Poems by Padraig O'Morain

Ronelda Kamfer - a necessary voice from South Africa

2008-12-24T18:20:00.001Z

I discovered Ronelda Kamfer's work on the always excellent Poetry International Web. From the age of 10 she lived in Camp Flats, a place in which getting to school involved getting past three gangs. Camp Flats at one time had 150 gangs and perhaps still has. She saw a schoolmate shot dead in crossfire outside her school.

It's unusual to find a poetic voice coming from a background like this and I really like her poetry and recommend it to you. She writes in Afrikaans and there is just a handful of her poems available in English.

She developed her poetic style by compressing sentences into a few words to stop her little sister from reading her private stuff, according to this interview with Fred De Vries. I've never heard of that method before - but it worked.

The trouble with chipmunks

2008-12-20T20:53:00.000Z

'A chipmunk is not an attractive thing.
That odd little roly poly body,
those long teeth gleaming like stainless steel,
could not bring success on the social circuit.'

As he spoke he glanced around the group
already bored, loooking for another drink.
What are they good for anyhow? someone asked
but he ploughed on with his unwanted chatter.

'Chipmunks dance to catch up
from the margin, wild eyed, struggling
to salvage their dignity and their okayness
and not be undesired and unregarded things.'

There was nothing any of us cared to say.
We drifted off or talked of something else
and left him looking at his shoes,
grinning from his place on the edge.

Published, 2008, in Snakeskin, Number 144

Reading in the Troubadour, London next Monday 17th November

2008-11-11T20:50:00.002Z

I'll be reading at The Troubadour Café at 263-7 Old Brompton Road, Earls Court, London, at the launch of the latest issue of Magma Poetry in which I have a poem called Me and my shadow. The big draw isn't me but poets Blake Morrison and Vicki Feaver. The Troubadour readings fill up pretty quickly so early arrival is advisable. Cost of admission is £6 (concession £5). Judging by the last time I was there, you can expect a good buzz and a memorable night. You might even meet the partner of your dreams.

The hairdresser pauses

2008-10-18T22:44:00.004+01:00

The hairdresser stands behind me,
her hands flowing over my hair.
We could be under water
in a glass tank, an exhibition
of absorption or of peace,
like the breathing of an accordion
before the first note is played.
On the worktop creams, scissors,
the steriliser hums to itself.
The hairdresser pauses, comb poised.
What are you thinking? I inquire.
She stands in stillness for a time,
then: at the moment I am thinking
of going out for a cigarette
when I am done with yourself.
She makes a last pass with the scissors
and I picture smoke ribboning
from her lips up to heaven.

Published, 2008, in Snakeskin, Number 144

Singing, dancing poets - blame Shakespeare?

2008-10-12T14:00:00.002+01:00

An Irish poet once remarked to me that English audiences at poetry readings expect to be entertained in a way that Irish audiences do not. He still recalls his terror at having to follow a series of entertaining poets at a reading in England with his extremely good (in my opinion) but sensitively nuanced poems. He survived, because English audiences also happen to like good poetry. I recalled his experience at a reading I did at the new premises of Smith/Doorstop in Sheffield on 9th October. Poet John Turner wasn't just entertaining - he had backing music and he danced, and sang his poetry. I loved what he did but I was very glad I had been on before him! I blame Shakespeare for this trend in English poetry. Shakespeare, as many a poor student has had drilled into them, always introduced clowns and clown-like characters into his plays - even the witches in Macbeth can be played for laughs (though I am not calling John Turner a clown). Shakespeare was a bloody good showman and he was in the same theatrical company as the great comedian Will Kemp, for whom he wrote the part of Falstaff. So when I saw John Turner I thought of Shakespeare. And I thought of the fact that, thanks to Bill, we more melancholic Irish poets are up against it when we cross the Irish Sea.

Sensuality? Try this by Pablo Neruda...

2008-10-10T10:30:00.000+01:00

Wow, check out this poem by Pablo Neruda on the Poem of the Week blog. Talk about sensuality...

