Back From Away is the second full collection from the force of nature that is Damien B. Donnelly.  He is the award-winning author of the poetry pamphlet Eat the Storms, a Stickleback publication and the conversational pamphlet In the Jitterfritz of Neon, co-written by Eilín de Paor, all published by Hedgehog Poetry Press. Many of you know him as the host and producer of the poetry podcast Eat the Storms, and editor-in-chief of The Storms, a printed journal of poetry, prose and visual art. His first full collection Enough! was published by Hedgehog Press in August 2022 Damien has received several awards, from the Arts Council and Fingal Arts and others. Back from Away is his second full collection.

Reading the poems in Damien’s exuberant collection felt akin to being immersed in a kaleidoscope of many sensations, places, people, culture, languages, as the poet delves into a multitude of experiences derived from his many travels – starting with his home town of Dublin, continuing on to Paris, Amsterdam, Shanhai, Korea- and also, a journey from the past, landscapes of North Co Dublin, evoked with great affection  to the present and looping back to reflect on memories, and on the nature of memory itself.

See p 29 Book of Memories first stanza

In less accomplished hand, such a rich and riotous journey could feel chaotic  for the reader, but is  not – rather, the reverse. I think this is because there is the spine of a structure that is familiar to so many of us – the adventure of leaving our home, be that country or hearth – wandering in foreign parts, meeting new people, leaving them – and returning, with all the enrichment, changes and even losses that such a journey brings. Although Damien’s experiences are specific and his own, they speak to us on a universal level, because of the added dimension of the physical travels being a journey into and towards the self.

See p 72 To Capture Each Other,Together

Some of these poems have a light touch and are peppered with casual references to places in Madrid and Paris and Amsterdam that place us in the mind of a flaneur, whose streets are the streets of the world; whereas others take us on a journey through memory, early life, questioning of origins, a wistfulness for connections and intimacies left behind.

Although I think you will fund some of these poems witty and amusing –  there is a poignancy underlying the voyage itself, where some experiences are fleeting yet leave an indelible mark and others, people the poet returns to. Reading such poems  is all the more affecting for the mingling of change and renewal accumulated while away, alongside the coming back – returning home to an enriched self.

Damien, let us accompany you.  

It’s almost 7 years to the day since Turas Press published its first book: on May 5^th, 2017, we stood in this room to celebrate my own collection. Since then, it has been a rollercoaster of activity, supported by so many people, including you, booksellers, publications, Irish Writers Centre and of course, 13 – now 15 writers who have put their trust in Turas Press in the publication of a total of now 26 titles. I am grateful to you all and honoured that you have put your confidence in this endeavour.

Emma McKervey is an award-winning poet from Holywood in County Down. In 2015 she was the winner of the Poetry NI/Translink Poetry Competition. Her work has been shortlisted and Highly Commended in many competitions, including the Seamus Heaney Prize, the Northern Ireland Poetry Competition and the Bord Gáis Iris Book Awards Poem of the Year. She is a professionally trained musician in cello and saxophone and has engaged in many musical ventures that include collaborations with composers, dancers and theatre. Emma is a member of Women Aloud. Her first collection The Rag Tree speaks, was published by Doire Press in 2021. Highland Boundary Fault is her second collection.

Given the title, you won’t be surprised to learn that the collection is set in Scotland. Although I am from Scotland myself, I had never heard the term Highland Boundary Fault. It refers to a tectonic plate between the Minch and the Atlantic, a literal terrestrial boundary between the lowland, and the highlands of Scotland, including the Hebrides – where Emma’s great grandmother hails from, and, coincidentally, my own grandmother as well. Highland Boundary Fault could be summed up – if it’s possible to sum up this rich, magical tapestry – tell of how these divided parts of the world are unified  – through a family story, a love story that takes us from the Hebrides to the Clyde estuary; and also, magically, through the evocation of landscape, history and myth. These poems are inhabited by flesh and blood people navigating the social mores of their time, and also by mythic characters recognisable from the stories not just of the Celtic world, but Norse, Greek, Indian and more.

