The Continuing Story of Óglaigh na hÉireann All around the snot-nosed parishes of Ireland small people of both genders, and neither, are flapping open copies of The Sunday O’Duffy getting worried about the continued existence of the Citizen Army, Fenian Brotherhood, Official IRA. We can’t have parties who perspire to government secretly controlled by cabals … Read more
omeros is unforgiveable they come and they go fleeting wet bullets my bed has left me for another bed the world has lost eternity clocks are now winding towards a new paternity i wait within the ward of maternity for mother to give birth to me so that the idea of him will return https://soundcloud.com/cassandra-voices/omeros-is-unforgiveable-by-brendan-mccormack … Read more
Holding Vellum to the Light The pages of the city unfold its secrets like holding vellum to the light, a palimpsest of the past. Who walked here on sacred ground? What foundations lie under that coffee shop all birch and glass? You may see a piece of broken railing, the bronze of a sword. This … Read more
A poetaster’s tribute to Geoffrey Hill’s The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin (2019). I heard Sir Geoffrey refer many times in his Oxford lectures (2010-2015) to our current situation as one of ‘plutocratic anarchy’. I suspect that, like many, he was fascinated and frustrated by the oxymoronic sight of ordinary, ‘common’ people persistently … Read more
Poem written in old age The light that streams across the universe Brings evidence of other worlds than ours Where midst the flux of fields and particles Eternal wisdom older than the stars Unweaves her web of possibilities The patterner experiments and plays. Bright pearls arranged according to the laws of chance Or unknown logic, … Read more
Try mph To Payney, Tinpan, JJ, Tom P., Tom C., Col, Ry, Peewee I know the car I would most love to own: Well red, early seventies TR6, That beautiful, British-built, roadster mix, Boldly bearing the boxed badge of renown – Great jewel in Triumph’s commercial crown – Two point five litre, manual, straight-six, Mint … Read more
Advisory Epistle From Literature Quangocrat after Alexander Pope About my person, I at all times carry a bowl of re-heated cocktail sausages and a completed application form asking that I be better funded next year. I only read novels which interrogate the relationship between gout and Islamist terrorism, translated from the obligatory French; and poets … Read more
At the end of 2019, I wrote: In these times it is perhaps inevitable that people will want to write poems about climate change, or Twitter and politics. But poetry knows in its heart, what has already ended inside your consciousness, to which you and the world are gradually catching up. In the greatest poems … Read more
Rooftop Blues I could go for a quick smoke on the roof, the steel vent pipe snaking its lobed edges toward the window, hear the incidental music of engines snarl up from Richmond Street, relentless as diesel. Maybe, just maybe, I see people for what we are and want no part in it? Spilled lighter … Read more
Sammy Jay, 30, grew up in Oxford and in Ireland by the sea. He works as a rare book dealer with Peter Harrington of London, tending to their literature department with an interest in poetry in particular. He has been writing since he can remember, and is working on his first collection.