Matthew Sweeney’s Shadow of the Owl reviewed by Mike Farren
Shadow of the Owl by Matthew Sweeney.£10.99. Bloodaxe. ISBN: 978 1 78037 542-7
If we envisage a poet writing under the shadow of death, we are most likely to consider either the youth – Keats coughing blood; Owen in the trenches – or one who has passed three score and ten: there’s the recent example of Clive James’ public leave-taking.
Matthew Sweeney, who died aged 65 in 2018, doesn’t quite fit either of those templates, just as his writing did not neatly fit an established Irish or British template. This posthumously-published volume begins under the threat of an undiagnosed, though clearly serious illness, which became an imminent death sentence when identified as motor neurone disease.
This section, ‘The Owl’, presents an extended analogy between the lowering, unseen presence of an owl and the wait for a diagnosis in…
For Visionary Leaders, First Responders, Resisters, and All the Helpers, Everywhere
We’re in the same boat— Death swims all around us, floats
with crocodile grin in skeletal face, glides, sometimes without a trace–
a certain-skater, a shadow-waiter
for color to flee. Let him be–
if there’s no hope–to do what he must, when blood flows out and cold winds gust.
Beware the fakes and winter witches who line their pockets with others’ riches–
but—call the intermediaries, if you can the ones who stop the flow and span
the distance between wish and despair– the bringers of light, the helpers who care–
those who take us from frozen tombs to whisk in spring’s incipient blooms.
Dead dying faces all Covid taking back to fall sudden horror call
-Merril D Smith
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day (CO18)
The toast is crying again. I have spoken to it firmly about this: I told it that in the mornings it must try to show more positivity if I am to have a chance of making it through the day. If this attitude continues, I may have to resort to muesli despite its recurrent dark spots.
Showboat (MH18)
This show is only for those in my boat. It’s not funny but you might find yourself laughing uncontrollably. Laughter has more teeth than tragedy and it takes you beyond your boat into the blue, heightens your emotions, raises your temperature from Depression to Resignation; and if you are lucky beyond that all the way up to Guilt. The water is still coming in; I never said it could fix the hole. So keep baling while you watch, and think of it as a form of exercise.
-Hilary Otto
Here’s a short poem, inspired by the famous poet Kalidasa and the winter scene of Kerfe Roig’s ‘intermediary.’
Shishira, Winter ( Homage to Kalidasa)
Clusters of lack lustre stars, cool moonbeams chilling the air, breeze that curdles with dense sleet, huddles of snow, chill the breath of life steamed inside awaiting warmer climes, dare the flowers to bloom when sandal paste to cool is applied, still my beating heart, that winter may soon fly away, I lie in misty lair the denuded trees greened, the iced waters melt and flow, life Begins.
-Leela Soma
KR12
Perceive color amid green and brown living plants trees and crown life is breath, rest are but mortal matters, lifeless? Dry in fetters, Live to eat , dead? Cannot be fed.
-Anjum Wasim Dar
Entropy
Winter blows frozen halitosis Spring spews vomit of blossoms Ice-choked branches fall on power lines Moss-flocked live oak stands, for now Mud-darkened slush seeps into snow boots Sun dapples daffodils Projections in opposing directions Tenuous seam that will not hold
-Holly York
Intermediary (afterYayoiKusama) – KR18
You’ve altered the thermostat again. I’ll knock it back down to twenty; that should be plenty.
How about shutting the upstairs window. It’s not nice feeling cold when you start getting old.
Summer will soon be here. It’s nearly equinox; we can ditch our thick socks.
17,Ja,2021 for the eighteenth of. -Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kiroji Roige.
Felt – (CO18)
I like your red hair. Are you Cindi Lauper ? You`ve got an orange face; I bet you;re not a pauper. You have a square head. Are you a Cavalier ? With a dirty mouth like that you’re not welcome round ‘ere.
17,Ja.2021 for the 18th of. -Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and painter Chris O`Connor.
is an artist working in glass, metal, fibre and paint. Sometimes her work is based on photographs, but more often, she creates in the moment. She loves to play with texture and colour.
is a Dutch visual artist. He is also one of the two men behind the publishing house Petrichor. Freedom is very important in the visual work of Marcel Herms. In his paintings he can express who he really is in complete freedom. Without the social barriers of everyday life. There is a strong relationship with music. Like music, Herms’ art is about autonomy, freedom, passion, color and rhythm. You can hear the rhythm of the colors, the rhythm of the brushstrokes, the raging cry of the pencil, the subtle melody of a collage. The figures in his paintings rotate around you in shock, they are heavily abstracted, making it unclear what they are doing. Sometimes they look like people, monsters, children or animals, or something in between. Sometimes they disappear to be replaced immediately or to take on a different guise. The paintings invite the viewer to join this journey. Free-spirited.