The very first poem captures the flavour and the voice will be very familiar to Irish readers – its Cailleach, the hag – who opens this magical work with a declaration of ownership, a creation myth – powerful, and terrifying. P 11 lies 1 – 4

 From here on, the human story of the almost star-crossed lovers, Dan from the Isle of Lewis and his sweetheart Lizzy from Greenock, is interspersed with interruptions from – who? Their ancestors – Persephone,  Blodewedd, Odysseus and many more. Ours, too, maybe, For these are archetypes that tap into our deepest, mythic memory.

But these are flesh and blood creatures, too, and rooted in the social mores of their time. Telling, and reassuring, to see how the women of the island, in the face of patriarchal shift that forbids them from wearing bright colours, subvert the attempt to suppression in their colourful petticoats and undergarments. Vanity p 43 last stanza

There is such a wealth of erudition here, very lightly worn, that it is almost impossible to describe it, distill it. Luckily, I don’t have to, because the poet is here, the marvellous Emma McKervey, the architect of this magical construction, to share it with us.

Emma, transport us…

ISBN print: 9781913598433   Format:  Paperback  92 pages  Price: €13/£12

When I first read a selection of new poems from Julie-Ann which, she explained, dealt with her experience of living with a chronic illness, FND, I was both greatly impressed by the power and resonance of the poems, and intrigued, as this was a condition I had never heard of. I learned that Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) is a disorder of the nervous system which manifests through a variety of physical, sensory and cognitive symptoms such as seizures, dizziness, chronic pain, speech impairment, paralysis.

I immediately found those first few poems to be compelling, both in the subtle craft which straightaway engaged and sustained this reader’s unwavering attention, and in their poignant descriptions of navigating life while grappling with symptoms of an illness that is often little understood.

            Even so, when Julie-Ann told me that she had almost completed a full collection dedicated to her experience of being diagnosed with FND, followed by hospitalisation, treatment and discharge, I admit that I was a little unsure. Would readers warm to an entire collection that dealt with such a daunting subject?  And could a poet produce a sustained and varied body of work about living with chronic illness that would reach out beyond her own, very specific, experiences?  

But that was before I had read the book in its entirety, when I finally understood the nuanced, multi-layered, sometimes wry, wisdom which the poet brings to this challenging topic. The poems in the first, longest of three sections, called IN, describe a period of hospitalisation, and the many ways in which individual identity is stripped away: handing over personal belongings, taking meals in an institutional setting, the ritual of medication administered at regular times, group activities under the watchful eye of a supervisor.

Within this clinical environment, the narrator’s world is people by a cast of characters ‒ staff and other patients ‒ who variously enhance or diminish her well-being. One fellow patient provides a sense of solidarity:

A new patient arrives, Gina,

first admitted twenty years ago to this same hospital.

            ‘We were called fakers then,’ she says.

Others, such as the man who roams naked through the corridors during the night, are unpredictable or frightening. The cold dismissiveness of the Unit Manager reminds her of Nurse Rached, the cruel nurse in the novel and the film ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’.

            Through these and many other accounts of interactions, the poems of Inside Out grapple not only with the physical challenges of chronic illness, but the emotional and social struggles as well. This comes to the fore most starkly in a distressing episode described in the short second section, OUT, after she has been discharged:

            I venture into town on my own,

            a short way in among the shoppers

            when Woman stops and turns,

            her eyes dark pith, ‘You’re drunk!’

as the narrator struggles in vain to find her leaflet that explains the symptoms of FND, to show that she is not drunk, but recovering from a serious illness.

            Although the poems in Inside Out recount an intense reflection on navigating a world which does not always respond with understanding or kindness to people who do not conform to normative social expectations, this is not a purely individual experience.  Most of us, if not all, are confronted at some time in our lives with illness, our own or that of other people, with the frustrations and, if we are lucky, compassion, from other people or institutions that ensue.

            Yet despite the seriousness of the subject matter, this is a collection that uplifts the spirits. This is due in part to the nuggets of sly humour which pepper the text, the narrator very far from being a passive onlooker, but rather an insightful commentator on the behaviour and motivations of those around her. The beautifully crafted poems of Inside Out, tell a story ‒ of illness, yes. But also of resilience and the survival of the spirit in difficult times. It is a joy to read.        

