The Southern Review articles from June 1995

The Southern Review archives from June 1995

The hag of beare. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... The sea crawls from the shore Leaving there The despicable weed, A corpse's hair. In me, The desolate withdrawing sea. The Hag of Beare am I Who once was beautiful. Now all I know is how to die. I'll do it well. Look at my skin Stretched...

The destruction of poetic habitat.(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... In a glen in County Wicklow, a fold in the hills between the great valleys of Glendalough and Glenmalure, there is a spring well, the source of the Derrybawn Brook. Once upon a time, I felt that this was my own personal "Sidhe of Nechtain." I...

Border sick-call. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... for Seamus Montague, M.D., my brother, in memory of a journey in winter along the Fermanagh-Donegal border Looks like, I'm breaking the ice! - Fats Waller Weary, God! of starfall and snowfall, weary of north winter, and weary of myself...

Writing in modern Irish - a benign anachronism?(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... When I am asked, as happens occasionally, why I write in Irish, I fall back on the old chestnut about climbing Everest: "because it is there." It is of course not an answer, merely a stratagem to avoid answering. The phenomenon of a vigorous...

Daphne agus Apollo. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Nuair a ling an dia id ghaobhar ag breith barroige ort; e chomh hiogair le cu ag toraiocht ghiorria ar ghort maol, do theithis ar dtuis, ansan do chas ar do shal is chuiris do chos sios. B'in a dhein crann diot. Do phreamhaigh do bhonn go dluth...

Daphne and Apollo. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... When the arch-poet made a play for you, like a bloodhound nosing a hareless scent, your race from him froze in a skater's pirouette, a music-box arabesque, a twig that bent. The veins of your foot spread out into the clay, a lacy skin coated...

Na Murucha ag Ni a gCeann. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... O thugadar cul na laimhe glan don uisce ni feidir leo iad fein a fholcadh. Glanann siad na haraisti le meascan fuail is luaithe is pinch beag gainimhe trid is caithfear a admhail tar eis a bhfaigheann siad da ndua gur gleineach a bhionn siad....

The marianne faithful hairdo. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Having washed their hands of water forever, they can no longer even have a shower. They scour the household vessels with a Fairy Liquid puree of ash and urine, plus a grain of sand thrown in, and use so much elbow-grease, you'd have to give it...

An mhuruch san ospideal. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Dhuisigh si agus ni raibh a heireaball eisc ann nios mo ach istigh sa leaba lei bhi an da rud fada fuar seo. Ba dhoigh leat gur gaid mhara iad no slaimici feola. "Mar mhagadh ata siad ni folair, Oiche na Coda Moire. Ta leath an fhoirinn as a...

The mermaid in the labour ward. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Something stirred in her: not the swishing meteor of her fin, but in the pit of the bed, a body-long split of ice, languid as dulse tentacles, flaccid as fishbait. "Lord Bless Us, isn't this a hoot - some kind of Night of the Long Knives -...

Na Murucha agus an litriocht. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Ce go bhfuil leamh agus scriobh a dteanga fein acu o thangadar i dtir is go raibh si a foghlaim ag an aos og go dti gur dunadh scoil an oileain sios ag an Roinn um Oileain Nuathriomaithe thiar ins na caogadai (baol o mhaidhm no sciorradh carraige...

The merfolk and the written word. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Although they were literate in their own fish-tongue from the day and hour they landed, and composition was taught to their offspring until the Island School was closed down by the Department of Dried-Out Islands back in the '50s (so the story...

Foliage ceiling rose. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... This shallow brook breaks death into two. The divine perfume of the purest of the dead buys this freedom. My headless convict-doll has the mouth of someone spoiled, whose glance stumbled against, not grazed, mine. There is a distance in...

Ros sileala duilleogach. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Deineann an seithlean eadoimhin seo dha leath den mbas. Is e mus cumhra phlur na marbh a cheanaionn an tsaoirse seo. Ta mo pheata baboige gan ceann daor ar an saol seo. Ba dhoigh leat ar a bheal go raibh pus agus breidhill air, gur tuisle a...

