Poetry

The Poets’ Republic – Issue 10

Poetry, Writing
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My poem, View from Cavehill, 1970, is published in Issue 10 of the excellent Scottish magazine, The Poet’s Republic.

The title of the issue is Poetry as Testimony, so I am delighted that my poem sits in there, with its themes of migration, poverty and witness.

The foundation of the issue in may ways are the voices of indigenous American poets. It is worth spending time reading the biographies of these writers. Their biographies speak of lineage, both generational and poetic. They give an insight into the power of the written and spoken word to frame people’s experiences and resonate very much with writers like me from an Irish-Scottish background. I’m sure it’s the same for others of different heritage.

The launch event for this issue of The Poets’ Republic was on Zoom, enabling poets from all over the world to share their work and listen to others. The event was led by Scottish Poet Lesley Benzie. Lesley’s poetic voice is as strong as any, and her poem John Pilger set the scene powerfully for the indigenous American poets. The poem is one of many she read from her excellent Fessen/Reared collection, published by Seahorse Publications in 2020. Poets like Lesley Benzie, and others in this edition, generate energy that stirs up the puddles.

Alan Riach is Professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University. His interesting essay in The National of 14th February 2022 (Culture is no longer the preserve of the wealthy few) discusses the increasing diversity and strength of Scottish poetry. Work by Lesley Benzie is noted by him as an example of this strengthening.

The Poets’ Republic has a desire to bring voices together, with more than bit of an edge. It is home to the Gaelic Poblachd nam Bàrd and affiliated with Drunk Muse Press. In his excellent editorial, Hugh McMillan reflects (with less optimism than Alan Riach) that the hierarchies that dominated theScottish poetry scene in the past still hold sway. ‘This narrowing and exclusivity is at odds with the explosion of interest in and profusion of poetry in Scotland.’

The Poets’ Republic is well worth a close read.

New poetry collection: Tales from the Dartry Mountains

Poetry, Writing
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It’s being printed as I write, my new poetry collection, published by Sally Evans from the excellent diehard Press. Gerry Cambridge provided the cover design and because he’s the best in the business, people are already raving about. It really adds to the overall feel, look and quality of the book.

Gerry Cambridge's cover design has caught people's eye

“A masterly, honest and melancholy collection.” Des Dillon

The Dartry Mountains run from Benbulben in County Sligo north to Arroo that overlooks Lough Melvin. My mother was born among these mountains in the town land of Magheramore, Glenade. This is border country: Lough Melvin is run through with a dotted line that marks the join between Fermanagh and Leitrim, the UK and Eire, Ulster and Connacht. 

Launch events

I’ll be introducing the collection to the world at the Allingham Arts Festival in Ballyshannon, County Donegal on 10th November. An apt place, as the Dartry Mountains reach almost up to there from Sligo. The festival is a broad arts festival with a reputation for being a friendly and open space for artists.

On 19/11 I’ll be at the CCA in Glasgow for a Scottish Writers’ Centre event with renowned Irish short story writer Donal McLaughlin and prize-winning Finola Scott, who will launch her new poetry collection with Red Squirrel Press. What fine company to be in!

From there, look out for events in Callander (05/12), Baillieston Library (again with Finola Scott, 10/12) and Highland Lit (21/01/20). Other events are in the pipeline for Stirling and Edinburgh.

Charlie Gracie’s new poetry collection coming soon!

Poetry, Writing
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Tales from the Dartry Mountains is on its way. Charlie Gracie’s new poetry collection will be published by Diehard in January 2020, with launch events this November.

Des Dillon on Tales from the Dartry Mountains

Charlie Gracie’s poetry set in Ireland takes you directly into the history of his family and the history of their land. The intimacy with this land now lost in those who had to leave. It’s never directly said but those who had to leave are now out of sorts and out of place in a land that just doesn’t quite fit them. The poem where his mother rides a chopper bike to work describes this out of placeness perfectly. There is a constant drone of grief for what an immigrant loses; never again to be Irish and never quite 
Scottish. And too far removed in time now anyway to ever go back and find what is lost. The political oblique-ness and visceral descriptions are what makes these poems work, no lectures, no diatribes and more philosophical insight than anger.

