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Somewhat Vortex by Orla Martin. Published by Salmon Poetry 2023

Like a vortex, poems often draw in the reader by a line, a word or a phrase that catches the eye and causes them to look again. This ‘magnetic’ quality can be felt in many of Orla Martin’s poems. ‘Rainbow’ for instance is a title that might signal a poem like the one about the rainbow that made Wordsworth’s heart ‘leap’ when he beheld it. But here there is a kind of sideways treatment, more reminiscent of Emily Dickinson (who, you will remember, told us to ‘Tell the truth but tell it slant’). Poets are limited to letters on a page and the poem asks ‘How can I / in black and white / paint your plumage.’ Paint would be great but, for this poet (and the rest of us) black ink on the white page will have to do. And it does. This very short reflective poem touches on the limitations of the written word, but also highlights how much can be done with little.

     ‘The certainty of absence’ presents a puzzling situation. The postcard is nice. But the poet says it is just a ‘Neat rectangular self-indulgence’ and the reader is drawn to wonder what exactly is the relationship between these two people. Is it a story of a sad ending? Regret? Or perhaps one of good riddance? No more ‘gawping after the postman’ anyway. 

    Short poems are very suited to this kind of ‘drawing in,’ magnetic quality, and these poems (like Emily’s) are often quite short. No words are wasted. However, I find the longer pieces where the tone is less abrupt are equally effective. ‘Andromeda’ takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of our galaxy, full of ‘Stellar cities of red stars and shiny new blue ones.’ – a breathtaking journey with fleeting glimpses of extraordinary worlds. Makes me feel an insignificant dot in this great order of things. Different people take different meanings from different poems but, for what it is worth, for me this poem is a comment on the endless possibilities in our lives, unless we get sidetracked into going somewhere we really did not want to go in the first place. It seems the poet ended up on Sedna which, Google declares, is a dwarf planet, mostly a mixture of solid ices, water, methane, and nitrogen, along with widespread deposits of reddish-coloured tholins. (Tholins?) Sounds very disappointing, after all we have seen on the great tour. A cautionary poem.

    Not all the poems are as energetic as Andromeda. I also liked the more sombre pieces like ‘Reposal.’ There is a quietude here which suits the subject. Sounds are heard that might have gone unnoticed elsewhere: (‘a child cries in the church. A pew creaks’). ‘Cove’ is also a fine piece of restrained writing. And there are some wonderful descriptions in ‘Wedding poem.’ Finely structured too, as are all these poems.

    And there is that great poem I have heard Orla read at poetry events – ’The Poets’ – with its gently sardonic tone and vivid pen pictures which delighted audiences (‘They do write a great card, do the Poets,’ and‘Intense over coffee, are The Poets’) but I often wondered would the poem have the same impact without the poet behind it. And yes, it does, and handsomely.

     I found these poems to be very compelling and original. And enjoyable, something very important in any collection. The cover by Esmé Lewis is beautiful and reminiscent of the work of Jack Yeats.

Eamonn Lynskey

Orla Martin has had poetry published in many leading journals, including Poetry Ireland Review and Crannog. Her work has been broadcast on RTE and Dublin City FM and shortlisted for many awards such as the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize . She has organised, and paticipated in, many poetry events over the years

Orla holds an MA in Arts Policy and Practice from University College Galway and works as an administrator at The Irish Writers Centre, in Dublin.

You can purchase Somewhat Vortex from Salmon Poetry by clicking HERE

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Very late with this blog about my visit in February to the AWP yearly conference, this time held in Kansas City, Missouri. But better late than never. The city was in a fevered state with the Kansas City Chiefs about to go for their second title in a row in the American Football Championship, so the atmosphere was warm and welcoming for all out-of-staters. You HAD to be coming for the game, yes? Well, no (I didn’t admit), but the atmosphere was equally welcoming at the AWP. As always, plenty of interesting and inspiring talks to attend and the enormous bookfair to browse through and books to buy, even though the shelves at home are creaking.

And plenty of interesting people to meet as well, including friends Carolyn Tipton, Eamonn and Dru Wall and Ryler Dustin, to mention just a few. There was a lively attendance at the Salmon Poetry stall in the Bookfair, manned by Stephen Powers, whose new collection Hail My Attention Kindly is well worth the paper it’s printed on. It encompasses travel poems, observations on the world seen through those travels, and poems featuring (well … mentioning) Dolly Parton, who is something of a muse for Stephen. To see (and buy!) his books, click on salmonpoetry. Stephen

Plenty of other new Salmon collections and Salmon scribes on hand, including the irrepressible Sandy Yannone, also with a new collection The Glass Studio from Salmon, which I am reading just now. Sandy did her usual great job as MC at the annual Salmon Reading, this time in the Marriot Hotel just across the road from the convention centre.

