Editor’s Statement

I was thrilled to receive an invitation to return as judge of this year’s Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet. Teaching the workshop, judging the Broadsheet, and joining Paul Muldoon in launching such a beautiful object at last year’s Kilkenny Arts Festival were highlights of 2016 for me. This year’s Broadsheet workshop and competition once again convinced me that there is something very special about Kilkenny poets. As my selection shows, Kilkenny poets are writing in a range of styles on diverse themes. When making my decisions (a difficult task!) I was again looking for poems that masterfully employ imagery, figurative language, voice and form. I was also searching for what Spanish poet Federico García Lorca calls duende. Lorca says duende is ‘a mysterious power which everyone senses and no philosopher can explain’. It is that goosebump feeling experienced when one encounters powerful works of art, music, dance and poetry. I wish to thank Mary Butler and Ruth McCann of Kilkenny Arts Office for their support and Alé Mercado for his design.

About the Editor Kimberly Campanello

Kimberly Campanello was born in Elkhart, Indiana, and is a dual Irish and American citizen. Her most recent poetry book is Hymn to Kālī (Eyewear Publishing). Extracts from MOTHERBABYHOME (forthcoming with zimZalla Avant Objects) will be published this summer in Laudanum Publishing’s Chapbook Anthology Volume Two alongside work by Fran Lock and Abigail Parry. Her play Constance and Eva – about the revolutionary sisters Constance Markievicz and Eva Gore-Booth – will run at Bread and Roses Theatre in London in September 2017. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University.

Introduction

The Kilkenny County Council Arts Office is delighted to announce the publication of the seventeenth issue of the very popular Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet. The aim of the publication is to give local writers a platform for their work. Over a hundred poems by fifty-four writers were submitted for consideration, with twelve poems by ten poets selected.

Kilkenny County Council Arts Office5 Dean StreetKilkenny

Mary Butler, Arts Officermary.butler@kilkennycoco.ie

T: 056 779 4138W: www.kilkennycoco.ie/eng/Services/Arts/

All images and poems are subject to artistic copyright 2017. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the copyright owners.

Series Director: Mary ButlerSeries Coordinator: Ruth McCannEditor: Kimberly CampanelloGraphic Design and Illustrations: Alé Mercado

Eclipse (for Leonard Cohen)

I Kepler regards the moon, draws a cloak over his head and in his darkroom shakes his little goatskin bags, summoning thermals from Hekla. There! A spooky Icarus. Wings entangled in maddening winds, he nose-dives onto the groaning ice, whispering the secrets of his prison- house, misery tales, ochón ochón...

II We are made of star-stuff, you and I, soaring drafts on forked stick with forked tongue, iron blood, serpent prick and scarlet tang, our crimson suckled from rock, embarking —

you and I, kindred, casting off the veil. In the blinding light our moon-face marvels, oh!

Imagine intolerable heat.

Shed the skin sack,

slough off the meatbag,

the threadbare caul

ribbons between us,

unhinged joints unspooling the veins

the body cloak is a mesh of dying stars,

you reach out to staunch the sky —

the end is night.

III

She says:

I am burning oh I am burning with desire, release me sire, your shackles, bristlecone, yucca and moss, I am burning she says, burning with danger, you can sing to me:

We are children of the stars. Our bodies move in sacred geometry, moon and ice thaw, fractals | a falling planet this is the stuff that dreams are made of...O, o, o, o

Nuala Roche

Le Temps des cerises for Marie

Daffodils open their eyesA seagull glides through the eye of Newfoundland bay.

Last night a woman knocked on my door.I made tea, told stories by an open fire.

She stoked embers, fanned flames,sang about a time of cherries

and all the revolution would bear.In my garden now

the clay is quivering,the rosebuds are pregnant with summer.

Patrick Doyle

Prohibition

I forbid myself to think of you in our made-up bed To picture you sketching, glasses propped on your head, I forbid so often that forbidding seems the point of it all. Who knows how far I will go? Devotion to saints plagued by fleshly lust, penances of one or another: a bed of nails, tacks perhaps, the icy pond, thorny bush, a roll in the snow. Someone swears by island dillisk for women’s longing. I steep red dulse in a pot and chew, salty lips burning, by morning I vow to swap this wanting for another: Apples, filled with charms and pagan spells. For a month I gorge on their flesh: Pollock, crabs and cookers, slices of Greasy Pippins, quartered Bloody Butchers, Sheep’s Snout, Honeyball, a Gladstone to cleanse the palate. Soft-fleshed Dick Davies is pulverised; all the better to guzzle it. Widow’s Friend is a storybook apple, deep red with white flesh, perfect for ducking in a basin or hanging from a string. At dusk I slide the knife through a firm Clearheart, repelled by the treachery of empty space at its centre, I cradle its halves for as long as it takes flesh to rust.

Nuala Roche

Song of the farmerOh, the acres of the heart, my lovethese acres of the heart,have I tilled for you.

Angela Keogh

Cín Lae1827

Le breacadh an lae is siosarnach meidhreach na gealbháin tiSa chloigtheach agus sa seanchaisleán seo thall.*

2017

I lár an lae,an londubh is an chéirseachag alpadh faoi mhahonia.Blas-bolaidh na bplandaí mór-thimpeall.

Sa contráth,an chailleach dhubh ag iascaireacht.gan fainne ar a muineál.Fíochán cíorach ar an abhainn.

Istoíche, mar thaibhsesciatháin leathana bánana scréachóige reilige.Réalt na nóna an solas is gile.

