The Tuesday Poem - 'Afterword' by Robyn Rowland

Afterword

i.m. Seamus Heaney, April 13 1939 – August 30 2013

It was the week after your funeral mass.

Your poem Postscript was meandering through my memory,

with your government of the tongue, your message about voice,

unique sound of a poet come into themselves.

I was re-arriving, driving from Clifden,

the road you knew well, out

along the marbled spine of our peninsula,

jetlagged, neither here nor there.

Packed overgrowth from summer was so full

compared to the stark cold spring I left earlier in the year,

when you were reading and writing, knowing already

tomorrows are best left uncounted.

It was a soft day but no wind to blow the dust off a long trip,

no hurry in the low-slung sky,

a slight hush in the lightly wet wheels.

Air had been thoroughly soaked and a

county-full of spiders busy at work.

The land was hung as if for Christmas –

every tip of gorse branch, each dip of lavender heath,

every vacant space between the cups of fuchsia,

was glitter-strung. Thousands of webs, millions of drops,

netted a tinselled land, branches rising

as shimmering limbs from the bog,

or perhaps heaven had laid out a lacy crystal cloth

that angels at play dropped careless beneath long hugging clouds,

and the trees, reaching up, had torn it about themselves

in bliss at their lovely ornament.

Or maybe, for a small moment, the earth,

feeling aged beyond counting, had

webbed-over with wearied loss,

grown ancient at your death.

Robyn Rowland © from Line of Drift, Doire Press, Galway Ireland, 2015

Third generation Irish-Australian, Dr Robyn Rowland AO  has been reading and teaching in Ireland for 32 years.  A citizen of both countries, she lives in the two places equally.

Robyn has previously published ten books, seven of poetry, with two further books forthcoming in 2015: Line of drift, emerging from her life in both Ireland and Australia (Doire Press, Galway, Ireland) and This Intimate War. Gallipoli/Canakkale 1915 –  içli dışlı bir savaş. Gelibolu/Çanakkale 1915 (Australia and Turkey). The latter, based in historical research, represents the experience of both Australians and Ottoman Turks during that war. It is bi-lingual, with translations by Assoc Professor Dr Mehmet Ali Çelikel from Pamukkale University.

Line of Drift has just come out - congratulations, Robyn! You can purchase Line of Drift, (free postage!) Doire Press Galway at http://www.doirepress.com/writers/k-z/robyn_rowland/ 

I've been taking part in the Iowa Writer's Centre online poetry MOOC - and the linebreaks in the current Tuesday Poem, 'Albert Park' by Alice Miller interest me. Have a look and see what you think - I agree with the guest editor, Saradha Koirala that they invite you to read the poem in different ways.

Phew! Good to be back at the blog....

Tuesday Poem

A Book

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

by Emily Dickinson

Next week I'm the Tuesday Poetry Hub Editor and I'm featuring Patricia Sykes, a Melbourne-based poet on both my own blog and the Tuesday Poetry Hub.  I love this little poem by Dickinson and I hope you do, too. Keep reading poetry at the Tuesday Poetry Hub - this week's poem is by Jac Jenkins and it's dense, gothic and rich in imagery. You can read a 2012 interview with Jac Jenkins talking about her life and flash fiction here.  Don't forget you can access many more pages of prancing poetry from the Hub!

Tuesday Poem

Metro, Line 3

Her two dogs cowered

when she stopped

to curse me

in a unfamiliar language

but for the one word she repeated

mongolo mongolo.

I said I didn’t understand

refused to look away.

Maybe I had stared

puzzled by what was in the baby sling

she wore – a silent baby or other small

animal, her own belly?

She might have been my age or

younger, maybe I caught her gaze

and held it while I thought of that?

‘Mongolo, mongolo’

she said, stabbing the word home

poking my cheek

with one grubby finger

her dogs cringing.

