The summer issue of Crannóg has just been published and another fine publication it is too. As always there is a very strong selection of poetry and prose from Irish and international writers, including Jean Tuomey, Lisa C.Taylor and Enda Coyle-Greene. The wonderful cover image by Dolores Lyne carries its own story as it features the home of self-taught marine biologist Maude Delap who was the first to succeed in breeding jellyfish in her home-made laboratory on Valentia Island in the 1890s. Submissions for the autumn issue will be accepted throughout the month of July. For more information, see www.crannog.com
Here is one of my favourites by Enda Coyle-Greene. Her most recent poetry collection was Map of the Last (Dedalus, 2013)
Indigo, Electric, Baby
The
station slips through
static,
but I know
he’s blue,
that fear gorm
on the
radio;
I know to
get it wrong
in the
Irish tongue
conflates
an alias
the Devil
might have
sweltered
under back in days
before
religion gripped.
He’s
playing music
named with
a curious plural
and though
I’m thirteen,
fourteen
maybe, tuned
to
cerulean, cyan,
cobalt,
navy, manganese,
indigo,
electric, baby –
colours I
could touch
with a
brush
slurred by
water,
or feed to
a needle
through
its always-open eye –
I know
blue can be black
as the
dust-cut deal
he sealed
by dying
daylight
in his song.
I know
blue is a mood
no one
chooses,
how it’s
composed
of bass rise,
treble fall,
I know too
that what
you call the shade
won’t
matter,
it will
always call.