[PS: The Kansas City Chiefs overcame the San Fracisco 49ers to claim their second successive championship. Talk about fevered excitement!]

As usual I took the opportunity to look around yet another great American City. Lots to see, and during my visit I made sure to go to the famous Nelson Atkins Museum. The museum is housed in a truly magnificent building, worth seeing in its own right. There are famous exhibits such as Caravaggio’s John the Baptist in the Wilderness, brooding darkly in his dark canvas since 1604, and also exhibits from the ancient worlds of Pharaonic Egypt, Greece and Rome. A great collection too of the French Impressionts and Native American works … so much to see and far too much to enumerate. But my ability to walk around a gallery for hours has diminished over the years and I was sorry I hadn’t time to make a second visit. <http://www.nelson-atkins.org>

Took time also to visit the National World War I Museum, which is quite an experience. Overall, though, despite the excellent presentation of exhibits and accessible information on that conflict — at the time so misleadingly called ‘the war to end all wars’ — I was left feeling somewhat depressed, possibly because of the horrors the Palestinians were suffering in Gaza while I was going around at my leisure, safe and sound and out of the way of indiscriminate bombing. All wars give rise to brave and selfless acts but there’s no getting away from the indescribable suffering.

A relieving aspect of my visit was the special exhibition Bespoke Bodies: The Deign & Craft of Prosthetics which showed how that awful war contributed to a big improvement in the design of artificial body parts. Good news for war victims (of which, unfortunately, there is still no shortage) and for disabled people in general. Ironical the fact that some good things do come out of wars. Anyway, it was a sobering visit and please do not let my personal reactions put you off visiting this wonderful museum if ever you get to Kansas. It’s a must. Check out <https://www.theworldwar.org>

In my rambling around town, I ended up in River Market, a shopping district, and by chance came upon one of the most marvellous of exhibitions I’ve ever seen. The Arabia Steamboat Museum is dedicated to a steamboat that sailed the Missouri regularly carrying merchandise up river but struck a log in 1856 and sank. Fortunately, there were no casualties. Despite a number of attempts, it was not successfully excavated until 1988. Its cargo was painstakingly lifted from the riverbed and out of the accumulated mud of 132 years, and its contents sifted, cleaned and catalogued.

And such contents! Household plate and utensils, tools of every description, ladies and gent’s clothing for indoor and outdoor wear, all types of furniture, barrels, buckets, ladders, ropes … such an enormous and varied quantity of goods sailing to the upper reaches of the big river carrying the wherewithal for the great expansion into the new frontiers. A veritable time capsule of the early 1880s. Fascinating. This exhibition really has to be seen to be believed. Check out the museum website at http://1856.com

Finally, I must record my thanks to poet Lucien Zell (right), over from Prague to Kansas for the AWP conference whom I met in Prospero’s excellent book store and who invited me to read at an event he organised at the store. Thanks, Lucien. We had a great night. For informaton on Lucien see www.haikunorthwest.org/lucien-zell

‘The Scout’, the city’s famous landmark, looks out over Kansas City, Missouri.

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See this website’s introductory page www.eamonnlynskey.com

for details of Eamon Lynskey’s books (and how to buy them!)

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I hope you will enjoy my reading on Cultivating Voices Live Poetry on the New Books Showcase transmitted via Zoom alongside Breda Spaight (Ireland), and Ryler Dustin (USA). It was a privilege to read with two such accomplished poets. Click Here

Cultivating Voices Live Poetry  is a regular Zoom reading venue hosted by Sandra Yannone. Click here

Our books are available from the publishers as follows:

‘Watching for the Hawk’ by Breda Spaight from Arlen House ‘... an unflinching and intensely moving evocation of a childhood in rural Ireland …’ — Jane Clarke

‘Material Support’ by Eamonn Lynskey from Salmon Poetry ‘… measured and controlled, language strays into unexpected territory, offering surprise and sensitivity …’ — Eileen Casey

‘Trailer Park Psalms’ by Rylar Dustin from Pitt Press ‘ … the contradictory and conflicting emotions that come with loss …’ — Kuame Dawes

Regards to all

Eamonn

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Hard to believe that with this most recent edition (No. 17: May 2023) SKYLIGHT 47 celebrates its 10th anniversary.  Many are the literary magazines that have folded almost before the ink was dry on their 3rd or 4th edition, but some few survive the slings and arrows, and this Galway-based magazine is one of them. Its large ‘newspaper’ format is strikingly original and allows its poetry the space that all poetry deserves. Sometimes one comes across formats where the poems look rather crushed together and follow hot on the heels of each other. In SKYLIGHT 47 each piece gets its proper ‘breathing space’, a sometimes overlooked aesthetic essential to poetry. As well as this, the magazine always gives space to wonderful illustration, this time to the art of Julianne Guinee, whose solo show will open in the Hunt Museum, Limerick on 3 July 2023.

