Rebecca O'Connor

Domestic Bliss

I place a jug of lavender on the table to mask the smell of mould from under the fridge

while you draw nails to hammer with your fist. Then I draw a hammer , and watch

as you try to lift it from the page. by day its Mr Men, Mad Men, by night,

your father and I wishing we could be so bold. you have no such wants, though sometimes I wonder

as you try to peer into Jack and Jills well or climb the tiny ladder of your toy farm to mend the roof of your miniature barn.

- Rebecca O'Connor

Rebecca OConnor edits The Moth Magazine and organises the Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize. She worked as a commissioning editor of literary fiction at Telegram Books in London before returning to Ireland with her family in 2008. She won a Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2004 and her chapbook Poems was published by the Wordsworth Trust, where she was a writer in residence in 2005. Her poetry has been published in, among other places, The Guardian, Poetry Review and The Spectator.

Kelly Creighton
World Put to Rights

The dream that burst riverbanks held you; blackstrap molasses, antidote for your poison.

Your plummets spraying wetness like a coin in a cascade woke no-one, not even us.

The church spire grew legs, scaled bricks, ran to your side, spotlighted. I put glass over that glow.

Quiet-huff of your refuge, flailing arms, spluttering snores. Ungainly crooning tunes

to the realms of purity; I found too sickly-sweet. You fought the humdrum, from your seat.

You would sleep outside, would sing, stand on ledges mollified. I wont sing, no matter what.

Float on, keep your whistles of booze-hounds. When I awaken I will join you, watch for me.

World Put to Rights is Kelly Creighton , all rights reserved.

Kelly Creighton

Kelly Creighton is a poet and writer with work currently and forthcoming in literary journals Ranfurly Review, A New Ulster, Electric Windmill Press, Inkspill Magazine, The Galway Review, Saudade Review, PEN Austrias Time to Say: No! e-book, Recours au Poeme and other numerous other publications. She has recently finished editing her historical fiction novel Yielding Fruit. Kelly is working on her second poetry collection.

Moya Cannon
Viola DAmore

Sometimes, love does die, but sometimes , a stream on porous rock, it slips down into the inner dark of a hill, joins with other hidden streams to travel blind as the white fish that live in it. It forsakes one underground streambed for the cave that runs under it. Unseen , it informs the hill and , like the hidden streams of the viola damore, makes the hill reverberate, so that people who wander there wonder why the hill sings, wonder why they find wells.

Viola D'Amore is Moya Cannon

Bio (source Wikipedia)

Moya Cannon was born in 1956 in Dunfanaghy, County Donegal. She studied History and Politics at University College Dublin, and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. She has taught in the Gaelscoil in Inchicore, in a school for adolescent travellers in Galway, and at the National University of Ireland in Galway. She served as editor of Poetry Ireland in 1995. Her work has appeared in a number of international anthologies and she has held writer-in-residence posts for Kerry County Council and Trent University Ontario (199495). Cannon became a member of Aosdna, the affiliation of creative artists in Ireland, in 2004. Her first book, Oar, (Salmon 1990, revised edition Gallery Press 2000) won the 1991 Brendan Behan Memorial Prize. It was followed by The Parchment Boat in 1997. Carrying the Songs: New and Selected Poems was published by Carcanet Press in 2007.

Dorothea Herbert
The Rights Of Woman, Or Fashions for the Year 93 - being the Era of Womens literally wearing the Breeches. - Health and Fraternity!

Whilst man is so busy asserting his Rights Shall Woman lie still without gaining new lights Our sex have been surely restraind enough By stiff prudish Dress and such old fahiond stuff Too long have been fetterd and tramelld I wot With Cumbersome Trains and the Strict petticoat Yet should a poor Wife dare her Tyrant to chide Oh she wears the Breeches they tauntingly cried But now were enlightend theyll find to their Shame Well have the reality not the bare Name No longer will Woman to Satire be Dupe For she is determind to figure Sans Jupe And once she is rouzed she will not be outdone Nor stop at this one Reformation alone For mark me proud Man shell not yield thee a Jot But soon will become een a true Sans-Culote And flourish away eer the Ending of Spring Sans Jupe, Sans Culote , in short sans any thing

 Ca va et caira Liberty and Equality for ever !

by Dorothea Herbert

from, Introspections, the Poetry and Private World of Dorothea Herbert by Frances Finnegan , Congrave Press 2011.

from Congrave Press

The lost poetry of the celebrated Irish writer Dorothea Herbert, whose Retrospections, first published in 1929-30 more than a century after her death, continues to captivate readers. By turns amusing and melancholic, the recently recovered poems - and particularly her astonishing mock-heroic epic The Buckiad - are an important contribution to late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Irish literature.

Paula Meehan
Seed

The first warm day of spring and I step out into the garden from the gloom of a house where hope had died to tally the storm damage, to seek what may have survived. And finding some forgotten lupins Id sown from seed last autumn holding in their fingers a raindrop each like a peace offering, or a promise, I am suddenly grateful and would offer a prayer if I believed in God. But not believing, I bless the power of seed, its casual, useful persistence, and bless the power of sun, its conspiracy with the underground, and thank my stars the winters ended.