*Sliocht as Cín Lae Amhlaoibh Uí Shuilleabháin (1780-1838), scríofa i gCallainn

Carmel Cummins

Do You Require An Advice Slip?Make time each week to let the word Schnubartmolest your tongue, about to unblock is betterthan the unblocking, spend more time watchingants, learn to skim stones, seek out naturedocumentaries that do not anthropomorphisetheir protagonists, despite some initial promisethere is, in fact, limited comic potential for substitutingthe words Liberian and librarian, do the washing upso badly that you will never be asked to do it again,wear a cloak sometime, seek opportunities to usethe word roustabout, force a cold caller to hang upon you, the look on your brother’s face when his childunwraps the trumpet you bought outweighs the cost,lovingly lovingly, the dimensions of toilet cubiclesmakes learning the maracas a viable optionwhile waiting in airports, behold the court sectionsof provincial newspapers, the humming of a fridgecan soften the sound of time dripping down throughthe rafters, because that is the why, when out baitingbadgers ensure you put twigs down your britchesfor they won’t release – until they hear a snap.

Niall Bourke

Synopsis of the Modern Irish NovelCú Chulainn, drunk to grubbuggery, crawls into a cab and beginsbending the ear off the in-work driver (an out-of-work bricklayer)about a TV show where a politician claimed five thousand eurofor office toilet roll. The driver’s getting angry because the Lonnergantwins (with the two n’s mind) are lying on a square of carpet in the middle of the road and baytin the bells off of each other with hose pipes.Again. After they get dragged home by the mammy the driver tells Cú Chulainnthat sure the banks only have the country ruined, ruined, and, anyways,didn’t her cousin hear that the politician was forced to sniff The Bishop’s sandwiches when he was a child. (When the politician was a child that is,not The Bishop. The Bishop was a child once too, of course,he played the harpsichord with precocious talent and lived in the housewith the sundial in the garden. But that’s another story.) Romecaught wind of his olfactory predilections and sent him off to Guatemala,where he was put in charge of making packed lunches for the localprimary school. Cú Chulainn laughs at this so hard that the all-day breakfast rollhe was eating spills down the seat. The driver turfs him out —half for acting the maggot/half because she vowed to never allowanother French-bejaysus loaf in her car again after that bleedin goal in Paris.Cú Chulainn swear’s he’s done drinking and falls asleep in a ditch.In the morning either 1) your man driving the trimmer doesn’t see himand chops him up. The grief is palpable. Or 2) Cú Chulainn wakes up beforethe trimmer (but still too late for work) and gets a fierce bollockin off the husband.After a blazing blue barney they fold into each other like ironing boardsbecause, deep down, they both know that sure the banks only have the country ruined,ruined and, anyways, how is anyone meant to make a living anymore at all.

Niall Bourke

Crow ChildrenSt Mary’s Graveyard Kilkenny

It’s a certain time of year in grey lightWhen black shapes write, It is evening on the skyThat I remember a murder of crows flying in a stormAt losing one of their own,Squawking fire at meddling childrenTaking over their funeral.

The children are feathered too.Bruised from the climb down from the rooftopsInto the graveyard with a dead crowSwaddled in a vest.

A cortege of little priests, a funeral game,Hymns hurting the incensed murderAs their sister is child blessedThen buried in a person’s nest.

And still, at a certain time of year in grey lightWhen black shapes write, It is evening on the skyI hear their haunting cawsAnd I am sorry for their stolen rite.

I hear the children too; see the callow play,Ragged shapes from long agoTheir hearts in ritual for a crow.

Karina Tynan

The Road Ahead

The doctor spoke to me, sternly,and said I should try to get out more.So I joined a camera club, tookphotographs of boats, birds and babies,and then, later on, trained my lens onrubbish tips, polluted rivers and the homeless.

The doctor said I should try running instead.Now all I see is the road.

William O’Neill

Dedicationin memory of my motherwhose unspoken wishwas that I should marry a doctorhow I wish you could know what I didinsteadmo chúisle, mo chroí

Anne O’Connor

The Pension BookOut of sight, around the first cornerHe vomited their hospitalityInto their neighbour’s field.

The Excise man called to deliverThe pension book, March 1933In the wild cold of Donegal.

A wee gaunt woman at the half-doorWelcomed the gauger. Not everyone in thatPauper poteen parish held such a welcome.

The old man slept, slumped in his chairIn front of an empty grate, amid the smellOf incontinence and yesterday’s boiled cabbage.

The visitor drank black tea without sugarFrom a cracked dirty cup with no handleThe old lady drank from a battered tin mug.

When the boys come home from ScotlandAfter the potato picking, there’ll be a few pounds,And maybe a letter from America soon.

She shuffled to the sleeping man and tuckedThe dirty coat around him. Sure let the poor divilSleep, Won’t my X do as good.

A trembling hand marked it.The bilious gauger left, his stomach churning,And wondered how long the old man was dead.

Rory Johnston

(Not) The Flipchart After The Workshop 10.00 -12.30All poetry is TRANSLATIONDouble Coding Flip

Strong Words - Modern Poets on Modern Poetry. CRAFT – v – TECHNIQUE (Heaney) Technique tekhnikós, (Greek) of or pertaining to art

Learnt Vision (PERSPECTIVE Stance towards life)

EPISTEME/TECHNE KNOWLEDGE/MAKING

FlipASEMIC POETRY

Flip 1. WHAT IS THIS? 2. HOW IS IT DONE? 3. WHAT COULD BE DONE TO ENHANCE/IMPROVE IT?

Flip

Dramatic Dialogue Poem poem spoken in a voice other than your own

Flip

Evaluation sheet

Did the tutor deliver the results and quality that were promised?

q q q q Less than expected As expected More than expected Consistently more

Noel Howley