, Longley 
and Heaney, together with 
Plath and Liz Lochhead, to present a 
hard-won distinctive self…’

- Medbh McGuckian

http://annaliviareview.blogspot.co.uk

Anybody from any genre can send me writing, even before my stroke I had the vision of creating an anthology I still have that vision and that passion for writing.  I’m lucky ina sense that my stroke wasn’t a severe head injury that didn’t reach my brain ha ha I think.   Writers I think need a little madness, any age group can send me writing and any form of writing as this is not a poetry or prose workshop it’s a

             

                writing of the moment workshop.

THE WAY HOME

for ASM

I chose to walk rather than hitch a ride,

and no sooner had we parted on the street outside

the Moon, not more than a minute from your

gentle parting jibe – ack sure,

you’ll probably find a wee poem

on your dander home –

I strode into a firefly guard of honour.

Those matchless passers of the flame

lit my Oakwood stroll with their

royal relay the whole way back,

and stayed outside the door

until I got myself slippered-up

and seated on the dusky porch.

Then, one by one, as if on cue,

they each turned off their golden torch.

Adrian Rice  .....................................BIOGRAPHY BELOW

PHOETRY 

                GEORGE WEIR

RHYMED TIME



'loving them all the way back to the source

loving everything that increases me'
                                          Raymond Carver

The current of literature flows
And I stream the stream. 

I don’t know what kind of fish

This is until I land it, I’m writing
This for me, to find the current
Flow and to know that it’s
A big bastard. You have to know
Where the current flows
And when to let it go. The scales
Are black and silver and it swim’s
Every colour in between. It me-
Anders through the water as if
It knows it can’t be caught.

It’s big and bold and beautiful
It’s been hooked a thousand
Times but this isn’t about
The hooking its about its
About the killing time. Time
Is a big fish landed in this

                               ADRIAN FOX

     'IF YOU CANNOT BE A POET 
              BE THE POEM'

Spring Wildflowers in a 

Woodland Garden

(TINA'S TITLES)

A melting pot of Glory-Bluebells bobbing-Fern unfurling-Sorrel smiling-Horse Chestnut fingers waving-Lavender Blooming-Viola hiding-Daisy dancing-Ladies Mantle beauty dew-Montbrethia stretching-Lady's smock the Cuckoo calls-

Marsh Marigold bathing-A Frog hopping-

Trowel resting-Plantain nesting in a wall -

Moss in pretty pink-Rhododendron rising-

I hear the gossip of their Bloom.


These were only Tina's titles 

so maybe that should be in the title.

                
                    TINA ROCK





JAX LECK




Nightdreams

Dreams are my bolthole
I close out the world
become my alter ego

The writer of wrongs

The chaos of reality dim
As solutions are found
To the insurmountable hurdles
Of my daily life

Empowerment surges
the burnt kittens
the butchered dolphins
never happened

Religion reads its scriptures
And understands the words

Politically masked self interest
is not de rigeur
becomes non sequiteur

I can feel the contentment
well-being and joy
I breathe deep and long
For morning when...

the dreaming stops
reality kicks in
the cloak of invincibility drops
I am left, vulnerable





POARTRY

    BARRY KERR       

                              IN-TURN-MEANT

                                                                                                           

(a special powers act)

My command of Lowell is in

my birth date fall of 1961, John

Keats is in melancholic autumn

leaves, Kavanagh is the ditch way

down in Muckers shuck, Frost is in

the snow and ive got miles to go be-

fore I know, Akmatova is in the O-

pressers boot stamping down on me.

Poetry is within the sensing feeling

sea like Raymond Carver's current is

in the fish brave and strong and true

the command is deep within me

and deep, deep, deep in you.






PHOETRY

            





The Rippled sky

framed decay

                 by Tina Rock

THE CLOCK FLOWER

As far as the rest of the universe is concerned,
Maybe we’re like the feather-fluff of the clock flower,

The ghostly snow-sphere of the dying dandelion
That the child holds up in wide-eyed wonder,

Which the mother says to blow on to tell the time
By how many breath-blows it takes before the airy seed

All flies away, leaving her child clutching a bare stem.
And where our humanness might go, who knows?

And when it lands – takes root – what grows?

SOMETIMES I THINK

Sometimes I think that my happiest days

Have been spent in bookshops;

Especially when everything’s in bloom,

When the trees have hung out

Their flags on every street,

And the clouds have gone AWOL

Or been safely penned

By that orange collie of the skies:

Even then you can’t keep me

From feasting my eyes

On those book-shelved spines.

It’s then that I’m in my element

Because, because there’s magic in the book.

Even Hewitt, custodian of reason,

Was moved to heresy as he took me

By the elbow in his house

To tour his library, his working collection,

And pointed to a buckramed book

On the jam-packed shelves. “See this one? 

Believe it or not, and I sense you will,

Roberta and I were in Edinburgh,

And as we hurried past a second-hand

Bookshop, I suddenly stopped and said

That I needed, quickly, to go in.

I knew, somehow I just knew,

That there was a book on the shelf

That was somehow meant for me.

So we entered, and I went straight

To it, reached for it, and took it.

Now, that’s all that I can tell you.

It was there.  And it was for me.”

My friend always says that we should

Choose our addictions well.

I think I have.  Only time will tell.

Adrian Rice

Anybody from any genre can send me writing, even before my stroke I had the vision of creating an anthology I still have that vision and that passion for writing.  I’m lucky ina sense that my stroke wasn’t a severe head injury that didn’t reach my brain ha ha I think.   Writers I think need a little madness, any age group can send me writing and any form of writing as this is not a poetry or prose workshop it’s a

             

                writing of the moment workshop.

A SLITHER OF PLASTER

'Your winter night....all merciless and hope-

less, the one that killed you'

                                        Jack Kerouac

These words come from beyond

the grave of Atilla Joszef and

the catacombs of your statue eyes.

These are your words of barren

joy and my homage to hope.

This is the Danube your flowing

of wonder lapping at your shore.

Transcending the slums and the-

gaze of your eyes, even the train

lines disappear.

Summers flame has blown out.

Above, a slither of plaster

ponders whether it should fall.

What barren joy embraced by

shadow at this moment of poem

writing, laughing, weeping life

of my own decision.

The pigsty's gate is wide open.

I can live forever a master-less fool

The flame is ripening in our land.

I am fatherless, motherless, god-

less and country-less, grown from

my beautiful pure heart out of an

April's evening shadow listening

to the train whistle me out of sight.

                      ASHES TO ASHES

I hurry to the ash-pit to lay them but -
The ashes fly back in my face. 
My eyes rest on laurels – that
Wave their leaves – snow falls
In its finest form – holding
back spring; the in between

Season of words; even the birds
Sing on through the cold March. 
Thoughts flit and feet
Shift with care-worn tread…
Through gaps which left -
Our love in cinders…

                                      HELEN HARRISON 2013

THE FORM OF THESE WORDS ARE CREATED BY THE MOMENT.

Why do we want to create a magic formula for yesterday, form is the moment

and the moment creates the form.  Form is not a structured way of saying something you've written, a formula a haiku or a sonnet.  Do you want to do what was done yesterday and go the academic route to refine it or do you want to do what's you?

Jack Kerouac one of the great beat writers told us to 'write as if were the first person

on earth'  and Wallace Stevens told us that 'the theory of poetry is the theory of life'

       THE FORM OF THESE WORDS IS CREATED BY THE MOMENT.

Beat poetry was new and experimental as were the words of Walt Whitman and when we heard it first we went wow and since then have tried to fit our words into the pasts parameters but it was the moment of change that created those magic words, so we've got to let the moment create the form.  beat poetry is named so because it captures the essence of beat poetry it has life a rhythm a pulse, ok I know I fall down on the grammatical front but isn't all new writing politically and grammatically in or un-

correct.

THE FORM OF THESE WORDS ARE CREATED BY THE MOMENT.

Form is a moment lost in time and we harness that moment with words, form is not a way of saying something written on a page, we know that we can never capture that moment but why not create a moment from that moment not by reliving the formula but by creating a new form from the magic of a form its not its steps, metre and rhyme that captures magic its the moment.  Words have a rhythm a magic of their own and they find a rhyme within the moment (the form).  We can never reproduce the magic of a haiku or a brilliant villanelle but it is the combination of words that catch the moment.

Time to Crow

Mmmm, quiet, silence, mute,
Just a distant whisper as Wind plays his flute.
A deafening hush, a crisp, clear night,
Dark wings cast shadow, Crow took flight.
Now the Soul ponders, somethings amiss,
An Impish smile, says silence is bliss.
So sleep well nightshades, drift in the Dream Wood,
listen to the quiet, nourished thoughts, Soul food.
Ah, but who knows what the Dawn will bring,
When silence breaks, CAW! and Crow did sing .