The second part of the collection deals mostly with Scotland (with a few trips elsewhere) and there are some crackers in here too. It seems to me that the melancholy of the emigrant from the Darty Mountains must bleed 
into whatever Gracie writes about in the here and now. The trace of melancholy and the longing for something we shall never receive resonates through the whole work. Take For betterfor instance; a tremendously truthful look at old age and tucked away, like a genius in Easterhouse, is a breathtakingly exact line that could be a whole poem itself (read it and see it). Or the T shirt for those whose loved ones have disappeared into dementia.

A masterly, honest and melancholy collection.

Des Dillon is an internationally acclaimed award winning writer, born in Coatbridge: poet, short story writer, novelist, dramatist, scriptwriter for radio and screen. 

To Live With What You Are: first novel and a whole lot more for 2018

Fiction, Poetry, Writing
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The first novel from Charlie Gracie, To Live With What You Are, will be published later this year by Postbox Press: their first Scottish novel. It’s been a fair ould gestation, and I’m very pleased that Sheila Wakefield, owner of leading poetry publisher Red Squirrel Press saw both the poetic and  prose value in the story.

Maura Weightman, one of the leading public artists of our time, and her husband James, are masters of malice, creative and callous: but what is it that makes them tick? You’ll have to wait till November 2018 for the book’s launch.

Before that, on a calmer note, I’m teaming up with the wonderfully creative and centred Teresa Johnston of Sunrise Holistic. We’re running a short series of workshops at West Moss-side entitled Our Inner Emotions & The Written Word. Teresa will lead participants in meditation and I will support people in creative writing. The first will be on 24th March and it will be a very special day.

I’m building on my sequences of Irish poems too this year. Tales from the Dartry Mountains is based around my maternal grandparents’ home in the west of Ireland. Several poems were published in 2016 and 2017 in places such as Gutter and Southlight magazines, as well as Jackdaws being recorded by the excellent Pefkin (AKA Gayle Brogan) on her Murmurations album from Netherlands based Morc Records. Tales from the Shore Road is a Belfast sequence, based around my paternal grandfather’s life there and after he came to Baillieston. These are coming together to be a bigger project than I’d first imagined: one that takes the whole diverse histories and ecologies and up to wee Charlie in Baillieston. Me and the ould yins, that’s it.

Oh, and back to the fiction: after the first novel, number two is finished. I’m looking for a agent for this one, so it is out and running about in the Rejectosphere. Secrets. Maps. Kicking up the leaves. More good news to follow I hope.

Pefkin’s new album Murmurations includes Charlie Gracie poem

Collaboration, Poetry
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Murmurations is Pefkin’s new vinyl album on the Belgian-based Morc Records. Excellent, stuff, with long, ranging pieces that take you one minute to dreaming, the next to intensity. Pefkin is Gayle Brogan’s solo musical persona.

Among the pieces on the album is Jackdaws, based on a poem of mine. Gayle picked up on it when she played one of the HillGigs house concerts in Thornhill in 2016 as part of the brilliant duo Electroscope (with John Cavanagh). I was at the recent concert in Glasgow’s Glad Cafe to hear the last gig on Pefkin’s tour with Bell Lungs and Chris Cundy.

As well as Murmurations, Gayle has many CD’s that can be found on Pefkin’s Bandcamp site. You should also check out Morc Records for more of Gayle and other amazing electronic and experimental musicians.

Here’s what WIM from MorC Records say about Pefkin.

“Gayle Brogan has been a key figure in the experimental music scene since the mid nineties. She first gained recognition as one half of the remarkable duo Electroscope, mixing psychedelic pop, lofi, drones and folk. And as the woman behind Boa Melody Bar, she became a well known distributor of underground music as well, and so got exposed to more great music than most of us will ever be.

When Electroscope went on hiatus in 2000, Gayle picked up the name Pefkin, and continued on the same path, though the music shifted a bit more towards freeform folk and longer dronepieces. This resulted in a string of well-received releases on prestigious labels like Pseudoarcana, Foxglove, Ruralfaune, and in 2014 in a first LP on morc (now sold out).

​The past couple of years, Electroscope has become more active again as well, exploring new sounds, and as one half of the duo Barret’s Dottled Beauty, in which she performs alongside Kitchen Cynics’s Alan Davidson, all while keeping her work as Pefkin top level.”

