writer, lecturer in religious studies, journalist-commentator, national radio-award winner. Poems in places. Fan of Jung.
Waterford, Ireland
Joined April 2016
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‘The clocks slid back an hour
and stole light from my life’
From the poem ‘Mean Time’ by Carol Ann Duffy. With thanks to Kate Clanchy who posted this poem on her Sub yesterday. My first introduction to it:
Colette Colfer retweeted
For my recent 50th, my dad, with a little prompting, bought me a Nina Paley original drawing depicting the mower incident. The drawing is about to make its way over the Atlantic in my direction.
It is my favourite poem, and “unmendably” my favourite word.
I find the poem fascinating to think about in the context of Larkin himself - because I think he embodies the kind of kindness I believe in, which I don’t see as passive or obsessively careful of feelings, but which still matters.
‘The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time’
- Philip Larkin
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❛ You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life... You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.
Doris Lessing, born #OTD in 1919.
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All the Afghan women and girls I teach have male family members who support them. Shadmana's is her father.
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Oak galls. A poisonous yellow. A blue from a humble weed. The calf that gave its skin. The old monk of Kells opens his paint pots and shows where the Book's colour came from.
madeinkells.com/news/ask-col…
#IrishDiaspora #BookOfKells #Kells #Meath #Ireland #IrishAbroad #AskColm
Colette Colfer retweeted
In case you missed it...
We're delighted to be inviting Pulitzer Prize-winner Diane Suess as this year's judge for The Moth Poetry Prize – one of the biggest competitions in the world for a single poem.
Closing 31 December – open now!
🌟🌟🌟
themothmagazine.com/director…
For the nerdy poetry lovers… I listened today for the first time to the Southword poetry podcast. This one features Stephen Sexton. Really enjoyable and interesting:
podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcas…
‘I believe society is anti-women. Look at those can-machines. How many men do you see at them? I think a man designed them’ - Overheard in Waterford
(In Ireland, we pay 15-25 cent extra on recyclable cans/bottles - reclaimable when we put the empties into ‘can-machines’)
My respect for @PatKennyNT and for @NewstalkFM has just soared. Whilst our national public service broadcaster (RTÉ) still avoids the topic of gender identity, Newstalk has facilitated an important discussion. Bravo. And @salltweets - excellent as always
I was on Ireland’s @NewstalkFM
“Everyone can have whatever view they want, no one should be forced to agree with me. I’d just put it to everyone that what I’m actually saying is a view based in reality & on facts… Live your life how you want to do it but living your life how you see fit cannot take away peoples existing rights.”
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Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
W.B. Yeats
Colette Colfer retweeted
A poem for anyone living with regret, self-loathing or shame. For, 'Coming to terms with oneself and one's past is a crucial prerequisite for moving on, and for escaping those familiar patterns of thought and behaviour that have dragged one down for so long.'
From William Sieghart's, 'The Poetry Pharmacy'.
ALT This is where I came from. I passed this way. This should not be shameful Or hard to say. A self is a self. It is not a screen. A person should respect What he has been. This is my past Which I shall not discard. This is the ideal. This is hard. — James Fenton, The Ideal
So the Celebrity Traitor producers were in a meeting and someone suggests ‘bored to death’ and the idea spirals so badly that it involves perfume and a yawn. Surely someone said ‘wait, this is ridiculous’?
Neruda
‘so that everything can learn the reason for my song’
This poem by Pablo Neruda was read at the funeral yesterday of a most beloved man by his most beloved, his wife, who dedicated the reading to their heartbroken children.
LXXIX
When I die, I want your hands on my eyes.
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more.
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.
I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.
I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else.
to continue to flourish, full-flowered.
So that you can reach everything my love directs you to.
So that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song.
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Our own Hell is everything we would cast off, reject. If we do not face our Hell, we continue to deposit the unwanted, the loathsome, the horrific in our neighbor and try to kill it there.~Ann Belford Ulanov