Operation market garden. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Soldier father, the death of your mother unites us. An underwater chain is stretched between us. You are squarely in the light, encased in a tarnished brass scabbard. More than once I kiss your military moustache, the lived-in house of you. My...

Feachtas gharrai an Mhargaidh. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... A shaighdiuir, a athair, nascann bas do mhathar le cheile sinn. Ta slabhra fomhuireach ag sineadh eadrainn. Ta'nn tu go ceartchearnach i lar an tsolais cumhdaithe i dtruaill mheirgeach prais. Pogaim do chroimeal mileata nios mo na uair amhain, an...

"How things begin to happen": notes on Eilean Ni Chuilleanain and Medbh McGuckian.(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Given the full range of what has been possible in verse in our century, Irish poetry is essentially conservative. It tends to avoid formal experiment, jealously hoards its clarities, its logic, its trove of paraphrasable content. Think, for...

Inhabited by a song. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... The song isn't mine, It just passes through me sometimes, Uncomprehended, untamed, Lightly dressed in my name; The way the gods in the old days Would pass among people Dressed in a cloud. I don't know when it will come, I don't know when it...

As if. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... As if the light itself Were a plant, as if the stars Sent down their thin rays Like capillary roots Into me, to extract Their mysterious nutrient. Astral blooms flock to the scalpel Like crows to the plough. The size of the field of light...

Maybe there's somebody dreaming me. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Maybe there's somebody dreaming me, And that's why my gestures have turned So slack and soft-edged, Their purpose forgotten halfway, My every move idiotic, Backsliding, and groggy. It explains these states of collapse When my profile keeps...

Loneliness. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Loneliness is a town Where everyone else is dead. The streets are clean, The street-markets empty, Suddenly everything's in a true light Through being deserted - exactly The way it was meant to be. Loneliness is a city Where it's always snowing...

Hunt. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... I never have been in pursuit of words. All I ever looked for Was traces of their passage Like the long, silver haul Of sunlight sweeping the grass Or moonblinds drawn on the sea. The shadows of words Are what I hunted - And hunting these is a...

Era's end. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... My grief on the men of the stories And the death that felled them! The shawled women following And I still alive, Anonymous amid the throng, Without "Who's he?" on their lips Or knowledge of my surname. Never again will I try To press...

Memory of Sunday. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... I see the Sunday sun beating Down on the face of the ground In the beloved island all afternoon; Much stone, little clay - That's the bleak island's testimony, The wretched inheritance of my people. I see how the stone has cast each man And...

My mother's burial. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... June sun in an orchard And a whispering in the afternoon's silk, A malicious bee's drone Scream-tearing the day's fabric. An old, soiled letter in my hand: With every word that I drank A venomous pain stung my breast, Each word bruising out its...

Mary Hogan's quatrains. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... I If I once got free of this net - And God grant that won't be too long - I could perhaps live on the memory Of the ease I found in your arms. When I learn again how to pray, Hear mass and go to communion, Who'll say then it's not right To...

The shannon estuary welcomes the fish. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... The salmon's leap In the darkness - Bare blade Silver shield; And me welcoming, net- Draped and slippery Full of seaweed Of quiet eddies Of eel-tails. All meat Is this fish Almost nothing of bone Less of entrail Twenty packed pounds Of tensed...

Shakespeare. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Shakespeare created the world in seven days. On the first day he made the sky, the mountains, the narrow defiles of the soul. On the second he made the rivers, the seas, the oceans, and sundry other emotions that he doled out to Hamlet, Julius...

Symmetry. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... There I was, out taking a stroll, when suddenly, ahead of me, two roads opened up - one to the right, the other to the left, in keeping with the rules of symmetry. I stood there, screwed up my eyes, pursed my lips, and, after clearing my...

Angle. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... The cranes flying by, with their rigid form, might be sonnets for peasants on their farm.

Writing the political poem in Ireland.(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... For a long time Irish poetry kept an almost nineteenth-century order. The discourse was not so much about ideas as between generations. The authority of the Irish poet proceeded fairly well by subtle negotiation and heirloom convention. Despite...

