Crannog 42

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.