© by Gréagóir /l\

Adrian Rice

Adrian Rice is from Rathcoole, Northern Ireland.  In 2005, Rice was Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, NC.  Since then, he and his wife Molly, and baby boy Micah, have settled in Hickory, where he teaches English and Creative Writing at Catawba Valley Community College.  Rice is also half of the Irish Traditional music duo, The Belfast Boys, alongside singer-songwriter Alyn Mearns.  Their first CD – Songs For Crying Out Loud – regularly airs on Radio Ulster, and on radio shows across the Carolinas.  Rice’s first sequence of poems appeared in Muck Island (Moongate Publications, 1990), a collaboration with leading Irish artist, Ross Wilson. Copies of this limited edition box-set are housed in the collections of The Tate Gallery, and The Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  His first full poetry collection – The Mason’s Tongue (Abbey Press, 1999) – was shortlisted for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Literary Prize, nominated for the Irish Times Prize for Poetry, and translated into Hungarian by Dr. Thomas Kabdebo (A Komuves Nyelve, epl/ediotio plurilingua, 2005).  In 2002, he co-edited a major Irish anthology entitled, A Conversation Piece: Poetry and Art (The Ulster Museum in association with Abbey Press).  Selections of his poetry and prose have appeared in both The Belfast Anthology and The Ulster Anthology (Ed., Patricia Craig, Blackstaff Press, 1999 & 2006) and in Magnetic North: The Emerging Poets (Ed., John Brown, Lagan Press, 2006). A chapbook, Hickory Haiku, was published in 2010 by Finishing Line Press, Kentucky. A new full-length poetry collection – The Clock Flower (MP, 2012) – has just been released.

  

HOTEL NATURE

I’ve never fully noticed until this evening
How loudly birds chitter-chatter before bed.
Such bird babble! Such tower of song!

Too tired to google away my ignorance,
I wonder if it’s simply an inter-flock
Roll-call of present and corrects;

Nest-calls of Goodnight, John-boys;
Plethora’s of passionate sweet nothings?
Incredible, how it all abruptly stops.

Though there are always some random tweets,
Some feathery heart-thanks, dusky prayers.
Tonight, given my mood, it’s appropriate

To imagine them coming from the tittery
Back row of a touring bird chorus –
Some raffish, humourous, banter-boy’s silly

Craic before Hotel Nature’s final lights out.

                                   Gideon Grieg

The World Turned

The world turns...

I see chest of drawers, wardrobes, tv, painted models dusty abandoned, bandana's The Ladder  plays softly mingles with distant dogs barking and window framed birds chirping.

My world turned...

I see old scripts discarded sketches that never existed a pile of art pads, note books, models, pencils, paints an assortment of artistic implements.

The world turns...

I see an army on parade permanently waiting inspection, I breathe the air incense lingering on the air a hint of               sandalwood. I see my prize a trophy of a successful hunt the complete E.E.Doc Smith Skylark series complete with original box.

My world turns...

       I see yellow mellow walls sea blue trimmings dust motes dancing like fireflies trapped. Performing            silently for some unseen audience. I lose myself in their pattern almost catching the rhythm, time.

The world turned...

I remember ancient battles, read and make believe re-enacted glorious defeats, hollow victories.

This is my world...

This is their dance, their celebration, memorial. 

This is my world.

MATT KIRKHAM

After The Flood.

The issue: after the cloven-trottering sow

and piglets' emergence from the ark 

he'd taken down and measured out 

and constructed, muddied, students of Bach 

grunting their canon, squinting,

"This issue: after the cloven-

trottering sow...", and the sun bringing 

the rat-like flights of hooded crows 

and the rat-like flights of feral pigeons 

cross-referencing, embellishing fables 

of sow pellets, growers' pellets, generations 

under the eaves of stables, 

the deliquescent hard weather,

sleet, hail, down a sloping fencepost, fifth to fourth; 

the issue here is whether 

to call the child Ham or Shem or Japheth.

A UNIVERSAL THIRST

Tiny drop-

lets of colour

swirl my coffee cup

like oil on water

forming constellations

shapes and forms.

I could read almost any-

thing into them but

I just drink them down in-

to me.

A Passing Thought

Hmmm, a passing thought
floating on a labyrinthine nouveau
sucks the bitter sweet nectar
of Yggdrasil
while pinealocytes dance
between her branches
and release a eurphoric veil
to lull the right-winged moth
of compartmentalized thinking.

Gréagóir 

Alistair Graham 

studied at Shaftsbury House College and is working in sales and account management.

He lives in Belfast with his wife Lucille and their two sons Samuel, age 25 and Dary, age 21.

His first book, War and Want, was published in 2011 and his second collection, Streets of Belfast, was published in 2012 both by Lapwing Publications.

                                  History Lesson

I

Under a parasol

three days before

my fortieth birthday

It was 12pm and the sun

was hot as hell, and the blood

in my veins a crazy jus

II

Thirty years earlier                                  

in a young age in grandma’s

A piss-pot, the po

an ornate vessel, stowed

under brass-iron bed

and eiderdown

and bare hands

on tiny handles to steady

waves of waste to outside

loo.  Flush away

down the pan to sinew

of sewers under streets

III

Under a parasol

three days before

my fortieth birthday

I was alone, maybe lonely

and heard birds gossiping

in the raw heat

IV

And now

in this time and place

Splint in my hand, smile

on my face,

coffee cup drained

reading ANON, the 15^th page

And I can prove this

time and place

my fragment, stilled

The potato eaters

POTATOES

I can smell the sweet potato peel

Upon my skin – and I visualise walking

Amongst the summer rows…

I pick over the box of earthy potatoes

When I pull one that is perfect

I turn it in my hand like a gold nugget,

Buried in my memory - a charm.

I peel back happiness from the soil,

Memories drop into a watery bowl;

The day we planted them – sowing…

Love which had lain on the edges…

Uncertain, I nearly threw love out -

With un-seeded tubers; to decay in hedges.

Instead I wrapped them and stored them -

In a cold shed - for spring planting…

I can already see your face shining pride

At flowering drills; you stand with a wide-stance;

The posture of the accomplished soul - your eyes,

Stare lovingly at each planted offering.

Helen Harrison

BORN OF WATER

I live and breathe the Waters of Life,

I know no other World, as I cradle in

The liquid nest of my Mother’s Womb.

Then sudden and abruptly my World is

Swept from under me, my Ocean of comfort

Gone, I am Born, crying, into a strange World.

With tears in my eyes, remnants of my familiar

Place, I gaze into the eyes of Giants, making

Watery sounds with their voices, Primitive,

Though soothing to my ears, I feel their

Welcome, and I smile.

These two will teach me of this new place,

Though part of me, will always thirst,

To swim the old shore, to plunge into
The depths of my World once more.

       © by Gréagóir

Frida Ravenna Bowen

Frida is a poet singer/songwriter from Holland

  Break out

                                               A sunray gently strokes my hair

                                   Hungry for spring

In the last shivers of winter

The ill body

Like an empty cup

Still for a moment

To break out

Of the invisible shackles

Into sheer light

                                              

Aubade

What choice do we have between light and dark?

Do we cry away sadness or sing like a lark?

Awaiting dawn between day and night.

Life’s like a constant shadow that’s cast
If your having a ball or your flags at half-mast
What choice do we have between dark and light?

Even the blind feel an emotional tide
This is a Sanskrit that’s deep and wide
Awaiting dawn between day and night.

A bit of nature a twig and a dove
A symbol of love from below and above
What choice do we have between dark and light?

Look at the leaves the sea and the sky
Don’t get lost in the question why
Awaiting dawn between day and night?

There’s no positive and negative were in between poles
Swaying central on the ledge of our souls
Were dripping like resin or soiled like the bark

Awaiting dawn between light and dark. 

THE POETS COMPASS

‘All beautiful and happiest things are dead’

                                                   Sean o’ Casey

True north is beauty

fixed and dead.

You empathise sin-

You, skin on bone.

                                            beauty

                                                  truth

You place a heart

within a heart.

South finds only

Your truth

The passing away

Of time.

East Is east

It brings the snow

And frosts upon

Your ground

West is there

In setting sun

The compass

Vibrates a hummmmmmm.

THOUGHT FOR A FOX

From a cul-de-sac – you make fresh paths

And use the residue of rubble to build new

Walls of words…from which your magpies

Perch; in readiness to sour the skies of chance…

The shadows still remain, but your poetic mind;

Tinged with a glimmer; reflects colour in streams

of light to caress your senses to ease prose upon

your brow; and reflect onto a pure page…

A poet of disability - whose vigour bred strength;

before your stroke; and now you strive to recapture

the essence from disabled feeling; bring words

of truth; sorrow and hope in a soaring energy;

Rising and falling like a sky-scraper…Adrian Fox.

                                                                        

From your wheel-chaired chariot of teachings;

Without reaching for honour… you absorb other

Poets words, and with honesty, say - that they pull

You from the blind brow to give you purpose in life...