Last night's fun. (Irish song)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... We are in Ballyweird on the outskirts of Portrush, County Antrim, and it's the morning after the night before. Or rather, it is sometime after noon, and we've just staggered back from the local Spar, laden with the makings of a fry: bacon,...

Hag mothers and new horizons.(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Everyone familiar with contemporary Irish writing is aware that there was an explosion of women writers on the Irish poetry scene in the 1970s and '80s. Indeed, women poets, for so long invisible in Ireland, have now achieved such a presence that...

Burbles. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... (after Beckett) far end of void beyond what blind night watch eye spied head dimly swaying soothed it saying all in the mind each day a great desire one day to be alive though not without despair at being forced to live do not forget when...

Second class relics. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Pilgrimage to Lourdes from Ireland is not to be classed as foreign travel and therefore should not require a passport. - Tadhg Foley When John Tim Jack made his pilgrimage To Lourdes, he never got as far As filling the neighbours' bottles...

Passive smoking. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... The cows' repulsive body heat Kept the car warm through frosty nights, Making it easier to start For its spattering push up the passage. Even so, my father sat for minutes Every morning and stared out With the engine running And the carbon...

Entering the mare. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... She stamps and shivers, her white coat vainly shrugging as the would-be chieftain plunges in, burying deep his puny, acrid man's seed between her fragrant haunches. The Goddess lives in her fine rearing head, the pink stretch of her lips, the...

Grooming. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... for my mother Dreamy and docile you sit as I comb out the long ends of your hair. Like mine, it is thin and straight - a hairdresser's bad dream. I have played with your hair since I was scarcely tall enough to reach your reclining...

Moon street. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... It's a minute to, a minute past, but always the night of the sky, the waxing or waning or full moon here on Moon Street, where every key fits every lock, every heart is open or broken, and posters of missing household pets turn the railway...

Ghosts. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... It is we who are the ghosts. The ones we call ghosts are scared of us. After all, we bustle through their homes, with our ridiculous sense of urgency scream our obscene love and pain as if nothing before had ever been important, or we slump in...

Penance. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... And still they live in unforgiven places, on the sides of arthritic hills, where low walls hide the sea and the sea hides the dead, though the dead still whisper in their silent graves, "I'm cold, I'm cold." Enough bog here to stoke the fires...

The miracle. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... I am part of this land, the last of an old family whose father walked here over the sea, when men and women did such things and wondered. I was born by the drowning sea, and the sea's saving shore. As a child I was always running over water;...

The silken robe. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... I grow weary of mourning you, winding your hair around my hands, dressing and undressing, wide-awake or semi-conscious, my face touching your face, my arm resting on your thigh. Cover me with your silken robe, cool against my skin in the heat...

Fionnuala. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Imagine the bell's call in a town asleep beneath bleak mountains, a woman alone in a room, a vase with blossoms, scentless things. The dark sky shadows a space, the white page, rage of winter in the alders, and Lir's daughter, a swan in...

The riddle of the sands. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... 1 In their growing eleutheromania, the prisoners did not adopt a Daedal strategy, and ignored the cliche-ladder dangling from the helicopter. Their accomplices were extramural extras. The word was passed on by a kiss, Its characters...

Ciaran Carson's parturient partition: the "crack" in MacNeice's "More Than Glass."(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was Spawning snow and pink roses against it . . . There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses. - from "Snow," by Louis MacNeice I broke open the husk so many times And...

An interview with Michael Longley. (Irish poet)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)(Interview)
June 22, 1995... This interview first appeared in the County Mayo magazine Force Ten. DH: Whereabouts exactly do you live when you go to County Mayo, and how long have you been going there? ML: We stay in a remote cottage owned by a friend. You have to cross...

Love's equal realm.(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Is courtly love dead, or, rather, is it a form of speech no longer accessible to us? Either would be a pity, because the tradition goes back to the origins of Western civilisation, to the valley of the Dordogne, not far from Lascaux. As you drive...

Acts and monuments of an unelected nation: the Cailleach writes about the Renaissance.(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... I work in an institution founded by Queen Elizabeth I, though not much about its appearance now suggests that she and her colonial advisers, and not the cool philosophers and raging politicians of the eighteenth century, were the originators....

