A trio of Irish women poets will share their award-winning poetry at an afternoon reading on Tuesday, September 26, at 4 p.m. at Trinity Church, Mercer Street, Princeton.
The reading is part of a U.S. tour in partnership with Solas Nua (New Light), a contemporary Irish arts organization in Washington, D.C., and Cultural Ireland, an international Irish arts promotion organization based in Dublin.
The reading was developed in part for the writers to reflect on social and cultural changes experienced in present day Ireland and to give voice of the importance of poetry to “fine tune our senses to help restore the past, giving memory and story legitimacy.”
The poets are Jane Clarke, Katie Donovan, and Catherine Phil MacCarthy.
Clarke has published three collections. Her most recent, “A Light in the Air,” is currently shortlisted for the Forward Prize in Poetry 2023, and also long-listed for the Laurel Prize 2023, both UK awards. She grew up on a farm in the West of Ireland and now lives with her wife in the uplands of County Wicklow.
Here is a sample of her work:
After
Now that her heart is bent over
like larkspur after a storm,
she stays in bed past milking time,
pulling the quilt
tight around her shoulders
until her collie barks her
down the stairs
to lift the backdoor latch.
She kneels to light the cipeens
piled on last night’s embers.
Her bones creak
like the bolt on the door of the barn.
A cup of oats, two cups of water,
a pinch of salt —
porridge, tea and tablets,
a meal for a queen.
Every day without him
is too long;
she’s waiting
with the tired cows at the gate.
Donovan has published five collections, including her most recent, “Off Duty,” short-listed for the Irish Times/Poetry Now Prize. Her work has appeared in the best-selling anthology “Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times.” She grew up on a farm in County Wexford and now lives in Dalkey, a suburb of Dublin.
Deeper
(for Catherine Nunes)
We go to the edge:
we are fresh, ready
for the lacy buffeting waves,
toes gripping shingle.
While our daughters squat on sand
immersed in shell games,
the tide swallows our ankles,
hungers around our legs.
Eyes on the horizon as we wade,
we know that one by one,
our heads will disappear — already
we have seen our mothers drown.
We spend calm days avoiding stings,
nursing hurts, judging and forgiving
our faults. The sky is still a canopy
our faces can enjoy.
When the breakers fall, we stretch
to lift each other clear,
calling: ‘Sister, I am here –
I am still here.’
Phil MacCarthy has published five collections including “The Invisible Threshold” (2012) with Dedalus Books, short-listed for the Irish Times/Poetry Now Prize. She is a former editor of Poetry Ireland Review and has just completed work on her forthcoming collection, “Catching Sight.” A native of Limerick, she lives in Dublin.
The House, Thoor Ballylee
‘And what if my descendants lose the flower
Through natural declension of the soul…?’
-W. B Yeats, Meditations in Time of Civil War, IV
What might you have foreseen? The way that rain
teemed all autumn on the ragged elm
so fields were flooded and the river rose
on your precious acre of stony ground?
How water crept round the ancient tower,
and swept old trees in the eyes of the bridge,
immersed the road, welled up the winding stair
so that each intake of breath was a magnet
for a river in spate and the torrent flowing in
the chamber window met waters flowing out?
That table, of trestles and board where you wrote,
a fire of turf in the open grey hearth:
and know whatever flourish and decline
these stones remain their monument and mine.
The Princeton reading is being coordinated in part by Pennington resident and former Solas Nua member Colette Breen.