Seed is Paula Meehan, all rights reserved.

Paula Meehan

Image from Imagine Ireland Paula Meehan has published five collections of poetry, the most recent being Painting Rain (Carcanet, 2009). A selected volume, entitled Mysteries of the Home, was published in 1996. Her writing for stage includes the plays Mrs Sweeney (1997), Cell (1999), and, for children, Kirkle (1995), The Voyage (1997) and The Wolf of Winter (2003/2004). Her poetry has been set to music by artists as diverse as the avant-garde composer John Wolf Brennan and the folksinger Christy Moore.

Eileen Sheehan
All About Climbing

After he slaughtered her he dumped her body in the market square

where merchants and citizens continued their trading

averting their eyes from the sight of her broken corpse; the limbs skewed at grotesque angles.

A fly alighted on her eyelid its blue-green body gleaming like a jewel.

A mouse nibbled flour from under a fingernail.

A goat strayed from its pen sniffed at her body lay down beside her.

Her house cat navigated the alleyways of the rural town till he found her.

A rat curled to sleep in her armpit.

Then the last slice of moon slid down from the sky, lodged in the small of her back.

From high in the hay loft an owl let out its long note across the dark

and that was the sound she heard as she woke; the sound that led her to walk to the foot of the mountain.

Now she carries the moon on her back and she climbs.

Her days are all about climbing; all about purpose;

committed to restore the moon to the sky: hang it aloft.

So she climbs in her blood-red shoes, her tattered garments:

there is no slipping back.

 Eileen Sheehan

from the collection Down the Sunlit Hall (Doghouse Books)

Eileen Sheehan

Eileen Sheehan Eileen Sheehan is from Killarney, Co Kerry. Her collections are Song of the Midnight Fox and Down the Sunlit Hall (Doghouse Books). Anthology publications include The Watchful Heart: A New Generation of Irish Poets (ed Joan McBreen/Salmon Poetry) and TEXT: A Transition Year English Reader (ed Niall MacMonagle/ Celtic Press). She has worked as Poet in Residence with Limerick Co Council Arts Office and is on the organizing committee for igse Michael Hartnett Literary & Arts Festival. Her third collection, The Narrow Place of Souls, is forthcoming.

Mary O' Donnell Hungary

came to me in stamps. Magyar Posta ice-skaters, delicate as Empire porcelain, a fish, an astronaut and rocket, a silvery boy on 1960s skis. I understood only difference. Now, flying home from Budapest, I touch the pages of my poems, freshly minted in translation. Now I really dont get them, but did I ever? The words will make me briefly native to a coffee-slugging morning reader on the Vaci Ut, who may not understand, even in his own tongue. The lines shimmer as night slips through the tilting crowded cabin. Again I press fingers to page, blind, as if by touch I could capture a fish, an astronaut, a rocket, or those elegant, ice-cutting skaters. Outside, clouds I cannot see busily translate country to country. Hungary is Mary O' Donnell

Mary O' Donnell Mary ODonnell is the author of eleven books, both poetry and fiction, and has also co-edited a book of translations from the Galician. Her titles include the best-selling literary novel The Light-Makers, Virgin and the Boy, and The Elysium Testament, as well as poetry such as The Place of Miracles, Unlegendary Heroes, and her most recent critically acclaimed sixth collection The Ark Builders (Arc Publications UK, 2009). She has been a teacher and has worked intermittently in journalism, especially theatre criticism. Her essays on contemporary literary issues are widely published. She also presented and scripted three series of poetry programmes for the national broadcaster RTE Radio, including a successful series on poetry in translation during 2005 and 2006 called Crossing the Lines. Today, she teaches creative writing in a part time capacity at NUI Maynooth, and has worked on the faculty of Carlow University Pittsburghs MFA programme in creative writing, as well as on the faculty of the University of Iowas summer writing programme at Trinity College Dublin.

Bloomsday 2012

Nuala N Chonchir
is a writer and poet, who has contributed poems and translations to the blog over sometime. I am linking here to her poetry collections page

La Pucelle

In the hush of my fathers house, before dusk rustles over the horizon, I take off the dress my mother made -its as ruby red as St Michaels cloakand with a stitch of linen, bind my breasts.

By the greasy light of a candle, I shear my hair to the style of a boy, in the looking glass I see my girlhood swallowed up in a tunic and pants, I lace them tightly to safeguard myself.

My soldiers call me Pucelle, maiden, they cleave the suit of armour to my body, and know when following my banner over ramparts into Orlans, that there will only ever be one like me.

When the pyre flames fly up my legs, I do not think of the Dauphin, or my trial as a heretical pretender, but see my mother, head bent low, sewing a red dress for her daughter to wear.

