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2.1
Quantum
Spring 2015
t h e
p i c k l e d
b o d y
Contents
Editorial 3
Kate Dempsey
Equations on Waking 4
Eabhan Ni Shuileabhain
Flowers 5
Noel Duffy
Shapes That Fit Together 6
Tessa Berring
Etching 6
Shane Holohan
Two Become One 7
Neil Fulwood
Display 7
Sheila Mannix
Bakunin’s Probability Clouds 8
Jennifer Matthews
S.A.D. 9
Sean Ruane
Scale 9
Iggy McGovern
Quantum Clerihew 10
Afric McGlinchey
A Quantum of Happiness 11
Paul Casey
a small measure 11
Featured artist Sean Hayes
A Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose 12
Siobhán Flynn
A Glimpse of the God Particle 16
Michael Farry
My Fish and I 17
Kay Buckley
Fields 17
Kate Quigley
Inside the Orange 18
Angela T. Carr
Experimental Mathematics 19
bruno neiva
logistics 19
Marjorie Lotfi Gill
Low Tide 20
Death Row Door 20
Eleanor Hooker
By the Barricade 21
Justin Karcher
The Great Abyss Where I Grew Up
is Being All Modernized and Gentrified 22
Review Dimitra Xidous
on Dylan Brennan’s Blood Oranges 23
Pickled this issue 24
the pickled body quantum 2
Editorial
A poem is unpredictable. A message, a feeling, sent from one mind to another, it is changed
in ways the writer cannot know. In this issue of The Pickled Body, we have captured some of
these slices of meaning yet let them slip out on a journey over which neither we nor the
poets have any control. Make of them what you will, because a poem becomes something
other – and richer – when it combines with the mind of the reader.
!
Some of the poems presented here deal, on the face of it, directly with the theme of
quantum mechanics. Others take the notion of Ian Fleming’s ‘quantum of solace’, his
unusual tale of the death of affect, in which he illustrates the bare minimum of human
feeling!– the least amount of hope, of consolation – required for a relationship to survive.
Others still are perhaps surprisingly spiritual.
!
A few of the poets in this issue are physicists or have a background in the subject – offering
us an insider’s perspective, if you will. All are first-rate explorers. We are delighted to bring
their work to you. We are also thrilled to feature Sean Hayes’s glorious photography
nestled among the poems.
!
In choosing ‘quantum’ as our theme, we knew that poetry, like all art, like all
communication, finds its true form when it is received, not when it is transmitted. And
when that happens, both the poem and the reader are changed.
Engage.
the pickled body quantum 3
Kate Dempsey
Equations on Waking
You cling to the brink of sleep In the thin light I watch your dream,
your eyelid flickers, your mouth twitches. I touch your night-rough chin,
you turn, I kiss your jaw.
If it were dark as a shutdown mine I could still know your scent
dusky dizzy sweet; You breathe out, I breathe.
your pulse beats to my heart.
You teeter at the edge. I move, slow as dawn, spoon
sunshine around you. Closer. My skin to
your skin, we share the warmth.
But skin is no barrier. I analyse wave functions
to find my busy fundamental particles
quantum tunnelling through you and fragments of you
in me.
the pickled body quantum 4
Eabhan Ni Shuileabhain
Flowers
I watched him
turning through her gate,
walking in her door.
I understood it all then,
the late nights,
how he seemed more sure,
smiled more easily,
brought so many more flowers than before.
Why he ran his fingers through my hair
like he used to and cupped my face
and started holding me again.
I had wondered was he trying
to get back what we once had,
wondered whether I still wanted it.
And then I saw him go to her.
I waited as night settled down
and lights were flared behind curtains
that shielded me from how his back would look,
his spine marked out, his shoulders bared,
the small hollows above his buttocks that I loved
showing how his muscles worked
giving pleasure to someone else, not me.
And waiting there, I wanted him again,
wanted him to wrap his fingers in my hair
and drag us back to life.