Chair. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... At the local museum of natural history they used to keep, halfway up the stairs that now are part of its Living World exhibit, an iron chair. Sixteenth-century Spanish, a remnant of the Inquisition - crudely forged but lightweight, less a chair...

Milk. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... This notebook in which he used to sketch has, on its expensive-looking black cover, a sprinkle of whitish stains: of the sort sure to detain the unborn biographer. Could they be the miniaturist's impression of the northern sky, his Starry...

Site. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Outside "The Crown" flowers bloom from the plastic tubs as the men are on the road again, putting down pipes. A wide-shouldered man hugs the drill between his legs, although it shivers and jumps, trying to keep it still: Potato rills, he...

Inner cities. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... On your beige couch, toned to match the walls, we talk about race, the need to belong, how this country's changed. It can be done, you say, getting out of England to live in a quieter place. I listen, though I don't need convincing, and leave...

The temptation of Phillida. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... When she was younger much younger she liked to look deep into men's eyes. A friend told her men can make you come with their eyes. One day at the traffic lights she saw eyes she wanted to fall into. The owner of these baby blues was leaning...

The siege of derry. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... It began as an exodus, like people Leaving their houses under threat, Abandoning, abandoned, queueing At a turnstile of weapons that Slid their safety catches on and Off in clicks and counterclicks. Such were my feelings as I waited For...

Western. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... A painted pony floats in tall grass, Rising and plunging soundlessly with All the time in the world. The grasses are dry-headed, flecky with dust. They wheel out around him in great arcs Under billows of wind. The day's weight is pulled down...

Where women pray and judge. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... After two hundred miles of snow I walk into the room Where women pray and judge. We know all about him. Child of Mary, corpse in blue, Focus of tears and sighs, Love is what I kiss, And love is ice.

Time for breaking. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... When the old man said, watching me Watching the leaves tumble with the river, "'Tis like the inside of your head," didn't know for decades what he meant. In fact, I'd forgotten his words Or consigned them to a corner where they couldn't Be...

I wonder now what distance. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... I wonder now what distance A man should travel to die; Across a road into a house Or two hundred miles in a car Or take off across the Shannon in the Marianne Through the beckoning evening? Or it might involve a long day's work With or without...

A note on Irish publishing.(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Samuel Beckett, by the end of his career, was the most notable Irish writer since Joyce. It had been a mixed career, and Beckett had a mixed publishing history. This was due partly to his adopted exile and partly to the nature of his work. But...

Troubled thoughts: poetry politics in contemporary Ireland.(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Like any small indigenous industry, Irish Poetry Inc. looks abroad for growth. Poets born into this country, with its limited local resources and its marginal domestic market, try to export their produce to America, and spend a good deal of time...

Wrestling with Hartnett. (Irish poet Michael Hartnett)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Is seo i Eire, is mise mise. (This is Ireland, I'm myself.) From the very early '60s, when his first poems were published in the University College, Dublin magazine St. Stephen's (edited in 1960 by the enigmatic Kerry-man Jerry Nolan, and for a...

The swing. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... 1 Fingertips just tipping you would send you Every bit as far - once you got going - As a big push in the back. Sooner or later, We all learnt one by one to go sky-high, Backward and forward in the open shed, Toeing and rowing and...

A fire in my head. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... for Dorothea 1 Leaves like water shimmer on the curtain; a wren hops in and out of the garden wall, and all over the house mirrors brighten. Plumbing springs alive with the Breakfast Show's chat all about new diets for the old, followed by...

Heart of hearts. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... There is always a man on the platform who is waiting. He has flared trousers on, or green socks, or a funny woollen hat, and wears, in the middle of damp October, sunglasses. At some distance from directions arrowed to Bus, Exit, Cross Over By...

Almost forty. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... You are in the dusk of the garden, and it is you I hear going to work. You have bought Spearmint and The Rover and lift me over the turnstile at Solitude. It is your uniform pressed and hanging there; your boots that thud about upstairs. After...

The sea. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Sitting on an upturned boat in the green middle of a roundabout overlooked by towers and crenellations, she watched the cars curve by and waited. Overhead, the gulls kaokaoed the blue of the sky where fat clouds floated, and a lone bee was higher...