He collaborates with many different authors, poets, visual artists and audio artists from around the world and his work is published by many different publishers.
RedCat’s love for music and dance sings clearly in The Poet’s Symphony (Raw Earth Ink, 2020). Passion for rhythms and rhymes, syllabic feets and metres. All born out of childhood and adolescence spent reading, singing, dancing and acting.
Her writing spans love, life, mythology, environment, depression and surviving trauma.
Originally from the deep woods, this fiery redhead now makes home in Stockholm, Sweden, where you might normally run into her dancing the night away in one of the city’s techno clubs.
is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey, where she is inspired by her walks along the Delaware River. She’s the author of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Fevers of the Mind.
-Godefroy Dronsart
is a writer, teacher, and musician currently residing near Paris. His poetry has appeared in Lunar Poetry, PostBLANK, Paris Lit Up, The Belleville Park Pages, and Twin Pies Literary among others. His first chapbook, “The Manual” (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020), explores the space between poetry, prose, and gamebooks. He has a sweet tooth for all things experimental, modernist, and strange. Follow him on Twitter and his Bandcamp for electronic explorations.
-Joy Fleming
Born in County Down, Joy has studied, mothered and worked in Scotland since 1980. Brief excursions to follow her heart, back to NI mid-1990’s and England for first round Covid-lockdown ’19, Joy is currently back living in Glasgow. Joy’s first poem was accepted as part of the C. S. Lewis themed Poetry Jukebox curation A Deeper Country in Belfast in 2019. This poem, Ricochet was published in The Poets’ Republic Issue 8 Autumn 2020. A love of reading poetry is now accompanied by sporadic writing of poetic lines which spill out as an apparent by-product of processing dark and sorrowful days.
-Holly York
lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two large, frightening lapdogs. A PhD in French language and literature, she has retired from teaching French to university students, as well as from fierce competition in martial arts and distance running. She has produced the chapbooks Backwards Through the Rekroy Wen, Scapes, and Postcard Poetry 2020. When she isn’t hard at work writing poems in English, she might be found reading them in French to her long-suffering grandchildren, who don’t yet speak French.
-Alan Gary Smith
A Lincolnshire Ludensian living in Grimsby who built up his poetic stance after visiting Doncaster and Mexborough during his real ale and comedic music searches. Surprised to find a recent DNA check leaned heavily towards being a strong mix of Scottish, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. A sixty year old baldy who loves Julie, astronomy and chocolate; after giving up on football and telly.
-Hilary Otto
is an English poet based in Barcelona. Her work has featured in Popshot, Black Bough Poetry, AIOTB, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The Blue Nib, among other publications. She received her first Pushcart Prize Nomination and performed at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She tweets at @hilaryotto
-Jim young
is an old poet living in Mumbles on The Gower. He does most of his writing from his beach hut at Rotherslade – still waiting for the blue plaque
Anjum Wasim Dar was born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir, She is a migrant Pakistani.Educated at St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi she has a Masters degree in English Literature and History ( Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English from Cambridge UK. , a Diploma in TEFL from AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan. She has been writing poems,
articles and stories since 1980.A published poet Anjum was awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal in 2000 by ISP International Society of Poets and poetry.com USA .
She has worked as Creative Writer at Channel 7 Adv. Company Islamabad, and as a Teacher Educator for Fauji Foundation Education Network Inservice Teachers
-Marcel Herms “All the talk about getting results”
-Christine O’Connor
-Kerfe Roig “I was born (after Yayoi Kusama)”
All the Strands Carried, Come Together and Dissolve
The talking heads talk, on TV screens and from online streams, pontificate and remonstrate elucidate, and then negate— but flowers do not wait
for thoughts and prayers, the analysis of fools’ blares. Unaware of blithering-blather, the slathering lather of rabid madness—
feeling neither hope nor sadness, they simply do
until they’re through.
And, I am born, as are you– in their petal-dust, scattered or buried, river-ferried or eagle-carried, or by winds and air brought here—again, again, again–
then on a sigh, we’re here to live until we die, and nourish once more the flowers that grow and glow— with a wave to bees, a waltz for trees—
We cast shadow puppets
on the bedroom wall,
in the circle of light we’ve made,
the lamp angled up so it beams across
the single mattress, and us.
