Evelyn casey

EVELYN CASEY is a native of Limerick.

She is a fitness and health consultant working at the Limerick University Sports Arena.
She is one of six poets featured in Sextet (Revival, 2010).
She is also published in Limerick 12 12 12 art/poetrycollection by Anne-Marie Burke.
In 2009, Evelyn had a prize-winning poem in the Desmond O'Grady International Poetry Festival.

 
POEM
 

THIS PHOTOGRAPH I HAVE OF YOU
(FOR MY MOTHER)

I gaze deep into your eyes

and try to see,

what kind of life you thought it would be.

Your beauty shines from deep within

and penetrates my being.

Your smile tells no sorrow

your pain allows no tomorrow

your fear haunts your soul

your love endless, and complete.

My Mother with your special charm;

My Mother with your heart so warm;

Your beauty, born to care and share

your love and patience.

I try to feel what you went through

sense your despair.

I hold your image and whisper ‘ Do you hear.’

No one can surmise

my depth of loss, without you,

when I gaze into those soft grey eyes,

in this photograph I have, of you.

Donal O'Flynn

Born in 1952, he grew up in the parish of Ballyhea, and now lives in Charlveille, Co. Cork, Ireland. Educated as an engineer at DIT Dublin and Brunel University London, his employment has taken him to America, Asia, The Middle East and Africa. A regular reader at the White House Poetry Revival sessions, he has been writing poetry from the age of twenty.

His first poetry collection Lost Grace was published in 2009 (Revival Press).

In 2011 Donal's second publication, 'The Tailor and Ansty Poems' (2011, Revival Press), featured a collection of poems based on epigraphs from a book by Eric Cross, namely, The Tailor and Ansty (Mercier Press). Due to its perception as being indecent and obsene, Cross's original book became the subject of bitter controversy and it was banned, until the 1960s, by the Irish Governments' Censorship of Publications Board.

I write poetry because of what great poets do for me ... 

... Comfort in solace

Release in misery 

Angers anchor

Loves silent prayer

 - Donal O'Flynn (Lost Grace)

POEM

(1)

EVERY SO OFTEN

Every so often Muse wakes me, beckons,

turns, and walks away.

And I follow no matter my state of nakedness.

We are lovers and have great days when

we meld and mould and articulate easily.

The loving experience that greatly moves

these times, vividly image the page.

Clear declarations of Love released.

Other times I duvet up and write alone.

Essential uncompromising stuff - sometimes venomed.

Mixed essence of things -sometimes garbled - not precise.

Impassioned gluey-woozy words

POEM

(2)

HANG 'EM

The Examiner half excused it by saying

“suffered from an altered state of consciousness”

Daw! Well yes!

Due to the fact he’d imbibed 

a large quantity of alcohol down

on strong prescription drugs

Big deal

As far as I’m concerned,

It doesn’t change the basic facts.

He’s alive. He is not the victim.

He is the criminal. 

And now for the replay of that very successful long running show

“Precedent and his Ass” by the Cloaked Wig and Dagger Players

Times like this I wish we were in the old Wild West 

POEM

(3)

IN FARAWAY PLACES

Guns are booming.

Bombs are being dropped in faraway

places with hard to pronounce names.

And we are helpless when told of the rapes

the killings,

the utter destruction. 

Here.........

The days follow one

quickly on the other.

Through clouds and sunshine.

We are hapless and helpless

Minding our own cares.

What they said:-

"Donal's work is always passionate and honest. His voice is individual and it is becoming more assured. He describes with sympathy and love the ordinary joys and trials of life, exchanges with and observations of family, friends and community that enhance our lives."

- Joe Slade (of Lost Grace)

"An intriquing mix of the sacred and the profane."

- Dominic Taylor (of Lost Grace)

"Donal O'Flynn has resurrected a piece of our Irish literary and folkloric past. He is a poet-chronicler, whom the older reader should also take heed of, if only to check against complacency and to guard against turning our backs again on people like the Tailor and Ansty. He is a poet who is also a gatekeeper to what is holy in human beings. His poems are laced with honest-to-god good fun and a traditional wisdom that throws light on the chaos that is so prevalent. He has passed iton. Read this book and rejoice, as the Tailor, himself a poet, might have put it.

- John Liddy (Introduction to The Tailor and Ansty Poems)

Joe Healy

Joe Healy is a resident of West Limerick in Ireland. Previous work has been published by Crannóg, Bare Hands, The Clare Champion, and in online literary journals The First Cut  and The Mystic Nebula. In 2010,

Joe featured in SEXTET (Revival, 2010), an anthology of six poets (see below). His work also appeared in Poetic Humour an anthology in support of the Cliona Ring Foundation.

As an active member of the Limerick Writers' Centre and the Listowel Writers' Group, Joe divides his time between the two and his poems appear regularly in Revival, the literary journal. Joe's first collection, Soft as Rainbow  was published in 2013 by Revival Press, Limerick.

POEM

(1)

KILLALOE BRIDGE

I am a bridge, crossing a river and lake.
Its late Autumn, mist shrouds me.
I carry the living who love

and the souls of the dead.
From Old World to New
and sometimes – back again.