Meaning; to comfort your shade, in nature’s glade

of dappled light. You told me once “This is your blues,

Be proud of your blues, and your down; it might

Build you up.” And “Life is jagged – like a wall.”

“The self is only good as an illustration.’ Kavanagh said, and -

you Adrian Fox; amongst natures grace where winds of change

have blown and Northern rivers are flowing; know - amongst

hope and grief; a terrible beauty has been born. 

‘You write the senses in front of you.’ Robert Creeley

 You guide others with non-judgemental words of influence.

And you speak the truth - not by half… sharp edged from life.

Better to know this… for talent to grow. And like a fox -

You find any residue in writing; sniff it out, and chase away…

You will say – “no place for words - just to fill in gaps.

Let’s read between the spaces”… religion’s not allowed; thank god!

Or capitalism or consumerism. The theory of poetry is your

theory of life.  Poetry is your wonder…your love.

It saved your life, along with Keats…Wallace Stevens

and Carver’s wisdom and Robert Lowell’s honesty and all

The best of Irish poets; who you keep by your side…they will

never die as you keep their memories undisturbed - their truth.

‘Throw away the lights, the definitions, And say what you think in the dark.’ Wallace Stevens.

                                                                                   Helen Harrison 2013

                                                          

                

Susan Farrell

CUTTINGS

‘I’m in here darlin-’’ the carer said

taking books from the fridge,

moving black plastic bags,sagged 

with eighty four years,weaving a well 

worn path through stacks of Good

Housekeeping magazines,

         
walls of empty jam jars, washed

       margarine tubs heaped neat in 

           readiness for cuttings from plants 

                that remember the famine. ‘-you can 

                      get through here now darlin’to your bed-

room and the bathroom.’

Miss Sally Maguire, zimmer-framed 

manoeuvring,smiles, thinks of driving,  

she’ll be back at work next week -

she imagines proudly.She’ll get rid of those-

‘carers’ who call her darlin’’who wreck her bag 

organised,placed, catalogued, filed, fond

memories, and cuttings:at least two epics 

and a new century.She’ll be back at work 

guiding the present round the past.

Helen Harrison

HALFWAY 

 Halfway down the hill, I stand

still soaking up mists of misery.

The sudden sight of a lone calf

and grassy smell unleashes

a Cavern of calm.

Through tear-glazed eyes, a valley

of feelings unfold, a stirring of the past –

a childhood; a place where chance

can dance on my conscious brow

mocking my lonely standing…

from where I view the world through

new breath and renewed heart;

the colour like a painting; of sky reflecting

in the jewelled eye of the calf; re-

united with its Mother; earth half-

 way up the hill.

Paul Maddern was born in Bermuda and now lives in Co. Down -- but is currently Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at Leeds University. "The Beachcomber's Report" (Tempar Poetry, 2010) was nominated for the Eithne Strong Award for best first collection.

Islanded

Why return to this avenue 

that opens to daylight on the beach, 
where I can pick mangoes and sink my feet—
the one, the other—into the blue of familiar 
then unfamiliar tidal pools?

Always from the horizon come 
polluted ranks of sails and liners and planes.
If defined by the loss of degrees in these sub-topics, 
still an invading force to rival great armadas,
still vicious in their capacity. 

To guard the shore I have sculpted a wall of heroes
from wet sand, but have also watched them 
spent by tides. I have tried kisses and more 
as charms to save them all, 
my indigenous Canutes and Calibans. 

Undaunted, I dispatch another man-o-war,
its varicose tendrils to slip back undetected
on the undercurrent and charge the ocean 
with the force of my convictions:
defend, if it can, this isolation.

I tear a ripe mango from its tree
and splash in blue pools. I have my answer
and there was no invasion. The day
tucks into history. Canvas after canvas 
sails close by, before the pockmarked moon. 

Tree Goddess

Limbs akin rejoicing the Heavenly Skies

Displaying her beauty, proud and strong

Her shapely form, carved with nurtured love

Rose upward in unashamed,naked bark

She stands rooted, in guard, home of Earth

Eternal in youth, giving in strength

Sensual forces beckon, as her beauty unfolds

Memories of a distant past held within

I gaze spellbound as she gently sway's

Bending her bough in the firece north wind

She reckons with the call of Nature's hell

As her life force errupts, as she enter's 

Penetrating my wilful soul.

Tina Rock 

                          GERRY BURNS 

BREUEGEL

        Sky the colour of blue,

Scum-bled on paler ground

feeling down, deprived of snow,

I shoved my way through crowded streets

To view the Flemish Masters on display,

There I stood in awe before Herr Breuegel’s

Masterpiece:     ‘Massacre of the Innocents’

 

Transposed to Holland
And though, initially,

I took it for a simple,

Village scene with icicles

animals, and leafless trees a filigree

Against the pure white.

A closer look showed soldiers

At their gruesome work,

With wide-eyed mothers pleading

For their children’s lives;

But there will be no rescue
On this day of reckoning;

I felt my blood run cold,

And yet I could not turn

Away transfixed, transformed,

Forgotten that I had only  

stopped to look, because

I felt deprived of snow.

Impermanence

Ah, the Enigma of Time,

The Elixir of Youth,

Like a raging Fire,

Arises from your Heart,

While the Wisdom of Ages
Is but a distant sparkle
In your minds eye.
 

Dance between the Two
And let neither Embrace.


© by Gréagóir 

"Aine MacAodha is a writer and amateur photographer from Omagh, situated in 

County Tyrone; North of Ireland. Her essays, poems and photographic work have 

appeared in issues of Luciole Press and Pirene’s Fountain, her poetry has been 

published in online magazines including Argotist Online, Arabesque Review, 

Shamrock Haiku Journal, The Herald, Celtic Myth Podshow, Debris Magazine and 

recently in The Toronto Quarterly, Glasgow Review and the first two issues 

of soylesipoetrymagazine. which are also translated into turkish, also poems in a couple 

of issues of Thefirstcut and Outburst Magazine and two issues of A New Ulster
 She has two poetry collections published. ~

http://ainemacaodha.webs.com/index.htm

http://ainesireland.webs.com/

http://aine-macaodha.blogspot.co.uk/

THE GATHERING 2002

                                                                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                               

Slowly the house crammed to the hilt

like the poor crimbo turkey.

Each room occupied by family;

each room a generation of gaps.

                                                                                       

                   Inside the curtained windows

voices rise into the night

like an opera of opinions or perhaps

an anthology of wishes.

Missing; the ould pair. The eldest now

drape the fireside with songs of old

Ireland with a bit of Hogmany

thrown in for good measure.

The twenty-ish gather at the dressing

table, exchanging notes on Uni,

shots and the opposite sex; oblivious to

blethering of family at this time.

The teens storm each room; moan

about the crap music and low mobile signals;

create tension and take advantage

of the elders tipsy nature.

The 40’s sip wine and recall the days

when the undertones and Kenny Everett

were cool and how no one questioned

Morcambe and Wise sharing a bed.

Midnight brings all to the hearth, some

reluctant to link for old times sake.

First kisses of the New Year are meted out.

There’s an air of remembrance.

                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                      

By 12.30 slowly the house empties. The

trail of singing can be heard by the road.

The twenties and teens have gone. United

for now; they head for the nearest club.

The elders stalk the fireside, agreeing and not,

laughing and singing. The 40’s get cozy with

thoughts of the coming year, and more wine.

  

Tearful Warrior

Oh little Warrior
Whose heart is torn
Take time to grieve
Time to mourn.

 
Then raise your head

Your wars begun
The Worlds a battle
Not easily won.

But your Heart is strong

And your Spirit will soar
So let the World hear
Your battle roar.

Shout to the Heavens

  The Gods will awake

                The Skies will rumble
                       The Earth will quake.            So little Warrior

                                                                      Let your Spirit shine
                                                                           For all is not lost
                                                                                 All will be fine

                                    © by Gréagóir

Why are the words of one 
man who went the academic route to the path of poetry any better than the man who found the same essence of poetry along the path of life and yet the academic master says that ‘the theory of life is the theory of poetry’.

Raymond Carver says as much if not more than the masters of the word and yet his theories are not worthy to grace the critical essays of the greats, I suppose its going to take another fifty years for poetry to find its own level and pull its head out off its own high art ass.  I know now and the great anthologists know who start and finish great books with the essence of his  realism as worked as any Shakespearian sonnet.

Its time to move over boys and let the master in, words are not glossed with snobbery as the master himself said, ‘poetry is (and should be,) for the poet, a source of pleasure and satisfaction, not a source of honours’.  Raymond Carvers essays are towers of wisdom and are worthy to sit alongside any masters, there has to be a place where academia and life meet Carver and the life poets on one bank and the emperor of ice cream leading academia, where water comes together with other water, a magic spot by the river where honor flows in the current, imagine that current.

