Paul Casey
his début collection is home more or less (Salmon, 2012). His second, Virtual Tides, is due from Salmon Poetry in early 2016. A chapbook, It’s Not all Bad appeared in 2009 from the Heaventree Press. He edits the annual Unfinished Book of Poetry (transition year writing) and is the founder /director of the Ó Bhéal reading series in Cork, at www.obheal.ie.
Pat Boran
was born in Portlaoise, Ireland, in 1963 and currently lives in Dublin. Prior to taking over the running of the press in 2005, he had published four collections of poetry with Dedalus, The Unwound Clock (1990), which won the Patrick Kavanagh Award, Familiar Things (1993), The Shape of Water (1996), and As the Hand, the Glove (2001). His New and Selected Poems (first published by Salt Publishing in 2005) was reissued, with minor revisions, by Dedalus in November 2007.
The Light for Damhnait Ní Ríordáin
by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Come out, I say, and you all come to the light.
I look for her, she’s there,
the sunlight glancing up from the shining leaves
wavers on her face
as she consults the rose–bush, the light moving
in slow time with her hair.
At the end of the garden where the tall trees shiver
the river’s in spate.
We walked down there at dawn to get rid of the noise
of the night’s debate,
leaving the table with the bottles and empty glasses,
Socrates and his fate
in Phaedo, in the Great Books of the World edition
on thin Bible paper
laid open, we left them to look at the swelling river
rushing to Askeaton,
the tall Desmond castle by the bridge and the friary downstream
in their desolation.
We turned back, we had to wash the glasses and arrange
the room before her parents
rose up, she stopped to consult the rose–bush, and the sun
rose up in its ranges,
her face shone green in the glancing light, I remember
across all the changes —
and that they had arrived in the dark, the small shy moths
lined up, wings packed tight,
crowded under the lamp that still shone emptily
recalling the hours of night.
In This Silent Land.
by Seamus Ruttledge
In this silent land
Say nothing
And keep saying it
In this silent land.
Men draped in cassocks
Possess a Nation’s secrets
To barter for souls over open graves
And we stay silent
In this silent land.
In this silent land
Hushed by conquest
Secrecy is sacred
In this silent land.
Subconscious whispers
Fill the confessional box
Where all flesh is sin
And silence is sacred
In this silent land.
In this silent land
The sun shines
On celibate holy men
Bearing sacred staffs
Like ancient chieftains
Parading authority from Castle walls
All over this silent land.
They measured the morality
Of a Nation
In a Roman Chalice
That shone bright
On the outside
For a people
Blessed with poverty
And bowed in silence
In this hushed land.
In this silent land
Women lay bleeding
On laundry floors
In this holy land
Infants are secreted
Like contraband
From cursed wombs
In this still, silent land
(To the memory of all of the women who were condemned to live desperate and lonely lives in the Magdalene Laundries.)