Poetry reading in Sheffield for National Poetry Day

2008-10-09T06:17:00.000+01:00

It's National Poetry Day in the UK today and I'm off to Sheffield for a reading at the new premises of Smith/Doorstop at Bank Street Arts. It starts at 7.30pm and admission is free so get on that plane now. Readers include Geoff Hattersley, John Turner and Poetry Business competition winners Julia Deakin & myself. The latest issue of The North will be launched at the do.

Reading at The Troubadour

2008-10-07T22:40:00.005+01:00

Reading at The Troubadour in London last night with Yvonne Green, Julia Deakin and other past winners of the Poetry Business Award organised by Peter and Ann Sansom of Smith/Doorstop. It was a particularly special night for one reader, River Wolton, because her collection, The Purpose of Your Visit, had been printed that very day. Much of her poetry is political and I found this really interesting because many poets, including myself, shy away from current events and from issues. The fear is that issues make for bad poetry. But I think River has found a way to write good poetry about issues. You can read an example of her political poetry here in Magma. River is currently Derbyshire Poet Laureate.

London reading at The Troubadour Monday 6th October

2008-10-05T07:50:00.000+01:00

I'll be reading poems from You've been great at The Troubador in Earls Court, London, on Monday 6th October. There will be readings of 15 minutes each from current and past winners of the Poetry Business Award includingmyself, Julia Deakin and Yvonne Green. Some runners up are also expected to read. The do will be hosted by Ann and Peter Sansom of Smith/Doorstop, publishers ofThe North who organise the Poetry Business competition. Readings run from 8-10pm.

Check out my Poetry Daily feature today

2008-10-04T07:30:00.001+01:00

I'm delighted that Poetry Daily, a website I've been reading with admiration for years, is featuring one of my poems today, Saturday 4th October. The poem, The red heifer, is from my collection You've been great. Click on over there and take a look.

Reading on the Arts Show, RTÉ Radio One

2008-09-15T11:51:00.002+01:00

I read four poems from You've been great on the Arts Show on RTÉ Radio One on 19th August. You can listen to the readings and the interview with Seán Rocks here.

Jesus loves Angela

2008-08-21T08:27:00.004+01:00

It began on the beautiful day,
that's what she called it, the beautiful day
an angel stopped her on the Newbridge road
and told her of Christ's desire for her.

Three days later Christ started to visit.
He played hide and seek. He hid under beds
behind the curtains, giggled, hid again
until she collapsed exhausted, sobbing.

Once she dreamt she was with him in the tomb
for a blissful night before he rose.
Angela stroked him, kissed him, embraced him.
What else, she asked us, could she have done?

When he did not come to her for days
she said it was like hanging, blindfolded,
from a gallows, hands tied behind her back
with no chance left of salvation.

She wanted us to crucify her
so she could suffer his shame, his torment.
We laughed until we found her in the church
spreadeagled naked against the cross.

Her husband hauled her to a doctor
off the telly, cost a fortune,
put her on tablets she hid them
in her mouth and spat them to the dog.

When himself and the child were killed
under a truck on the road to Newbridge
she tittered it meant more time for Jesus
and dressed like a bride for the funeral.

She died in bed, an old woman
unpunished, sins confessed, pardoned.
In the end she gaped at the curtains
and then she giggled, and was gone.

Published, 2008, in Cyphers No. 65

Award-winning poems published

2008-08-09T06:40:00.002+01:00

You've been great, my collection of 20 poems which was a winner of the Poetry Business Award 2007, is published by Smith/Doorstop. Smith/Doorstop, based in Sheffield, publishes the poetry magazine The North as well as books and pamphlets and was founded by poet Peter Sansom. The collection of 20 poems was one of four winners of the competition run by The Poetry Business which is associated with Smith/Doorstop. The competition was sponsored by the Arts Council of England and Kirklees Cultural Services. Also winning and having their collections published were Julia Deakin, Yvonne Green and Ann Pilling. Look down the column on the right to find out how to buy You've been great.

Aftershock

2007-11-12T10:07:00.000Z

Bricks scattered like toys after playing,
a pig rooting in a flowerbed,
the cot, the couch, the fireplace buried,
masks hiding the mouths and noses
of men who lift stone from bone,
children sifting ashes for what is broken,
tumbling already out of memory.

