SCRIOBH LITERARY FESTIVAL 2005

 

POETRY COMPETITION SHORTLIST

 

Hugh O’Donnell	'Lodger'	1st place
Claire Lyons Dagger	‘Dallach Dubh'	Joint 2nd place
Jim Maguire	'Man Adrift'	Joint 2nd place
Justin McCarthy	'Field Thieves'	3rd place
Peggie Gallagher	'Luck of the Draw'
Don Hanley	'The World Bank'
Ron Houchin	'Touching Wood'
Eamonn Lynskey	'Exiles'
Olivia Kenny McCarthy	'Rough Touch'
Nora McGillen	'Leaving'
Willie-Joe Meally	'Pieces of Time'

 

 

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Dallach Dubh by Claire Lyons Dagger

 

Thar mo chuimhne a shleamhnaigh

spleachadh de la boideach eile i mi Aibreain,

soineann nach rabhthas ag suil leis

'is tu ag gearradh an fheir leis an sean lomaire faiche

'is me ar ghogaide ag tarraingt fiaili idir na meirini puca;

ach

Ba lear an tsolais e a dhall mo shuile

'is fuaim rithimeach na gcuilithini ar phuirini tra

a dolbhaiodh me – a mmo tharraingt siar – gan coinne,

go sean uaire a d’eirigh anios on am ata thart  

 

a d’ealaigh uaim aris ‘is an ghrian ar an spear

ag sleamhnu go grimmeall na gcuimhni caillte.

 

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Field Thieves by Justin McCarthy

 

The field folds up

To fit into a briefcase

There are two pockets

One for birdsong

The other for rain

 

Underneath worms wave goodbye

Naked earth steams and shivers

Light seeps through cracks

Into cold nosed nests

Drawing colour from dark

 

I will be waiting for you

In the room we washed last year

Everything is ready

The window has hazed

Dust has settled

 

Unfold the field

Smooth it with your elbow

Careful with the rain

That it doesn’t stick together

And make a pool

 

Sprinkle the birdsong on

It knows where to go

Curve your arm as a hedge

The ceiling is blue

A church bell rings

 

I will mind the briefcase

We may need it again

Not all fields transplant

That’s the chance we take

As field thieves

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Lodger by Hugh O’Donnell

 

Ground shifts and I am somewhere else.

Change of address, street lighting, loud stairs.

Once there was a hand squeezed in a father’s

by a kerb, then hair-oil, knotting one’s own tie

and shoes, then a boy astray in a mist

of chalk-dust.  Homesick for the first time,

later it becomes a habit, polished by goodbyes.

Window panes more or less dirty, doors that close

with a thud, neighbours whose greeting can’t hide

their reticence.  The last place wiped clean of you

in a day and someone else moved in.  ‘Who

are you?’ a voice enquires, when you return

in a week to collect your things.  Each morning

the fluid self solidifies for another go at being

somewhere, checking these clothes for size

and in the kitchen finding the kettle still warm.

 

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Man Adrift by Jim Maguire

 

Distant children try out descants

above traffic and the clapped-out

train that pokes along the quay.

A forlorn seabird squalls along.

 

It is evening.  I let my boat drift

far from the shore until the sounds

of the town are no more than some old

guilt inducing melody.

 

In the stern my nearly empty carrier-bag

flaps like a man losing his nerve.

Anytime now it will be time to go

ashore.  As usual I delay.

 

I do not like dry land.

The air makes my hands go wrinkled

and stiff.  Dogs bark at my beard,

shopkeepers stand square behind their tills.

 

I am frightened by the betting shop

odour of the streets, and by men

holding forth in doorways with nothing

on offer but guided-tours

 

of their loneliness; also by their victims

whose pale faraway faces look oddly

like mine in the days before water

became a presence to me.

 

Amongst men and stone nothing

has ever come alive for me.

Not even the girl with the mermaid tresses

who roams the castle ruins on the hill

 

and to whom once in a frenzy I called out

Who are you?  But no sound coming back

except the sea.  Lapping against all

that is hard and objectionable in me.

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Rough Touch by Olivia Kenny McCarthy

 

When you left

you left nothing

in that small room

 

but the odour of tobacco

on closed curtains,

a tap with a slow drip,

 

one knot of hair –

loose drift from a brush

or fingers combing –

 

tangled round the leg

of your unmade bed.

 

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Touching Wood by Ron Houchin

 

Wood used to be

everywhere like

water and wind.