Russian. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... He woke up speaking Russian, he lay there, amazed, as sentence after sentence emerged and sailed to the window - it was verse, it had to be to flow that rhythmically, but he hadn't written it, nor had he been to Russia. His wife came in from...

The compromise. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... He wanted to be buried on the moon. At last he was answering the question, but she wouldn't have it. She laughed and he laughed, but he persisted. He brought it up at dinner parties. He wrapped it in a joke, but she knew he meant it. A guest said...

Spiders. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... When these shelves were put up when this wallpaper lay on the bed in rolls we came here newly born each day to set it right put our mark on each room and cast benevolent spells in the hallway, hang a lamp over the door one asked no more of the...

Traditional music. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Pipes, flutes, whistles, goatskin drums mandolins, guitars, the human voice an arsenal of instruments to flatten history or sharpen it, as the case may be marching, keening, dancing, courting polkas, waltzes, slow airs, the eyes closed the...

The otter woman. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Against the wisdom of shorewomen She stood on the forbidden line too long And crossed the confluence of sea and river. One shake of her body on O'Brien's Bridge And the sea was off her. A glorious swing from haunch to shoulder Sent water arcing...

My beloved compares herself to a pint of stout. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... When in the heat of the first night of summer I observe with a whistle of envy That Jackson has driven out the road for a pint of stout, She puts her arm around my waist and scolds me: Am I not your pint of stout? Drink me. There is nothing...

A snail in my prime. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Slug love: Older than the pyramids Christ Jesus I am a snail in my prime. On the banks of the Boyne on a June night, I lie under the great snail cairn of Newgrange Watching men go to the moon While their women give birth to more women. My...

Afterlives.(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... When Oisin came back to Ireland After three hundred years On one of those enchanted islands Somewhere in the Western Seas, He thought nothing of dismounting From his enchanted steed To be one again with the mountains, The bogs and the little...

Modern Irish poetry: some notes by an outsider.(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... When Oisin came back to Ireland After three hundred years On one of those enchanted islands Somewhere in the Western Seas, He thought nothing of dismounting From his enchanted steed To be one again with the mountains, The bogs and the little...

Underdeveloped comedy - Patrick Kavanagh. (Irish poet)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... The writer of a minor literature, according to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, "feeds himself on abstinence" and tears out of language "all the qualities of underdevelopment that it has tried to hide." He tries to "make it cry with an...

The parish and the dream: Heaney and America, 1969-1987. (Seamus Heaney)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... "Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence." So wrote Larkin, who had left Ireland for England, "home," in 1955. The implied aesthetic is akin to (and roughly contemporaneous with) Kavanagh's assumption that creative potential has its tap-root...

Field system, Church Island. (poem) (A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... In the church, the ruined cells, even on carved gravestones, the monks of the island are distanced into history. It's in the small fields between tumbled stone boundaries that ghosts are immanent among overgrown ridges. In the network of...

Home. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... I was going home as the crow flies. Good hitching roads, then unapproved roads threading the border. Bandit country. Dumps. Yield signs askew, summer rain in sheets. A truck driver, tattooed, quizzes me on schools, names, sense of humour, until...

The waiting deputies. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... Tonight I drive through my native county. Ten o'clock, all the canvassing over, the lights go out in the last polling booth. Incumbents await their final transfer. What is it that my childhood meant to say, I wonder? Just one version of the truth...

Snap election. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... The Partymen have failed you in three colours. A councillor tells stories. You sit beside him in desolation. It is the spring of 1973. You bend your head like a jilted lover. Television light flickers across the room; a neon hunchback with a...

Firefly. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... On my last night in the country a firefly gets stuck in the mesh of the window-screen and hangs there, revealing to me its tiny legs, head like a minuscule metal bolt, the beige sac jutting under its curl of a tail, splayed on the fine wire and...

Visit to Mount Jerome. (poem)(A Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Poetry and Criticism)
June 22, 1995... After I'd touched down last summer on my parents' grave, clutching yellow chrysanthemums and small carnations, I wanted to walk away on my own at last, without their gone bodies grappled to my tongue, wanted them - when I stepped back from their...