                                                 by Anon

TWIN TOWERS

I have just been sitting here

Pondering, do my pomes be-

Long in this able-bodied world?

All towers of words are dis-

Abled searching out meaning.

You give them the energy

To rise and fall on the page-

So their rise and fall is up to

Me and you, for me to feel

Your energy when you read

My sky-scraper of non-judge-

Mental words.

a fox

                                                                                                                                                 
apf1961@mail.com
           poems from the resident collections www.adrianfox.org

 

WHAT MORE CAN I SAY?

         'Loving them all the way back to the start

Loving everything that increases me’
                                        

R. Carver

Wallace Stevens said: ‘It is life
That we are trying to get at in poetry.’
Life is the reflection of literature
Its purpose is to make life complete.

The Duino elegies by Rilke
And the melancholy odes by Keats
Are two of the finest examples
Of pure poetry that whisper into-
The ear of today.

Its as if those poems were written yesterday
not one or two hundred years ago.
These are poems that pull you back
From the blind brow and give you pur-
Pose and meaning in life.

Both of these poets are as brave
And meaningful as any writer
Writing today. They are the negative-
Capability that pulled these men away

From darkness, away from horrific-
Reality and into the power of poetry.
Beyond the divinity of death, beyond
The exhausted culture (Christianity).

These men stood alone in their words
And their words take us through into
A source of pleasure and satisfaction
Into the theory of life.

 Adrian Fox

 Gréagóir Mac Giolla Fhinnein

Creags of Avon

The Creags of Avon
Always rang sweeter to me,
A storybook land from a distant past,
and the momentary ponderings
Of an escapist Spirit.
For the name Craigavon
was stigmatic,
To blow ins, scumbags, gypsies,
All the derogative scorn.

 

They called it the roundabout city,
A labyrinth of square bricks and mortar,
The concrete jungle.
But we are a people,
A community,
And we have come a long way
Down that mislabeled road,
No longer just a forest of concrete,
For we have a Beautiful Nature around us.

 

We watched it birth as a manmade lake,
Which looked pretty bleak in it infancy.
But over the years Mother Nature
Has Loved it unconditionally,
Nurtured it and dressed it In Her Velvet Green,
Whispering, “Wake Up, it is Spring”.
Then adorning Her child with creatures
Of Shadow, Wisdom and Story.
And all Summers Night til the early Dawn,
Her Nature comes alive with the
Sweetest symphony of music,
From the Deepest Undergrowth,
To the Canopy above.

 

Her mood changes with the Autumn months,
Her thoughts pour down upon the Wood,
And a metamorphosis of Beautiful Colour
Imbues Her Infinate Nature,
The unveiling of the Artists Canvas.
A new wonder springs forth
From the Woodland floor,

 

An explosion of Inocybe, Agaricus, Amanita and Clitocybe.
And the Fae dance in Mycopia this Night.
Then soon the Colours fade,
And the Mothers breath, blows cold,
the Woodland stripped bare,
And exposed to Her Winter Elementals.
But Her Breath is Immaculate,
And all is wrapped in a Pure white blanket,
Our Wood shimmers in Crystalline bloom.
And there She will sleep in a porcelain veil
Til the Snowdrops appear, and the Mother whispers,
“Wake up, Spring is here”.

 

Ah!, The Creags of Avon,
Sure it always rang sweeter to me.

  Mum and Spudz
 
How are you managing for heating oil?
Do you know Mrs Mullen died?
I hope you like onions with your stuffing?
You said in your text that you're on nights next...

Heaped on offerings of food,
Hot pans make mood for flavour,
Television loud repeated soaps, 
Water hissing on stove. Potato
peelings blocking sink - no time to think;

Can i help? I question her red face,
No it's alright - clean the windows instead -
but listen; wait until after you're fed.

                                   Helen Harrison 2012
 

Adrian Fox was born in Kent, England in March 1961. His family moved to Belfast in 1967 when he was 6 years old. He spent most of his youth in the riot torn streets of Ardoyne in North Belfast.

Adrian studied under the great poet Jimmy Simmons. Many of his poems have been translated into Hungarian, Philippino and Indonesian and his poetry has also appeared in Libyan newspapers. During the late 1990's and early 2000's He read in Hungarian universities as part of the program for peace.

He has an M.A. in Creative Writing and his work has been published by Poetry Ireland, Cyphers, Honest Ulsterman, Black Mountain Review, Poetry Guild, Poetry Society and Coffee House.

A selection of his work appeared in the anthology Breaking the Skin (Black Mountain Press, 2002), and also, Hide Dada, Hide (Lapwing Press 1999)

As a tribute to all those who died during the troubles in Northern Ireland, Adrian and the folk singer Rodney Cordner created the CD Violets based on the Lost Lives book, where every person who died during the latest troubles of Northern Ireland are listed.

CONTROL

The highchair became my wheelchair,

Before I knew language I knew control

And this is a translation of that:  I knew

My father was calling me a waste of space.

My Mother was and is my only true friend.

They tried to control me in a regimental way

But I was wise to their schooling way, they

Tried to control me in bullets and bombs but

I took the path of life.  The Bat (headmaster)

Held me under twenty four slaps, I cried

And broke twenty four windows in his school.

I got expelled and ran through Kavanagh’s play-

Ground, just a mile from ‘Mucker’ in hack-balls-cross

I ran through his fields in freedom winds, I un-done

My group cert and failed on the streets of London.

My marriage was a farce but I loved her I knelt

There un-blessing my pew. My children being

Born were my un-controlled things, their blood un-

Bloods my soil, evolution is my only snare I’m locked

Into life, my highchair has become my wheel-

Chair and im locked into this locked in syndrome.

Martelle mc Partland


BIO

Narrow Water

It was late on an August night

when I, the elected driver

drove home from a club.

The  craic stopped when

 I saw an army roadblock.

In my head I rehearsed,

who I was,

where I was coming from

and where I was going.

Not wanting a slip of a tongue

to condemn me for a search.

I fumbled for my licence

slowed to the circular light

rolled down the window

waited for the question,

'Identification?'

No question asked

no soldier outside.

Just a lonely road

on a late August night.

Rathmullan Abbey

For Maria Mc Sweeney

If I called out would you be there

a shadow against the stones.

a breath against my face?

You, who built this abbey

to keep your only son

safe in a sacred space.

Is that music in the ravens call?

Is that a white robe

or reflected light I see?

Are you still here

fasting and in prayer

beside the broken grave

where your son rests?

In the last of a December day

I came to shelter from the hail

and remembered the talk

of a lady haunting this empty place

while around me shadows grow. 

  

Annie McLaughlin now living in and loving Armagh City, is originally from London where she grew up in the seventies. After a bit of world travel and work abroad she chose an Irishman and eventually moved to Ireland. She teaches and helps out in the house a little as she has five children.

She was a member of John McAllister’s Armagh Writing Group and is going to focus on sending more work into magazines. She is delighted to be able to share on Adrian’s Blog and invites comments and feedback from other poets.

Correnary

On the hills above home, beyond 
there is only the mountain,
The mud clings to the soles of his shoes
bonding him as he takes that last 
obligatory walk on the land.

Tramping the fields, the voices
murmuring-murmuring in his steps,
Bringing him back to his Father’s grave.
He overlooks the town below, memorizing it.
He is tied to this sod.

He watches as the cloud brings rain 
from the west as it always does,
Slowly, inevitably they push on
As he must, back across the water, 
tearing up angry roots,
for us, now.

  

Helen Harrison was born on the Wirral, Cheshire, just seven miles from Liverpool, in England, to Irish parents. Spending all her summers in The Emerald Isle inspired her to take up residency there as an adult. She still resides in Ireland. A love for the country means most of her holidays are spent travelling there, often alone, as she enjoys meeting new people and absorbing the culture.    An ability to see the larger picture of life and a gratitude to nature is the launching place for her poems.

     ‘The Brook’ by Tennyson is my favourite poem.

  

Rain

The cold miserable rain is spitting at me

it’s turning to hail and hitting me and I wish
my old bones were stronger. I remember racing
down this hill on sunnier days, the sky was always
bluer, smiling on me.

The rain is so cold on my face, turning it blue,

I try to recall – my past and a younger self but…

Now the rain won’t let up on me; leave me in peace,

To make my way home, to my fields;

Suddenly I can see through the rain; my rugged stone walls

Where hens jumped and wild flowers grew, the wall

The ones my husband built

Now cold wind whips at my head like sharp stones,

And I wonder what took me - far from home.

My memory has long since weakened, and confusion set in,

It’s not the first time I’ve tended to roam.

My shoes hit a stone, and I stumble, clawing at earth,

But I will myself to rise; to make my way ahead.

Tears mingling with rain, a hare bounds lightly

a moor-hen screeches, suddenly I smell

my childhood in the rain.