New Charlie Gracie poem in Scotia Extremis Week 54

Poetry, Writing
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Scotia Extremis has been an excellent project run by Brian Johnstone and Andy Jackson. I’m delighted that my poem Ye dancing? features this week. The theme: Francie & Josie and The Proclaimers. What divergence, but also such resonance with both pairs laid deep in Scottish hearts.

The Proclaimers poem is Men, a belter of a piece by Theresa Muñoz.

Why not sign up to Scotia Extremis and get the chance to read poetry from all over Scotland, illustrating the depth and breadth of our country and our poets?

 

 

Scotia Extremis with a big nod to Scottish singers Emeli Sandé and Susan Boyle

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Susan Boyle – against the odds

Yet again Scotia Extremis hits the mark with work by Scottish poets about Scottish singers.

Susan Magdalene is an aching poem by Valerie Thornton about Susan Boyle and wider issues of bullying. Real tenderness with a big bloody dash of anger: I wish that I could sing / like you, into the heart / of every wounded child.

Similarly, Janet Paisley delves beautifully into the essence of Emeli Sandé in Voice: There are rhythms in rain, of storms, / grace in green notes, a flowering. 

Both these poems continue the journey of Scotia Extremis across the great divides of Scotland. They move towards a deeper understanding of all of us with our differences and our intricacies. Excellent stuff. More to come.

Jackdaws shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Competition 2016

Poetry, Writing
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I didn’t win, but my wee poem Jackdaws was shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Competition 2016.

pefkinI am also pleased to say that Gayle Brogan, as Pefkin, will use the poem as the basis for a piece on her new album, due out in 2017. Check Pefkin out for really beautiful music, such as in the 2015 album Liminal Rites.

Good poems take on a life of their own. Jackdaws is part of a broader, developing piece of work called Tales From The Dartry Mountains. In this I am exploring the people, culture, politics and geography of the area in the west of Ireland that my mother came from.

The Bridport Poetry Competition was won by Edinburgh-based poet Mark Pajak with Spitting Distance, described by the judge, Patience Agbabi, as having an ‘understated authority of voice’. Well done!

Review of Good Morning by Des Dillon

Poetry
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I was very pleased to have Good Morning reviewed by one of Scotland’s best writers, Des Dillon.

Charlie Gracie’s collection Good Morning is saturated with poems about landscape. Mostly wet rainy, moss-laden Scottish landscapes and so evocative are they that they reminded me of Graham Swift’s Waterland which is set in the Fens. But these poems do for Scottish wetlands what Waterland did for the Fens. I doubt Good Morning will make the money that novel did but it conjures up the smell, feel and chill of the landscape just as well. There are other poems not set in landscape but even those don’t escape Gracie’s obsession with water, squelch and rain and so the reader leaves the collection with the sensation of having been on a deeply melancholy but somehow redemptive journey.

If you haven’t read Des’s work, I’d recommend you do.

‘Jackdaws’ shortlisted for Fish Poetry Prize

Poetry, Writing
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‘Jackdaws’ shortlisted for Fish Poetry Prize

My poem ‘Jackdaws’ is part of a larger sequence I am writing based around the Dartry Mountains in Ireland. The poem was shortlised for the Fish Poetry Prize 2016, run by Fish Publishing who operate from Bantry in Cork. Well done to the winners.

back of Arroo
Arroo Mountain, inspiration for Jackdaws

The Dartry Mountains includes Benbulben in Sligo (Yeats’s mountain) and travel north to Arroo, overlooking Lough Melvin, a lough that is part in the Republic and part in the UK. It is an area full of natural beauty, geological wonder, political and social history and, for me, family history, with my mother being born in Glenade.

I’m off to Ireland again this month to spend more time among the hills and to write, write, write. I’ll do what Liz Lochhead suggests: tie myself to a chair and tie the chair to the desk. There might be time for a night or two out in Bundoran for a pint or two of the black stuff in Brennan’s Bar or a bite to eat at Madden’s Bridge Bar. That and a hallo to my family there.

So, with all that, my Irish poems will be more and more formed. Perhaps I’ll have others for the Fish Poetry Prize next year.

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