 

 

 

Writing is a system of belief – scripture! People often tend to overlook this simple fact. And, its most fervent practitioners, like so many other believers, live with it every day. This belief system of theirs is their way of trying to make a way in the world. Somehow, through their script, their inscriptions made, on whatever material is at hand, a formal trace of their lives will remain perhaps long after their physical remains are gone. This alone, no doubt, is one of the most fundamental reasons perhaps why writers, and particularly poets, do what it is they do, in order to, and in the words of one of the system’s most powerful and so representative voices; leave a stain. 

I was up in Kilmainham recently, walking among the graves in the smaller graveyard there opposite Bully’s Field, trying to decipher whatever was left of the inscriptions that were made on the now great and blackened slabs of stone, and I thought of Chris. For Christine Murray is a stone-cutter by trade. One day she told me the most extraordinary thing. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing a living writer, or poet, ever told me. She told me that as a stone-cutter you were used to inscribing letters and words on monuments, and in many cases to the dead. So, she told me that in her writing, this was a quality that she tried to bring to her work – this ‘monumental’ vision.

Imagine the time and effort that is required to first prepare the stone to receive the first chip of the chisel?

a granite stylus

a grave bed

green sea-bed of flowering heads.

 

shatter of tree hacked-through/

windmills beside an sruthán geal

gold coins  in – stream- glitter out to me[1]

 

Symphonic tonal variations on paper-stone/ Variations of symphonic tones on stone paper. Whatever way you will attempt to define them, this is what I love about the poetry of Christine Murray, it is her artful delight and the playfulness in which she chips away at the words, the way she lets them bleed into one another like perhaps the vein lines in a stone. Writing being a very physical act for her. For instance, her very deliberate choice of verbs or nouns(?) There is a very specific lexicon to Murray’s work. Listen!

 

     silica  caul  rivulet  and skein                          ( nouns )

ribbon    sear   quill  and embed                  ( verbs )

 

They are taken from the worlds of masonry and haberdashery, just two of which Murray effortlessly channels into her work. One overtly masculine, the other so decidedly feminine, but such binary concepts have no place in Murray’s universe, for Murray writing is an act of transgression; all borders must come down. Transgendered, be aware! With such words, Murray carves out constellations of sound, out from the graphemes lying there so apparently idle on the page hooking them up to stories, myth, legend, the stuff of folk-lore and sheer fantasy. Indeed, the worlds she creates in her books interconnect, which for the reader of her work is but a further reason to enjoy reading her books. For example, in this her latest bind , the first of her books to be published in her native country ( for this Liz McSkeane at Turas Press is heartily to be congratulated) all too familiar motifs such as birds, trees and leaves appear, as indeed they did in  She ( Oneiros Books, UK, 2014), and Cycles ( Lapwing, Belfast, 2013).

But let us first go to the title – bind , of this her latest work with its rather curious subsidiary title a waking book. What does this mean? Do other books sleep, and so dream? If one turns the page we come across the following quote, taken from one of the poems towards the end of the collection.

a leaf fallen

is always a poem

 

It signals autumnal decay, and reverie. In French, curiously, rever is the verb to dream while réveil is to awaken, so with just the slightest nuance in pronunciation we are in completely alternative states of consciousness. Feathers, birds, trees and leaves are some of the key signs  Murray peoples the psychic horizon, rather like the way signs do people the psychic world of the iconic French psychoanalytical thinker Jacques Lacan. So, the world of the subconscious very much being a deep well which Murray exploits at will. This is one of the key features which make her work so original, I believe, for she is one of the few contemporary poets in the English- speaking world, at least, who uses the symbolic power of words so advantageously, creating these astonishingly clear dreamscapes which we, the readers, are lucky enough to be able to inhabit in our reading/waking state.

When Chris told me that the new title of her latest book was bind, I remember smiling. Was it the verb or the noun, I thought? And this is the second feature to her work which I believe it is important to further highlight. As Murray has a deeply physical relationship to language. For like all truly great poets her understanding does not only encompass a deeply metaphoric resonance, which is crucial, but her deep appreciation of symbolism is also allied to her very clear understanding of the onomatopoeia of all language. This double distinction, coupled with her multifaceted interests in phenomenon at large in the world, give Murray’s work a particular edge over a lot of writing which is produced today.   

