abridged 0 - 18: absence
DESCRIPTION
Abridged aims to commission and publish contemporary/experimental poetry plus contemporary art freed from exhibition ties and especially commissioned for the magazine. We encourage poets/artists to investigate the articulation of ‘Abridged’ themes. For example our last few issues have been concerned with Time, Absence, Magnolia and Nostalgia. These themes focus on contemporary concerns in a rapidly changing society. We are offering an alternative and complete integration of poetry, art and design. We experiment continually. We also stray into the exhibition format producing contemporary, innovative and challenging work accompanied by a free publication. www.abridgedonline.comTRANSCRIPT
Cover Image: George Shaw Ash Wednesday: 8.30am, 2004-5; Humbrol enamel on board 91 x 121cm
Image courtesy of the artist Courtesy of Wilkinson Gallery
Abridged is a division of the Chancer Corporation 2010. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.
Copyright remains with the authors and artists.
Designed by John McDaid at Verbal MediaA division of the Verbal Arts Centre, Derry/Londonderry
Tel: 028 71266946 verbalmedia.co.uk
EditorialKathleen McCrackenZoë MurdochRhoda TwomblyKim MontgomeryGary AllenSusan KellyZoë MurdochJohn O’RourkeMark RoperLynda TavakoliJenny KeaneClare McCotterMairead Dunne Kathleen McCrackenPeter RichardsOlive Broderick
3
Contents
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Gerald DaweZoë MurdochGary AllenLibby HartJenny KeaneSusan KellyMairead DunneAngela FranceMaoliosa Boyle Gerald DaweClaire McCotterPeter RichardsKathleen McCrackenZoë MurdochGearoid O’BrienMark Roper
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We sit in the acid stomach of evening and define ourselves by what we are
not as much as what we are. The human condition seems to be attuned to absence. We’re always missing something or someone. The artist or poet has used this lack to fuel creativity; the politician uses it to change society, not always for the better; the priest fixes God into this hole; everyone has filled it with drink, drugs or chocolate. We are abridged. We all need something to aim for however. As such the Abridged is not a paean to an absent past rather a call to arms for endeavour and challenge; power in the face of misery if you will. We take absence and imperfection as sources of inspiration. As Mr Cohen observes: ‘There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.’
‘Absence’ is the companion issue to the previous ‘Time’ and the second in our new format. Abridged is a curated poetry/art space which offers a platform for poets and artists to explore contemporary themes in an imaginative and innovative manner. The poetry and art are not merely decorative additions to each other but conceptually integral to an overall thematic concern. We aim to move beyond the traditional poetry circles therefore Abridged is free and distributed beyond the bookshop.
…a time when angels…a time when fear…
abridged is Maria Campbell (Editor) & Gregory McCartney (Project Coordinator)no part of this publication may be reproduced without permission
copyright remains with authors/artistsabridged is a division of The Chancer Corporation
c/o Verbal Arts Centre, Stable Lane and Mall Wall, Bishop Street Within, Derry BT48 6PUTelephone 028 71266946 Email [email protected]
Abridged 0-18 Absence
Abridged grew out of a somewhat legendary and rather bad tempered little magazine called The Chancer, a Derry based publication that explored the darker and quite often funnier sides of our night-time economy. The magazine published writing that no-one else at the time did and supported by occasionally riotous pub performances by the editors and associates lasted more years and issues than it probably should have. The Chancer faded quietly back into its cave and others covered similar ground, a lot worse, some much better but few with the same panache and dark humour.
Eventually it was felt that another vehicle for exploring the shadows that surround was necessary. We did not wish to transverse similar ground to previous or existing publications but to create something that brought artistic excellence to the public in a manner that experimented with poetry/art presentation and design. Each Abridged is conceptually linked, as each is essentially an exploration of the concept of ‘abridged’ or of things that abridge. Of course each poem/artwork should also be considered separately. Previous issues have been titled ‘Romance and Assassination’; ‘Mutation’; ‘Time’; and the next issue is entitled ‘Magnolia’. We operate an open submission policy so as to encourage emerging talent and publish material based solely on quality and how it meets the remit of a particular issue.
