As Mid Term Break begins and snow has
caused my son’s basketball game to be cancelled, I’m availing of the opportunity
to read and redd my way through the mountain of things I have put by my writing
space at the dining table since Christmas. These include receipts,
schoolwork, notebooks, to do lists, shells and sea glass lifted from Rathmullan
walks with Summer, my kindle, novels, things cut out of the newspaper and
poetry books. These are hastily bundled to make way if we need the table, as
when Garden Room Writers met here last week. It’s amazing how the pile
accumulates and appears to the untrained eye (my mother’s) as a mess. Still, I
know exactly what is where and that none of it is for dumping.
For years my morning ritual
includes time spent with a poem, a pause before the working day commences. The first coffee of the day tastes of
poetry. Last thing most evenings when the lights are going out and the kitchen
is stilling I dip in again. The pick-up-ability of a poetry book means there is
always one in my handbag to pass the moments I must while away over the course
of the day. Bed-time reading is always a
novel (The Witchfinder’s Sister these nights), but these are like TV:
entertainment, downtime, relaxation and relatively forgettable. Poetry reading
is something else, maybe closer to prayer in my life, certainly in that it
insinuates its way into most of my waking time. It’s soulful, meditative, for
sure but also like the best conversations it is provocative and inspiring. I am
the better for it.
Among the books I bundle today are
Annemarie Ni Churreainn’s BLOODROOT, and Amanda Bell’s First the Feathers from
Doire Press and the beautiful gift of Emma McKervey’s collection, The Rag Tree
Speaks, that Lisa sent along with my order. Also in there, the most wonderful Dead
End from Joan Newmann from Summer Palace Press and brand-new purchase, Angel Hill
from Michael Longley, published by Cape Poetry.
I feel blessed among these books, this rich seam to mine as the snow
falls outside. I am reminded with each dip into these collections of Imelda Maguire’s
beautiful ‘Why I Love Poetry’ from her collection Serendipidy from Revival
Press.
“I love the friendliness of poetry –
the way the poet expects me to see
what they mean. Like a friend would.
I love the trust in that. I love that
every poem is another
hand, reaching,
warming.”