And so, given the anniversary, everyone at the magazine launch on the 25th of May was in excellent good humour, tinged with sadness at the recent passing of Kevin Higgins, one of Galway’s foremost poets and longtime supporter of SKYLIGHT 47. The fine essay by Molly Twomey in the magazine (‘A Poet Who Changed Lives’) speaks for all who knew Kevin.

The editors – Nikki Griffin, Bernie Crawford and Ruth Quinlan – had an especial right to be happy with the achievement of giving such a long life to the magazine. The event was also an opportunity to welcome aboard a new member of the team, D’or Seifer. Galway library provided the venue, as often before, and several of the writers published in the new edition were at hand to provide readings. It was good to be in the company of friends like Brian Kirk (pictured right with my good self) whose next Salmon collection is in the offing, and to make new acquaintances like poet Breda Spaight.

Susan Millar DuMars was MC and introduced Breda (pictured left) who launched the magazine and had many kind words to say about it and its editors and how they supported her work over the years. She also launched and spoke to her new collection from Arlen House entitled Watching for the Hawk. Breda explained that the title poem encapsulates a memory of what her mother would tell the children to do while they were playing outside their house. In fact, the book has a particular focus on the many and, to Breda, often puzzling aspects of her mother.

Poems about mothers are frequently written as warm-hearted tributes (and long may that be so!) but Breda’s poems travel a good deal beyond this. Her mother’s complexities are explored in a poetry which is rigorous, lyrical, and completely devoid of easy sentimentality. It is a book firmly grounded in its locales of Clare and Galway, as is seen in poems like The Homeplace. When journeying home – ‘She times the journey to miss mass / in Ennis, Crusheen and Gort …’. And we can sense the Irish historical backdrop to her mother’s life in poems like On the Run in Dreary Eden: ‘Even without the gun / and without the car, my parents, a Free State couple / in their wedding photo, scarcely smiling / on church steps, look like Bonnie & Clyde …’. In this poem too — and in this time now when we are so excited about our modern Ireland and its increasing population — her bald statement about her parents – ‘They are old Ireland’— is a corrective to remind us of where we have come from. As Jo Slade says on the back cover, ” ‘Waiting for the Hawk’ is a startling, sharp-edged, sometimes disturbing, searingly honest debut”.

My own contribution to the magazine is the following untitled poem and I thank the editors of SKLIGHT 47 for publishing it and for their support in the past.

water has a skin
the dragonfly can tread
at will      the beetle too

its glassy plateau conquers
with cretaceous skill
      the butterfly knows how

to perch the leaf    while we
   but late arrivals   step
a floating crust divides us

from the surging oceans
underneath   equipped
with no aquatic tricks

should water rise to wrap
its motherskin around us
   drag us down again

back where we crawled from
      while the dragonfly
            the beetle    butterfly

will hover   skim and perch
   continue to finesse
sly strategies for survival


         
Eamonn Lynskey

Watching for the Hawk (ISBN 978-185132-304-3) is published by Arlen House: http://www.arlenhouse.ie

Copies of Skylight 47 (Summer 2023) can be ordered at skylight47poetry.wordpress.com

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The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) was back in business in March 2023 in the great city of Seattle with its yearly in-person conference, its first since San Antonio in 2020, which was itself heavily impacted by the Covid 19 pandemic. In the meantime, provision was made for a highly successful delivery of lectures and events online, but of course there is no getting around the fact that the buzz of an ACTUAL conference is simply irreplaceable. AWP is not just about talks and lectures – enlightening as they are – it is also a yearly opportunity to meet up with old friends and make new ones. And a chance to stroll around the fantastic full-floor book fair (pictured above) which continues throughout the three days of the conference.

The Salmon Poetry booth at the conference book fair is a great opportunity to meet some of Salmon’s American poets before reading with them later at events organised by the company. My own involvement this year was made even more enjoyable because of the publication of my second Salmon poetry collection ‘Material Support’ which – like everything else – has been much delayed by the pandemic. The cover is the wonderful work of freelance photographer Martin Jakubic of EirLandscape.com.

I include a poem below from the collection, ‘Longtime Companion’, which touches on one of the concerns of the book: the idea that we are surrounded by objects which are our mute assistants, helping us on our journey through life and will most likely go on to help others when we journey onwards to the Shades (see also ‘Everything Must Go’). The subject of the poem is a something which is an everyday part of our lives. I have allowed it to speak for itself and remind us of its importance. ‘Material Support’ is available for purchase on the Salmon website at My books at Salmon Poetry and at bookshops shortly.

Longtime Companion


Beside the microwave
and Kenwood Chef and toaster --
me. There was a time

      you cupped your hands to drink 
      fresh water from a stream,
      then had the sudden thought

to shape me. Later still
to round me on the wheel
and decorate me, bake me,

      sometimes accidentally
      break me in your earth-floored
      Neolithic kitchen.

And it wasn't long
before you learned to bend me
out of metal, came

      to place me gently
      with the shrouds of those
      who journeyed to the Shades.

These dials and switches now,
these interactive screens
and temperature controls

      are very welcome, but --
      always standing nearby
      full or empty, me:

wooden, clay or metal,
porcelain or plastic, 
ever I remain,

                            Your humble servant

(First published on 'Live Encounters' website)

Several other spring titles were launched from Salmon poets Lex Runciman, Paulann Peterson, Patricia Brody, Erin Coughlin Hollowell, Eamonn Wall, Mary Buchinger, Alice Pettaway, John Morgan, David Rigsbee and Susan Rich. So far I have read Lex and Eamonn’s collections and , even so, I know I will have to re-read them to get beyond a superficial glimpse of their worth. So I have a good deal of reading ahead of me!

The Salmon presence owes much to the volunteers who undertake the mounting and organisation of the booth at the book fair. Mention must be made of Stephen Powers and Sandra Yannone (both of them ‘Salmon’ poets), and of course Jessie Lendennie, founder and director of Salmon and doyenne of the Irish poetry scene, who travelled again from the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland to meet and greet her American poets and any of her Irish ones who happened to be present. Readings were arranged at the Mayflower Hotel and at the Grand Sheraton.

With Jessie Lendennie

… and Lex Runciman

A word about Seattle itself. It is one of those BIG BIG American cities but with a great transport system that allows one to get around easily, so it really does not feel so big at all. And cheap too. Travel from the airport to the city centre is a long haul but costs only about $3.00. The same ticket (card) does for all other modes its public transport. A stroll around the city’s edges will bring you to many little parks and open spaces

and maybe and unexpectedly to a farmers’ market with the most delicious of edibles on show. Some ‘old’ buildings stubbornly hold their place among the chrome and glass cathedrals. ‘Old’ is in inverts because we are too-accustomed to think that not much in America is ‘old’ by European standards. That is of course completely untrue, given the thousands of years that indigenous peoples inhabited the area, but theirs is another story best told elsewhere.

Some of my earliest reading in poetry began with the work of Robert Service and his engrossing narratives set in the gold-rush days of the Yukon (‘There are strange things done in the midnight sun / By the men who moil for gold…’) and Seattle’s more recent history really begins with discovery of the precious metal in 1896 near the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory. The small town was strategically placed on the route that prospectors would take on their way to the the fabled goldfields and so it became the place to buy the equipment and provisions necessary for the long journey ahead. Cue: boom times! It is said that the merchants and traders of Seattle made much more of a fortune than did most of the prospectors.

Seattle 1890s

Seattle 2020s

If you find yourself in town no doubt you will want to visit the famous landmarks such as the Space Needle and to wander around the fabulous Pine Market. But don’t forget to call into the Klondike Gold Rush Museum at 319 2nd Ave S.  There you will find photographs and artefacts testifying to that torrid time when prospectors came from all over America and elsewhere to seek their fortune. The personal histories of many of those people are detailed in well-mounted displays.

See y’all next year in Kansas City for AWP ’24!

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This book is available from my Salmon Poetry page at My books at Salmon Poetry

Eamonn Lynskey writes of the pressures of our fast-changing 21st century, sometimes too fast-changing (He Walks His Several Cities), and how our lives are supported by a cast of unacknowledged assistants in the practical demands of day-to-day life (Your Humble Servant). Poems of loss (Those First Evenings and An Emigrant’s Return) are complemented by others of renewal (This Turning Hour and Everything Intent). Extraordinary events are celebrated here too and the way they do not seem to affect us as much they might (20 July 1969 AD and Selfie). Many poems point to truths obscured by our mythologizing of the past (Before the World Was Storied) and how it is that despite being caught up in the rush of events we are constantly drawn to reflect on just what it is, and why it is, this strange experience we call ‘living’.

Fred Johnston writes:

Eamonn Lynskey’s fourth collection of poems is masterly in its interrogation of the wide spectrum of ordinary – and not so ordinary – experiences and how poetry might address them. From the domestic to the international, the familiar and lyrical to the distressing and tragic, Lynskey uses a deft and well-practiced pen to illuminate the realities of our allegedly-modern world, while never losing sight of the intention always to create a poem. Ireland’s personal tragedies are seen as a component of the often-overwhelming sufferings of a greater world; countering this is Lynskey’s ruminations on teaching poetry in a classroom or meditating on a great painting. The world is a violent place, bombs fall as they have always done, refugees risk everything and men seek work. Somehow it is within the personal and the personal-as-poetry that a measure of quiet redemption may be found.

Grateful acknowledgement to Liz McSkeane, Anamaria Crowe-Serrano and Ross Hattaway of the Troika workshop.

And sincere thanks to Jessie Lendennie and Siobhán Hudson Jeanotte of Salmon Poetry for enabling this collection to see the light of day.

salmonpoetry ISBN 978-1-915022-32-5 Diverse voices from Ireland and the World

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If you take time to read the essay below thank you very much. It was published at the beginning of last month (Nov.2022) in Senior Times magazine so that accounts for the semi-apology for broaching the subject of Christmas so early. But only semi. The truth is that by now it’s not that ‘Christmas comes but once a year’ but that it arrives earlier and earlier every year. No sooner has Hallowe’en been shut down than images of Santa and his reindeers start to appear. All driven by market forces of course, especially supermarket forces. Some years ago I wrote the following short poem about Hallowe’en’s appearance in the shopping aisles and about how the Devil himself has suffered from too much exposure, leading to the diminution of his power to strike fear into any heart that saw him (or even thought they saw him).

The Old Enemy

I recognise him straight away.

The hooves. I’m disappointed

that he has no horns. There’s a tail,

and do I get a whiff of sulphur?

The aisle is full of Hallowe’en:

witch hats, inflatable corpses,

faux skeletons hanging from the ceiling.

But his stare is vacant and he seems

a little lost among the plastic pumpkins,

ersatz blood and grinning skulls.

And much, much smaller than I remember.

That sort of fear of Satan now firmly belongs to Old God’s Time. Not so much with the Christian message of Christmas but it still has a lot to do to struggle out from under the bumper boxes of chocolates, seasonal turkey recipes and American-style outdoor Christmas lighting. I hope you enjoy the essay and I ask that you please take particular note of the last paragraph …

‘Tis the Season ..

Eamonn Lynskey considers some Christmas customs old and new.

November has swung around again and everyone begins to think of Christmas. Well, that’s not quite true. Even before Hallowe’en the yuletide preparations were well underway. The once popular yearly Church calendar of saints’ days is now replaced by the commercial exigencies of the supermarket. And no sooner have the witches’ hats, faux-cobwebs and plastic pumpkins been cleared from the aisles than the red-cheeked Santas and boxed fake pine-trees begin to make their appearance. Then comes the endless and inescapable playing of Christmas songs, ancient and modern. In these final months of the year, every time you venture out to get your few rashers and eggs you take your sanity in your hands.

But I don’t want this bit of scribble to turn into a ‘bah-humbug’ piece of curmudgeonry and bad-tempered writing. I enjoy Christmas as much as anyone else. It’s a great family time, particularly if some members arrive home from years in exile. And the giving and receiving of gifts is a wonderful experience, even if the gift makes one think immediately of a donation to the charity shop. So yes, it’s a great festival but, nevertheless, I think I may be permitted to voice impatience at some aspects which I find rather hard to take and I suspect others may share some of my views.

Our Christmases have by now become a mixture of diverse cultural borrowings. You might say that this is a reflection of the way our Republic of Ireland has become a nation of diverse peoples, far removed from when it saw itself as a homogenous Catholic nation. But this diversification of Christmas had begun long before we became a multi-ethnic society. By the time I came on the scene (I’m talking 1950s) the festival was already a compendium of myth and folklore, gathered around the story of the Nativity. And influenced by the imagination of Charles Dickens.

Roman Catholic Ireland of the 1950s was a different society to the one we have today and St Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus was central to the celebration of Christmas. There used to be life-sized representations in Churches of the stable where the great event occurred and this continues to the present, though on a reduced scale. There also used to be much smaller ‘cribs’ in people’s houses: Joseph and Mary around the new-born child in the manger, as Luke had described, surrounded by animals, which Luke had not described. Neither had he said that the shepherds and the three wise men had arrived together to pay homage, but these were minor details. The story of the coming of the child who will save mankind is surely one of the most entrancing of all time, though somewhat overshadowed today by the commercial interests of the marketplace.

As to the imagination of Charles Dickens – once so dominant in the Christmas iconography of my younger days – his influence has by now faded, though a tincture remains. There are still many Christmas cards that bear the imprint of that long-gone Dickensian world of horse-drawn coaches rolling into town in a snowy blizzard. And there are still some jolly Pickwickian old gentlemen to be seen pictured sipping their mulled wine behind the mulled windows of wayside taverns. But they are a disappearing species, although Ebenezer Scrooge and his Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future still survive in yearly revivals on stage and screen of Charles’ ever-popular seasonal story ‘A Christmas Carol’.

How come this longevity? Well, it’s down to the wonderful writing of course. Dickens was a master of the English Language. But probably his story has lasted all the more because it neatly encompasses what we would like to think is at the heart of the festival itself: the defeat of ill-will by the supernatural power of The Good. And how there must be room for everyone at the table no matter how scant the fare.

Such was the influence of Dickens. In decline now, before an indiscriminate assortment of images that are not very specific to the celebration of the Nativity. The Christmas tree has gone so much from strength to strength that it alone on a Christmas card, even bereft of decoration, evokes immediately the whole festival in all its variegated jollity. It seems like it was always there amongst us, winking its electric lights and shining out its baubles. But it wasn’t.

As is common knowledge, when Prince Albert arrived from Germany to woo the young Victoria, it was love at first sight. Much less successful was his hope to bring his wisdom to the English nation and to leave his mark on their political affairs. The British parliament soon put him wise on that score. The only lasting mark he left on English culture was the Christmas tree, a German custom that had long been part of the German Christmas and was an immediate success among the gentry of Britain and Ireland. Soon it became popular among all classes and has by now come to be the pre-eminent symbol of the celebrations.

And what is it that has kept Christmas cards so popular in this age of the email, the Zoom, the Skype and the WhatsApp? Yes, there are those who have changed over to the practice of sending digital greetings to their friends at Christmas, thereby saving themselves the bother and expense of sending actual paper cards with written good wishes. Nevertheless, packets of cards still appear on sale during November and are readily bought up. It seems that people are still intent on imparting a personal touch to the act of greeting others, especially their nearest and dearest, and do not favour sending a generic email message that has a ‘business-like’ feel about it; one which says: ’I’d like to wish you a Happy Christmas but in the shortest and least bothersome way possible’ (my addition in italics). Sometimes the sender even forgets to use the Bcc computer option which hides other recipients and one sees that the exact same message has gone out to several other ‘friends’. So much for sincerity! An actual card, with even just a sentence or two, is always much more appreciated. In the matter of Christmas good wishes, emails just don’t cut it.

Now please give me leave to mention my own particular bête noir: Christmas lights. And yes, I do understand the atavistic need we all have to brighten these winter days, the darkest of the year. And no, I am not criticising the City Fathers’ attempts to bring some cheer to the city centre. I am talking about the increasingly garish electrical adornment of suburban houses. This type of outdoor decoration began with the placing of a few electric bulbs in the front garden, in a tree or a bush perhaps, ‘to brighten things up’. Fine. However, of recent years, and under the influence (I think) of American TV and movies, electrical lighting has started to cover the whole front facades of suburban houses, complete with neon-enabled ‘on-off’ colours which have a terrible effect on those of us whose eyes have become somewhat sensitive over the years. Santa and his reindeers and elves often feature too, cascading down a roof illuminated by a host of white electric mini-bulbs simulating snow. It will be interesting to see if these expensive demonstrations of ‘good cheer’ will survive our 2022/23 cost-of-living crisis when even boiling an egg will become a BIG DECISION, thanks to escalating electricity bills.

These displays are a long way from the era in which it was the custom to place a candle in the front window to guide the wayfarer along dark winding rural roads and perhaps to the offer of a bed for the night. Suburbia put paid to that kindly notion, but yet the occasional candle is still seen in housing estates windows. Old customs die hard. Sometimes too one sees the seven-branched candle-stick, a symbol of the Jewish people and a reminder that Jesus himself was a Jew. Perhaps too this can be a poignant reminder of sufferings endured in the past and of the need for us to be men and women of good will towards others.

The mention of Santa’s reindeers reminds me that there is one iconic symbol of Christmas without which Christmas would not be, well … Christmas. Santa’s red and white outfit and flowing white beard reminds us of his great ancestor, Saint Nicholas, who saved the three poor sisters from being sold into slavery by providing them with dowries so that they could be decently married. I always liked that story and I find in our Santa the embodiment of that generosity – a virtue which we hope will outlast the season and stay with us into the New Year, no matter how many disappointments land on us. As for Santa’s reindeer, the temptation is to think that these are (like Prince Albert’s tree) some kind of cultural import. Not so. The bone fragments of reindeer consumed by humans have been found in Ireland, dating back to our ancestors of 35,000 years ago when land bridges linked us to other territories far and wide.

I have not enough space to consider traditional Christmas carols, though their history is as interesting as any other. It’s true to say too that most of the lyrics are wonderful (‘… when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even’) although their constant playing three or four weeks before Christmas Day takes a good deal of the shine off them and, as mentioned, makes shopping in the local supermarket something of an ordeal. But it is the endless playing of popular Christmas songs that is a particular penance.  I always had a soft spot for Brenda Lee, and still have, though having to listen to her endlessly Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree for weeks every year has put a severe strain on our relationship. And I do not trust myself to put down on paper anything about that chap who sings that he wishes it could be Christmas every day. Is he mad or what?

Finally, I want to thank you so much for taking time to read this piece. Despite the objections and reservations outlined above, I want it known that I intend to enjoy my festive season, as always. And that I wish the blessings of the season on each and every one of you and on your families and friends.

My thanks to the Senior Times magazine for publishing this article.

See the website http://www.seniortimes.ie

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Cyphers #93

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Horace reads his poems in front of Maecenas,
by Fyodor Bronnikov (1827-1902)

My thanks to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and her editing team for including the following untitled poems in Cyphers #93, one a version of Horace’s famous ode in his Book 1 (poem xi).  I am having a shot at using my Latin – first encountered at James’s Street CBS in the long, long ago – to do out versions of Horace and, as always when one reads a great poet carefully, his influence comes to bear. So it is that both poems are untitled because I have found that Horace does not use titles and it has occurred to me that titles can influence the way a poem is read. Without a title, the poem stands on its own; the reader is given no idea or direction or as to what their mind-set should be on reading it. They must discover everything from the poem itself, rather like when one views a canvas in an Art Gallery. It should first be viewed carefully before one reads the detailed note beside it. This ‘untitled’ approach won’t work for all poems but I’m going to make it work for me as much as possible from now on. So again, thank you Eiléan, and you too, Horace.

I have long had this belief that an artwork should be considered on its own merits first, and without reference to the artist’s biography and critics’ views. These should come later for a fuller understanding of the work. When I was a teacher, I used to collect up all my student’s poetry books and instead give them each a page with just the poem on it. And when we had exhausted all our speculations as to its meaning(s) and devices (and as to whether it was written by a man or a woman: interesting discussions here!) only then would we explore the poem with the detailed information provided by the book. Not all my students (or their parents) agreed with this approach – some were impatient with me, arguing the pointlessness of trying to speculate on the poem’s ‘message’, etc., when all the information was already in the poetry book and could be read before studying the poem, thereby saving a lot of time. But I stuck to my method of focusing entirely on the poem first and not on someone’s explanation of it, and I am pleased to say that most of my students enjoyed examining the poem without pre-judice. And this enjoyment was reflected very positively in their exam results. I surmise that this was because the examiners were more impressed in reading what the students themselves thought of the poems rather than getting the usual rehash of what the poetry book editors thought. Certainly when I was correcting papers I found far too much of the latter

In keeping with my no-title policy, I’ll say nothing about the other poem (Untitled #2). See what you make of it.

Quintus Horatius Flaccus. (Carminum, Liber Primus xi)

Tu ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
temptaris numeros. Ut melius quidquid erit pati!
Seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare               
Tyrrhenum, sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi
spem longam resecesquam m. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

Untitled #1 (Version Horace Ode I. xi)

irreverent to enquire
the end allotted us 

by the gods      to me
      or you Leuconoe

and useless to consult
the babylonian seers

      it's better suffer out
whatever jupiter grants us

      : many winters more
            or just this final one

to watch tyrrhenian waves
erode the shoreline      come

      strain the wine      cut back
on any longterm plans

you have for this brief space
allowed us      mark the way

that even as we're speaking
envious time flies onwards

      seize this day      repose
your least trust in tomorrow

    - Version of Horace Ode xi, Bk 1.


Untitled #2

along the grassy verges
      yellow constellations

worship summer long
the sun's ascent      until

the council's autumn blade
undoes them      sends them down

to wait in winter's dungeons
for the pulse that rears

the horsehead nebula
from interstellar dust

     the pulse will warm the soil
and signal time again

to infiltrate the cracks
in neat suburban pavements


Plenty of other poems to enjoy in this issue, and to reflect on. De Tunis Lucerna by Fred Johnson focuses on an ancient(?) grave lamp he brought back from a trip abroad.  It is 'Greening from age or some con-man's art'. Either way, it becomes a troubling presence atop his TV set considering the news reports conveyed nightly. Similarly My Grandmother by Thomas Brasch (translated from the German by Eva Bourke) is a troubling read.  I have never lived through a war, so poems like these always pull me up short. But Sujata Bhatt in her poem Hope offers a way out of bad moments: 'I turn to the old masters / and fill my silence with their words'. Well said.

Cyphers is available from book stores and from 3 Selskar Terrace, Ranelagh, Dublin 6. See http://www.cyphers.ie for details as to submissions and subscriptions.

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by on 
a good man long forgotten
      : charles the good      was murdered
praying to his god
in eleven twenty-seven
      so galbert of bruges informs us

      : all those warring kings
and disappointed heirs
      the plundering soldiery
            the inquisitions      burnings
at the stake      or worse

      : and charles the good      the good
            who fought the barons      fed
the poor in times of famine
      ministered to the sick
            : poor charles the good

      the times being what they were
            (and have been since      or worse)
poor charles the good
      -- with a name like that      he was
      a murder waiting to happen.

I wrote this poem shortly after reading a book by the historian Galbert of Bruges (d.1134) * about Charles, count of Flanders (1084-1127) who, as the poem says. met his end in the same way as did Thomas a’ Beckett. Prince Hamlet baulked at the idea of killing Claudius while he (Claudius) was at his prayers and therefore, according to the superstition of the time, would go straight to heaven. Charles’s murderers didn’t care where he went. They just wanted him out of the way and not be around to interfere with their ambitions

I suppose the poem touches on the well-worn theme of how difficult it is to find goodness in the murk of the political world. Or in the world at large, for that matter. U.S President Joe Biden looks a decent man. Certainly, for many, he would seem to outshine his predecessor as regards being sensitive to the needs of those outside his own electoral support. It’s hard to pin down, this idea of the good man, or woman. We always we end up with no real candidates, just approximations. Even saints, like Augustine, were often not so saintly in their early days.

So it is too with Count Charles, whom we find took part in the Crusades and which are now seen as little more than looting expeditions undertaken in the name of Christianity. Still, he seems to have been one of the clearest examples we have of someone worthy of the title ‘the good’, a sobriquet bestowed on him because of his exemplary character, his care for the less well-off (not much of a political priority in those days) and his religious devotion.

My thanks to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and the editing team of Cyphers Magazine for including this poem in edition no. 91.

  • The Murder of Charles the Good, by Galbert of Bruges. Translated and edited by James Bruce Ross. Published by the University of Toronto Press (1982) in association with the Medieval Academy of America.

Cyphers 91

And … Lots of fine writing in this edition of Cyphers. I particularly liked The First Time the Pope Came by Colm Scully, with its combination of shrewd observation and understated humour. It brought back memories of that long-forgotten (and little-lamented), Ireland of the past. Nell Regan’s poem The Geologist in Lockdown is also a fine piece with its vocabulary of apposite hard, gritty words. And Ann Zell’s First Readers is an excellent example of terse telling. Lots of other top class work too, including two brief but memorable sketches by my good friend Richard W Halpern. And Natasha Cuddington’s review of Leontia Flynn’s new book, Slim New Book, makes me want to look at Catullus again.

Also I must thank to the other members of the our Troika workshop: Liz McSkeane, Anamaria Crowe-Serrano and Ross Hattaway for their valuable support in the writing of this poem.

by on

I am delighted to see my poem Best Time of Day published in the Italian on-line magazine Formafluens <https://www.formafluens.net/magazine/> translated with the assistance of the Italian poet Anna Maria Robustelli. This poem was included in my collection It’s Time, published by Salmon Poetry in 2017. http://www.salmonpoetry.com

Like everyone, my mother had difficult days and when the time came to go to bed she always breathed a sigh of relief. In the moment I describe, I was still a child and shared the room her. My hero was Kit Carson the ‘Indian Fighter’ and I used to read anything about him I could find, at all hours.

My thanks to Tiziana Colusso, director of Formafluens and to the Editorial Director Natal Antonio Rossi (of FUIS: The Italian Federation of Writers).

Sono felicissimo di vedere la mia poesia Il momento migliore del giorno pubblicata sulla rivista on-line italiana Formafluens <https://www.formafluens.net/magazine/> tradotta con l’assistenza della poetessa Anna Maria Robustelli, dalla poesia originale Best Time of Day inclusa nella mia raccolta, It’s Time, pubblicata da Salmon Poetry nel 2017. http://www.salmonpoetry.com

Come tutti, mia madre aveva giorni difficili e, quando veniva il momometo di andare a letto, tirava sempre un sospiro d sollievo. Nel momento in cui  sto descrivendo, ero  ancora un bambino e dividevo la stanza con mia madre. Il mio eroe era il ‘combattente indiano’ Kit Carson. Ho letto tutto quello che potevo trovare su di lui, a tuute le ore.

Ringrazio Tiziana Colusso, Direttrice della rivista, e Natale Antonio Rossi (Direzione Editoriale) della FUIS (Federazione Unitaria Italiana Scrittori).

Best Time of Day

In a charity shop I find a stack
of dusty women's magazine,
the kind my mother read each night,

her candle winking on the ledge
behind her. Out across the frontier
with Kit Carson at my side

I led the covered wagons west
across the arid plains, Winchester
ready until, felled by sleep,

I'd wake a little later, find her
reading still a Woman's Own
or People's Friend. "Best time of Day,"

she'd say. I hear her say it still
each night I open back the sheet,
pick up my book. Best time of Day.


Il momento migliore della giornata.

In un charity shop trovo una pila
di riviste femminili impolverate,
il tipo che mia madre leggeva ogni sera,

la sua candela ammiccante sulla mensola
dietro di lei. Oltre la frontiera
con Kit Caron al mio fianco

guidavo i carri coperti verso ovest
attraverso le pianure aride, il Winchester
pronto finche' , piegato dal sonno,

mi sarei svegliato un po' tardi e l'avrei trovata
che leggeva ancora Woman's Own
o People's Friend. "Il momento migliore della giornata,"

diceva. Sento che lo dice ancora
ogni sera quando spiego il lenzuolo
e prendo il mio libro. Il momento migliore della gionata.


Eamonn Lynskey
con Anamaria Robustelli

https://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=430&a=305