5
Trains at Tempe
Let me tell you about the trains, he said
How the moon won’t bring you sleep
or the sun either, how it’s all always
Peckinpah, Malick
on odd days pure Lynch
out there in Arizona
How they came each day at dawn
Santa Fe hot shots
Canadian Pacific freighters
all graffiti and gondolas, all lumber and grain
and makeshift crates of Asian figurines
How the earth on its axis stalled
while the low light fixed the camera
a full eight minutes and forty four seconds
and the film we are watching now
five thousand miles, three hundred and sixty six days later
unavoidably arrived
and the trains – unblessed, burdened – were again
gone
Kathleen McCracken
Zoë Murdoch The Comfort of Strangers, 2009 Photo Manipulation
Hay Days
Warm air rising from the easterly field melts into the briny on-shore breeze as a strong, spiny thistle pricks the farmer’s thigh.He walks his land, absently swinging a pliant salley rod through the mix of grass and random weeds,the white, red and purple of the invader’s blooms flashing within the waves of green. Squinting at the haze dappled peaks across the bay, his fingers brush the tips of grass past ready to cut. Tomorrowhe’d smile as the scent of mowed fields mixed with sea air,pray the high June sun stayed the course andhope the rust pocked tractor made it around those hilly fields one more time. The salley rod sings, slicing through swaying stems speckled by bird shadows.Swallows swooping, diving, teaching their youngthe tricks of the trade, while the starlings gather in dark rising clouds, coming to rest on telephone lines.Tomorrow he’ll hear no birdsong; only the tractor’s ancient grumbles. In the bright twilight of this Solstice day, when light never fully dies,his rambles return him to his seaside gate, to the timber bench worn by memories.He fancies he sees those now long gone, hears theirvoices and laughter rising and falling, in sync with the slap of the incoming tide. Sweat-stained cap in hand he sits, arms crossed hard across his chest.He waits, sea-blue eyes red rimmed, stung by salty wind, until midges force him to face theghost-riddled house he hoped to avoid for awhile. Standing, stretching his tired back, he glances out of habit at the small wooden boat, lifeline to the mainland, bobbing dozily on its rope. Work hardened hand pushes the red metal gate, its rasping hinge somehow immune to oil.His boots crunch softly against the pebble path neatly trimmedwith whitewashed sea-smoothed cobbles his mother collected.He turns his eyes from the small grave, freshly dug,nestling under the stone wall: the resting place of
the last cat of the house.
Rhoda Twombly
7
Kim Montgomery Happy Keith Haring Day , 1997
Unclaimed
My father is a cardboard suitcase left in the lost luggage
like his life – no beginning or end
something that was, and is gone
a minor movement among the planets.
He was known for a moment in North Africa
burning through the desert night
a quick burst of tracer fire
in the lower caste brothels and gambling dens of Cairo
put in mothballs with his truck
imagined he found grains of sand
in the folds of his skin years in the future.
That they loved each other, I have no doubt
but what is love when one is naïve
in search of a life within limits
and the other is weary of a world without advancement?
so here he gathers dust, never to be collected
a dog-eared locker ticket somewhere in Liverpool
already forgotten, stuffed to bursting the knotted string
with useless tags that mean nothing –
a square of Donegal that keeps growing smaller to a hankie size
a terraced house shrinking under a railway bridge
the arbitrary madness of everything contained in the universe.
Gary Allen
9
A Life Unanswered
Dust smothered hat boxes stacked, empty,
blue and white Switzers stripes dulled by years.
Flapper dressers, bridge club receipts idle in drawers
lined with the Letters page of a 1940’s Irish Times
redolent with lily of the valley talcum powder.
I have your eyes but I can’t see what you saw;
history witnessed, decades endured.
Did they roar, were they hungry, did they swing?
Did scarcity wage a local war to leave you wanting,
did world events impact, always make contact?
Did you mind leaving Achill to settle in Westport?
Urbanity on your new doorstep.
Did faith and prayers of two Roman collared sons
ease untimely widowhood?
Clacking of rosary beads, the murmur of novenas your mantra.
Was my mother an appreciated ally,
righting the balance, nurturing anima?
Did she steal your mantle as lady of the house?
Did you mind or was your arched-eyebrow sternness
an act of survival in a male domain?
November evening your pen ran dry, books accounted for.
Expired batteries silenced your radio
yet you required no replacements.
Who knew you would follow; ready, willing
that very night? Only you.
Susan Kelly
Abridged 0-17
11
Zoë Murdoch A Laying On Of Hands, 2009Photo Manipulation
MARATHON MANIn memoriam Patrick Doonan
“The foxes have holes….”
ABC manages to stifle a silent titter.
Let’s begin again.
The foxes have dens.
“The birds of the air,”
who, like the man from Subiaco,
(Beloved Francis)
Packie loved so much
“have nests.”