I can manage an adequate
rabbit, and a Homer Simpson
that’s good, or bad, enough to
make her laugh.
Like this, she says, feathering my
palms, turning me into an eagle.
Together, four-handed,
we figure out ways
to create fantastic creatures,
alien worlds,
visions of the future.
About the Author:
Joe Williams is an award-winning writer and performing poet from Leeds. His latest book is the pamphlet ‘This is Virus’, a sequence of erasure poems made from Boris Johnson’s letter to the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic. His verse novella ‘An Otley Run’, published in 2018, was shortlisted in the Best Novella category at the 2019 Saboteur Awards. His poems and short stories have been included in numerous anthologies, and in…
We know Jane as an outstanding poet from the North East of England whose skill with words is regularly recognised both nationally in the UK and internationally. Today, we introduce her as a supremely talented visual artist. She works in a wide variety of mediums, from watercolour, acrylics, pencil and pen & ink through to lino cutting and sculpture. Much of her work carries a strong environmental message, having been produced on or with reclaimed materials in order to lessen the burden on landfill. Most of her artwork is sold privately and her illustrations have been used as covers for many of the pamphlets published by BLERoom Press. She has provided the artwork for the covers of anthologies including Noble Dissent (Beautiful Dragons), Bloody Amazing (DragonYaffle), Be Not Afraid: An Anthology in Appreciation of Seamus Heaney (Lapwing) and Witches, Warriors. Workers (Culture Matters).
It all started with moss dotting the pavement, grass edging through the crack between the steps, shrubs seeding on roofs and poking out of tiles. In the distance on the hills defining our horizon we could see the pine forest. Some days it looked bigger, but we thought it was just a trick of the haze. Soon, it got harder to close the door. The clematis and jasmine wound their way around hinges and sent shoots around the lintel, spreading inside. One of my friends called to say a sapling had sprouted in her living room. She has to prune it before she can watch the telly. Apparently it is a sycamore. Down the road they had a problem with hydrangeas taking over the entire housing development, invading each flat one by one like the ants used to way back. I think we won’t hold out much longer. I opened the window this morning to find an enormous hollyhock blocking my view. It muscled high into the air, its baby pink flowers raising their stamens to the sun like satellite dishes looking for a signal. I closed the window, but tendrils curled over the glass, spiralling out of control. I called the police, but I think it’s too late. Just now I dared to approach the balcony and saw that now the entire street has turned green, disappeared completely underneath trees.
-Hilary Otto
A response to all three works of art: “All the talk about getting results” MH17 CO17. “I was born” KR17
All the Strands Carried, Come Together and Dissolve
The talking heads talk, on TV screens and from online streams, pontificate and remonstrate elucidate, and then negate— but flowers do not wait
for thoughts and prayers, the analysis of fools’ blares. Unaware of blithering-blather, the slathering lather of rabid madness—
feeling neither hope or sadness, they simply do
until they’re through.
And, I am born, as are you– in their petal-dust, scattered or buried, river-ferried or eagle-carried, or by winds and air brought here—again, again, again–
then on a sigh, we’re here to live until we die, and nourish once more the flowers that grow and glow— with a wave to bees, a waltz for trees—
a balm we seize, a thread connecting bodies, earth, air, sea- from the stars reborn, hearts, heads—we.
-Merril D Smith
I Was Born (after Yayoi Kusama) – KR17
It was the D.N.A. That made me this way. When I was an egg we all looked the same and to tell me apart they gave me a name.
I found fellow beings with arms legs and faces, I even discovered there were numerous races. I became different, sometimes crazy, not wild. There’ll be no one like me; for I have no child.
16,Ja,2021 for the seventeenth of. =Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kiroji Roige.