I put his flowers
in all the vases I could find,
in old jugs and chipped glassware,
hoping the scent of his guilt would convince us both
he wasn't leaving, he couldn't leave,
hoping he wouldn't see the dread I hid
on every windowsill and ledge.
the pickled body quantum 5
Noel Duffy
Shapes That Fit Together
The two elements exist
as though predestined
to make a perfect fit,
like a see-saw pivot the molecule
bent into a fixed contour—
one oxygen with its
partially empty shell, coupling
with two hydrogen atoms
each angling from the side—
this their own unique
and necessary marriage
at the scale of the tiny,
the weak charge each carries
enough to draw these molecules
together, grouping them
into a liquid cluster
giving us water, the cloud
that hangs in the sky above,
the rain that falls around us all;
a substance so pure it carries
no taste or smell, it the base
receptacle for the elements
that hide in its embrace,
supporting all the living things
in a given place.
Tessa Berring
Etching
She is quietly anatomical,
nothing gory, no ripped flesh
or yellowed innards.
A flat sucked lozenge
outlined on a tongue,
intestines folding,
paper walnuts,
and limbs non-plussed
by scissors.
Held up, splayed,
dried frog in a tin,
naked puppet in a turban,
solemn lips to colour in.
Witness this symmetry of
fists and feet soles,
foetal snail knot, crouched.
Thought dares its way to surgery,
remnants of a cutting out.
the pickled body quantum 6
Shane Holohan
Two Become One
Wednesday, September 12th, 2001
Overdue Africans babble competitivelyBellies swollen, joints loosening, teeth less secure
I should resent how their taut skin Mocks, but I don’t
To my right you lean leftA little more than you need toThe pressure small comfort
She arrives with a clipboard And the words that divide us
Just uterine ballast,I sit, sit and waitWith the babble, the belliesThe heartwhoosh cacophony
While you go with her
Past the curtain, through the doorTo the room I rememberBut won’t see again
You return moments later,Empty.
Neil Fulwood
Display
The kerbside is a gallery
of broken glass, each
exhibit a shattered portrait
of the sun.
Petrol expands its debate
on combustion
across tyre-marked concrete,
a dull rainbow smearing
the surface of its latency.
the pickled body quantum 7
Sheila Mannix
Bakunin’s Probability Clouds
in a stone
in a piece of wood
in a rag
in this state of barbarism and animal brutality
particles seek each other
in this state of barbarism and animal brutality
particles seek each other
*
a particle of the infinitely great
is necessarily infinitely small
immediately god appears
man is reduced to
nothing
in a stone
in a piece of wood
in a rag
*
a particle of the infinitely great
is necessarily infinitely small
immediately god appears
man is reduced to
nothing
immediately god appears
man is reduced to
nothing
*
god is everything
the liberty of living men
the sufferings of real men
are nothing
immediately god appears
man is reduced to
nothing
immediately god appears
man is reduced to
nothing
*
immediately god appears
man is reduced to
nothing
in a stone
in a piece of wood
in a rag
in this state of barbarism and animal brutality
particles seek each other
*
immediately god appears
man is reduced to
nothing
in a stone
in a piece of wood
in a rag
in a stone
in a piece of wood
in a rag
the pickled body quantum 8
Jennifer MatthewsS.A.D.
My disorder in this sunless fortressof brown stairs and blue bodiesI’m told is to blame on a lackof vitamin D. Worse are the poisonous positive ions from computer screens— unhappy mirrors gazed into for days, weeks scrying eventualities, soaking up full spectrum gossip, up to the minute depressants & political-affective-contorters.
The solutions: milk with a green cap, saline baths in magnetised pools,high intensity yoga aerobics to sweat out ill will, stagnant karmaand negative ‘I’ statements. Following, my yoghurt pot of drinkable serotoninto supplement my deficit of connectivity, of chemical facility, those leaps of light I crave from neuron to neuron.But thriving somewhere behind my shaded winter eyes: mood sucking, white light eating machines.
