No 9 Summer 2014
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The Yellow Nib No 9 Summer 2014 Edited by Leontia Flynn Frank Ormsby The Yellow Nib Edited by Leontia Flynn and Frank Ormsby. Editorial Board: Fran Brearton Edna Longley Peter McDonald David Wheatley Editorial Assistants: Stephen Connolly Charlene Small Printed by: CDS Typeset by: Stephen Connolly Subscriptions: Gerry Hellawell The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry School of English Queen’s University Belfast Belfast BT7 1NN Northern Ireland www.theyellownib.com Subscription Rates: £10/€12 per year, for two issues (Great Britain & Ireland) €20/$25 per year (rest of world) All subscription rates include postage and packaging. Back Issues Numbers 1 – 5, and 8 are available. £5/€6 per back issue (Great Britain & Ireland) €10/$15 per back issue (rest of world) All rates include postage and packaging. ISBN: 978-1-909131-02-6 ISSN: 1745-9621 Contents Ciaran Carson Five poems after Francis Ponge........................……………………………………6 Alan Gillis Six Poems.............................................................……………………………………12 Bob Collins A Tribute to Seamus Heaney........................………………………………………29 Fred Johnston Three Poems...................................………………………………………………………33 Eva Bourke Three Translations of Jan Wagner ............…………………………………36 Fran Brearton Thomas Hardy and Irish Poetry ..........……………………………………40 Harry Clifton Three Poems...................................………………………………………………………59 John McAuliffe Two Poems...................................…………………………………………………………62 Gary Allen Three Poems...................................………………………………………………………64 Fred Pollack Two Poems..............………………………………………………………….....................69 Bridget Meeds Two Poems...................................…………………………………………………………72 Diane Fahey Three Poems...................................………………………………………………………74 Donal Mahoney Two Poems..............………………………………………………………….....................77 John Wheway Three Poems.............………………………………………………………......................81 Niall Campbell Later Tasting............………………………………………………………......................82 REVIEWS Edna Longley on War Poetry………………………………………………................................85 David Wheatley on Apollinaire……………………………………………...............................91 Connie Voisine on Olds……………………………………………………...................................94 Carol Rumens on Adcock and Robertson…………………………………........................97 Gail McConnell on Laird and Symmons Roberts…………………………....................99 Kathleen McCracken on Dawe and Jamison………………………………...................106 Dave Coates on Lowe and Pollard…………………………………………............................114 Eamonn Hughes on Murphy………………………………………………...............................117 Stephen Sexton on O’Callaghan and O’Sullivan………………………….....................121 Contributor notes ………………………….......................................................................127 [ The Yellow Nib ] [ Poetry ] Ciaran Carson Five poems after Francis Ponge Cigarette Let us first set the atmosphere: foggy yet powder-dry, dishevelled, the cigarette forever in the thick of what it constantly creates. Then the personal touch: a pencil-thin torch, much more fragrant than illuminating, from whose tip fluffy grey dottles are tapped off in phrases. Finally, its burning passion: this glowing bud, shedding itself in a silvery dandruff, sleeved still in a little muff of recent ash. [ 6 ] [ Poetry ] Ciaran Carson Candle From time to time the night revives this extraordinary plant, whose glow rearranges furnished rooms into great blocks of shadow. Its golden leaf stands poker-faced upon a coal-black stalk perched in the hollow of an alabaster column. Tatty butterflies bombard it in lieu of the much too lofty moon which hazes the woods. But once singed or frazzled by the fray, they tremble on the verge of frenzy near to stupor. Meanwhile the candle, bursting suddenly free from smoke to flare and flicker on the book, encourages the reader, whereupon it tilts over in its dish to drown in its own juices. [ 7 ] [ The Yellow Nib ] [ Poetry ] Ciaran Carson Vegetation Rain does not form the only series of hyphens between the earth and sky: there is another kind, less intermittent, made of better woven, sterner stuff, which holds its ground however strong the wind. And if the elements, according to the season, succeed in breaking off some bits – endeavouring to pulverise them whirlwind-fashion – it is evident, when all is said and done, that what has been dispersed is nothing much to speak of. Looking more closely into it, we find ourselves at one of the thousand doors of an immense laboratory, bristling with omnifarious hydraulic apparatuses infinitely more intricate than the simple columns of the rain, so daringly original