ANCIENT OAK PILGRIMAGE

 

The fairies oblige us but only up to a point ... We collect presents on the way. Ruby thinks my one sycamore (?) leaf and two blackberries is a bit sad compared to her colourful selection of meadow flowers and leaves. 

It’s a ten minute walk but as the forest is in full summery glamour it’s maybe a half hour or more before we find what we’re looking for. Up this track then that track. Brambles, leafy carpets, low young limbs, a bounding squirrel. Walk along that outer edge of the forest. Find another track from another direction. Peer into the forest for the distinctive shape, peer in for the surrounding pole markers. Google Maps telling us we are one minute away every time we check. Aroona — giftless (hands and head full of clues and phone maps) — eventually picks a lime green leaf. Bingo (the fairies are happy). Before us, the Belvoir Oak! Part of Ireland’s living history. All the more magnificent for its ageing. (500 years.) The front half of its eight metre girth broken away, the remaining half carved and etched, cloaked with lichen, ivy and ferns — AND — I’ve just read — a rare fungus. It’s thick foliage surprises me — I thought it was mostly beyond that. There are new acorns.

 

Thank you fairies — but you did it again. Sent us in the wrong direction afterwards, again — tampered with Google Maps, again — teased us with incorrect advice from walkers, again. Brought us out at the lock gates this time, yet another half hour from the entrance we used. At last, sound advice from extremely fit extremely sweaty forest runners. (The trainer can run the forest in the dark!) We are confident. Still somehow go slightly off course. At least it’s a main road this time. Wth a hotel. Coffee, chips … taxi to our car …

 

Our first pilgrimage to the Belvoir Oak — it only took three attempts to find the actual tree — was in January 2022, mid-winter. I’ll see if I can find that post — also our first encounter with the fairies!

 —

Maybe the fairies just wanted us to have the extra scenic views?

I said I’m fine but next time I see a log I’m sittin for a bit — and even better — a tree stump appeared! With wood creature.

 

Links that may be of interest:

Belvoir Oak nominated for Tree of the Year —

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/500-year-old-belfast-oak-in-running-for-title-of-uk-tree-of-the-year/a1624059967.html

 

https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2023-08-15/belfast-tree-nominated-for-tree-of-the-year

 

Woodland Trust — 

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/tree-of-the-year/

DUNCAIRN AUTHOR SPECTACULAR

Such a great night at Duncairn Centre for Culture and Arts in North Belfast (Friday, August 11). Fascinating novelists Michelle Gallen, Tony Macaulay, Michael Magee read from their books and took questions from the audience, expanding on points raised and talking about their experiences as authors and living in Belfast. Also me. Chair, Marnie Kennedy (Reader in Residence) clearly knew all our books intimately, asking interesting questions herself and facilitating the whole event superbly.

 

The  Duncairn is a 174 Trust strategy. Established in 1983, the Trust is celebrating forty years of building peace and promoting reconciliation.

 

I was honoured to be invited into the program and fully enjoyed meeting the other authors and the audience. I especially appreciated the response to my poem War Zone Tours which, in part, looks back at my own experience of the Troubles and later as a migrant watching the Troubles from a safe distance. (The tour aspect is from another country altogether.).

 

Afterwards a couple of us (daughter Aroona and a lovely friend) went to Cassidy’s where the service is still of the days when my (late) husband Bill was a barman/manager — orders taken from and back to your table, payment and change at your table, orders remembered for the next round, everything a pleasure — you just can’t wait to go back again. At the end of the night — after last orders — I’m introduced to a local: this is Lizz she’s a poet; response — an on the spot rendition of a poem he wrote when he was eighteen years old. It gave a particular and powerful insight to the Troubles.

Photo (top): Tony Macaulay (left), Michelle Gallen, Michael Magee, me wearing a light shade and host Marnie Kennedy. 

Photo (below): My first ever reading in Ireland. 

READING AT SCRIBES BELFAST

SCRIBES AT THE DUNCAIRN 2023

I’ll be reading tomorrow night at Scribes at the Duncairn with Tony Macauley, Michael Magee and Michelle Gallen, 7 pm, Duncairn Arts Centre, Duncairn Avenue, Belfast. I’m excited. These authors sound awesome. I’ve started reading them with Michelle’s novel, Factory Girls — hilarious, dark, hilarious from page one. I’m excited. My first poetry reading in Belfast. Thank you to Marnie Kennedy (Chair). More information at www.theduncairn.com

Later in the month I’ll be talking in the Ennistymon Book Town Festival in Co Clare.