Sean RuaneScale
Metal at the smallest levels, so I’m told,May show differences beyond those of scale.When gold’s reduced in size a billionfoldIt’s red, magnetic, liquid, a catalystAnd hardly seems itself, torc strangleholdOn our emotions loosed, pierced gilt chain-mail,The sheer awe lost it once inspired in bulk.
It strikes me, sitting by this mountain lake,
That the ring thrown away here in a sulkLast August, when our hopes were at their brittlest,Was merely rust-prone, tarnishable gold;While your forgiveness, even at its littlest,To the tiny traveller down in the vale,Would glint as bright as a welcoming grailRaised on the walls of a noblewoman’s stronghold.
the pickled body quantum 9
Iggy McGovern
Quantum Clerihew
Max Planck
is the man to thank
for the mysterious phantom
that is the quantum
Louis de Broglie
had the unholy
idea that a moving particle
wasn’t a definite article
Werner Heisenberg
Would not waste an erg
On those who were unconvincible
about his uncertainty principle
Albert Einstein
liked to opine:
‘it's not very nice
for God to play dice!’
Erwin Schrödinger
Was a real humdinger
His eponymous wave equation, it’s said
Was conceived in a mystery woman’s
bed
Paul Dirac
Took a different tack
People thought he was mad as a hatter
With his prediction of antimatter
Neils Bohr
might feel sore
if he heard my brother’s perceptive
remark:
something rotten in the state of the
theory of Denmark
the pickled body quantum 10
Afric McGlinchey
A Quantum of Happiness
A half-wild boy, panting up the hill
under a sky blue-swept, cloud-ragged.
His body asks a question, gives an answer.
A mosaic of light, like a secret,
captured in this song of slanted movement;
a half-wild boy, panting up the hill.
His urge to run leaps from foot to foot,
and earth exhales its pleasure in response.
His body asks a question, gives an answer.
The wind swings behind him, like memories
shaken out, snapped laundry.
A half-wild boy panting up the hill.
!
He flies through doorless rooms,
across a private ocean, to a pinnacle.
His body asks a question, gives an answer.
!
Each day’s discovery, a kind of grace.
Arms winged above his head, like a stork, uplifting.
A half-wild boy, panting on the hill.
His body asks a question, gives an answer.
Paul Casey
a small measure
stars are born people die
more stars than people
by far reborn as stars
and more stars than grains of sand
the number of grains of sand?
(7.5 x 1018 grains of sand)
seven quintillion, five hundred-
quadrillion grains we believe
(give or take a few grains of sand)
the number of stars, 70 thousand million,
million, million stars (the same number
as molecules in ten drops of water)
so there are more worlds
in eleven of your teardrops
than stars (or grains of sand)
the pickled body quantum 11
Featured artist
Sean Hayes
A Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose
Siobhán Flynn
A Glimpse of the God Particle
The elusive Higgs boson
may have been sighted
doubts arise as it decays
immediately after creation
transforms into smaller particles
which form the elementary units of the universe
that is if it exists at all
They speculate that it provides mass
without it
the atoms that make up the pears
ripening in my fruit bowl
would be zipping around the kitchen
at the speed of light
which is the same speed
they turn from ripeness to rot
I evaluate them every day
cradle one in my palm
apply gentle pressure
but they’re always too hard
until I forget my inspection
too late I discover
their time has passed
There is nothing official yet
but the scientists are intrigued
they have found clues
spikes in their data
which suggest that the Higgs boson did exist
for a moment
like a perfectly ripe pear
the pickled body quantum 16
Michael Farry
My Fish and I
(After a painting by Roisin Duffy)
I have no idea what it is—
somewhere between trout and swordfish—
but it’s mine and has been
since my first fascination
with the swirl of deep water,
creatures too fast for me
splashing to right and left.
