Heavy Load by Padraig Power, age 11, from Tipperary.
Meadhb Smith writes:
“Padraig was the winner of the primary senior category of the Trocaire and Poetry Ireland Poetry competition 2013. His poem compares a school child’s struggle to carry a school bag with the struggle of a girl in Africa to carry a heavy load of water. We posted the poem [link below] as part of our Lenten campaign/Trocaire box, which this year is about the global water crisis.”
Eleven.
Rapid-talking, Dublin-born, beatnik bard Kevin Barrington [performing ‘Jack Kerouac’, above] returns [following a recent now happily resolved health issue] to the Monday Echo spoken word night at the International Bar, Wicklow Street, Dublin.
No limericks, he promises.
More Kev here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0dHCb7AHHw
Tell Me What A Man Is.
Spoken word verse by Belfast poet Colin Hassard.
Colin writes:
In Valentine’s week I’ve posted up a new poem called ‘Tell Me What a Man Is’. It focuses on ideas of masculinity, adulthood, domestic violence, and what it means to be a man in 2014.
FIGHT!
Previously: Moral Hassard
Anonymous
By John Moynes
First we admit that we are powerless over literature, that our lives have become meaningless.
Then we came to believe that only a power greater than ourselves could restore us to clarity.
And so we decided to turn ourselves over to the care of an editor, as we understand them.
We made a searching and fearless inventory of our vocabulary.
We admitted to our editor, to our ourselves and to another poet the exact nature of our typos.
We prepared our poems for submission.
We humbly asked our editor to remove our clichés.
We made lists of all persons we had harmed.
We wrote verses of apology to our victims.
We continued to draft, redraft and start to write again.
We sought through reading and reciting to improve our conscious contact with Heaney, Joyce and Yeats as we understand them.
Having had a literary awakening as the result of these steps, we went to Grogan’s, and told everybody.
Pic: DublinStreets
Colin Hassard writes:
I penned this poem in light of the imminent G8 summit in Northern Ireland and the global “stick up”. It also laments the demise of the NHS and the media’s obsession with celebrity culture. Peace!
Dave Lordan tweetz:
“Imagine Nation poetry board from today’s workshop with 6th class and 1st years in Wicklow town,”
So, you go to Google. You type in the start of a random search and, usually, nothing of much poetic merit emerges.
But then, every once in a while…
Peruse a huge collection over at Google Poetics or at the Google Poems subreddit.
‘She Said To Me’
By Paul Timoney
She said to me – “I’ll never stay.” I said to her – “Then go away. Load up your donkeys and your carts, I’ll not play conkers with our hearts.”
(Performed live for my friend Fiona via the Skype)
Previously from Paul: My Friend Wants To Shift You
A bit of success and look what happens.
Like Heaney and Meatloaf back in the day.
And we all know what happened there.
Dude Looks Like A Poet: Backstage With Aerosmith And Paul Muldoon (New York Observer)
Thanks Larry