Photo: in the upstairs theatre of Duncairn Centre for Culture and Arts, North Belfast (for a performance by John Spillane)

A HEARTBEAT OF POETRY

 

I just discovered Racquel McKee in the Video Showcase of Writers in Northern Ireland on the EastSide Arts website. It's a very interesting representation of writers and worth a look at them all but make sure you stay tuned in until the end where Racquel talks about her storytelling traditions and recites The Sound of our Own Heartbeat. This piece was commissioned for the Links and Legacy 400 project organized by the African Carribbean Support Northern Ireland to commemorate 400 years since the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. It references Clifton House a landmark building opened in 1774 and known as The Poor House which gave voice to the enslaved.

Photo: Detail of the ancient Belvoir oak tree in Belfast

NOSTALGIA COMES IN BLACK & WHITE

 

Abridged is an exquisitely produced poetry and art magazine available in print and online. The poetry and visual work is so splendid that their launches often feature exhibitions of the visual work. Submissions are currently open and the theme is TERMINUS. Closing date: March 10. (I'm assuming it's still open to international contributors.)

The theme outlines are a delight in themselves: When the end feels all too near, the old lines, walls and boundaries ...  ... Nostalgia comes in black and white. Just some of many possibilities and prompts should you need them.

This issue is a collaboration with the Belfast Photo Festival. Submit your photos for exhibition, publication (Abridged) and cash prize opportunities.

Abridged is supported by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Image: detail of charcoal drawing by Lizz Murphy

IRISH POETRY READING ARCHIVE

 

If you have any interest at all in Irish poetry — and who hasn't! — you might like to visit the Irish Poetry Reading Archive, Ireland's only curated digital collection where the voices of Irish poets, both North and South, doing readings, scholarly masterclasses, and in conversation, along with digital copies of poetry related materials (anthologies programmes posters) are preserved for future generations. If you're in Dublin, you will find the archives in the James Joyce library at the University College of Dublin (UCD) otherwise you can jump online and find them here. 

Poets include everyone from Nuala Ní Dhomhniall and Mary Dorcey to Theo Dorgan and President Michael D Higgins to Andrew Jamison [related by chance?? — nee Jamison here] and Michael Longley to Medbh McGuckian, Maíghréad Medbh and Christine Murray. You will also find Australian poets Anne Casey, Robyn Rowland and myself, all part of the Irish diaspora. This is just a sampling — all the poets are fascinating. 

I must thank and thank Anne Casey who put the Archive in touch with me. It was such a great experience to visit the James Joyce Library and to meet co-founder Ursula Byrne and her team — great thanks indeed to them. It was fun too, travelling from Belfast to Dublin on the train with daughter Aroona Murphy and testing the Guinness at a couple of venues before the return trip. 

Here are my eight recorded poems, including links: 

A Woman’s Work (after Jenni Kemarre Martiniello) from The Wear of my Face (Spinifex Press 2021) 

The Weight of Tomatoes from Two Lips went Shopping (Spinifex Press 2000) 

$600 from Six Hundred Dollars (PressPress)  

Departure from Stop your Cryin (Island Press)  

Felt from The Wear of my Face (Spinifex Press 2021) 

Out of the White from Walk the Wildly (Picaro/Ginninderra)  

Brown Hills from Two Lips went Shopping (Spinifex Press 2000) 

Syria’s Children from The Wear of my Face (Spinifex Press 2021) 

Photo: A Dublin afternoon in January

LOW-FLYING DUCKS & POETRY

There are always amusing or special moments from changing skies to kangaroos and foxes giving you a nod or low-flying ducks or hawks swiftly passing your windscreen.

So grateful to have an interview in The Monthly arts journal published online by Community Arts Partnership (CAP) in Belfast, Ireland. They’ve also provided links to five of my eight readings filmed at the James Joyce Library at University College Dublin (UCD). Worth visiting for the range of poetry interviews from Scottish-Australian poet Ali Whitelock, to Scottish poet Magi Gibson and Canadian poet Catherine Graham. There are videos of Seamus Heaney reading Digging and Sinéad Morrissey talking about her poem inspired by the painting Titian, and spoken word music, podcasts and links to International Page and Stage online events, just to mention some.

Great thanks to Ali Whitelock for connecting me with The Monthly and to Gordon Hewitt, editor, for the opportunity.

