These two books are published by Pound Project – Rachel’s cartoons look with a dry humour on modern life – she clearly has a keen eye to be able to express so much in a few seemingly simple lines and a handful of words.
Sunday, 6 November 2022
Waking Light by Kerri ní Dochartaigh, Mícheál McCann, Michelle Moloney, and Éilís Murphy
This is a small handbound edition of poetry and images
from everything was
In the winter I was pregnant, and I watched
a Christmas star, above
my first garden, the longest
night of the year.
Everything was soft as it is after the making of things:
bread, love, peace.
Everything was silent as it is after the breaking of things:
bread, love, peace.
The Forward Book of Poetry 2000
buy it from abebooks.co.uk
I put tabs on the following poems
Whang Editorial Policy by Mark Halliday
Late by David Hart
Sam Sax
Sad Boy / Detective (2015)
Each poem is titled “the boy detective ...” which has the effect of turning things around, like a jewel glinting in different lights, with a common threat pulling through them all.
All the Rage (2016)
“Sex + Love Addiction” is a powerful and hard poem – facing the insults and shame pushed on gay man full in the face.
“The Italian Root of Quarantine is” seems to be a echo backward from so much we have felt during COVID.
Madness (2017)
Each selection begins with an extract from the 1952 DSM-I which lists Homosexuality among the disorders and end with a different poem titled On PREP or On Prayer – it is taking troubling themes and opening them up – giving voice to pain that many hold so deep they don’t see it any more
Bury It (2018)
I tagged…
BILDUNGSROMAN which begins “i never wanted to grow up to be anything horrible | as a man. ...”
EASSY ON CRYING IN PUBLIC
BUTTHOLE
KADDISH, one segment of which is these haunting lines
please
tell
me
how
am
i
supposed
to
go
on
knowing
you
are
[ ]
A Smell of Fish by Matthew Sweeney
Featured in A Forward Poetry Prize collection
I had tagged Incident In Exeter Station in the Forward collection – a poem in such an ordinary setting but with an almost surreal twist to it.
The other poem I tagged is also set in a station…
the final stanza of Guardian of the Women’s Loo in Waterloo
I tell you, I want out from time to time.
The Eurostar’s just across the platform,
I could go to Paris and not come back,
lose myself in Montmartre, as artist’s flat
overlooking the steps, but who’d take over, who’d be
guardian of the women’s loo in Waterloo,
with all the tact, let live, let go by, that’s needed?
10p entrance? That’s half of it. The skill’s in the rest.
& Change issue No.1 September 2022
www. Andchangepoetry.com
A strong collection published in USA
From it Baltimore by Joshua Garcia
We are at a restaurant you chose, somewhere near
your apartment, when I decide not to sleep with you.
You read one of my poems in a magazine & ask if
it was about our last time. Two seasons have passed.
Two men. This morning I groomed my body,
trimmed the hair under my arms, held a blade
to my scrotum, to the quiet sacral dimple.
We order tempranillo, eat plantains with bacon,
lick a ginger-tamarind glaze from our fingers.
You translate a Spanish lyric I won’t remember.
There isn’t a moment, just a confluence of thought.
None of these details matter. It is a mercy.
The Drift by Alan Jenkins
Again Alan Jenkins featured in the Forward Poetry Prize collection (or technically before, as this is from the 2001 collection and the other one was 2006 but I am reading my way backwards through them)
His reflections on his Mother ageing are powerful – looking with an honest gaze
from House-Clearing
… the legs that, as a girl, she was famous for
have started to give her hell, and she must leave her house
which we both call home, as in “Are you coming home
for Christmas?”, and I can’t believe her house
holds so must of her...
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