Letting go of the old

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:

'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'

Minnie Louise Haskins (1876 -1957)

Poem as Haw Chutney

Twenty-one years ago, on the shortest day of the year, our house arrived on a lorry from somewhere in Sweden. By that evening there was a roof on and lights in all the windows. We had moved from Dublin and while we were planning the house I lived with the children in a tiny mobile on my sister and her husband’s land in Moycullen, Co Galway. 

My beloved commuted from the big smoke to our little home at the weekend. Our biggest treat was to go to Drimcong to feast on the beautiful food cooked by Gerry Galvin, a fantastic chef and a fine writer to boot. One of his cookbooks had a recipe for Haw Chutney, which took so long to make that it put me in mind of the similar effort involved in the crafting of a poem.

The poem was recently published in Crannóg #40 which is a most handsome journal. I was thrilled to see that Eamonn Lynskey has just given it a very positive review on his blog.

Many times when I read a poem by Geraldine Mills I feel like throwing in the thesaurus as a poet myself because she is so good. ‘Poem as Haw Chutney’ (p.26) is a marvellous creation:

‘Dump all you’ve plucked into the pot of possibility / with tart of vinegar, the wages of salt / raisins dried down to size.’

I’m not saying one could produce a poem using her recipe but the comparison of the skills of preservative-making and poetry making is strangely apposite. The last stanza is particularly applicable to both ‘disciplines’:

‘… and pour into a clean jar of page/ before hiding it in the dark larder of promise, / to mellow, settle, become its own name.’

http://eamonnlynskey.com/2015/12/17/publication-in-crannog-no-40-autumn-2015-isbn-978-1-907017-40-7/

Here is the complete poem. Thank you Eamonn.

Poem as Haw Chutney

i.m. Gerry Galvin

First, scour the hedges for word fruit,

vessels crammed to overspill

with scarlet letters, blazing vowels.

Dump all you’ve plucked into the pot of possibility

with tart of vinegar, the wages of salt,

raisins dried down to size.

Add spices that blood was spilt for:

clove, ginger, nutmeg

and simmer in liquids, mutes,

until the kitchen steams

with hissing fricatives

and each thing loses all semblance of itself.

Press the boiling mess through the waiting sieve,

the pulp that’s left behind − metaphor, enjamb

ment − is only fit for compost worms.

Bitter-sweeten the paltry trickle

that finds its way

through the pinhole of mesh

and pour into a clean jar of page

before hiding it in the dark larder of promise,

to mellow, settle, become its own name.

In the Space Between by Gerry Boland

Congratulations to Gerry Boland on the recent launch of his poetry collection,  In the Space Between published by Arlen House.  

The following poem is taken from it.   

magician

like a magician he kept his cards up his sleeve

and like an illusionist he was unreadable

he lived in an exercise yard of the mind

bending occasionally to pick up a shard

of ancient pleasure, hold it up to the light

no one who knew him claimed to know him

beyond that smile he would let hang in the air

like a 19^th century levitator practicing his craft

before an awe-struck audience, only to deflate

their wonder in a neatly choreographed collapse

at such times

– his mischievous smile wrong-footing us –

we would be complete again

the rabbit back in the hat

once when we were abandoned for a year

the air that he left behind all but suffocated us –

his absence more poisonous than his presence

we breathed him in

spent poets walking towards the cliff face

we didn’t know it then but he was the black cards

in the deck, who shuffled our small lives

as we played fearlessly aboard the wreck

Des Kenny reads my poem Snail Pals on Galway Bay FM

Des Kenny did a wonderful reading of my poem 'Snail Pals' on the Keith Finnegan Show last Friday, 4 December at 11:00am. This poem is included in that exceptional book Once Upon a Place children's anthology recently published by Little Island, edited by Eoin Colfer and illustrated by P.J. Lynch. Thrilled to be part of it. A perfect gift for the children in all of us.

                                                 

 You can hear him read it about 57 minutes into the programme at:
 
http://galwaybayfm.ie/the-keith-finnegan-show-friday-4th-december/

Launch of Circle and Square by Eileen Casey

All sorts of reasons prevented me from attending the launch of Circle and Square in the Shopping  Centre, Tallaght recently so I want to take this opportunity to welcome another fine book into the literary world. Edited by, and the brainchild of, the indefatigable, Eileen Casey, it is an anthology of poetry and fiction to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Square Shopping Centre. Having lived in South County Dublin when there was only the village shop, the arrival of the Pyramid changed all lives. It is fitting therefore, to have such a  collection of vibrant voices to paint its many faces through the looking glass of  new and established writers, with contributions from Platform One Writing Group and guests. The Tallaght Photographic Society brings the whole book together with its interpretations of the work. I am delighted to be part of such great company. Thank you Eileen. 

 Here is the opening to my story:

Coming Down the Line

I’ve always loved the driving. Diesel in my blood from the time I could toddle out to the gate as my father drove the truck home from the quarry. He’d stop, hoist me up onto his lap, big calloused hands guiding mine on the steering wheel as we moseyed into the yard. No surprise, then, says you, that I’d end up with a job like this, seeing the tops of nine houses in my little bus driving around the back roads.

            Checking my rear-view I head towards Kate Gunnings’ spot. Before her diagnosis, Kate was the sort of woman who’d use a dead man’s hand to skim cream off the milk, but that’s not her now. She’s there at her allotted place, between the crossroads and the back-side of the cemetery doing her best to be invisible while her husband makes a big farrago of fussing around her. He leans into the road, sticks his hand out like a scarecrow for fear I mightn’t stop, for fear I’d drive on by and she wouldn’t get to where she’s supposed to get to, before the morning has gone up its own arse.

I pull in close beside them on the grass virgin. The door ‘gillie-gillies’ open and the scent of rain creeps in on top of me.

With her scarf tied under her chin, the scarf with horses and hounds jumping all over her head, there’s a gimp on her because Jim’s helping her up the steps. She pushes his worried hand away, hauls herself along the aisle to her seat with nothing more than a nod to me, the world in her little bag of toiletries. She always sits at the other side of the bus, away from her husband, so he can’t decipher the lines on her grey face or, more importantly, she doesn’t have to read the pain on his.

            I indicate out onto the main road. The trees sway back and forth in the breeze and up through them the blue shirt of sky has sleeves of clouds ballooning out, little dark buttons of birds fastening it down the front.

The bus trundles along at its ease until it gets to Breege’s house. She’s not waiting outside like she usually is, so it’s handbrake on, I jump down and ‘cnagg, cnagg’ at her door. The statue of our lady is sitting on the windowsill with her back to us, her mantle of blue hiding her from the grey faces in the bus. Even she doesn’t have the stomach to look at the world anymore and watch the crosses that people have to bear. She’s seen it once; she doesn’t want to see it again.