Photo: Oh aye — wandered past this plaque in Dublin 

for the UCD readings but we were too late for Seamus

OK RIGHT — POETRY & BELONGING

Here’s an interview I did for the Belfast Telegraph one of the main papers in my hometown: ‘Place is belonging and writing about place can be a search for belonging' (October 16, 2021). I slipped it in before life went pear shaped. The first poem in The Wear of my Face is not about pears for nothing. However, with floods and wars, other people’s lives are currently even more peary. 

This is what I was thinking at the time: ‘I sometimes think I write to find solid ground in a story of loss, migration, colonisation and class. For me, place is belonging and writing about place can be a search for belonging – an attempt to understand one’s own displacement or the displacement of others and what that must be like.’

PS OK so the photo was actually taken in Dublin (January this year) rather than Belfast.

THIS INTIMATE WAR — ROBYN ROWLAND

Robyn Rowland featured poet

Robyn Rowland was a sensation at A Brush with Poetry in Binalong on Sunday. Reading from her latest books This Intimate War (2^nd edition, Spinifex Press 2018) and Mosaics from the Map (Doíre Press 2018), she had the audience hanging off every word and no wonder. The poems are narratives and histories with luscious words winging from young love to curdling life, from the taste of desire to the shredding noise of war. The bilingual collection This Intimate War is unique in that it sings the stories of all sides — the soldiers and child soldiers, the wives and mothers, the grandfathers, friends, family, lovers. Children of Gallipoli and Production Lines are two of the most poignant poems you could read. Victoria-based, Robyn has just returned from Ireland (where she lives half the year) and Turkey. We are so fortunate to have her join us in Binalong during one of her Canberra trips.

Poets and performers participating in the shared mike included Colin Campbell (also guest emcee), Janne Graham, Lindsay, Andrew McDonald and Janette Pieloor from Canberra, Ron Hoile from Boorowa, Peter Rose from Yass. Robyn Sykes (Coordinator and Deputy President of Binalong Arts Group) and myself (BAG & Brush committee member) also performed.

A Brush with Poetry is held on the last Sunday of odd months at the Black Swan Gallery. It attracts a great mix of poets and poetry lovers from Binalong, surrounding regional towns and Canberra. 

You can hear a pin drop when Colin Campbell (guest co-MC) reads his own work

 Always delighted to hear Janette Pieloor (above) and Janne Graham (below) read new work

Janne Graham with Robyn Sykes Coordinator & co-MC

Lindsay whose name escapes me — apologies — always has us in stitches

GALLERY OF IRISH WOMEN WRITERS

Here's a nice thing — The Irish Times made a poster featuring Irish women writers available (download here) to mark this year's International Women's Day. Yes I'm a bit behind the times (no pun intended). It's 'an antidote to the all-male Irish Writers poster of bars and student bedrooms' writes Martin Doyle, in his article 'Portraits of the artists as women' on March 7. That poster was published a long time ago — apparently the use of hanging hyphens proves it (I enjoyed that detail). I might still have one curled up in a corner somewhere myself (a poster not a hanging hyphen). I did at the time bemoan the absent women. 

Then, because it seemed a might belated The Irish Times also invited a bunch of writers, critics and academics to nominate their favourite Irish woman writer and to write a short essay of up to 180 words about her. You'll find a 'gallery' of around 60 of these in the book pages of irishtimes.com — yes — clickety click here. 

We could borrow from this idea ...

 

FourXFour POETRY RELEASE

Poetry Day Ireland was held on April 27. A special double issue of FourXFour was released as part of its celebrations. I am happily one of the eight invited contributors in Issue 20/21: Spring 2017. It's a beautiful range of voices. I just wanted to give you the updated link: http://www.poetryni.com/fourxfour.html And here's a local splash of purple while I'm at it.

FourXFour — NORTHERN IRISH POETS

Delighted not only to be an invited contributor to FourXFour one of Poetry NI’s online journals, but to be part of the special double issue to be released on Poetry Day Ireland, April 27. The other contributors are Nathan Armstrong, Julieann Campbell, Michael Conaghan, Aine MacAodha, Willetta Fleming, Gareth Osborne and Patrick Taggart. FourXFour is edited by Colin Dardis. 

You can read about Poetry NI here: http://www.poetryni.com/about.html You can read about its founder Colin Dardis, a dynamic poet and poetry activist based in Belfast, here:

http://www.colindardispoet.co.uk/ There is plenty about Poetry Day Ireland here: http://www.poetryireland.ie/whats-on/category/poetry-day