What survives: cup, comb, picture frame,
bunting got ready for a festival,
crops waiting in accusing ripeness,
a girl who startles birds to flight and laughs.

Published, 2003, in The Rialto, Issue 54.

That's it

2007-10-13T16:13:00.002+01:00

The nurse hoisted him into the car,
shoved the wheelchair into the boot,
pecked him and said goodbye and meant it.
He was a shell, not full of years but emptied of them.
As his daughter drove past the gagged
windows of the old tobacco factory
towards the bright ribs of the new stadium
he spotted a girl walking, eighteen or nineteen,
white trousers stretched tight.
Great big arse, he thought.
He managed a twitch. His daughter said,
What you thinking about Dad? He said,
That's it, great big arse.
That was it all right. She did not ask again.

Published, 2003, in Ambit, Issue 172.

Chatting her up

2007-10-13T16:12:00.001+01:00

A boy and girl drag themselves to the back of the bus.
He mumbles the slurred syllables of methadone.
He intends to impress his dark haired, dark eyed girl
who folds her hands like a nun and contemplates the windscreen wipers
while he displays for her admiration
the tapestry of his suicide attempts.

He took the sharpest kitchen knife to bed
mother in an oooh of horror found him too soon.
On the empty stairs of the flats at two a.m.
he slung a rope across a bannister and would have launched himself
but for a man from God-knows-where hunting down a deal.
I would jump from the balcony he says but with my luck
they'd have built a fucking swimming pool there before I hit the street.

She giggles, then sits in silence
watching the rain smack against the windows
thinking perhaps of sipping multicoloured cocktails
by hot Spanish poolsides in the healing sun.

Published, 2003, in Ambit, Issue 172.

The undertaker's assistant

2007-10-13T16:09:00.000+01:00

The undertaker's assistant puts her finger
to the tip of a tilted coffin
to guide the inexperienced pallbearers.

She stands at the ready in black livery,
perky buttocks in clinging trousers,
jacket pushed out by cocky breasts.

But what makes me stare is that black ribbon
looped around her saucy pigtail.

Published, 2002, in ROPES (Review of Postgraduate Studies), Issue 10, NUI Galway. (ROPES does not have its own website).

The calf-man

2007-10-13T16:07:00.000+01:00

Three or four times a year a van drove into the yard,
the calf-man climbed out and unlocked the doors
to show to my father, who feigned scepticism,
two or three calves, blinking, lying in straw;
they gawped from the dark of the calf-smelling van;
the calf-man poked them with his stick to get them up.
My father's resistance always unravelled in the end
and the two men prodded a gangly calf to a shed;
then the calf-man came into the kitchen to be paid
towering, reeking of cattle, his dung-stained coat
buttoned tight, his cap scarcely covering his great skull.

He refused tea while my father wrote out the cheque;
they argued a little over the luck money
before he left, the van moving up the hill
past the elm trees, to try his chances in Malone's
and only then, if he thought he had got a bargain
would my father look at us and grin shyly
while outside the calf lifted her head and bellowed loss.

Published, 2002, in The Rialto, Issue 51.

Last dance

2007-10-13T16:04:00.000+01:00

A knot loosening in his brain
has closed the book of expectation.

He shuffles for miles in purple tracksuit bottoms,
mumbles the thing again and again.

What comes out of his mouth defies meaning
what matter now are words already spoken.

The suits have gone to the charity shop
but for one that will do later.

The job was good, they let her keep his car
it sits in the driveway looking big.

He dines on scrambled eggs and meat cut up small,
the same for her, she can't be bothered.

The bedroom-slipper shimmy the nightly dance
she catches him on the street trotting home to mother

and partners him back to the room
the smell of cigarettes and disinfectant.

While she sleeps he shuttles between lock and lock
muttering the thing is, some step to be taken, but what?

Published, 2002, in The Interpreter's House, Issue 20.

Bloodline

2007-10-13T16:02:00.000+01:00

We seldom speak of you in this house
where you stabled your plough horses.
You are that silence between sounds we rarely note.
Are these hedges compositions from your hands?
Did you grunt in these ditches,
drag out slippery weeds
from dark, sucking mud?