Her trousers were torn,

her feet ingrained with the city

through which she led the dogs

on frayed rope – lack can make anyone

crazy with sullen, impotent rage

and I’d have felt sorry

but for the sweet-faced dog

who whimpered, hunched back on its tail

as she pulled up in front of me –

I matched her stare, indifferent.

Lady, I’m no poor toothless bitch you can drag

into your loco world.

The Metro doors closed between us

she cursed, I stared –

unrepentant.

Catherine Bateson, September, 2013

This may be my last Tuesday Poem posting for a while - I'm leaving Paris - so sad! - but moving on to London and from there, driving up to Scotland, back to London and on to Italy. I'm not sure where we have wifi. I'm sure there will be opportunities to blog along the way - but maybe not so many opportunities to write poetry! So, bear with me, please.

Check out the Tuesday Poem hub where there is a strong political poem by Gregory Philp, published by guest editor, Rethabile. And from here you can travel to other worlds. Travel safely! 

in lieu of a Tuesday Poem - I introduce you to two poets...

Last night I went to Shakespeare and Company and heard four Irish poets read. There's something so seductive about the Irish lilt and the unexpected vernacular, particularly after all the american I've heard. The poets were: Aifric Mac Aoaha, Ailbhe Darcy, Leeanne Quinn and Maurice Riordan. Of the four, the two whose works spoke most to me were Ailbhe Darcy and Maurice Riordin.

Both of these poets have a laconic but charged and crafted presentation of their world, ideas and experience. In my opinion, Riordan works more within a firm Irish tradition. I don't mean by this that its parochial, just that the tropes and vocabulary are familiar. (Maybe I mean an Irish male tradition?) Anyway, it's lovely stuff - have a look at 'Stars and Jasmine' - the casual authority of the first line held me and then when I came to that final stanza, I laughed out loud at the last domestic lines.

Naturally Darcy's first collection, Imaginary Menagerie, is not as sure-footed as Riordan's new collection, The Water Stealer.  But there's a sense of discovery and play in this collection, as well as self-investigation and I loved the robust vernacular that enters some of her poems juxtaposed against an exuberant and unexpected use of language. Check out one of Darcy's poems here and see what you think of both the poem and Carol Rumens's small essay, cracking the poem open.

Have a look, too, at the Tuesday Poem hub and read Saradha Koriala's poem, 'Tika' published here guest editor/curator Harvey Molloy. I lingered over the final stanzas of this poem, it resonated uncannily with some of my recent travelling experiences.

Tuesday Poem

Thoughts on a Belgrave Train

The old gum

sheds its skin,

peeling like a lychee.

The sky is

draped like a blanket

over a bed of trees.

A case of mistaken identity.

Blackberries growing

through the barbed-wire fence.

Shopfront reads

“Fish connection” –

on-line dating?

Cigarette smoke unfolds

around your ears.

What music looks like.

Eleanor Lamb


Belgrave Line

At Bayswater -
a girl with caged rats -
people keep texting.

Tecoma station -
three kids, their bare-foot mum
eye-spy blackberries.

A woman, inked
Medusa on one shoulder,
touches my husband briefly.

The helmet-tattooed man
cracks his knuckle-dusters.
Girls read horoscopes.

Catherine Bateson, 2012 - 2013


Eleanor Lamb has completed a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in Creative Writing and Literature at Melbourne University and about to begin her Honours year. She has previously been published in Cordite Poetry Review. It's a treat to be able to feature an emerging poet on this blog - and  I really enjoy the clever wordplay and sharp observations in 'Thoughts on a Belgrave Train'

I wanted these two poem sequences to be a kind of conversation as Eleanor and I are friends, neighbours, writing buddies and she is teaching me ukulele! I hope you've enjoyed overhearing this train conversation.

If you'd like to read more Tuesday Poems, check out the Tuesday Day Poem blog, this week featuring a poem by Joanna Preston, and from there, skip over to more poetry via the sidebar links. Enrich your week!