                                                                        

We all approach writing differently but we all end up at the same point a full stop.  The poetry co-op

was set up to celebrate that same difference so dont be afraid to send me poems in any shape or style, this is not a poetry or prose blog its just a blog writing comes in all forms.

WHERE ARE ALL THE N.I. WRITERS?

Since taking my stroke i have struggled to regain the voice i had before and the natural rhythm of poetry

trying to form a poetry cafe and a writers group at the hub and online.   now i have tried to form a poetry co- op trying to form a non judgemental community where writing can be free of snobbery and poetry politics.

i realise that i inhabit a different world than most of you and there isnt much truth in this locked in syndrome.

I have to accept that ill never regain that natural rhythm.  capitalism has taken over the fun-de-mentals of life for me but the great poets and artists still sting me and stab me from beyond the grave men like Rilke Neitzsche and Keats will always stab me in my dreams so in this locked in syndrome ill always be kept alive  and and they'll always feed my blind brow.  We have got to make poetry and writing more accessible,  to sit where im sitting in a wheelchair paralysed, a poet without a voice, without poetry and art i wouldnt be sitting here so i know the true power of words they saved my life.

I started the poetry co-op to show the world that Northern Ireland was living in hope,  whats wrong with all you prima donnas its only poetry and words they wont win the lottery but share and it might save your life one day.

1. THANKS TO ALL ON THE BLOG

David Braziel

David was born in England and grew up in the Midlands market town of Stafford before moving to Portadown in 1993.

In 2005 David was a finalist in the BBC "End of Story" competition and around the same time joined the creative writing group at Millennium Court under Adrian Fox and began to write poetry. A former board member of the Creative Writers Network and now a member and co-facilitator of the Lough Neagh Writers. David performs his own and others poetry at local readings and open-mic nights. His main influences are great northern voices Philip Larkin, Simon Armitage,  and Tony Harrison and the great poet and performer Adrian Mitchell.

 Unfathomable Plot

Waking at 4am I feel as though

I just stumbled into my own head

and found it full of people.

Some I know and many I don't,

in pairs, alone, all struggling

to  make sense of some 

unfathomable plot.

When I appear they fall silent 

and shuffle uncomfortable 

back into the darkness.

Leaving me alone in an empty hall

screaming at shadows.

The new Postmen

"Postmen like doctors go from house to house ..."

Aubade - Philip Larkin

Larkin's phones still crouch in offices

but they are old and toothless now.

E-mail slithers along back alleys

or slips under doors to lie heavy 

on beds, whispering and waiting 

for morning.

The new Postmen are like priests 

standing at the foot of every bed

watching for the flickering of an eye. 



Glen Wilson lives in　Portadown, Co Armagh with his wife Rhonda and daughter Sian. He works as a Civil Servant in Belfast in Statistics and Research. Glen was　part of the Millennium Court Arts Centre Writing group in Portadown for 5 years and is Worship Leader at St Marks Church.
His work has been　published in Black Mountain review, Purple Patch, Iota and The Interpreters House.　In 2007 He　was short listed for the Strokestown Poetry Festival’s Satire Prize. His influences include Jesus Christ, Leonard Cohen, Seamus Heaney, Pablo Neruda and Kurt Vonnegut.  

Precipice

I stand on an outcrop,

the vain labour of barren ideas

vented upon a sculptor’s block.

I cannot chisel for I cannot see

the visage in my mind, the face

of my quarry is yet to reveal itself.

I must chip at the epiphany that sits

on my shoulder, till I can turn around,

catch it in a stare, then soar on the words,

catch the vents rising from the earth

to the heavens. I retrieve a meteor fragment

from close to the sun, palming it carefully

in my hands, till I land and hold it aloft

as a jewel, I climb back up to my precipice

and wait to catch the next zephyr.

  

Jonathan Cordner is a well traveled practicing artist and musician form county Armagh. Although now working as an Arts Education Officer in his home town of Portadown he still finds time for writing. He started writing songs and poems as a youngster trying to follow the foot steps of his ‘fabulous and famous’ singer/songwriting father Rodney Cordner. Johnny is a published poet and a recording artist and can often be heard up and down the country singing his songs at various music venues.

DETUNED

I detuned my radio to 160am

It hissed a deep rolling hiss

Like an ocean of memories

It roles violently

Turning over the stones

Clicking and cracking

Like insects in the night.

It was analogue 

Ever changing white noise

The beginning of everything

An on going song of sorrow

It reminds me of my past

Adrift in the dunes of Déjà vu

Like whispering ghosts

Singing me to sleep.

Suffer the light

They said I must suffer 

The silent sorrow

It seeps through the cracks

I am innocent I cried

Both the liar and lied to

I was the fool

Innocence dies at birth

And if cracks can grow

What feeds them?

It is the madness 

That glorifies in pain

That suffers for joy

There must be a moment

Where the damage begins

Also a time before

Is suffering a one-way street?

  

And what of the light 

At the end of the tunnel

No lesson can be unlearned

But I see cracks in the tunnel

“There are cracks. 

There are cracks in everything. 

That’s now the light get in”

As you know in 2005 I took a stroke, I have spent the last six years trying to form a life for myself where I can regain bits of my old self.  I am confined to this wheelchair paralysed down my right side, the stroke attacked my balance so I’ll never walk, my vocal chords  were damaged so I’ll never talk right.  I cant teach creative writing classes, I have tried everything and I cant find a way of taking a class.  The only way is to inspire people,  my home seems to be the only place in the world where life is at least a little comfortable this venture depends on the manuscripts of writing.   Anybody from any genre can send me writing, even before my stroke I had the vision of creating an anthology I still have that vision and that passion for writing.  I’m lucky in a sense that my stroke wasn’t a severe head injury that didn’t reach my brain ha ha I think.   Writers I think need a little madness, any age group can send me writing and any form of writing as this is not a poetry or prose workshop it’s a writing of the moment workshop and its up to you if this workshop works.

i believe that we have to give the world something to get something and we as writers have to share our souls with humanity and stop thinking of commercialism, the only way to feel free in this capitalist world is to stop sapping the earth of nature and give the world something free.   being confined to a wheelchair unable to talk and paralysed down my right side there isnt much i can do but set this cafe up and inspire people away from this capitalist  money monster thats eating our souls  all i ask is for you to bare your souls, and send me not writings of sublime agonies but writings of hope. 

NOTHING WILL BE PUBLISHED IN A NEWSLETTER WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION.

A Passing Thought

Hmmm, a passing thought
floating on a labyrinthine nouveau
sucks the bitter sweet nectar
of Yggdrasil
while pinealocytes dance
between her branches
and release a eurphoric veil
to lull the right-winged moth
of compartmentalized thinking.

Gréagóir 

Alistair Graham 

studied at Shaftsbury House College and is working in sales and account management.

He lives in Belfast with his wife Lucille and their two sons Samuel, age 25 and Dary, age 21.

His first book, War and Want, was published in 2011 and his second collection, Streets of Belfast, was published in 2012 both by Lapwing Publications.

                                  History Lesson

I

Under a parasol

three days before

my fortieth birthday

It was 12pm and the sun

was hot as hell, and the blood

in my veins a crazy jus

II

Thirty years earlier                                  

in a young age in grandma’s

A piss-pot, the po

an ornate vessel, stowed

under brass-iron bed

and eiderdown

and bare hands

on tiny handles to steady

waves of waste to outside

loo.  Flush away

down the pan to sinew

of sewers under streets

III

Under a parasol

three days before

my fortieth birthday

I was alone, maybe lonely

and heard birds gossiping

in the raw heat

IV

And now

in this time and place

Splint in my hand, smile

on my face,

coffee cup drained

reading ANON, the 15^th page

And I can prove this

time and place

my fragment, stilled

The potato eaters

POTATOES

I can smell the sweet potato peal

Upon my skin and I visualise walking

amongst the summer rows…

I pick over the box of earthy potatoes

And when I pull one that is perfect;

I turn it in my hand like a gold nugget...

Lying buried in my memory…a charm.

I peel back happiness from the soil,

Memories drop into a watery bowl;

The day we planted them – sowing…

Love which had lain on the edges…

Uncertain, I had nearly thrown you out -

With the un-seeded tubers; to decay in hedges,

Instead I wrapped them and stored them -

In a cold shed - for spring planting…

I can already see your face shining pride

At flowering drills; you stand with a wide-stance;

The posture of the accomplished soul - your eyes,

Stare lovingly at each planted offering.

Helen Harrison

BORN OF WATER


I live and breathe the Waters of Life,
I know no other World, as I cradle in
The liquid nest of my Mother’s Womb.
Then sudden and abruptly my World is

Swept from under me, my Ocean of comfort
Gone, I am Born, crying, into a strange World.
With tears in my eyes, remnants of my familiar
Place, I gaze into the eyes of Giants, making
Watery sounds with their voices, Primitive,
Though soothing to my ears, I feel their
Welcome, and I smile.