In these strange solitary times
I hug it tight, enjoy its silent,
wet companionship,
knowing full well
how fragile is my grip,
how one flick would leave little,
a few sad scales maybe,
a damp memory
and me, way out of my depth,
drowning among seaweed fronds
and the bright cold creatures of the deep.
Kay Buckley
Fields
You put your hand on the gate and a herd
of grass warmth and wetness spies you shepherd.
Moving towards the metal, breath purling in patterns,
the cows cross the field, collecting mass to their atoms
Higgs boson. A world in particles, you and I, in the clear,
as mud shod too, our love has grown, once apart to now near.
the pickled body quantum 17
Kate Quigley
Inside the Orange
Your pithy skin, rent
in a spiral on the desk.
It looks to the teacup
& the dusty aloofness
of books for help—
No joy here.
Your juice is dripping
freely now—yes,
you were a good orange
while you lived.
Sweet, helpful, did
not try to escape your
net like some of the
others; like that one,
with a still-green hue
& sour face. But you,
you were a good orange.
Your Spanish brains
stuck in my teeth now,
fizzy, a matador’s gored
side-step, tanging blood
on the bull’s muzzle.
A line of spat-pips,
mapping the story of
your ideas. One, half-
formed, browning; chipped
bone from that unlucky
matador, as you watched
from between leaves,
hushing scandalous crows.
Another, the drop of an
earring, the fishlimbed
flamenco dancer you
almost got inside one
crazed night.
The last; strange; vaguely
twisted & veined grey,
a little dark spot liked a
round eye:
the child
you have purged here,
far from your hot home.
the pickled body quantum 18
Angela T. Carr
Experimental Mathematics
Experiment: two irrational primes shift
the horizontal plane of an unswept floor;
parabolic algorithms of Cuvier and tequila
collide in a skitter of projectile shoes;
a.m.’s rain-caked windows skew solar telegraphs,
prismatic intersections no longer able
to mathematically express the root
of who fucked who first and where;
Euclidean geometry tested,
but data, ultimately, unproven;
subjects exposed to relative uncertainty
in the stark, glaring angles of noon.
bruno neiva
logistics
been there
but
couldn’t
you know
pull it off
(it was so bloody whirlwind)
the road was clear
but
all the cars looked the same
from afar
really
they did
blinking
like dying soundless
fireworks
the pickled body quantum 19
Marjorie Lotfi Gill
Low Tide
The water on the sea side of the harbour wall flashes
like a child thrown in, a skinny child swimmer
waving wildly and howling at the cold and the dark
The marina side is calm as a sheet of window glass
laid over its waves, the bottom revealed,
like each of us, from its surface
He sits watching, not at the end of the curving stone wall
where the waters meet, but further back
so his view is true east to west, facing the North Sea
The boats in the marina wait like old men in a town square,
rusted at the joints, names that once called
to one another from the hull now flaked or gone—
and those furthest inland sit knee deep in mud, anchored
to breeze blocks beached in the sandy gristle,
like a set of dentures left out in an empty glass
A small school of fish, mackerel or saithe, wing through the water
darting in perfect unison; when they hold still,
he holds his breath, and gasping, looks away
He reaches into the small pack of his possessions,
all else given or lost, finds his passport, and hurls it
into the sea, aiming for the water’s point of change
Death Row Door
The door was like the skin of another man,
a long back risen in places with leathered scars,
welts grown dark with age, the whip’s strength
still visible in repeating arcs along its unhinged edge.
Then it read to him like the patchwork of patterns
she’d applied and pinned down, cut open before stitching
together to be worn by him and, later, his brothers.
But tonight the door is his father’s fields, the spades
of dark earth lifted high before turning, now waiting
for the next crop, the markings of each life drawn out
of the dormant soil and the hull, a husk left behind.
the pickled body quantum 20
Eleanor Hooker
By the Barricade
We are the survivors
who wait by the barricade
for the slow countdown.
Some of our dead slip through,
stand beside us, unsteady, unclothed, low—
we cannot take them with us.