Speaking of nests
It has been some time since Packie
when clearing
a chimney out in Ballinagh
amidst the jetsam
of accumulated ages
uncovered a five-pound note;-
pure Marquez’ magic realism.
Locusts and wild honey
took on the magic of whey in the desert,
the husks of swine and
the exotic sea-bird’s eggs off Skellig.
In a week when I flicked up a ball
as Packie was wont to demonstrate
(How his uncle, the great Bill
one of the Cavan heroes of ‘47 and ‘48
might have done with Bristol Rovers)
and double-headed before back-heeling to
Calvin, the perfumier, not a saint,
and within minutes
before collecting Clara from drama
and Ella from ballet
was already staggering
from the onslaught of vertigo.
I knew immediately that
all was not well with the world
and as with malaria in ‘93
in lonely Lagos
I surmised my mortality.
It was Packie who with some built-in radar or other
tapped on the now deceased
Bishop Mc Kiernan’s car window outside the Post Office
saying that, “ he was on the way”.
Who or what on earth
he was talking about
the good bishop did not know
until Packie sidling off
muttered something about Lagos.
Attendant en Godot.
The turning mass of the earth
was all awry
and it was not until two full twenty-four hour revolutions later
that the spinning stopped.
It was at the artist’s Ann Floody’s house
who had just completed a beautiful painting
of two horses cantering before the Laytown races
photographed by the local Parish Priest this September
when I got the sudden news.
Sudden Times! Sea the Stars.
Leopardstown on Stephen’s Day,
after dinner with Marie the cousin in Castleknock;-
myself and Packie.
Downpatrick and the old sterling debacle.
Parkhead, Clones, Croke Park.
The day before
Harding had inquired about
a metre-high statue of the National patron.
Una Pooka, John Paul the Second.
Anniversaries, my first year in Maynooth.
Like all the bad news
I never would have guessed
when Marie rang from the Presbytery.
The bank holiday marathon was on the horizon.
How many?
I had lost count a long time ago.
When we did Dublin in ‘98
I came in last
but enough to be
registered as completing the course.
I know now it was
Packie who kept the timekeeper at the finish line
and have the plaque to prove
and the document delivered months later.
Nearly half a day,
twice the time of Packie’s
13
I also have one for the year after
which day I was in absentia
and imbibing sub-secreto in an up-town bar.
Not the Top of the Town,
not the infamous and correctly titled Do Drop
(After two sudden deaths on the premises in the late nineties).
But as James Doonan,
another Ulster Senior medal hero,
informed me in Cullies graveyard, An Sibin.
Now I see him on his bike
headed for Barran
After the forty odd mile trek from Cavan
loaded down with Gulliver like findings
light too with lore and co-incident connected detail.
And headed back with an assortment of old bottles,
some for holy water.
ancient metal (Marquez again) and paper cuttings
with a curious interest
in cures as in the Well of the Saints
and more pouches and poches.
Everything is childlike wonder
and at Mass with the girls
the Sunday after his death
the din of the children is like
the beating of thousands of starling wings
along the twilight border.
The Lord is indignant.
The Gospel welcomes little children.
Soon he’s at the starting line
and he knows,
like Heaney and Horace,
without wings
Anything Can Happen.
John O’Rourke
Shell
On a beach
you might find
a scrap of shell
so small you will
wonder why
you noticed it,
so clean you will
not be able
to say what life
it might once
have housed,
so thoroughly
has all trace
of that life
been consumed.
The scrap is all
but lost
in your hand
though warmed
in flesh
it seems still
to give off
faint
familiar light.
When you put it
down with all
the others,
all the others,
when you walk
away, it will not
be found, not
be held, not
be seen again.
Mark Roper
15
Forty-Three Grams
Too early to name
you were too unfinished in the womb
for anyone to love
but me.
At fourteen weeks
your stubbed appendages
denied you somehow proper meaning
to the world.
Yet I imagined then
the promise of your touch
and flying fingers some day
glancing on piano keys
or toes that curled like leaves in winter
after frost.
Behind those swollen sockets
I would never know
the colour of your eyes -
if they were brown or blue
or hazel like my own.
But somewhere
past a sea of years
I watch you
dance beneath a saffron sky
on meadows crusted yellow
in a summer sun
or hear your footfall
whisper soft
on winter snow.
Yet now
your nearly heartbeat
grieves in me
its pulse the baby miracle
I never knew.
Just three and forty grams -
a single letter’s weight
of life unfinished
in the womb.