These two will teach me of this new place,

Though part of me, will always thirst,

To swim the old shore, to plunge into
The depths of my World once more.

       © by Gréagóir

Frida Ravenna Bowen

Frida is a poet singer/songwriter from Holland


  Break out

                                               A sunray gently strokes my hair

                                   Hungry for spring

In the last shivers of winter

The ill body

Like an empty cup

Still for a moment

To break out

Of the invisible shackles

Into sheer light

                                              





Aubade

What choice do we have between light and dark?
Do we cry away sadness or sing like a lark?
Awaiting dawn between day and night.

Life’s like a constant shadow that’s cast
If your having a ball or your flags at half-mast
What choice do we have between dark and light?

Even the blind feel an emotional tide
This is a Sanskrit that’s deep and wide
Awaiting dawn between day and night.

A bit of nature a twig and a dove
A symbol of love from below and above
What choice do we have between dark and light?

Look at the leaves the sea and the sky
Don’t get lost in the question why
Awaiting dawn between day and night?

There’s no positive and negative were in between poles
Swaying central on the ledge of our souls
Were dripping like resin or soiled like the bark

Awaiting dawn between light and dark.

THE POETS COMPASS

‘All beautiful and happiest things are dead’

                                                   Sean o’ Casey

True north is beauty

fixed and dead.

You empathise sin-

You, skin on bone.

                                            beauty

                                                  truth

You place a heart

within a heart.

South finds only

Your truth

The passing away

Of time.

East Is east

It brings the snow

And frosts upon

Your ground

West is there

In setting sun

The compass

Vibrates a hummmmmmm.

THOUGHT FOR A FOX

From a cul-de-sac – you make fresh paths

And use the residue of rubble to build new

Walls of words…from which your magpies

Perch; in readiness to sour the skies of chance…

The shadows still remain, but your poetic mind;

Tinged with a glimmer; reflects colour in streams

of light to caress your senses to ease prose upon

your brow; and reflect onto a pure page…

A poet of disability - whose vigour bred strength;

before your stroke; and now you strive to recapture

the essence from disabled feeling; bring words

of truth; sorrow and hope in a soaring energy;

Rising and falling like a sky-scraper…Adrian Fox.

                                                                        

From your wheel-chaired chariot of teachings;

Without reaching for honour… you absorb other

Poets words, and with honesty, say - that they pull

You from the blind brow to give you purpose in life...

Meaning; to comfort your shade, in nature’s glade

of dappled light. You told me once “This is your blues,

Be proud of your blues, and your down; it might

Build you up.” And “Life is jagged – like a wall.”

“The self is only good as an illustration.’ Kavanagh said, and -

you Adrian Fox; amongst natures grace where winds of change

have blown and Northern rivers are flowing; know - amongst

hope and grief; a terrible beauty has been born. 

‘You write the senses in front of you.’ Robert Creeley

 You guide others with non-judgemental words of influence.

And you speak the truth - not by half… sharp edged from life.

Better to know this… for talent to grow. And like a fox -

You find any residue in writing; sniff it out, and chase away…

You will say – “no place for words - just to fill in gaps.

Let’s read between the spaces”… religion’s not allowed; thank god!

Or capitalism or consumerism. The theory of poetry is your

theory of life.  Poetry is your wonder…your love.

It saved your life, along with Keats…Wallace Stevens

and Carver’s wisdom and Robert Lowell’s honesty and all

The best of Irish poets; who you keep by your side…they will

never die as you keep their memories undisturbed - their truth.

‘Throw away the lights, the definitions, And say what you think in the dark.’ Wallace Stevens.

                                                                                   Helen Harrison 2013

                                                          
                






Susan Farrell

CUTTINGS

‘I’m in here darlin-’’ the carer said

taking books from the fridge,

moving black plastic bags,sagged 

with eighty four years,weaving a well 

worn path through stacks of Good

Housekeeping magazines,

         
walls of empty jam jars, washed

       margarine tubs heaped neat in 

           readiness for cuttings from plants 

                that remember the famine. ‘-you can 

                      get through here now darlin’to your bed-

room and the bathroom.’

Miss Sally Maguire, zimmer-framed 

manoeuvring,smiles, thinks of driving,  

she’ll be back at work next week -

she imagines proudly.She’ll get rid of those-

‘carers’ who call her darlin’’who wreck her bag 

organised,placed, catalogued, filed, fond

memories, and cuttings:at least two epics 

and a new century.She’ll be back at work 

guiding the present round the past.

Helen Harrison

HALFWAY 

 Halfway down the hill, I stand

still soaking up mists of misery.

The sudden sight of a lone calf

and grassy smell unleashes

a Cavern of calm.

Through tear-glazed eyes, a valley

of feelings unfold, a stirring of the past –

a childhood; a place where chance

can dance on my conscious brow

mocking my lonely standing…

from where I view the world through

new breath and renewed heart;

the colour like a painting; of sky reflecting

in the jewelled eye of the calf; re-

united with its Mother; earth half-

 way up the hill.



Paul Maddern was born in Bermuda and now lives in Co. Down -- but is currently Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at Leeds University. "The Beachcomber's Report" (Tempar Poetry, 2010) was nominated for the Eithne Strong Award for best first collection.




Islanded




Why return to this avenue 

that opens to daylight on the beach, 
where I can pick mangoes and sink my feet—
the one, the other—into the blue of familiar 
then unfamiliar tidal pools?

Always from the horizon come 
polluted ranks of sails and liners and planes.
If defined by the loss of degrees in these sub-topics, 
still an invading force to rival great armadas,
still vicious in their capacity. 

To guard the shore I have sculpted a wall of heroes
from wet sand, but have also watched them 
spent by tides. I have tried kisses and more 
as charms to save them all, 
my indigenous Canutes and Calibans. 

Undaunted, I dispatch another man-o-war,
its varicose tendrils to slip back undetected
on the undercurrent and charge the ocean 
with the force of my convictions:
defend, if it can, this isolation.

I tear a ripe mango from its tree
and splash in blue pools. I have my answer
and there was no invasion. The day
tucks into history. Canvas after canvas 
sails close by, before the pockmarked moon. 

Tree Goddess

Limbs akin rejoicing the Heavenly Skies

Displaying her beauty, proud and strong

Her shapely form, carved with nurtured love

Rose upward in unashamed,naked bark

She stands rooted, in guard, home of Earth

Eternal in youth, giving in strength

Sensual forces beckon, as her beauty unfolds

Memories of a distant past held within

I gaze spellbound as she gently sway's

Bending her bough in the firece north wind

She reckons with the call of Nature's hell

As her life force errupts, as she enter's 

Penetrating my wilful soul.

Tina Rock 

                          GERRY BURNS

BREUEGEL

        Sky the colour of blue,

Scum-bled on paler ground

feeling down, deprived of snow,

I shoved my way through crowded streets

To view the Flemish Masters on display,

There I stood in awe before Herr Breuegel’s

Masterpiece:     ‘Massacre of the Innocents’

 

Transposed to Holland
And though, initially,

I took it for a simple,

Village scene with icicles

animals, and leafless trees a filigree

Against the pure white.

A closer look showed soldiers

At their gruesome work,

With wide-eyed mothers pleading

For their children’s lives;

But there will be no rescue
On this day of reckoning;

I felt my blood run cold,

And yet I could not turn

Away transfixed, transformed,

Forgotten that I had only  

stopped to look, because

I felt deprived of snow.

Impermanence

Ah, the Enigma of Time,
The Elixir of Youth,
Like a raging Fire,
Arises from your Heart,

While the Wisdom of Ages
Is but a distant sparkle
In your minds eye.
 
Dance between the Two
And let neither Embrace.


© by Gréagóir 

"Aine MacAodha is a writer and amateur photographer from Omagh, situated in 

County Tyrone; North of Ireland. Her essays, poems and photographic work have 

appeared in issues of Luciole Press and Pirene’s Fountain, her poetry has been 

published in online magazines including Argotist Online, Arabesque Review, 

Shamrock Haiku Journal, The Herald, Celtic Myth Podshow, Debris Magazine and 

recently in The Toronto Quarterly, Glasgow Review and the first two issues 

of soylesipoetrymagazine. which are also translated into turkish, also poems in a couple 

of issues of Thefirstcut and Outburst Magazine and two issues of A New Ulster
 She has two poetry collections published. ~

http://ainemacaodha.webs.com/index.htm

http://ainesireland.webs.com/

http://aine-macaodha.blogspot.co.uk/

THE GATHERING 2002

                                                                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                 

Slowly the house crammed to the hilt

like the poor crimbo turkey.

Each room occupied by family;

each room a generation of gaps.

                                                                                         
                   Inside the curtained windows

voices rise into the night

like an opera of opinions or perhaps

an anthology of wishes.