The cry goes up for cheer,
smile, they demand, be merry.
Fireworks tear the stars
from the moon, pock the night
with dissimulated Armageddon,
the awed throng pitches forward.
If not in groups then kinfolk
keep in hailing distance, their
calls, inmost, distinctive,
provisional. My Dad
sees me first. He’s changed; parchment against bone,
eyes gone the colour of vertigo.
I am a smashed pane,
that lets the rained downpour in,
in to vacant tenure.
As the countdown begins
there is a clamour for the barricade.
This is where we’re obliged to live on.
Time takes its relentless
hold, drives us through to
this New fatherless Year.
It is unstoppable.
I look back as the barricade goes down on
the old year, on my Dad, left behind.
the pickled body quantum 21
Justin Karcher
The Great Abyss Where I Grew Up is Being All Modernized and Gentrified
Steady, heavy rain throughout tonight and
It’s worth mentioning that time is running out
For me to be happier that I’ve ever been,
That creatures are being catapulted into the neighborhood
And that their sweat tastes like cool craft beer.
It’s madness!—me all drunk like this and growling
At my telescope. It plays strip poker with the stars
And always wins, but that doesn’t get me any closer
To rolling around with them in mothballed beds.
I’m too old to become an astronaut, which sucks,
Because darkness is exploration and the darkness
Above is the best kind of darkness. The closest I’ve been
To being an astronaut is that time I was drunk and snuck
Into that bounce house on Niagara Falls Blvd. in the dead
Of night. It was a clear night so the stars were dandruffing
Like dogs all over Western New York and it felt like I was
Caught in a snow globe of astronomy and zodiac vomit.
It was great—the way the moonlight pulverized me into
Earthly submission, the way I drunkenly bounced like
An inner city basketball with a death wish. It was great
Being swallowed up into the emptiness of space. It
Sounded like the desert, the interplay between light
And shadow. The true emptiness in our lonely lives
Is starkly apparent. We Americans know backwards
And forwards the vacant industrial buildings, how after
Heavy rain, human teeth and bones can become exposed
In the burial pits of ghost towns rotting right on the Rust
Belt. It’s tough to clean up this mess. The universe on the
Other hand is concise. Its long dark hair isn’t pulled back into
A loose ponytail and messy bangs. Ah well—steady, heavy rain
Throughout tonight. A stormy night of severe starlessness.
Nothing to do but keep a watchful eye on the parking lot adjacent
To my house, pockmarked with rusting cars, abandoned buildings,
And the nation’s last train blasted by war. Lifeless bodies hanging
By chastity belts from the city’s only tree. Postpartum duchesses
Using sledgehammers to remove the paint on their faces. Frat boys
Binge drinking the liquid nicotine used in e-cigarettes and looking
For love. They’re tossing a box of Soviet-era condoms around
Like some prophylactic Frisbee. I envy the reckless evilness
Of their youth, how their faces leap from mask to mask,
Manmade satellites launched into the emptiness of space,
Hot sticky masses that will undoubtedly never make it back home.
I wish I was the first animal sent into space. What brings them here
Night after night? To the parking lot adjacent to my house? Some
Gentrified wormhole dragging them all into limbos of overpriced
Identities? Did they fall into the great abyss of finding yourself?
Nah – nobody falls into the abyss of finding yourself. It’s the
Bluffs of finding yourself and the abyss of losing yourself—
That’s how they getcha. Yeah, that’s how they getcha.
the pickled body quantum 22
Dimitra Xidous reviews
Blood Oranges by Dylan Brennan
Brennan has flung his bones on a high temple.
Blood Oranges, the debut collection by Dylan Brennan, begins with a broken promise, of bones and ‘skinless fingers’ – and, at the risk of stating the obvious but mindful also of the need to find an opening, to begin somewhere, there is much about bones in the collection. There are bones in the titles, as in Bones of Anonymous Children – a jolting piece about the skeletal remains of two sacrificed children:
[…] There was evidence of cranialcranial irregularities – deformed babies skull-smashed for ritual.