Too early then to name
so I completed you
inside my head
and loved you
just the same.
Lynda Tavakoli
Jenny Keane Interview with the Vampire, From the Lick Drawings series, 2009
Graphite, saliva and blood on Fabriano paper, 100x70 cm
17
First Colourin memory of Josephine McCotter (née McGill)
The earliest appear to be those with the short wavelengths, and therefore the colour blue
- Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language
You were the keeper of the shrine, serpentine prayers
faded scapulars, petitions sequestered in oak and myrtle
under a mazarine moon. In its languorous light you knelt
beside feral fires, a poetry of silhouettes unfolding on
your hand the windwept mountain rose, damask message
from my namesake carried to a locked door.
Gift of sign stained with hope and nothing else for what
did you know then or ever know of the carneled chamber.
A crouching girl burning the blighted image with alchemilla
and marigold. The flame darkening her deep basamite bowl
as she read your falling petals and saw from afar the benevolence
of ambient anomalies glittering like a carcass of stars.
When stars and time frayed, your almond soft seahorses
(hippocampi) surrendered with cauterised calm.
Bleached memories on their closed lids, your face lowered
over a brimming basin awaiting ablution that could not come.
Two reflections sorrowing the intricacies of water
hanging like rhizomes from extended fingers.
If I could have closed them as later I closed your eyes with
more relief than decency demanded. Wondering at the ease
of it all until your absence grew with the prospect of return
from a harem’s domed sky stencilled with gold and carnadine.
Or were those halls an arithmetic of sound where the oud player
almost always heard the music of the spheres?
Mystical mathematics stark on the reddening ridge of day
as acequias flow to the Gate of the Pomegranates.
Theorems, fractals, surds in a place of cisterns
rebus for the faithful elided as cedar hexagonals unravel
on the scales of silver fishes. Below the vanished
oratory, a rawda where the nomad plants no orange trees.
Moving among the sparrows and Arabic script
you will be there when the lions return to the courtyard.
The orphanage of their ancient eyes watching at noon
as you mix the secret of azure with saffron and rain.
It is here we will meet: standing in the space between
where a dark green silence has always been.
Clare McCotter
Mairead Dunne See your better self (Girl in white), Oil on board, 60cm x 60cm, Sept 2009
19
Flight
By habit I would hunt and delve
worry the meaning of dreams about flight
not in biplanes or bombers or featherweight gliders
but solo, body neither machine nor animal
nor sheer soul either
rather a candent rain of molecules
oxidized, dextrous, wired, designed
for tracking roofbeams, skimming floorboards
grazing the tarmac, rushing
that porthole southwest of Arcturus
its lure, its thrown uncanny music.
Until you cautioned not to speculate
instead to take the thing whole
(a gold stone, a cuneiform tablet)
be sated knowing that movement
is all the property we own.
This weather the nights are short
and laminar the light rides in
on bright neap tides.
I trace its long retreat, the lough’s span
and west out over the plateau
sometimes with you
but mostly I fly alone.
Kathleen McCracken
Opposite: Peter Richards On target: twenty four minutes in Belfast ii Pinhole photograph on colour archival paper (8 minute exposure)
h 150 x w 121cms, 2005
SOSAfter the Sean Scully Retrospective at the Ulster Museum (Nov 2009)
ALL NIGHT I HAVE WONDERED WHAT THIS WOULD LOOK LIKE WITH THE
WORDS STRIPPED OUT HEAVILY UNDERLINED PAUSES I HAD HOPED TO
HEAR FROM YOU THIS YEAR EVEN IF IT WAS TO SAY THE SAME THING
BUT IN A DIFFERENT VERSION I HAVE SAT THIS AFTERNOON
CROSSLEGGED IN THE CENTRE OF THE UPPER EXHIBITION SPACE OF THE
ULSTER MUSEUM STUDYING HEXAGRAM 57 INNER DOORS OPEN CLOSE
PEOPLE PASS BY WHISPERING TELL ME WHICH IS BETTER THE SEA BREEZE
IN BARCELONA OR THE HUMID AIR OF THE YUCATÁN A POLAR BEAR
IN AN ENVIRONMENTALLY CONTROLLED CASE IS SUSPENDED BETWEEN
FLOORS A CELTIC CROSS IS FLANKED BY A LEPIDOPTERIST CABINET A
HUMMING BIRD A SUBTERRANEAN TEA SET THEY HAVE PACKED AWAY
YOUR TROUBLES BUT THE LATEST TROUBLES ARE
SHOWN HERE IN PANELS OF TEXT THE NEXT ROOM EXPLORE YOUR
HISTORY IS INTERACTIVE THERE IS A SHOE DISPLAY AND A
LARGE MIRROR I SPEND MOST OF MY TIME ON THE WALKWAYS NOT
TOUCHING THE GLASS RAILING SEEING A SIGN FOR
WHERE I WANT TO BE BUT NO WAY ACROSS THE AITRIAL CHASM THE
LIFT HAS A VERTICAL LINE OF BUTTONS TRYING TO
REMEMBER I TOUCH A SEQUENCE AS IF I HAD SEEN THE WORKINGS OF
THE BALLAGH EXCHANGE OUTSIDE OF A DREAM NO
CALL WILL BE PUT THROUGH FROM ME BUT ALREADY I HAVE PREPARED
MY FEW SENTENCES UNCLE SEÁN I AM LOST I WANT YOUR COMPANY.
