“a curlew cried and in the luminous wind/ A curlew answered” – “Paudeen”, WB Yeats
World Curlew Day has been and gone, but the literature of curlews seems endless. I am reading “Curlew Moon” by Mary Colwell which has been an engrossing read so far…
Category: poetry
“When I landed in the republic of conscience / it was so noiseless when the engines stopped./ I could hear a curlew high above the runway.”
From the Republic of Conscience was written by Seamus Heaney in 1985 at the request of Mary Lawlor, then head of Amnesty International in Ireland. While I find it perhaps…
“Mars Ever Nearer”, John Jay Speredakos – Chaleuer Magazine
I liked this poem by John Jay Speredakos of the recurrent violent reciprocity of conflict and war. Mars Ever Nearer Twenty millennia ago when we made spears, we did…
“Curlews Lift”, Ted Hughes
Curlews Lift Out of the maternal watery blue lines Stripped of all but their cry Some twists of near-edible sinew They slough off The robes of bilberry blue The cloud-stained…
A poem for Palm Sunday – “The Donkey”, G K Chesterton
I find Chesterton a somewhat mixed bag , and that applies to his poetry also, but this has always moved me deeply, and is all the more effective for concealing…
Glen Falls – a poem by Ciaran MacCormaic, Glencomeragh, Co. Waterford
A while back I posted “Be Still”, a poem by Agnes Hunt RHSM which is displayed on a board at the Holy Family Retreat Centre in Glencomeragh, Co Waterford. There…
“Seduced by sinners, fools, & jerks I delight in as I write in my study, my pen my poker, my thoughts often bloody” – ‘Flannery and St. Thomas, Take II’ by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
I posted Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s “Flannery and Dante” the other day. Here is another poem by O’Donnell, this time dealing with Flannery O’Connor and St Thomas Aquinas. “Flannery and St…
Flannery and Dante – a poem by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
At The Other Journal I come across this poem “riffing on Flannery O’Connor’s fandom for Dante” as the site itself puts it: Flannery and Dante For my money Dante is about as…
Séamus Sweeney 