Sometimes restraint goes a long way. Knowing when not to say something is a skill. The opposite is also true and what gives this poem its muscularity, what makes it matter, is Brennan’s ease with which he rubs our noses in this:
[…] unholy mess. The spiritual and physical constructs of all those years would come crashing down around us. We’d never clean that up.
You’d have to have been living under a rock not to draw parallels between this poem and the Tuam babies scandal of 2014. To paraphrase Brennan – here in Ireland, an unholy discovery of a holy mess).
Elsewhere the issue of bones is there in the bodies of the poems themselves. The Ethnographer carries the stench of
wet bone/ …[…]Riddled with moist infection – skin, bone and a pencil,
while in Here and Now Upon this Earth, a stand-out piece, the explicitness of bone is to be found in the absence of flesh:
you’ll have to goyou’ll end up fleshless
and
I say don’t let me go to the place of the fleshless
Even in fruit, in the spat-out pips, Brennan manages to echo the idea of bones:
In that place we spent an entire dayeating and burying our dead underspat-out cherry pips
All that said, not every bone reference or bone poem in the collection works. Bone Couplet is a misstep; here, knowing when not to say something – when to leave a poem on the cutting-room floor – would have been the wiser choice. Desire, the poem preceding it, could have suffered the same fate and I for one would not have mourned its loss. Brennan does better in some of his longer pieces, while some of his shorter poems are, pardon the choice of words, just the bones of ‘not yet there’ pieces. Sometimes I need my poems to have a little more meat on them. On this point, Irma is a poem with meat, and a lot of it.
Irma is one of the more sensual and visceral poems in the collection. It looks good on the page – one gets the sense that Brennan worked hard for this one, tweaking line breaks, fattening up or leaning down the verses until they were just right. Read this poem in silence and feel momentum as your eyes run along each line, across and down each verse; read this poem out loud, and you almost taste iron as you hear yourself say lines such as:
Iron Woman – your poseis insubmissive and I will not
look away.
The soil beneath you smells fertile.
Irma you are made of iron
While this is not the only poem in the collection that focuses on the female body (‘Between your thighs, the cunty/petals of Longley’s Sheela-na-gig’, from Danzante) and pregnancy/birth (Silent Birth) it is the strongest. The references to blood recall the cover image – a bleeding orange sphere, a blood orange; and for a moment I am left wishing there was a poem on menstrual blood in the collection. I think Brennan could (and should) write one on the topic*. A final comment on Irma – ‘from whence/he landed’. A more contemporary word than ‘whence’ would have served the poem better. Of course, this is a small gripe on what is an otherwise voluptuous and well-formed piece.
There is much made of Mexico in the collection, which is not surprising when you consider that this is where Brennan currently resides. While the collection is written in English, the work benefits from the poet’s fluency in another tongue. There is a liveliness, something alive throughout the collection; and nowhere is it more lively, more alive than in The Men in Fake Uniforms:
I would have begged for mercy.
I would’ve licked milk off a grey carpet, tasting the calcium tingedwith the salt of my teardrops and snot.
I would’ve shouted at them, go ahead and do it, I always hated that fucking finger so go ahead.
I would have gotten through the anger, somehow.
In Blood Oranges, Brennan shows us Mexico through his eyes. It is a land of blood and sacrifice. There are moments of acute visceral pleasure in reading these poems. While it isn’t perfect – debut collections rarely are – Blood Oranges does what most debuts should: it whets one’s appetite. To draw from the title poem, Brennan has ‘flung [his] bones on a high temple’. For my part, I came to pray (and prey).
*pretty please, with a cherry on top
Blood Oranges is published by Penny Dreadful Press.
the pickled body quantum 23
Pickled this issueKay Buckley lives in Barnsley. She was overall winner of the 2014 York Mix poetry competition. Her poems have been published in magazines, e-zines and anthologies including Antiphon, Brittle Star, Butcher’s Dog, Proletarian Poetry, Three Drops from a
Cauldron and The Darker Side of Love by Paper Swans Press.