Olive Broderick
The Afterlife
One dark windy night all you’d hear was –
‘I’ll tell you another time’ floating up
from the street into the moist night air,
and down below, the house darkens too
as he peruses the book on the afterlife –
the ‘medium’ is bound hand and foot,
out of his mouth, the white stuff of life-in-death,
lost generations, swoon, and in the muzzy room
drapes are pulled back on such a bright afternoon.
*
I remembered the house well
with the back door that never opened,
jegs of glass on top the yard wall,
a few pots of flowers, the wind rustling
down the hillsides, just as the sun was rising.
Gerald Dawe
Centrepiece: Zoë Murdoch Silently Fly the Birds, 2009Photo Manipulation
23
No one listens
First they took away the field below
the black roots of the hawthorns
giving ground to new houses
that hemmed him in –
nobody asked him
no one would listen
the bells of the chapel sounded different
crows picked across the furrows, untouched
the tractor lay rusting and useless
in the drainage ditch
the burnt-through pots on a cold hearth,
a wife’s barren laughter from the grave
like the wind in the chimney flue
the microwave oven still in the box
and the lone star of a helicopter
lifting off girders
from the watchtower hills:
a niece found him on the stairs
a heart attack
but he knew he had no heart attack
what do doctors know?
four tablets of warfarin a day
enough to melt the bones of rats
of course he stopped taking them
and then some days he was confused
couldn’t remember not putting on his trousers
they took him to that red brick place
trying to catch him out –
one-hundred and fifty questions,
he answered one-hundred and thirty-eight
but still they wouldn’t let him out
no one listens, in this world
you’re only a voice in the wilderness.
Gary Allen
Thread
I take the loom
to craft a collapsible horizon,
a true definition
of this tyranny of distance
between me and you.
Full of rowdy wave
it charts a map of senses,
a cartography of memories.
If I could recreate your fingers
I would do so every day.
I sit surrounded by invisible words,
for only you can know my real name.
I think I’m not so much faithful, but patient.
No. Perhaps not patient, but vigilant.
My eyes take in all things --
each weave and unpicking.
I become all but a thread
as the curve of night takes hold.
That’s when I unravel and tangle.
That’s when I become a troubled dream.
No more than a rhythm
of making and unmaking.
One day this shall be my own undoing.
Libby Hart
27
Jenny Keane The Exorcist,From the Lick Drawings series, 2009Graphite, saliva and blood on Fabriano paper, 100x70 cm
Disassociation
Debris tumbled to November earth,
swirling squall tore leaf and branch from the great oak.
Early evening’s winter-beauty maligned by night,
her own; ravaged by excess, time.
Vengeful sky illuminated in a flash,
night laid bare for all to see.
Storm rained down darkness,
faraway full beams, beacons in blackness.
Her faded glamour, vacant presence,
former glory a vague memory.
Her journey home hampered by vice, vanity.
No one watching, no one waiting;
no home fires burning, no curtains twitching.
Solitude surrounded her,
she welcomed its detached company
preferring it to the coldness of the human touch.
Susan Kelly
29
Mairead Dunne See your better self (Girl in red), Oil on board, 60cm x 60cm, Sept 2009
Absence
Night-walking into fog a torch throws
blindness back there is no way to know
what is beyond the space paced out
you can’t think tree or house
something must be there
Finding an object for keeping safe
say an empty frame in a stack of darkened oils
the gilding chipped dirt defined corners
an engraved plate gives a name that means nothing
you know what is missing can’t tell its shape or style
A small enamelled box a crystal lid
and silver clasp the lining deep-buttoned blue
fabric straining with importance
the curl of hair it was made for
missing.