As Tat, le Nuala N Chonchuir, Arlen House, 2007. http://poethead.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/la-pucelle-by-ni-chonchuir/

Eithne Strong "(ne Eithne O'Connell) (1923-1999), poet and writer of fiction. Born in Glensharrold, Co. Limerick, she was educated at TCD. She worked in the Civil Service, 1942-3. Her first collection, Songs of Living (1961), was followed by Sarah in Passing (1974), Flesh-the Greatest Sin (1980), Cirt Oibre (1980), Fuil agus Falla (1983), My Darling Neighbour (1985), Aoife Faoi Ghlas (1990), An Sagart Pinc (1990), Spatial Nosing (1993) and Nobel (1999). The Love Riddle (1993) was a novel." from http://www.answers.com/topic/eithne-strong#ixzz1xr4mc0lx

Strip-Tease.

A poet must talk in riddles if he will not risk himself

for fear of public eye and tongue blaspheming privacies :

a host of leeches sucking parallels carnivores to strip his shivering secrecies

wrapped intricately. he should be silent or speak out.

No one asked for his arbitrary offerings.

from Sarah in Passing , by Eithne Strong. Dolmen Books 1974. http://poethead.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/strip-tease-by-eithne-strong/

Sarah Clancy

Phrase Books Never Equip you for the Answers

On the morning of the fifteenth time we went through our sleep-with-your-ex routine, I had the usual optimism thing about mistakes is to not keep repeating the same ones I said disregarding the government health warning on the cigarettes I was sucking, crossing the road without stopping speaking or looking, ignoring the red man pulsing on the lights at the junction, I was wired direct and I said; I know, Ill write you the definitive user manual for me. You said I was arrogant that we should make it up as we go, and I said; well could I do a mind map then? With here be dragons marked clearly in red, so we wont flounder like last time end up washed up dehydrated and drained well I was, fairly wired, I said in each shipwreck were lessened embittered, come on, let me at least try to fix it, I can write us

a blueprint for the new improved version, and you laughed and said well damn you for a head-wreck, go on then and do it.

So I wrote, but it came out all stilted, like a work in translation see when I say, let me fix that or give it here and Ill do it it means I need you, and if I tell you for example how Ill re-arrange the universe to your liking it doesnt mean Im superior in fact, translated its about the same as the last onecan you not see, how I need you? And when I come out with all those you-shoulds that drive you demented, theres no disrespect in em verbatim theyre whispering Id be desolated without you and when you call me control freak, the tendencies youre describing are inherently rooted in my fear of you leaving and how Ill react.

Less-wired more hopeful I brought you my phrase book on our very next meeting but you kissed my cheek and said let me stop you a minute and then those awful words that never signify good outcomes, listen Ive been thinking I know weve got this weird cyclical attraction thing going and Im sorry for my part in it but really I cant see it working, the problem for me is how you just dont need anything and my phrase book had nothing listed under that heading. Sarah Clancy

Thanks to Sarah Clancy for the poem, Phrase Books Never Equip you for the Answers , which is taken from Thanks for Nothing Hippies . Published Salmon Poetry 2012.

Kate Dempsey Kate Dempseys poetry is widely published in Ireland and the UK including Poetry Ireland Review,The Shop, Orbis and Magma. Kate blogs at Writing.ie and Emerging Writer . You can catch her on Twitter at PoetryDivas.

Its What You Put Into It For Grace

On the last day of term you brought home a present, placed it under the tree, a light, chest-shaped mystery wrapped in potato stamped paper intricate with angels and stars.

Christmas morning you watched as we opened it, cautious not to tear the covering. Inside, a margarine tub, empty. Do you like it? eyes huge. Its beautiful. What is it, sweetheart? A box full of love, you said.

You should know, O my darling girl, its on the dresser still and from time to time, we open it.

Kate Dempsey, all rights reserved.

Celia De Frine Celia de Frine is a poet, playwright and screenwriter who writes in Irish and English, her site is at http://celiadefreine.com/

An Bhean Chaointe

Taim ag caoineadh anois chomh fada agus is chumhin liom ce gur dcha go raibh me g trathseans fi amhin gp mbinn ag sgradh. Ni cuimhin liom an t-am sin n an ghruaim a chinn an ghairm seo dom.

Ni cuimhin liom ach oiread inne den dream at caointe agamn dhearna m taighde ar a saol n nior ligh m cur sos orthu i gcoln na marbh.

Ach is maith is eol dom gach uair a sheas m taobh le huaigh bhealschoilte, gur chomir me gach saol go huile is go hiomln, gur laoidh m achta

na nua-mharbh is gur eachtaigh m lorg a sinsear. Tigm anois go bhfuil na caointe seo tar is dul in bhfedhim orm.

D mbeadh jab eile agam ba bhre liom bheith im scealasui le hais na tine is scalta a insint. Distfe liom- tharraingeodh dEddifon asam iad n-alpadh sa treo is go slanofa m.

Faoi Chabist is Ronacha, Published by Clo Iar-Chonnachta, indreabhn, 2001.