Paula Meehan: Irish Professor of Poetry

DEATH OF A FIELD

 

The field itself is lost the morning it becomes a site
When the Notice goes up: Fingal County Council – 44 houses

The memory of the field is lost with the loss of its herbs

Though the woodpigeons in the willow
And the finches in what’s left of the hawthorn hedge
And the wagtail in the elder
Sing on their hungry summer song

The magpies sound like flying castanets

And the memory of the field disappears with its flora:
Who can know the yearning of yarrow
Or the plight of the scarlet pimpernel
Whose true colour is orange?

And the end of the field is the end of the hidey holes
Where first smokes, first tokes, first gropes
Were had to the scentless mayweed

The end of the field as we know it is the start of the estate
The site to be planted with houses each two or three bedroom
Nest of sorrow and chemical, cargo of joy

The end of dandelion is the start of Flash
The end of dock is the start of Pledge
The end of teazel is the start of Ariel
The end of primrose is the start of Brillo
The end of thistle is the start of Bounce
The end of sloe is the start of Oxyaction
The end of herb robert is the start of Brasso
The end of eyebright is the start of Fairy

Who amongst us is able to number the end of grasses
To number the losses of each seeding head?

                                         I’ll walk out once
Barefoot under the moon to know the field
Through the soles of my feet to hear
The myriad leaf lives green and singing
The million million cycles of being in wing

That – before the field become solely map memory
In some archive of some architect’s screen
I might possess it or it possess me
Through its night dew, its moon white caul
Its slick and shine and its prolifigacy
In every wingbeat in every beat of time

© 2005, Paula Meehan

 

 

Today Dublin’s “informal poet laureate” Paula Meehan has been named Ireland Professor of Poetry.

The poet and playwright is the second woman to be awarded the prestigious post, set up in 1998 after the late Seamus Heaney won the Nobel prize for literature. Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill held the post from 2001-2004

Meehan, who has worked with prisoners and people from disadvantaged backgrounds, is regarded as giving a voice to people and places that are often marginalised and forgotten.

Paula Meehan reading "Death of a Field"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYnyU7CkXjU

I attended a poetry reading given by Paula Meehan a few years ago I knew very little about her work but this poem won me over. It has particular meaning looking back on the building boom in Ireland followed by the bust..ghost estates etc...beautiful sites totally destroyed by greedy developers.

 

 

 

Mahon Falls:Comeragh Mts

The Comeragh Mts.

Waterford Mts.

Thanks to Dooceys Bar for the photo

Seamus Heaney Poet April 1939- August 2013

 The Skunk by Seamus Heaney


Up, black, striped and damasked like the chasuble
At a funeral mass, the skunk’s tail
Paraded the skunk. Night after night
I expected her like a visitor.
The refrigerator whinnied into silence.
My desk light softened beyond the veranda.
Small oranges loomed in the orange tree.
I began to be tense as a voyeur.
After eleven years i was composing
Love-letters again, broaching the ‘wife’
Like a stored cask, as if its slender vowel
Had mutated into the night earth and air
Of California. The beautiful, useless
Tang of eucalyptus spelt your absence.
The aftermath of a mouthful of wine
Was like inhaling you off a cold pillow.
And there she was, the intent and glamorous,
Ordinary, mysterious skunk,
Mythologized, demythologized,
Snuffing the boards five feet beyond me.
It all came back to me last night, stirred
By the soot fall of your things at bedtime,
Your head-down, tail-up hunt in a bottom drawer
For the black plunge-line nightdress


Skunk is a poem by Seamus Heaney about his married life. The poem is a
tribute to his wife – how living away from home has caused him to miss
his married life. Exiled from his wife, Heaney  recalls the skunk
which reminds him of his wife.There are two settings in this poem. The first five stanzas are based
on memories of California nights, and the last stanza is a recent
memory of waiting in bed for his wife as she changed into her
nightdress.





World-renowned poet and playwright Seamus Heaney has died at the age of 74.He was born to a farming family at Mossbawn near Bellaghy in Co Derry on 13 April 1939.Mr Heaney was educated at the St Columb's College Catholic boarding school in Derry.His upbringing often played out in the poetry he wrote in later years
He was awarded numerous prizes over the years and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995.
Among the academic posts he held were professorships at Harvard and Oxford universities.
He was an honorary fellow at Trinity College Dublin and last year was bestowed with the Seamus Heaney Professorship in Irish Writing at the university, which he described as a great honour.















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Magic Road near Mahon Falls Waterford : Bothar Draiochta

There is a magic road at the Mahon Falls in Co Waterford. Folklore has it  that during the last war the local council built a road through a fairy glen in order to harvest turf (peat). The fairies cursed the place and made everything appear to go backwards. It is also worth noting that the turf harvested from this area was part of the consignment that caused the collapse of the Jail wall in Waterford resulting in the loss of life.Drivers claim that even when their car engines are switched off cars still roll uphill at a section of road in the Comeragh Mountains

Bog Bodies

The mummified remains of a body found in a Laois bog two years ago have been found to date back to 2,000BC, making it the oldest “bog body” discovered anywhere in the world.

He is believed to have met a violent death.“All the indications are that the human remains from Cashel Bog tell of the fate of a young king who, through folly or misadventure, was deemed to have failed to appease the goddess on whose benevolence his people depended, and who paid the ultimate price,” 

The chemical composition of bogs can preserve human bodies for thousands of years.

Archaeologists have discovered more than 100 ancient bodies in Irish bogs but few as well-preserved as “Cashel man”.