Angela France
31
Maolíosa Boyle Thujone, 2010
33
Essences
I pick up a ball of twine
to tie off newspapers for recycling –
ordinary brown twine
that’s been here since Adam –
twine from the butchers,
twine from the electricians,
twine for parcels, the kind
everyone had, alongside candles,
Camp coffee, waxed oven paper,
silver foil, essences,
a ball the size of your fist,
left in the recess of a cubby hole,
the last thing you’d ever
think of until you go looking.
Gerald Dawe
The Day of the Angelin memory Mary McGill (née Moran)
A week of waiting and yellow roses, of winter benediction
in artefacts of light - lustral shapes or communion of dust and water?
Cold consecration sealed in an origami of doubt.
The healer left you nothing but her tears and a royal covenant
of wings, malaaikah, mal’ach, messenger
or your own heart’s breath diaphanous in lazuline and white?
It is four in the morning and you are still here; beyond the
night-struck glass a chaos of silence crowds eucalypt and beech
once a child’s time-thronged cathedral, you always near
lambent lark-light hands signalling encouragement and reprimand
to family and those where bloodlines run less clear
now they lie calm and lovely in a galaxy of spheres.
I wish you had worn the earrings that I wear today for this poem
symbol of an adopted land, the studied stars you bought
when I was twenty one, long before these hours of astral ambassadors
of lucent pale blue orbs; of a young saint’s favourite flowers.
Before I saw feathers of morning and gold gleaming there
in the unflinching black of your daughter’s black hair.
Clare McCotter
Opposite: Peter Richards On target: twenty four minutes in Belfast Pinhole photograph on colour archival paper (8 minute exposure)
h 150 x w 121cms, 2005
The Sun on His Back
In my daughter’s atlas
Spain is the colour of a cool satsuma
the one I watched him peel and section
not so long ago, fingers recollecting
the contours of a dozen Christmas mornings.
And even if he’d chosen not to name
the places and the dates
(each one a mystery, each one an abstract noun)
before he had to go
I would know the sun crossing
the skin plateau my pelvis makes
is the same sun casting
blessings on his back where he works
measuring light and the angle
of the Andalusian mountain’s influence.
Today’s the seventh day of March.
I trace the lines from there to here
distracted midway by the centre fold
to wondering if desire like the double helix
(those symmetrical economies)
has something yet to say about the way
fresh water finds a second life far underground
or sea creatures routes to sanctuary
without recourse to maps.
Kathleen McCracken
37
Zoë Murdoch The Difference Between Temptation, 2009Photo Manipulation
Beaufort I
The old granite pillars haunted
Me for years
Etched with the word “Beaufort”
Leading to a half-forgotten house
Though I was family
I wouldn’t allow myself to trespass
Here,
To filter back,
Into childhood memories
Instead I built-up “Beaufort”
In my mind
Walked through darkened hallways,
Imagined Maude arriving home with
The groceries in a paper bag.
Once lodger, then my grand-aunt’s
Companion
Her life revolved around this crumbling
House - she enjoyed the borrowed status
It conferred.
When I look now at the new houses
Built on these grounds
I see Maude leading a feeble Kate
Through that old door
To the “Beaufort” that stands forever firm
Behind the granite pillars of my mind.
Beaufort II
How can I ever untangle this dream
Now that you are no more
The gardens and tennis pavilion
Are etched in my mind’s eye
I still taste the eucalyptus cones
And smell the green bay
But you are a faceless woman
Forgotten out of my childish fear
And still on St Stephen’s Day
I think of you fondly each year
Sitting in that filthy kitchen
Stroking an ageless cat while
Keeping two grand-nephews in chat
Catching up with your sister’s news
Second-hand
And wearing your tell-tale blindness
Like a dreaded black diamond
Sewn on the sleeve of a good dress.
Beaufort III
Here is where the shades linger
Capturing the music of past seasons
I wonder briefly whether Ned Carey
Ever knew this garden?
Did he turn lazy-beds
Or plant trees here for his daughter?
And what of poor Granny Carey
Brought here in her blindness
To soak up the sun
To taste the fresh air.
But somehow I sense only music
There is always music here
Annie’s violin which rotted away
In her garden-shed
Played for many a hearty session
Nick, an old bands-man, kept time
Granny Carey sang her favourite song
“Sitting on the bridge below the town”
And even when I pass today
It is the absence of the house,
The people,
The music and life that most affects me.