Tessa Berring is an Edinburgh-based artist and poet. A!lot of her work centres around!histories of!human anatomy!in both!art and medicine. She!frequently!combines!words and!images,!and has also had poems published separately!in both!print and!online journals.
Angela!T.!Carr!is!a!poet!based!in!Dublin,!with!work!published!in!a!number!of!UK!and!Irish!literary!journals.!In!2014,!she!won!the!Allingham!Poetry!Competition,!was!selected!for!Poetry!Ireland!Introductions!series!and!published!her!debut!collection,!How!to!Lose!Your!Home!&!Save!Your!Life.!www.adreamingskin.com
Paul Casey has published poetry in five of his six spoken languages. His début collection is home more
or less (Salmon Poetry, 2012), with his second due in 2016. He is the founder/director of the Ó Bhéal reading series in his home city, Cork.
Kate Dempsey’s poetry and fiction is widely published in Ireland and the UK and has a degree
in Physics. Her debut collection, The Space Between is forthcoming later this year with Doire Press. She reads with the Poetry Divas Collective who love to blur the wobbly boundaries between page and stage.
Noel Duffy’s debut collection In the Library of Lost
Objects (Ward Wood Publishing, 2011) was shortlisted for the Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish Poet. His secondOn Light & Carbon followed in autumn 2013, again with Ward Wood. He lives in Dublin.
Michael Farry was was selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions in 2011 and his first poetry collection, Asking for Directions, was published by Doghouse Books in 2012. He won the Dromineer Poetry Competition in 2014.
Siobhán Flynn has been placed and shortlisted in a number of poetry competitions including the Percy French prize in Strokestown and the Desmond O'Grady prize.!She!lives in Dublin with her husband, two sons, a dog and the hope that she has a collection published some day.
Neil Fulwood is the author of film studies book 'The Films of Sam Peckinpah'. His poetry has appeared in The Morning Star, Butcher's Dog, Prole, The Black Light Engine Room, Obsessed With Pipework, Art Decades and Ink Sweat & Tears. He lives in Nottingham, holds down a day job and subsidizes several pubs. He is a member of the Alan Sillitoe Committee, a group who are raising funds towards a permanent memorial to Alan. Neil co-designed their website www.sillitoe.com.
Marjorie Gill’s poems have been shortlisted for both the 2013 and 2014 Bridport Prizes and the 2014 Mslexia Poetry Pamphlet Competition.! Others have been published by, or are forthcoming in Rattle, Ambit, Gutter, Magma, Mslexia, The North, the
reader and The Scotsman.
Sean Hayes is a advertising art director with over 30 years’ experience working for clients and ad agencies in Dublin, Paris, Brussels and Warsaw. He has worked with creatives from Los Angeles to Lublin and clients from Tokyo to Tallin. He started shooting with his iPhone in 2010 and has since become an avid iPhoneographer. His mobile photography has been selected for exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Miami, Milan, Paris and Brussels. Sean received an honorable mention in the landscape category of the MPA 2012 and 2nd place in the people category of!the MPA 2013.!http://mobilephotoawards.com/3rd-annual-mobile-photography-awards-winners-honorable-mentions/ He publishes a blog dedicated to celebrating the best in photography and cinematography past, present and future, at http://seanhayesphotography.com Sean lives and works in Brussels, Belgium with his wife and kids.
Shane Holohan lives in Stoneybatter in Dublin, in a house full of books, some of which are about Quantum Mechanics.
