Following a time-honored tradition, the Spring/Summer Cyphers magazine was launched in April  in the elegant surroundings of Strokestown House, Longford, during the Strokestown International Poetry Festival.  Eilean Ni Chuilleanain officiated and, as always, the launch itself was a festive occasion, combining  the debut of Cyphers 81 with that of two new poetry collections, On a Turning Wing from Paddy Bushe and Music from the Big Tent from Macdara Woods (both from Daedalus).

This Cyphers edition features a selection of New Zealand Poets, among which are fine pieces from  Dinah Hawken (Haze) and Bill Manhire (Coastal). Among the rest of the poets I particularly liked Mary Montague’s The Road back and Where the Brown River Flows by John Murphy.

A poem  of mine also features in this edition and I just cannot believe that it is thirty years since I first had a poem in Cyphers. Thirty Years! A Connaught Man’s Rambles is a poem about my father, one of that ‘lost generation’ of Irishmen of the 1940s and 50s who  worked in England for practically all of their lives, sending money home to their families. Besides being a hard-working miner in the coal pits of Lancashire, ‘Sonny’ Lynskey  was also an accomplished Irish Fiddle Player who shared many a session with some well-known names, such as the great piper Felix Doran (pictured with him below) This is the only photograph I have of my father playing. It was the age before Facebook and camera phones.

 

A Connaught Man’s Rambles          

(in memory of Eddie (‘Sonny’) Lynskey, 1914-1972)

1921:

and Michael Coleman cuts the discs

will guide the bow a generation.

You in Mayo find the tunes

are slowly forming in your fingers –

Miss Mc Leod’s, The Creel of Turf…

 

1928:

to Holyhead and Lancashire:

a collier’s life of dust and dirt.

Your bow has split the resin stick,

your fingerboard has lost its black –

The Munster Jig, The Frost is All Over…

 

1947:

back in Dublin you will try

to leave behind the life you’ve lived

since first you lied about your age

to take the cage with pick and lamp –

The Sheep in the Boat, The Morning Star…

 

1953:

and tired of jobs on building sites

you’re back in Manchester to rooms

and mineshafts, ever shorter letters

to your family of strangers.

Toss the Feathers, Cherish the Ladies…

 

1972:

in Meelick cemetery someone

pours a naggin on your coffin

just before the sods are shovelled.

Old men watch, remembering –

The Sailor’s Hornpipe, The Kesh…

 

2013: 

I hear Tommy Peoples play

and hear you chase the slurs and slides

with Michael Coleman’s 78s –

I see you raise your shoulder, bring

The Connaught Man’s Rambles to a close.

Cyphers, Ireland’s longest running poetry and prose magazine (with some artwork as well!), is available wherever good poetry magazines are sold, as are the two Daedalus collections by Paddy Bushe (On a Turning Wing) and  Macdara Woods (Music from the Big Tent).

And hearty congratulations also to the Strokestown International Award winners John Murphy, Beatrice Garland and Jed Myers.