Missing; the ould pair. The eldest now

drape the fireside with songs of old

Ireland with a bit of Hogmany

thrown in for good measure.

The twenty-ish gather at the dressing

table, exchanging notes on Uni,

shots and the opposite sex; oblivious to

blethering of family at this time.

The teens storm each room; moan

about the crap music and low mobile signals;

create tension and take advantage

of the elders tipsy nature.

The 40’s sip wine and recall the days

when the undertones and Kenny Everett

were cool and how no one questioned

Morcambe and Wise sharing a bed.

Midnight brings all to the hearth, some

reluctant to link for old times sake.

First kisses of the New Year are meted out.

There’s an air of remembrance.

                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                      

By 12.30 slowly the house empties. The

trail of singing can be heard by the road.

The twenties and teens have gone. United

for now; they head for the nearest club.

The elders stalk the fireside, agreeing and not,

laughing and singing. The 40’s get cozy with

thoughts of the coming year, and more wine.

  

Tearful Warrior

Oh little Warrior
Whose heart is torn
Take time to grieve
Time to mourn.

Then raise your head

Your wars begun
The Worlds a battle
Not easily won.

But your Heart is strong

And your Spirit will soar
So let the World hear
Your battle roar.

Shout to the Heavens

 The Gods will awake

                The Skies will rumble
                       The Earth will quake.            So little Warrior

                                                                      Let your Spirit shine
                                                                           For all is not lost
                                                                                 All will be fine

                                    © by Gréagóir

Why are the words of one 
man who went the academic route to the path of poetry any better than the man who found the same essence of poetry along the path of life and yet the academic master says that ‘the theory of life is the theory of poetry’.

Raymond Carver says as much if not more than the masters of the word and yet his theories are not worthy to grace the critical essays of the greats, I suppose its going to take another fifty years for poetry to find its own level and pull its head out off its own high art ass.  I know now and the great anthologists know who start and finish great books with the essence of his  realism as worked as any Shakespearian sonnet.

Its time to move over boys and let the master in, words are not glossed with snobbery as the master himself said, ‘poetry is (and should be,) for the poet, a source of pleasure and satisfaction, not a source of honours’.  Raymond Carvers essays are towers of wisdom and are worthy to sit alongside any masters, there has to be a place where academia and life meet Carver and the life poets on one bank and the emperor of ice cream leading academia, where water comes together with other water, a magic spot by the river where honor flows in the current, imagine that current.

                                                 by Anon

TWIN TOWERS

I have just been sitting here

Pondering, do my pomes be-

Long in this able-bodied world?

All towers of words are dis-

Abled searching out meaning.

You give them the energy

To rise and fall on the page-

So their rise and fall is up to

Me and you, for me to feel

Your energy when you read

My sky-scraper of non-judge-

Mental words.

a fox

                                                                                                                                                 
apf1961@mail.com
           poems from the resident collections www.adrianfox.org

 

WHAT MORE CAN I SAY?

         'Loving them all the way back to the start

Loving everything that increases me’
                                        

R. Carver

Wallace Stevens said: ‘It is life
That we are trying to get at in poetry.’
Life is the reflection of literature
Its purpose is to make life complete.

The Duino elegies by Rilke
And the melancholy odes by Keats
Are two of the finest examples
Of pure poetry that whisper into-
The ear of today.

Its as if those poems were written yesterday
not one or two hundred years ago.
These are poems that pull you back
From the blind brow and give you pur-
Pose and meaning in life.

Both of these poets are as brave
And meaningful as any writer
Writing today. They are the negative-
Capability that pulled these men away

From darkness, away from horrific-
Reality and into the power of poetry.
Beyond the divinity of death, beyond
The exhausted culture (Christianity).

These men stood alone in their words
And their words take us through into
A source of pleasure and satisfaction
Into the theory of life.

 Adrian Fox

 Gréagóir Mac Giolla Fhinnein

Creags of Avon

The Creags of Avon
Always rang sweeter to me,
A storybook land from a distant past,
and the momentary ponderings
Of an escapist Spirit.
For the name Craigavon
was stigmatic,
To blow ins, scumbags, gypsies,
All the derogative scorn.

 

They called it the roundabout city,
A labyrinth of square bricks and mortar,
The concrete jungle.
But we are a people,
A community,
And we have come a long way
Down that mislabeled road,
No longer just a forest of concrete,
For we have a Beautiful Nature around us.

 

We watched it birth as a manmade lake,
Which looked pretty bleak in it infancy.
But over the years Mother Nature
Has Loved it unconditionally,
Nurtured it and dressed it In Her Velvet Green,
Whispering, “Wake Up, it is Spring”.
Then adorning Her child with creatures
Of Shadow, Wisdom and Story.
And all Summers Night til the early Dawn,
Her Nature comes alive with the
Sweetest symphony of music,
From the Deepest Undergrowth,
To the Canopy above.

 

Her mood changes with the Autumn months,
Her thoughts pour down upon the Wood,
And a metamorphosis of Beautiful Colour
Imbues Her Infinate Nature,
The unveiling of the Artists Canvas.
A new wonder springs forth
From the Woodland floor,

 

An explosion of Inocybe, Agaricus, Amanita and Clitocybe.
And the Fae dance in Mycopia this Night.
Then soon the Colours fade,
And the Mothers breath, blows cold,
the Woodland stripped bare,
And exposed to Her Winter Elementals.
But Her Breath is Immaculate,
And all is wrapped in a Pure white blanket,
Our Wood shimmers in Crystalline bloom.
And there She will sleep in a porcelain veil
Til the Snowdrops appear, and the Mother whispers,
“Wake up, Spring is here”.

 

Ah!, The Creags of Avon,
Sure it always rang sweeter to me.

  Mum and Spudz
 
How are you managing for heating oil?
Do you know Mrs Mullen died?
I hope you like onions with your stuffing?
You said in your text that you're on nights next...

Heaped on offerings of food,
Hot pans make mood for flavour,
Television loud repeated soaps,
Water hissing on stove. Potato
peelings blocking sink - no time to think;

Can i help? I question her red face,
No it's alright - clean the windows instead -
but listen; wait until after you're fed.

                                   Helen Harrison 2012
 

Adrian Fox was born in Kent, England in March 1961. His family moved to Belfast in 1967 when he was 6 years old. He spent most of his youth in the riot torn streets of Ardoyne in North Belfast.

Adrian studied under the great poet Jimmy Simmons. Many of his poems have been translated into Hungarian, Philippino and Indonesian and his poetry has also appeared in Libyan newspapers. During the late 1990's and early 2000's He read in Hungarian universities as part of the program for peace.

He has an M.A. in Creative Writing and his work has been published by Poetry Ireland, Cyphers, Honest Ulsterman, Black Mountain Review, Poetry Guild, Poetry Society and Coffee House.

A selection of his work appeared in the anthology Breaking the Skin (Black Mountain Press, 2002), and also, Hide Dada, Hide (Lapwing Press 1999)

As a tribute to all those who died during the troubles in Northern Ireland, Adrian and the folk singer Rodney Cordner created the CD Violets based on the Lost Lives book, where every person who died during the latest troubles of Northern Ireland are listed.

CONTROL

The highchair became my wheelchair,

Before I knew language I knew control

And this is a translation of that:  I knew

My father was calling me a waste of space.

My Mother was and is my only true friend.

They tried to control me in a regimental way

But I was wise to their schooling way, they

Tried to control me in bullets and bombs but

I took the path of life.  The Bat (headmaster)

Held me under twenty four slaps, I cried

And broke twenty four windows in his school.

I got expelled and ran through Kavanagh’s play-

Ground, just a mile from ‘Mucker’ in hack-balls-cross

I ran through his fields in freedom winds, I un-done

My group cert and failed on the streets of London.

My marriage was a farce but I loved her I knelt

There un-blessing my pew. My children being

Born were my un-controlled things, their blood un-

Bloods my soil, evolution is my only snare I’m locked

Into life, my highchair has become my wheel-

Chair and im locked into this locked in syndrome.

 



Martelle mc Partland


BIO

Narrow Water

It was late on an August night

when I, the elected driver

drove home from a club.

The  craic stopped when

 I saw an army roadblock.

In my head I rehearsed,

who I was,

where I was coming from

and where I was going.

Not wanting a slip of a tongue

to condemn me for a search.

I fumbled for my licence

slowed to the circular light

rolled down the window

waited for the question,

'Identification?'

No question asked

no soldier outside.

Just a lonely road

on a late August night.

Rathmullan Abbey

For Maria Mc Sweeney

If I called out would you be there

a shadow against the stones.

a breath against my face?

You, who built this abbey

to keep your only son

safe in a sacred space.

Is that music in the ravens call?

Is that a white robe

or reflected light I see?

