Artikel
Editorial: 15 September 2011
13 september 2011
On the PIW Ireland domain, there are poems in Irish (with English translations) by Aifric Mac Aodha, whose engagement with Gaelic mythology and traditional forms is evident in poems such as ‘Conlae Speaks’ and ‘The Adventure of Conlae’, the latter which compares the seduction of the Celtic hero Conlae with that of James Joyce’s Eveline. ‘In My Defence’ invokes images of horses’ skulls under floorboards – traditionally used to help the sound of dancers’ feet resonate – in a beautiful, short love poem.
Maurice Riordan, an English-language Irish poet, translator and editor, is our final poet of this issue. Jennifer Matthews, his PIW biographer, notes the strong sense of homeplace in Riordan’s work, which is evidenced in the selection of poems here: alongside translations from Old English, Maltese and Irish, are poems such as ‘The Nests’, a gorgeous evocation of birds, local landscape and love, while ‘Stars and Jasmine’, with warmth and wit, considers a nighttime garden occupied by a cat, a hedgehog and a “summer interloper”, a tortoise on whose back is painted a neighbours’ address: “9a Surrey Rd”. “Come September, we will post her through their letterbox,” writes Riordan.
September, at least in the northern hemisphere, does indeed feel like the month of homecoming after the summer, the return to school and work. If, like us at PIW, you are now spending more time at your computer than you were a month ago, take a short break to enjoy the poems of this issue.
Welcome to our second issue of September, in which we introduce poetry from Belgium and Ireland.
First published on PIW in 2005, the Belgian poet Leonard Nolens features with additional poems taken from his recent collection Zeg aan de kinderen dat wij niet deugen (Tell the Children We’re No Good), and translated into English by Paul Vincent. Many of these poems, which are in fact sections of a series, begin with the line “Tell the children we’re no good”, establishing a collective ‘we’ in a series of hard-hitting yet lyrical short poems that examine and question the relationships between love, loss, parenthood and global responsibility.On the PIW Ireland domain, there are poems in Irish (with English translations) by Aifric Mac Aodha, whose engagement with Gaelic mythology and traditional forms is evident in poems such as ‘Conlae Speaks’ and ‘The Adventure of Conlae’, the latter which compares the seduction of the Celtic hero Conlae with that of James Joyce’s Eveline. ‘In My Defence’ invokes images of horses’ skulls under floorboards – traditionally used to help the sound of dancers’ feet resonate – in a beautiful, short love poem.
Maurice Riordan, an English-language Irish poet, translator and editor, is our final poet of this issue. Jennifer Matthews, his PIW biographer, notes the strong sense of homeplace in Riordan’s work, which is evidenced in the selection of poems here: alongside translations from Old English, Maltese and Irish, are poems such as ‘The Nests’, a gorgeous evocation of birds, local landscape and love, while ‘Stars and Jasmine’, with warmth and wit, considers a nighttime garden occupied by a cat, a hedgehog and a “summer interloper”, a tortoise on whose back is painted a neighbours’ address: “9a Surrey Rd”. “Come September, we will post her through their letterbox,” writes Riordan.
September, at least in the northern hemisphere, does indeed feel like the month of homecoming after the summer, the return to school and work. If, like us at PIW, you are now spending more time at your computer than you were a month ago, take a short break to enjoy the poems of this issue.
© Sarah Ream
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