ST BRIGID PATRONESS OF POETRY

 

Pleased to be reading with Irish-Australian poets Moya Pacey and Rosa O'Kane at the Canberra Irish Club on Saturday. We are celebrating St Brigid patron saint for poetry, learning, healing, protection, blacksmithing, livestock, and dairy production. Also Celtic Goddess for the same.

There's a great read at Image — 'Brigid: The original female trailblazer' — where you will learn that Brigid liberated women from slave and bondswomen roles, had healing powers, was a master brewer of ale and as Abbess managed 15000 nuns. Ireland only recently gave her a public holiday of her own putting her finally on the same level as St Patrick!

Anyway come along on Saturday at 1.00 pm — there'll be poetry, singing, dancing and stew! And I'll show you my new book Bitumen Psalms.

GRAND POETRY INDEED SATURDAY FEB 3

Well here we are the day after St Brigid’s Day — how many Brigid’s crosses did you weave? Me? None. But I’ve got myself ready for a celebratory luncheon at the Canberra Irish Club in Weston Creek tomorrow, Saturday, February 3. 

It’s a program of dance, music, song and poetry and it’s going to be fabulous. The four poets are myself, Jenni Kemarre Martiniello, Moya Pacey and Kimberly Williams. We are Irish or have a bit of the Irish in us and we all have published rather grand poetry, if I do say so myself. 

I’ve also watched the quite fascinating show Finding Brigid broadcast by RTE. Siobhán McSweeney — y’know — the droll nun in Derry Girls — goes searching for the real St Brigid. I encourage you to visit: https://www.rte.ie/player/movie/finding-brigid/326119208110 

Brigid is more than a good match for St Patrick and now she too has her own public holiday in Ireland. In contemporary Ireland, St Brigid’s Day is increasingly used to celebrate the successes and achievements of women. I know this is last minute, but hope to see you at the Irish Club. Here's the link: www.trybooking.com/1168634 $25 or $20 for Comhaltas members. Many thanks indeed to Mary Collier for the invitation.

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

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

IPS RITES OF WOMEN ZOOM

What a blast it was reading with Marion Clarke (Northern Ireland), Amy Louise Wyatt (Northern Ireland), Kiri Piahana-Wong (New Zealand) and Makyla Curtis (New Zealand) in the International Page and Stage (IPS) Rites of Women Zoom event on Sunday night (my time). Great thanks to Gordon Hewitt for the invitation and Susan Millar DuMars for hosting the event.

The poetry was varied and evocative, rhythmic and striking and as someone else said — just sumptuous. These events Zoom and FB livestream, then remain on the  International Page and Stage Facebook page to be accessed at any time afterwards. Now that I have discovered it I am working my way through previous events and enjoying poets from all over Ireland and from all over the world.

Thank you friends/colleagues Deborah Faeyrglenn (Canberra), Curt Linderman (US) from The Cool People, The Night People FB group (Billy Collins followers) and Victoria McGrath (Yass NSW) for being there on Sunday. Thank you also to Jenni Kemarre Martiniello whose capturing glasswork was the inspiration for my poem A Women's Work which was of interest.

I've provided links wherever possible to everyone's online presence or examples of their work, and here is the link for Sunday night's Rites of Women recording: https://www.facebook.com/Internationalpageandstage/videos/305292555050900  Watch the IPS Facebook page for new events.

SUNDAY'S INTERNATIONAL PAGE AND STAGE

I’m a guest poet this Sunday April 10 in the first of two International Page and Stage Zooms on the theme The Rites of Women from Opposite Ends of the Earth (Northern Hemisphere) — a very exciting invitation. I join Marion Clarke (Northern Ireland), Amy Louise Wyatt (Northern Ireland), Kiri Piahana-Wong (New Zealand) and Makyla Curtis (New Zealand). Times are: Ireland and UK — 10.30 am; Binalong and Canberra — 7.30 pm, New Zealand — 9.30 pm. Visit the International Page and Stage Facebook page for information on Zoom links and the FB live streaming of this plus more events happening very soon. 

International Page and Stage is part of a New Belfast Community Arts Initiative trading as Community Arts Partnership (CAP). It’s a wide-ranging arts program with everything from poetry in schools and drama to public art and — not surprisingly — spray art festivals (Belfast is renowned for its gable-end street murals). There is also a lot of great content in their online journal The Monthly.

Many thanks indeed to Gordon Hewitt who among other things is the Editor of The Monthly. Visit the March Poetry and Spoken Word edition for poets from Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Jamaica, US.

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 ...