Gearoid O’Brien
39
In Between
You are down at the brink,under the black poplars, ready to give up the ghost.
But each time the boatman finds no coin in your mouthand will not take you.
We can hear your tut, impatient tut. We know soon you will decide
to creep away, nip under a fenceand swim across yourself.And then neither life nor death
will know where to find you – you’ll be swimming somewhere between and in the dark
you won’t be able to tell which shore is which and you will never ask for help. Mark Roper
41
Gary Allen was born in Ballymena. He
has been published in, Agenda, Ambit,
Antigonish Review, The Edinburgh Review,
Irish Pages, London Magazine, Poetry
Ireland Review, Poetry New Zealand, The
Poetry Review, Stand, The Stinging Fly,
The Yellow Nib, etc. A tenth collection
is due this autumn from Lagan Press.
He recently received an award from
the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
Maoliosa Boyle is a practising artist
and Manager of Void. She studied
Fine Art at The National College of
Art and Design, Dublin and has an
MFA from The University of Ulster in
Belfast. Maolíosa has curated several
exhibitions at Void over the last five
years as a member of the Curatorial
Committee. Maolíosa has exhibited
in group and solo exhibitions in
Ireland, Scotland, England, France
and America. Before Managing Void
she co-ordinated public art projects
in the Derry area and was a part-time
lecturer at the North West Regional
College and University of Ulster.
Olive Broderick was published most
recently in the Stinging Fly, Sunday
Tribune, Ulla’s Nib, Abridged 0-17. She
has an MA (Creative Writing) from
QUB. From Co. Cork originally but now
lives in Downpatrick, Co. Down and is
an active member of the Write! Down
collective.
Gerald Dawe’s recent publications
include Points West (Gallery Press
2008, Country Music: Uncollected poems
1974-1989 (Starling Press 2009)and The
World is Province: Selected Prose 1980-
2008 (Lagan Press 2009). He is a Fellow
Contributors
of Trinity College Dublin where he
teaches modern literature and directs
the graduate writing programme.
Mairead Dunne, originally from the
Midlands graduated from the National
College of Art and Design Dublin and
the University of Ulster Belfast. She is
currently based in Belfast where she
is a member of Platform Arts Studio
Collective. She has had both solo
and group exhibitions in Ireland and
the UK and has recently received an
Offaly Arts Council grant for a solo
exhibition in 2010.
Angela France is a Gloucestershire-
based poet whose second collection,
‘Occupation’ is available from Ragged
Raven Press. She has had poems
published in many of the leading
journals, including Agenda. Acumen,
Orbis and The SHOp and has been
anthologised in a number of small
press anthologies – most recently in A
Twist of Malice: uncomfortable poems by
older women. She has just completed
an MA in Creative and Critical Writing
at the University of Gloucestershire
and is now studying for a PhD.
Libby Hart’s first collection of
poetry, ‘Fresh News from the Arctic’
(Australia, 2006) received the Anne
Elder Award and was shortlisted for
the Mary Gilmore Prize. She is also the
recipient of a DJ O’Hearn Memorial
Fellowship at The Australian Centre,
University of Melbourne. Her work has
been published widely and broadcast
on ABC Radio National.
Jenny Keane, born in Co. Clare
and currently based in Belfast is
a video and drawing-based artist.
Her practice is focused on the word
‘horrific’. Through performative
drawings captured from horror films,
in which elements of the drawing
have been licked away to remove the
‘horrific’, the work investigates the
dichotomy between fear and desire,
its relationship to language and
connection to the (female) body.
Susan Kelly is a poet from Co Mayo.
Her work has appeared locally and in
Cyphers and she is due to be published
in Crannóg and wordlegs this spring. She
is a member of the Westport Writers’
group who produce The Broadsheet, an
annual collection of poetry and prose
from Westport-based writers.
Kim Montgomery is an artist in the
midst of MA studies in Fine Art at
Wimbledon College of Art. She is an
enthusiast of drawing, Keith Haring,
dancing and reading the Bible.
Clare McCotter’s haiku have been
published in the leading haiku journals
in Ireland, Britain, Canada, the United
States, India and Australia. Her tanka
and haibun have also been published
in international journals. In 2005 she
was awarded a doctoral degree from
the University of Ulster. She has
published numerous peer-reviewed
articles on Beatrice Grimshaw’s travel
writing and fiction. At present she is
working on a paper which explores
cannibalism and miscegenation in
Grimshaw’s Pacific fiction.