Christine told me in an email, and I will quote her directly, “ It is elegiac.” It meaning bind. “It is about not being limited by physicality but being bound by our inability to transcend certain rules – hence the double-bind. The Gordian knot.”

 

if there are birds here.

they are made of stone. [2]

 

Before passing you over to Christine herself, there are just three extracts from some of the poems that I wish to highlight here, to give you a little flavour of the miracle which she brings. The first is a rather playful paraphrasing of the all too familiar dictum of Heraclitus about never being able to step into the same river twice, due to the eternal flux of material things-Life. In the first poem cycle of the book, in which the main ideas are introduced, the poem narcissus figures. It is at once a nod to the classic figure of Greek mythology, complete with echo contemplating him in the wings, evoking all of the psychic resonance of the archetypal pair, while at the same time being just a wonderful tonal composition evoking nature’s splendour. Generosity is another hallmark of great art, and it is by such twin-fold bounty that Murray’s generosity comes.

 

not step twice into, not

step back from stream.

 

its nets are storm-blackened,

 

Nets figure again and again in bind –  appearing in the very first title poem ‘ her nets of dust, fire’ in relation to the wonderfully phrased ‘draughts of birds’ to the ‘chlorophyll nets’ which ‘patch the grass’ in the closing poem of the first cycle. Along with the ‘corridors’ which also figure, a whole poem being given over to them, the nets act as an architextural device to further consolidate the overall theme of bondage which the book treats, of human bondage to quote Somerset Maugham. And, yes, there are strong sado-masochistic undertones seeping through the text, yet another layer Murray, the book’s Architext inserts; no doubt too  out of sheer mischief. For Christine Murray belongs to a longstanding tradition of Gothic writers, and such is where bind, just like She and The Blind ( Oneiros Books, UK, 2013)  before it, needs to be placed, alongside the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Marianne Moore, in the modernist tradition, but also alongside Emily Dickinson, Karen Blixen and Mary Shelley.

it is voice brings us alive

 

So Murray reminds us in the poem stalk the open ring, again a poem taken from the first poem cycle in the collection, and again relating to the figure of Narcissus. In Lacan’s universe, the mirror stage is a pivotal moment in the child’s engagement with the world around them, as it is the first time they fully perceive visually that they are a body in the world which they perceive for the first time, like Narcissus in the Greek myth. It is a traumatic experience, according to Lacan, or at least it can be depending how the child handles the vision of themselves in the world. Murray seems to be evoking this Lacanian world yet very much with her own slant, the voice too entering consciousness to either startle the Other into wakefulness in order to ‘dream’ together, or Not!

 

it is an unearthing of voice,

brings us alive.

 

his hands bound by feathers, his

red wings, a difficult birthing.

 

the gash

female-d.

mauve,

her silks are.

 

her integuments retain,

prevent his voice from out-birthing.

 

Not, it would appear being very much the case, hence the elegiac register. But, to invoke Heraclitus and Lacan once again, is not such stifling, such repression, not the true Mid-Wife of all Art? Such conflict being the mother of all unique invention?

Finally,

 

bound to

& bound

1. is

the very

point

of

tissue(d) skin.

 

For a poet so obsessive of form such matter does not pass unnoticed, being bound, all puns intended, to both the physical and mental content. Acceptance being key; freedom is a cage. Embrace the bars! Murray seems to be telling.

 

it is dawn

In Beckettian parenthesis…

 

the nodding daisies mourn.

 

 

Peter O’Neill

Irish Writer’s Centre

8/10/2018

 

 

  

[1] Glendalough, at Iseult Gonne’s Grave, Cycles, Lapwing, Belfast, 2013.

[2] Taken from bind –  opening poem.

When Ross asked me to launch his third poetry collection How To Sleep with Strangers  I was faced with a dilemma. His two earlier self-help books, The Gentle Art of Rotting  and Pretending to be Dead had failed to deliver on their promise to help me rot with dignity, or fake my own death.