We changed what you thought might last
past your time of horses and scythes
- they crumbled, there is neither bone nor rust left -
we sliced off one river bank,
weeds dance in your ditches;
a motorway storms through your High Field
like a bully roaring in a schoolyard.

There are still apple trees, chestnuts, a few primroses.
We carry you in our blood into the fog.

Published, 2000, in ROPES (Review of Postgraduate Studies), Issue 8, NUI Galway. (ROPES does not have its own website).

War of Independence: Unrecorded incident

2007-10-13T16:00:00.000+01:00

Willy Murphy is not in the war.
He carts gravel and clay
along the birdsong roads of Kildare,
milks a cow, can shoe a horse
draws turf from the Bog of Allen.
He is not in the war. The Tans do not know this,
nor do they care: all are guilty.
When he hears the lorries stop outside
he leaves his bed at midnight,
flits by the hedge of the field
to the sheltered pond at the far corner, slips in.
He thinks of men dragged behind lorries,
torment in the barracks, an infant shot for sport.
The lorries start up. Engines fade towards the Hill of Caragh.
But sometimes they leave men with guns behind, to wait.
He waits. Mud seeks to suck him into its black mouth
whispers your time came then, you have no business here.
The lorries do not come back.
The dark lightens and a bird sings.
Another day in the story begins.

Published, 2001, in Poetry Ireland, Autumn issue

Primroses

2007-10-13T15:59:00.000+01:00

Arthur Morrin and Peter Kane
built our house in a patient time,
hoisted blocks, hammered nails,
gouged window spaces out of hostile
stone in the walls of an old stable
while chestnuts fattened on the trees outside
and while snow fell and froze and melted.

Our dray always lurched into this hollow
in the shimmering heat of Summer
when we swayed on top of a load
of hay and waited in fright to fall off.
We had a tractor alright, an old
monster on giant wheels that could have done the job
but my father would rather horse and dray.

Rust and rain have taken the tractor,
the horse is slaughtered, the dray decayed
the motorway buried the lurching hollow
where we perched on the hay in terror.

But primroses which someone
- perhaps the grandmother taken by an epidemic
in the 'Twenties, one of the lost millions -
planted on a bank appear every Spring
and the children still laugh at the good of it.

Published, 1999, in Snakeskin, February issue

With Niamh in Harcourt Street Children's Hospital

2007-10-13T15:57:00.000+01:00

The intravenous drip machine doggedly
hums through the night,
breaks into fits of frantic ticks
as if it wants to fight its way out of the room.
I have my comforts: book, newspaper, flask of tea
and most importantly: a naggin in my briefcase.
A child wails on the wards, always;
shoes clack on tiles;
you, inscrutably
suck on your soother;
I eye the briefcase.

Published, 2000, in Snakeskin, September issue

Another dreamer

2007-10-13T15:55:00.000+01:00

The grocer sits and smokes behind his counter
- pock-marked lino top with tobacco burns -
explains to any listening idler
how to get rich, run a country, rear children.
As he speaks he flicks
tiny tobacco flakes off his lips.
Customers seldom come in:
there is little to want on his hungry shelves.
He addresses the few with certainty.
His yellowed fingers weave the air.
His navy suit, thin as tissue paper,
dances on his shoulders.
He confounds his listeners
with big-money cant
conned from the business pages
which turn yellow
while the light dulls
to the cold of three decades
and the dark moves in
thick as the walls of Fort Knox
with all America's gold
locked up behind them.

Published, 2001, in ROPES (Review of Postgraduate Studies), Issue 9, NUI Galway. (ROPES does not have its own website).

A night out

2007-10-13T15:53:00.000+01:00

Wife and husband wordless,
tongue-tied in the Corrib Lounge.
She looks away, her face is closed.
He scowls into the dregs, plods to the bar.
She regards the bottom of her glass;
her lip twitches. He sidles back
with a thin smile and another pint.
Nothing for her: she will do the driving tonight.

Published, 2001, in ROPES (Review of Postgraduate Studies), Issue 9, NUI Galway. (ROPES does not have its own website).