Kathleen McCracken is a Canadian
poet currently based in Belfast. She is
the author of seven books of poetry,
the most recent of which, Tattoo Land,
was published by Exile Editions in
2009. Her poetry has appeared in,
amongst others, The Malahat Review,
New Orleans Review, Writing Ulster and
Exile Quarterly. She has given readings
in Canada, the United States, Ireland
and the UK.
Zoë Murdoch is a visual artist living
in Belfast; she studied Fine Art at
the University Of Ulster and is based
in Queen Street Studios. She has
exhibited in a wide range of group
shows throughout Belfast and Ireland;
her work has been included in shows
in London, China, New York and
Pennsylvania. In 2007 she was awarded
the Robinson McIlwaine Architects
“Original Vision” Award at the RUA.
Her art is a visual expression of the
language of her life, created from her
own realities and imaginings; it is
fundamentally illustrating the inner
workings of her mind and is, for the
most part, inspired from memories.
Gearoid O’Brien, librarian, author
and broadcaster is a native of Athlone
and has been writing poetry for over
thirty-five years. For some years he
ran a small press called Kincora Poetry.
His poetry was widely published in the
1970s and 80s including works in: The
Stony Thursday Book, Neptune’s Kingdon,
Prospice and Poetry Ireland Review. After
a break of fifteen years or more he’s
back!
John O’Rourke was born in Glasgow
in 1961 and now lives in Mornington,
Meath. Has contributed poetry to
Issues and Drogheda Creative Writers
publications. Teaches part-time in
Patrician College, Finglas. Previous
publications include: Glimpses - As
seen through a Veil. 2001 Flares - Caught
in a Glance, Captured by the Dance. 2005
Waves - Ripples of Life, Cascading to Death.
2007. Website www.johnorourke.com
43
Peter Richards (b. Cardiff, 1970) has
been based in Belfast since 1994.
He completed his M.Phil. studies,
‘Representations of Representations’,
at the University of Ulster in 1998 and
has exhibited in numerous solo and
group shows worldwide. Richards’
practice is primarily concerned
with the processes of constructing
representations of existing
representations, usually working with
combinations of photography, video
and performance. His work can be
found in the collections of the Czech
Museum of Fine Art and the Arts
Council of Northern Ireland.
Mark Roper’s collections include The
Hen Ark (Peterloo/Salmon 1990), which
won the 1992 Aldeburgh Prize for
best first collection; Catching The Light
(Peterloo/Lagan 1997); a chapbook,
The Home Fire (Abbey Press 1998) and
Whereabouts (Peterloo/Abbey Press
2005). He wase editor of Poetry Ireland
for 1999. Even So: New & Selected Poems
was published by the Dedalus Press in
Autumn 2008.
George Shaw, in Spring 2009, held
a solo exhibition Woodsman at
Wilkinson Gallery London. Other
recent exhibitions include Solo
shows, The End of the World, Galerie
Hussenot Paris, and Poets Day, Centre
d’Art Contemporian, Geneva, and
What I did This Summer, Ikon Gallery
Birmingham, Newlyn Art Gallery and
Dundee Centre of Contemporary Art.
Group exhibitions include Master
Printer, Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Idle
Youth, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New
York and You Dig the Tunnel, I’ll Hide
the Soil, White Cube, London, Crash:
Homage to J. G. Ballard at Gagosian
Gallery London. Forthcoming
exhibitions in 2010 include a solo
show at Void Gallery, Derry.
Lynda Tavakoli in 2008 published her
first novel, Attachment and prior to
that literary successes included the
Eason’s short story competitions, RTE
Sunday Miscellany, BBC ‘My Story’ and
twice winner at Listowel. Her second
novel is presently under consideration
with a London publishing house.
Rhoda Twombly has lived in Ireland
for over thirty years. She owned and
ran a pub on Inish Mor in Galway,
then moved to Inishlyre, one of the
small Clew Bay islands. The close-knit
communities laced with traditions
and story telling, the spectacular land
and seascapes and ever-challenging
weather provides the inspiration for
her short stories and poetry.
Abridged Personnel
Maria Campbell is Abridged Editor.
Maria has just completed her PhD.
She will take the edge off an academic
career with as many forays into the
poetic world as is financially viable.
Gregory McCartney is Abridged Project
Coordinator, freelance exhibition
maker, North West Visual Arts Archive
coordinator, PhD researcher, and poet.
He is still damning the torpedoes.