Souls stop at my traffic lights.
Red for hell, green for heaven.
Amber if they are undecided.

Those spirits hide in roadside trees that
arch in the middle. Haunted branches
touch, support each other like humans.

A couple approach, cross over me.
The woman has brown eyes, full of adventure.
Soon she will board the Spanish train.

The man has eyes of many colours.
He may not pass this way again so easily.
But he will dream and be grateful

that he has helped her cross.
It is a gatekeeper’s reward.
And like the undecided soul

He will wait - for Hallowe’en
when walls are paper thin
between each world once more.

POEM

(2)

A LOVE FOR ALL SEASONS

When winter’s cloak has risen
Above the fields by the glen,
And a single bud has opened
Spring will start to care again.

For she fell in love with summer
With his long days and his wine
But he left her for the autumn winds
Rustling in the vine.

When morning fog has lifted
From the hills below the skies
It is the promise of a new day
When all our spirits rise.

We all have that special moment
When life just seems to say
Hold that baby, win that prize.
Get on your knees to pray.

For life has given me something
That nothing can deny. No pain,
Cruel lies or time - can take
A twinkle from your eye.

A single moment passing
In this lovely April day,
My love for you, like springtime
Will never, ever stray.

POEM

(3)

TOGETHER

Give me a bridge
Made of rainbow
Arched, strong
A stream gently flowing.

On one side a baby
Gentle, in swaddling clothes
Smiling of course

Children playing by the water
Parents watching

A little road over the bridge
So that one day

We can be together.

They said...

"Soft as Rainbow" is Joe Healy's first book. A regular reader at the weekly White House Poetry Nights in Limerick city, he writes honestly of life as he has seen and lived it. "Soft as Rainbow" is a deeply felt book told in a simple, straightforward, accessible style. Congratulations, Joe. Take a bow!

- Gabriel Fitzmaurice (on Soft as Rainbow)

The tribute to a very short life which is the primary focus of this work will break readers' hearts, before they enter into the small farm, old village world whence Joe healy weaves revelatory poems that soothe and console while recording the eccentricities, rural lore and family histories that constitute the wide world of deep places.

- Louis Mulcahy (on Soft as Rainbow)

See also:

Bridget Wallace Louis Mulcahy Evelyn Casey John Pinschmidt

Sheila Fitzpatrick-O'Donnell  Christy O'Donnell

Patricia Byrne

Patricia Byrne is a Limerick writer and a member of the Killaloe Hedge School Writer Group. She is a graduate of the MA (Writing) programme at NUI Galway. A writer of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, her short fiction is included in the collection Town of Fiction (Atlantis Collective, 2009). Her current non-fiction project, The Friar & the Felon, centres on the 1894 Valley House atrocity in Achill. Her reviews of Irish theatre and literature have appeared in New Hibernia Review (U.S.A.), The Journal (Australia) and Verbal Magazine (Northern Ireland). Her poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies and she was the winner of the Dromineer Poetry Prize in 2007.

Patricia Byrne's first poetry collection, Unstable Time, was hand bound and printed at the Winepress, Ireland and published in 2009 by Lapwing Publications, Belfast.

  

Following publication of Unstable Time, Patricia then turned to prose and, in 2012, produced her nonfiction book The Veiled Woman of Achill (Collins Press, 2012). She is currently researching her second prose book. 

The Veiled Woman of Achill can be found at: 

 http://www.collinspress.ie/the-veiled-woman-of-achill.html

 See They Said:- (below) 

POEM

(1)

RED RAW

The sow paws and kicks dry straw,

snorting hot fumes, heavy hanging

milk-blown udder,

gorged teats.

/... (stanza one of six)

POEM

(2)

HY-BRAZIL

Hy-Brazil is a mythical island supposedly seen

off Achill every seven years and is likely

a folk memory of submergence events

on the island

Slievemore is black save for its tip.

The mountain looks down

on Krinnuck,

on Dugurt,

on me.

/... (Stanza one of four)

POEM

(3)

CROSSING

I read a strange thing today:

that you have one hour

to select one memory

to take with you -

all other memories will cease to exist.

/... (Stanza one of three)

They said:-

(of The Veiled Woman of Achill )

"The gruesome tale of the 'real' Playboy of the Western World."

– Irish Independent

"Interesting slant on the violently sectarian atmosphere ... on Achill."

– The Irish Times

"Fascinating."

– Ireland's Own

"A compelling tale, which has all the ingredients of a classical tragedy, framed within the wild intimacy of an isolated community." 

– The Mayo News

Patrick Stack

Patrick Stack was born in Limerick and raised in Duagh, Co. Kerry. Educated at St.Michael's College, Listowel, he read French and English at Trinity College, Dublin before moving to Spain (1988) where he taught English and worked as an interpreter and translator. Since 1995 he has settled in Co. Clare, Ireland where he works as a web developer, programmer and adult education tutor. In 2007 he became a member of The Three Legged Stool Poets group. He has had poems published in The Clare Champion, Crannóg, Revival and Brigid's Fire. His first collection is due out in 2013.