Coming in Spring 2026!

 

Emma McKervey is an award-winning poet from Holywood in County Down. Her poetry has been widely published and broadcast in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Following her acclaimed début collection, Highland Boundary Fault published by Turas Press in 2024, which explored the lives of some of her Scottish antecedents. was longlisted for the 2024 International Poetry Books Award.

In her second collection, God-Head-Contraption, Emma turns her poetic vision towars the London branch of her family, which included bell-founders – the highly skilled artisans who cast and tune bells. In God-Head-Contraption, she probes the life of her ancestors who were employed by the iconic Bell Foundry of Whitechapel, London. The stately sub-title reproduced below gives a flavour of the book. This is followed by a sample poem from the collection:

 

 

Mr Oliver’s Tale,

Employed by the Bell Foundry

Of Whitechapel, London,

Who for 250 years Cast, Hung, and Rung

The Bells of London and of the Known World,

Whereby we follow his Pilgrimage, Moral Failings, and Redemption,

Incorporating a Cast of London Characters, Prominent Personages,

and the Bells of Saint Mary-le-Bow.

As Related by his Descendant

Emma McKervey

 

Sagittal – an Invocation of sorts

Tubal Cain

I sense the burden of the weight

of all I forge pressing on the Earth,

and I am of the Earth and the Fire:

I heft and hone them.

From them I shape what is solid,

solidity with solid borders and solid edges.

In all that I forge I find the axis –

the balance between the inside and out,

I seek to construct the fulcrum:

the blade for the scythe to turn the soil,

the hinge for the door to leave its jamb,

the sharpened tip of a skean or sword.

All I craft I craft as a tool for Man’s desires.

I look to my hands, I see the scars,

I look to the anvil, I see the hammer’s blow.

Sparks rise to the smut smeared beams,

they become little and dull,

then smut themselves.

This is what I pound out – the rhythm, the strike

on smoldering iron ore, it is a ritual,

I hear the chant with every beat’s passing

‘Begat,   begat,    begat’,

the list of names, the pages’ turn,

they turn from God to me.