CO17
Scrapbooking
I’m Dead, Now What? Title of a journal pushed to the far back corner of my desk, a work of love. I tuck in needful info for my children to find some day. Hollyhocks will greet them in their search for car titles. Shelves of books, sunrises and tax returns– Midway in this journey, a dark wood. Location of the will, how to care for the dogs. Deed to the hundred-year-old house, the sea. Scraps of my life to be plugged in where needed. Wrap it all up. Scatter to winds I have chosen.
is an artist working in glass, metal, fibre and paint. Sometimes her work is based on photographs, but more often, she creates in the moment. She loves to play with texture and colour.
is a Dutch visual artist. He is also one of the two men behind the publishing house Petrichor. Freedom is very important in the visual work of Marcel Herms. In his paintings he can express who he really is in complete freedom. Without the social barriers of everyday life. There is a strong relationship with music. Like music, Herms’ art is about autonomy, freedom, passion, color and rhythm. You can hear the rhythm of the colors, the rhythm of the brushstrokes, the raging cry of the pencil, the subtle melody of a collage. The figures in his paintings rotate around you in shock, they are heavily abstracted, making it unclear what they are doing. Sometimes they look like people, monsters, children or animals, or something in between. Sometimes they disappear to be replaced immediately or to take on a different guise. The paintings invite the viewer to join this journey. Free-spirited.
He collaborates with many different authors, poets, visual artists and audio artists from around the world and his work is published by many different publishers.
RedCat’s love for music and dance sings clearly in The Poet’s Symphony (Raw Earth Ink, 2020). Passion for rhythms and rhymes, syllabic feets and metres. All born out of childhood and adolescence spent reading, singing, dancing and acting.
Her writing spans love, life, mythology, environment, depression and surviving trauma.
Originally from the deep woods, this fiery redhead now makes home in Stockholm, Sweden, where you might normally run into her dancing the night away in one of the city’s techno clubs.
is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey, where she is inspired by her walks along the Delaware River. She’s the author of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Fevers of the Mind.
-Godefroy Dronsart
is a writer, teacher, and musician currently residing near Paris. His poetry has appeared in Lunar Poetry, PostBLANK, Paris Lit Up, The Belleville Park Pages, and Twin Pies Literary among others. His first chapbook, “The Manual” (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020), explores the space between poetry, prose, and gamebooks. He has a sweet tooth for all things experimental, modernist, and strange. Follow him on Twitter and his Bandcamp for electronic explorations.
-Joy Fleming
Born in County Down, Joy has studied, mothered and worked in Scotland since 1980. Brief excursions to follow her heart, back to NI mid-1990’s and England for first round Covid-lockdown ’19, Joy is currently back living in Glasgow. Joy’s first poem was accepted as part of the C. S. Lewis themed Poetry Jukebox curation A Deeper Country in Belfast in 2019. This poem, Ricochet was published in The Poets’ Republic Issue 8 Autumn 2020. A love of reading poetry is now accompanied by sporadic writing of poetic lines which spill out as an apparent by-product of processing dark and sorrowful days.
-Holly York
lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two large, frightening lapdogs. A PhD in French language and literature, she has retired from teaching French to university students, as well as from fierce competition in martial arts and distance running. She has produced the chapbooks Backwards Through the Rekroy Wen, Scapes, and Postcard Poetry 2020. When she isn’t hard at work writing poems in English, she might be found reading them in French to her long-suffering grandchildren, who don’t yet speak French.
-Alan Gary Smith
A Lincolnshire Ludensian living in Grimsby who built up his poetic stance after visiting Doncaster and Mexborough during his real ale and comedic music searches. Surprised to find a recent DNA check leaned heavily towards being a strong mix of Scottish, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. A sixty year old baldy who loves Julie, astronomy and chocolate; after giving up on football and telly.
-Hilary Otto
is an English poet based in Barcelona. Her work has featured in Popshot, Black Bough Poetry, AIOTB, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The Blue Nib, among other publications. She received her first Pushcart Prize Nomination and performed at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She tweets at @hilaryotto
-Jim young
is an old poet living in Mumbles on The Gower. He does most of his writing from his beach hut at Rotherslade – still waiting for the blue plaque
Anjum Wasim Dar was born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir, She is a migrant Pakistani.Educated at St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi she has a Masters degree in English Literature and History ( Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English from Cambridge UK. , a Diploma in TEFL from AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan. She has been writing poems,
articles and stories since 1980.A published poet Anjum was awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal in 2000 by ISP International Society of Poets and poetry.com USA .
She has worked as Creative Writer at Channel 7 Adv. Company Islamabad, and as a Teacher Educator for Fauji Foundation Education Network Inservice Teachers
These fuzzy-brained days– I’m a hand-puppet, waiting for direction, a sense of what to do, which way to go some sense at all to my sensibility—magical realism it may be when the surreal is real in this inside-out and upside-down world—where is the key to unlock it?
Somewhere, a butterfly flutters, and the world shudders; Somewhere a rabbit hops, escaping a predator, or setting off a bomb. Crow caws, and I open my eyes, there is light, crystalline bright— just over there. See?