Even the table

I tap so often

when recognizing

my luck stands

on a wooden

floor in a wood

house where once

an enthused forest

spread along both

sides of the river.

 

I rap on wood

as on the door of the earth,

asking for entry into the house

of wood that I have

always lived in and that

I will return to soon

in my own thin

private room,

the one with the keyhole

shaped like a worm.

 

When I touch wood,

I touch all

that ever was

and wood that

will be,

that is always

returning

in cracks of

sidewalks, debris

of gutters,

and fence posts

sprouting green

along rural roads.

 

Even this page

in my hand grows

twigs, black as

one endless

branch above the river,

and my hand

like the hurrying

squirrel runs

along continuous

treetops alone.

 

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Exiles by Eamonn Lynskey

 

This pianist from Warsaw plays Chopin

and Field without a score.  And afterwards

I sit again before your picturing

of him who faces out to sea from shore

because I meed to search again the scrapbooks

in my head to see if there's a chart

will find the men who shipped to England in

the fifties and found work and lost themselves.

 

Lost themselves in Lancashire as much

as Chopin did in Edinburgh, Field

in snowbound Moscow , which is to say

they found themselves as exiles, like this man

you painted with his back to everything

that made him, man who'll spend a few years sending

letters home from colliery towns in  Yorkshire ,

then less frequently, then nothing.  And

 

because you show him barebacked, shoulders tensed

against the sunlight he reminds me

of my father washing just before

he'd go to play in pubs, without a score,

the jigs and reels he learned in Manchester -

Reminds me of him waiting for the mailboat,

silent, suitcase at his feet, his mind

already past the pier at Holyhead.

 

No score will guide the hand that cannot play.

No brush will hilp a mind from which no colours

long to pour.  Not what was there already

but the music they brought with them filled

the years of concert halls or drinking houses.

Ghosting through her fingers here my father,

Chopin, Field and him you pictured standing,

with his back turned, facing outwards.  Exiles.

 

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Leaving by Nora McGillen

 

I want to remember each breath

faint as the wings of a trapped butterfly.

I want to open the lids which sit at half-mast

over the eyes that have loved me.

I want to touch again your throat

intricate as an ancient parchment,

at that spot where the swallow rose and fell slowly.

I want to hold your head forever

where the hairline receded and the small white hairs

sprouted like snowflakes.

I want to take your essence and every memory crumpled within it.

And carry it with me like a cross.

 

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Luck of the Draw by Peggie Gallagher

 

My brother is up at first light pacing

the steady nail of his smoker's cough

kettle whining, the hungry way

he looks at my leaving.

 

Late nights we play Twenty-Five.

It's February again, his sixtieth year.

Stories he slips between deals

I lift like souvenirs.

 

We play pieces of childhood.

I see father's hands

when he deals the cards.

Hearts and diamonds the rickety-

planks we light on, raking the pack

for the spangled jack

and stories he shrugs off

like what he says surprises him.

 

When he was young he had a future.

After that he had work.

He paved roads, broke concrete,

counted sewers,

his army great-coat

keeping out the cold.

 

Once I would tell my brother

          how mother grieved when he left,

          hungered for a letter.

 

But what do I know of his grief-

      the guarded room in his head

      borders he's crossed separately.

 

Here too is his story:

a family portrait

a china cabinet.

fridge big as a coffin.

 

At his kitchen table

cards fanned between us

bridges we cross

night narrowing behind us.

 

Dawn finds his garden sleeping

under a snow quilt, crisp as linen.

I will leave my footprints

and take his face with me.

 

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Pieces of Time by Willie-Joe Meally

 

Today the pony scratched her head against my shoulder

licked my hands

and walked away

 

I pulled stones from overgrown grass

bits of iron

dinged enamel buckets

a broken blue-rimmed mug

Was that Micheal’s?

 

Stones the colour of autumn

these walls knew the old people

felt their sweaty hands

felt themselves slide in mud

heard old tales

saw night and day

heard the wind

 

 

A bird sings on an old tree

 

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The World Bank by Don Hanley

 

A riverstone is the newmoon

seen, from Flynn's river fields

of late afternoon,

the sky blue turning,

 

a light blue in the dark

there flowing on ever on

down from Dromina

on to Askeaton.

 

The frost dead briar, the new grass

seen and the dried out fern,

the breeze motionless

before the main road,

 

a sound like a starling's

from the stream around the river:

in the Spring born clouds

swallows turn over.

 

The cast concrete bridge of

cobwebs is able

to catch Flynn's farm sounds

as in a sea shell.

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