Eleanor Hooker's first collection of poems!The
Shadow Owner's Companion!(Dedalus Press) was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine award in 2013. Eleanor is currently completing her second
collection, a poem from which is nominated by the Ofi Press for a Pushcart Prize.!Eleanor is Programme Curator for the Dromineer Literary Festival. http://www.eleanorhooker.com
Justin Karcher lives in Buffalo, NY. His poems have appeared in Melancholy Hyperbole, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, and more. You can find him on Twitter (@justin_karcher)
Sheila Mannix lives in West Cork. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming!in Irish Left Review
and!Burning Bush 2 (IRE); STRIDE and!Tears in the
fence (UK); Tripwire: a journal of poetics and Akashic Books' Thursdaze series (USA). !www.sheilamannix.wordpress.com
Jennifer Matthews writes poetry and book reviews, and is editor of the!Long Story Short!literary journal. Her poetry has been published in!The Stinging Fly, Mslexia, Revival, Necessary Fiction, Poetry Salzburg,
Foma & Fontanelles!and!Cork Literary Review, Poetry
International Web!and anthologised in Dedalus's collection of immigrant poetry in Ireland,!Landing
Places!(2010). In 2012 she read at Electric Picnic with Poetry Ireland, and had a poem shortlisted by Gwyneth Lewis in the Bridport poetry competition. Her poetry was recognised in both the 2013 and 2014 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competitions.
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Afric McGlinchey’s !collection, The lucky star of
hidden things !was published by Salmon Poetry.
Achievements include the 40th Hennessy Emerging
Poetry Award, !2012 Northern Liberties Prize !(USA)
and 2015 Poets Meet Politics award. She is currently
Poet in Residence at the West Cork Uillinn Arts
Centre. www.africmcglinchey.com
Iggy McGovern is Fellow Emeritus in Physics at
Trinity College Dublin. He has published two
collections of poetry with Dedalus Press. His most
recent title, A Mystic Dream of 4, a sonnet sequence
based on the life of Irish mathematician William
Rowan Hamilton, is published by Quaternia Press.
bruno neiva!is a Portuguese text artist, poet and
writer. He’s recently published!washing-
up!(zimZalla, 2014),!dough!(erbacce press, 2014),
and!averbaldraftsone&otherstories!(Knives Forks and
Spoons Press, 2013). More of his work can be found
in several magazines and anthologies worldwide.
He’s currently working on!Servant Drone, a
collaborative poetry and performance project with
English poet Paul Hawkins.
Kate Quigley’s work has appeared in a number of
Irish & UK journals including The Stinging Fly, The
Shop, The Moth & Orbis. She is one of the co-
founders of Flying South), a mental health themed
open mic night/artists’ collective - http://
facebook.com/FlyingSouth2015.
Sean Ruane lives in Meath. He read at the Fringe
Festival in Edinburgh in 2013. Short films ‘Sean
Ruane Poetry Live’ and ‘Sean—Harlequinade’ are
available on YouTube. His poem ‘Squares’ appears
on Soundcloud.com
Eabhan Ní Shuileabháin, daughter of an Irish-
American father and an Irish mother, grew up in
Dublin, Ireland, but now lives in Gwynedd, Wales,
with her husband and son. Her poetry has appeared
in numerous journals throughout Europe and
America.
Erratum. In our ‘Bull’ issue we printed an
incomplete biographical note for contributor Maeve
O’Sullivan. We are happy to correct this now:
Dubliner Maeve O’Sullivan’s work has been widely
published and anthologised for twenty years. Her
collections of haiku (Initial Response, 2011) and
poetry (Vocal Chords, 2014), are from Alba
Publishing. Maeve is a member of Haiku Ireland, the
Poetry Divas and the Hibernian Poetry Workshop.
www.twitter.com/maeveos
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Since 2013. The Pickled Body is an online poetry and art
magazine edited, designed and produced by Dimitra Xidous
and Patrick Chapman. The poems and artwork featured in this
issue are copyright © 2015 by their respective authors and
artists, and may not be reproduced without permission. The Pickled Body is copyright © 2015 by Dimitra Xidous and Patrick
Chapman. All rights reserved.!
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