I was reminded of that great man for all seasons, Homer Simpson who said: “Books are useless! I only ever read one book, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird,’ and it gave me absolutely no insight on how to kill mockingbirds! Sure it taught me not to judge a man by the color of his skin… but what good does that do me?”
So it was with some reluctance I agreed to read “How To Sleep With Strangers” and judge for myself if there was anything worth learning contained within its covers.

Let’s start with the cover. The lettering in bold red, announcing the title to the world. The image, from a painting by Ross’ brother Paul, abstract (or is it a mosquito?) unsettling, hinting at uncomfortable intimacies that refuse to be kept at arm’s length. On the back, further warnings from Iggy McGovern & Elizabeth Knox. “Minefield of human relations…” “…something terribly sad and shocking.” Even before opening it or reading a single poem we know this book may, in the words of Heaney “catch the heart off guard and blow it open.”

The book is dedicated to Sarah Lundberg. Many here remember Sarah and the tireless work she did within the artistic community. Her presence and absence stay with us. Her company 7Towers published 23 books in eight years, and Ross was one of those privileged to have her creative support and encouragement. She was his mentor and she was his friend. She is everywhere in the collection.

There are 44 poems in here, all very Ross-like. What do I mean by Ross-like? Well, there are puns and word play and tankas galore. Lines are typically very short, and there’s no messing about with superfluous descriptions, though he does like a bit of repetition evey now and then. But it’s always to the point. Ross always keeps to the point.

The poems cover a wide range of subjects, from a compost heap-
(‘..the endless love gifts
of peeled skin:
potato and parsnip,
carrot and banana
and apple and orange.
All the fossils of caring.’)

… to the inside of the poet’s eyes-
(‘..Sometimes I see
naked women
behind my eyelids,….
….There are many rooms
in the house of my eyelids.’)

….from an abandoned coalmine at Arigna-
(‘The best time
to go to a coalmine
is in the winter.
Just to see
how it was
to do this job
by hand
in the dark
in the cold…’)

…to speculative physics (that one’s five pages of Ross letting a knitting pun lose the run of itself. It’s a ripping yarn.)

…from shopping for poetry ingredients,
(‘..value pack clichès
…one litre pathos, sugar free’)

…to an amazing cluster or colony of tanka poems that all riff on Paua as power. A paua is a large shellfish that is very popular in NZ, both as food and as decoration. So we have “At the Paua table,” “The Paua of Love” and “The Paua and the Glory”, to name but a few. There are eight in all. Those of you now throwing your eyes up to heaven or panicking at the thought of Ross losing the pun of himself, I feel your pain, but fear not. The sequnce is quite brilliant and can handle the pun.

There are also two poems tucked into the collection that display a disturbing lack of respect for the national treasure that is WB Yeats. Tsk.Tsk.

And then there are the poems about love, life, and loss; those scary, arkward, intimate themes that demand and hold our attention, ultimately giving this collection its beating heart, its unique resonance and timbre.

(‘This is not about
mortality ¾
that’s a rational fact,
as well to fear the sky.
This is grief,
pure and clear.
I can’t put it away
and bring it out for Christmas’)

So what would Homer Simpson have made of ‘How To Sleep With Strangers’? What insight would he have learned?

Well, nothing and everything. If he were looking for tips on how to score at Copperface Jacks, he would need to head to another section of the book shop. But if he dared to see the stranger as himself, see that no matter how intimately he thinks he knows himself (“You wake up to realise/ there is someone in the bed/ who you don’t know, /no matter how long they have been there”) this book will shed light on the art of learning how to live with a self that is both familiar and strange, both intimate and distant, both grieving for what is lost, and embracing what has been given.

(‘… But something now
is calling us back,
with no need
to fear need,
no known advantage.
Too late
for regret
and too hard
to refuse.
This tumbledown communion
calling us home.’)

Thank you Ross for the privilege of launching your wonderful collection, and a huge shout out to Liz McSkeane and Turas Press. It takes courage to write a book, and it takes courage to publish one too.

I’ll leave one of my favourite poems in the collection to have the last word: “All The Things That Stay.”