in concept they are simultaneously retort and filter, siphon and alembic. These are the precise instruments the rain first encounters before it attains the ground. They receive it in a panoply of little bowls, arranged in crowds at every level possible, and variously deep or shallow, overspilling one into the other, stage by lower stage, until finally the earth is watered. Thus they slow down the downpour according to their particular bent, retaining the aqueous humours and their singular benefit to the soil long after the passing of the meteorological event. They alone have the gift to make all types of rain glitter in the sunlight: in other words, to display, under the auspices of joy, their font and origin as religiously acknowledged as they were precipitately cast by sorrow. Meticulously questing in their occupation are these enigmatic characters. [ 8 ] [ Poetry ] They grow in stature in proportion to the rainfall, but more regularly, and with greater discretion; and having, as it were, a reservoir of power, they keep on at it when there is no rain at all. And finally, moreover, water can be found in certain overblown ampoules they produce and show off blushingly: assignations that we call their fruits. Such, it would seem, are the physical functions of this tapestry of warp and weft in three dimensions, on which we have bestowed the name of vegetation for its other properties, most particularly the kind of life that animates it … But I wanted in the first instance to articulate this point: although their ability to self-synthesize and to reproduce themselves without being asked – as seen between the paving stones of the Sorbonne – connects them somewhat to the animal realm, that is to say, to every kind of nomadic species, nevertheless they dwell in certain places as a permanent fixture, a fabric rooted to the world, clinging on to it like one of its foundations. [ 9 ] [ The Yellow Nib ] [ Poetry ] Ciaran Carson Oyster The oyster, the size of a good-sized pebble, has a more rocky look to it; motley in colour, it is brilliantly whitish. It is a stubbornly closed world. Still, one can open it: one must hold it in the hollow of a tea-towel, then approach it with the stub of a blunt knife, making several stabs at it. Exploratory fingers get cut on it, nails broken: filthy work. Where it’s been chipped at, its cover of white tide-marks bears a serrated halo. The interior reveals a world of meat and drink beneath what we can confidently call a ‘firmament’ of mother-of-pearl, the skies above sagging into the skies below to form a single, brackish puddle, a viscid, greenish sachet that trembles in waves of smell before one’s eyes, its borders fringed with blackish lace. Sometimes albeit rarely a dental formula will pearl within its nacre craw, with which once found you will adorn yourself. [ 10 ] [ Poetry ] Ciaran Carson Mollusc The mollusc is a being … almost … an essence. It needs no internal scaffolding, making do with a stronghold, somewhat like paint in the tube. In this instance, Madame Nature scorns to show off plasma in its naked form. She merely demonstrates how tenderly she keeps it safe in a trinket-box whose inner is more fetching than its outer. No mere gob of mucous spit, but a reality by far more precious. The mollusc is endowed with the mighty power of shutting itself up. In other words it is a clam. If truth be told it’s no more than a muscle, a hinge – a self-closing hinge at that – and its door, a self-closing hinge having secreted the door. Two shallow concave doors constitute its entire dwelling, first and last abode. It lodges there even after death. Impossible to take it out alive. The least cell of our body clings as tightly to language as language has us in its grip. But sometimes another being comes to violate the tomb, and, if it deems it fit, to supplant its late departed builder. Hence the case of the hermit crab. [ 11 ] [ The Yellow Nib ] [ Poetry ] Alan Gillis Six poems The Zeitgeist I look for you behind retail parks, ghost-lit showrooms, in dark scrubland where plastics flutter on coils of barbed wire; where, through quagged soil sown with pipes, cartons, slugged condoms, streams a steep-edged brook. Drawn to its burble and splurge I slip on the verge, fall and splunge stretching for the banks, reeds, not catching hold of anything sound, my hands ice-cube cold. And past megastores, waste yards, the suburbs’ borders, carried along on colourless waters ever gushing on, with no smile, no frown, I call you down, I call you down. Ω City limits are fine, but I spend most of my time hemmed in and lost up a tower—in front of a screen, black plastic keyboard, black plastic machine on a laminate desk—where the windows won’t open much in case I throw myself out. Dust gathers on the phone, empty plant pots. I am alone much of the time,