Tagged with Poetry

Michael Boyle’s poems of exile and return

Going Back Home Again When are you going back?”Often I reply-I have an open ticket. Cups of tea full of sugar and milkThe full Irish or Ulster frySomber heart felt chatby stony graveyard walls.Old paths – now jungle under growthsYou wonder where time went.No one here knows you anymore.A couple of older neighborsstill tell how … Continue reading

The Earls Didn’t Return

The Earls Didn’t Return

There’s a border in Ireland now
that began – some would say –
when O’Neill and O’Donnell
of Tyrone and Tyrconnell,
took flight from where the
blue horizon is swallowed up
by the feral Atlantic in Donega Continue reading

Why Do You Write in Irish?

Why Do You Write in Irish?

The world seemed clear. The questions started later in life or when we went to the cities and were asked to convert and change our language to English, sometimes politely sometimes not so much. We got used to the requests, ‘can you please say that in English?’ or the statements ‘We speak English in here’ or ‘I’m afraid we don’t speak that language here’. Continue reading

Poems by David Harris

Poems by David Harris

Today, on our morning swim together.
I watch her dive, hair streaming,
at home among the waves…
You won’t find these in the bush.
Thistles, nettles, tumbleweed,
three-cornered jacks, horehound, Continue reading