Are you still here

fasting and in prayer

beside the broken grave

where your son rests?

In the last of a December day

I came to shelter from the hail

and remembered the talk

of a lady haunting this empty place

while around me shadows grow. 

 

 

Annie McLaughlin now living in and loving Armagh City, is originally from London where she grew up in the seventies. After a bit of world travel and work abroad she chose an Irishman and eventually moved to Ireland. She teaches and helps out in the house a little as she has five children.

She was a member of John McAllister’s Armagh Writing Group and is going to focus on sending more work into magazines. She is delighted to be able to share on Adrian’s Blog and invites comments and feedback from other poets.

Correnary

On the hills above home, beyond 
there is only the mountain,
The mud clings to the soles of his shoes
bonding him as he takes that last 
obligatory walk on the land.

Tramping the fields, the voices
murmuring-murmuring in his steps,
Bringing him back to his Father’s grave.
He overlooks the town below, memorizing it.
He is tied to this sod.

He watches as the cloud brings rain 
from the west as it always does,
Slowly, inevitably they push on
As he must, back across the water, 
tearing up angry roots,
for us, now.

 

Helen Harrison was born on the Wirral, Cheshire, just seven miles from Liverpool, in England, to Irish parents. Spending all her summers in The Emerald Isle inspired her to take up residency there as an adult. She still resides in Ireland. A love for the country means most of her holidays are spent travelling there, often alone, as she enjoys meeting new people and absorbing the culture.    An ability to see the larger picture of life and a gratitude to nature is the launching place for her poems.

     ‘The Brook’ by Tennyson is my favourite poem.

 

Rain

The cold miserable rain is spitting at me

it’s turning to hail and hitting me and I wish
my old bones were stronger. I remember racing
down this hill on sunnier days, the sky was always
bluer, smiling on me.

The rain is so cold on my face, turning it blue,

I try to recall – my past and a younger self but…

Now the rain won’t let up on me; leave me in peace,

To make my way home, to my fields;

Suddenly I can see through the rain; my rugged stone walls

Where hens jumped and wild flowers grew, the wall

The ones my husband built

Now cold wind whips at my head like sharp stones,

And I wonder what took me - far from home.

My memory has long since weakened, and confusion set in,

It’s not the first time I’ve tended to roam.

My shoes hit a stone, and I stumble, clawing at earth,

But I will myself to rise; to make my way ahead.

Tears mingling with rain, a hare bounds lightly

a moor-hen screeches, suddenly I smell

my childhood in the rain.

                                                                        

 

We all approach writing differently but we all end up at the same point a full stop.  The poetry co-op
was set up to celebrate that same difference so dont be afraid to send me poems in any shape or style, this is not a poetry or prose blog its just a blog writing comes in all forms.

WHERE ARE ALL THE N.I. WRITERS?

Since taking my stroke i have struggled to regain the voice i had before and the natural rhythm of poetry
trying to form a poetry cafe and a writers group at the hub and online.   now i have tried to form a poetry co- op trying to form a non judgemental community where writing can be free of snobbery and poetry politics.
i realise that i inhabit a different world than most of you and there isnt much truth in this locked in syndrome.
I have to accept that ill never regain that natural rhythm.  capitalism has taken over the fun-de-mentals of life for me but the great poets and artists still sting me and stab me from beyond the grave men like Rilke Neitzsche and Keats will always stab me in my dreams so in this locked in syndrome ill always be kept alive  and and they'll always feed my blind brow.  We have got to make poetry and writing more accessible,  to sit where im sitting in a wheelchair paralysed, a poet without a voice, without poetry and art i wouldnt be sitting here so i know the true power of words they saved my life.
I started the poetry co-op to show the world that Northern Ireland was living in hope,  whats wrong with all you prima donnas its only poetry and words they wont win the lottery but share and it might save your life one day.

1. THANKS TO ALL ON THE BLOG

David Braziel

David was born in England and grew up in the Midlands market town of Stafford before moving to Portadown in 1993.

In 2005 David was a finalist in the BBC "End of Story" competition and around the same time joined the creative writing group at Millennium Court under Adrian Fox and began to write poetry. A former board member of the Creative Writers Network and now a member and co-facilitator of the Lough Neagh Writers. David performs his own and others poetry at local readings and open-mic nights. His main influences are great northern voices Philip Larkin, Simon Armitage,  and Tony Harrison and the great poet and performer Adrian Mitchell.

 Unfathomable Plot

Waking at 4am I feel as though

I just stumbled into my own head

and found it full of people.

Some I know and many I don't,

in pairs, alone, all struggling

to  make sense of some 

unfathomable plot.

When I appear they fall silent 

and shuffle uncomfortable 

back into the darkness.

Leaving me alone in an empty hall

screaming at shadows.

The new Postmen

"Postmen like doctors go from house to house ..."

Aubade - Philip Larkin

Larkin's phones still crouch in offices

but they are old and toothless now.

E-mail slithers along back alleys

or slips under doors to lie heavy 

on beds, whispering and waiting 

for morning.

The new Postmen are like priests 

standing at the foot of every bed

watching for the flickering of an eye. 



Glen Wilson lives in　Portadown, Co Armagh with his wife Rhonda and daughter Sian. He works as a Civil Servant in Belfast in Statistics and Research. Glen was　part of the Millennium Court Arts Centre Writing group in Portadown for 5 years and is Worship Leader at St Marks Church.
His work has been　published in Black Mountain review, Purple Patch, Iota and The Interpreters House.　In 2007 He　was short listed for the Strokestown Poetry Festival’s Satire Prize. His influences include Jesus Christ, Leonard Cohen, Seamus Heaney, Pablo Neruda and Kurt Vonnegut.  

Precipice

I stand on an outcrop,

the vain labour of barren ideas

vented upon a sculptor’s block.

I cannot chisel for I cannot see

the visage in my mind, the face

of my quarry is yet to reveal itself.

I must chip at the epiphany that sits

on my shoulder, till I can turn around,

catch it in a stare, then soar on the words,

catch the vents rising from the earth

to the heavens. I retrieve a meteor fragment

from close to the sun, palming it carefully

in my hands, till I land and hold it aloft

as a jewel, I climb back up to my precipice

and wait to catch the next zephyr.

  

Jonathan Cordner is a well traveled practicing artist and musician form county Armagh. Although now working as an Arts Education Officer in his home town of Portadown he still finds time for writing. He started writing songs and poems as a youngster trying to follow the foot steps of his ‘fabulous and famous’ singer/songwriting father Rodney Cordner. Johnny is a published poet and a recording artist and can often be heard up and down the country singing his songs at various music venues.

DETUNED

I detuned my radio to 160am

It hissed a deep rolling hiss

Like an ocean of memories

It roles violently

Turning over the stones

Clicking and cracking

Like insects in the night.

It was analogue 

Ever changing white noise

The beginning of everything

An on going song of sorrow

It reminds me of my past

Adrift in the dunes of Déjà vu

Like whispering ghosts

Singing me to sleep.

Suffer the light

They said I must suffer 

The silent sorrow

It seeps through the cracks

I am innocent I cried

Both the liar and lied to

I was the fool

Innocence dies at birth

And if cracks can grow

What feeds them?

It is the madness 

That glorifies in pain

That suffers for joy

There must be a moment

Where the damage begins

Also a time before

Is suffering a one-way street?

  

And what of the light 

At the end of the tunnel

No lesson can be unlearned

But I see cracks in the tunnel

“There are cracks. 

There are cracks in everything. 

That’s now the light get in”

As you know in 2005 I took a stroke, I have spent the last six years trying to form a life for myself where I can regain bits of my old self.  I am confined to this wheelchair paralysed down my right side, the stroke attacked my balance so I’ll never walk, my vocal chords  were damaged so I’ll never talk right.  I cant teach creative writing classes, I have tried everything and I cant find a way of taking a class.  The only way is to inspire people from here,  my home seems to be the only place in the world where life is at least a little comfortable this venture depends on the manuscripts of writing.   

Anybody from any genre can send me writing, even before my stroke I had the vision of creating an anthology I still have that vision and that passion for writing.  I’m lucky in a sense that my stroke wasn’t a severe head injury that didn’t reach my brain ha ha I think.   Writers I think need a little madness, any age group can send me writing and any form of writing as this is not a poetry or prose workshop it’s a writing of the moment workshop and its up to you if this workshop works.

i believe that we have to give the world something to get something and we as writers have to share our souls with humanity and stop thinking of commercialism, the only way to feel free in this capitalist world is to stop sapping the earth of nature and give the world something free.   being confined to a wheelchair unable to talk and paralysed down my right side there isnt much i can do but set this cafe up and inspire people away from this capitalist  money monster thats eating our souls  all i ask is for you to bare your souls, and send me not writings of sublime agonies but writings of hope. 

NOTHING WILL BE PUBLISHED IN A NEWSLETTER WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION.