Another fine issue of Boyne Berries from the Boyne Writers’ Group, which was founded in 2006 and meets twice monthly in the Castle Arch Hotel in Trim, Co. Meath. In this poetry business, where magazines come and go, to be heading for your 10^th anniversary is no mean achievement!

Issue 18 was edited by Orla Fay who again has done a fine job of work. Well, I would say that wouldn’t I, since she has included one of my poems?— But there are many other poems which justify this praise. The book’s cover features a blackbird, and the first poem is entitled ‘Too Many Bird Poems’ by Paddy Halligan and he never spoke a truer word or wrote a truer poem. I am so tired of swallow poems and swan poems and other sorts of cutesy bird poems that  I’m afraid to go out into the garden in case I end up writing one.  There is course a long tradition of great ‘bird’ poems – Think of Shelley’s wonderful ‘To a Skylark’  with the great

lines

“We look before and after

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

However, I understand Paddy’s irritation at some of the ‘bird’ poems that find their way into print. It just seems too easy sometimes. I love his last two lines:

“I may even make an allusion to Peresphone

To keep the others happy, and not a lonndubh in sight.”

A very enjoyable, humorous poem. A poem that says something that needed to be said!

Another poem I really liked was Adrienne Leavy’s ‘Death of a Cowboy’. This is a lament for a family member, lightened somewhat by references to the iconography of the Cinema Western. Probably this was the favourite genre of the lamented one. Anyway, a lament is always the more poignant when it is not overwhelmingly full of grief. The balance is hard to strike but Adrienne  manages it well in this fine poem:

“Now we find ourselves thinking, how did Death come to you—

did it happen quickly, like a hero in a John Ford western,

or were you riding towards oblivion for a long time.”

I have heard Anne Tannam reading her work many’s the time, so I can actually hear her soft voice when I read ‘Thanksgiving’. It’s another of her joyful, optimistic poems that pick you up, dust you down, and make you feel that maybe, just maybe, you can start all over again.

“Speaking of miracles, what about duvets, pillows,

clean warm sheets, the quiet healing of a deep sleep …”

Patrick Chapman’s poem ‘July’ is one that affects me personally because I believe it refers to a mutual friend who passed away last July. It’s about other people too and in this way it is broadened out onto that ‘universal’ plane so necessary in a poem. Sad reading, but good, well-crafted reading. A very moving poem.

So many good poems – too many to mention. For instance, If I were to talk of Clare McCotter’s stunning ‘Ghost Children’ this short review would turn into a very long review.

“Do not waste your time hanging spirit traps

bright clothes hold no charm … “

Of the stories, I really enjoyed ‘My cat, my bad my lot’ from my old friend Donal Moloney (who also had a story in  ‘The Moth’  magazine recently … quite an achievement!). Unlike with poetry, one can’t say much about stories in case one gives the game away but I will say that I do not think I have read a story with a culinary flavour before! Really good. Also I liked Caroline Carey Finn’s ‘Cats’. Mary Gunn’s story ‘Never too Late’ was also enjoyable – I think Jimmy and Laurie would make a good match … if he keeps up his courage! And, as with the poetry, the items I mention here are just a very few of the great material in the magazine.

My own poem is simply a celebration of the birth of a child:

Making Room

 for Gil

Far out on the edge of things

the stars have had to shift this morning

to make room for you, obeying

that which Archimedes noisily

proclaimed, or that which is maintained

about a butterfly’s wing beat

having the power to set off hurricanes.

_

It is the rule that anything that enters

must shove over something else

and so it is this day that molecules,

discommoded by your advent,

must now seriously recalculate,

adjust themselves, create a space

for this new member of the cosmos.

_

Flex a toe or twitch an eyelash

and past Saturn’s coloured rings

and Jupiter’s red spot there will be slight

but quite significant displacements,

tidings of your safe arrival rippling

back across the vast aethereal ocean

towards the Primum Mobile.

 Boyne Berries 18 is available through the Boyne Berries website http//boyneberries.blogspot.ie  at €10 incl. P&P.