So I am glad our story begins:
Speak, memory, the forgotten language,
Clear the mist in the mirror,
The unreality of memory going dark,
The shadow of the sun across a
Billion years, far from the light
Of heaven.
It’s almost a year since my last book spine poem. Here’s a new one.
*
Return from the Stars
Return from the Stars,
A portable cosmos –
Island home buried in
The sky, the island of ghosts,
The uninhabitable Earth,
Kindred love, again,
Touching from a distance
Homesick,
The stars my destination.
Every April the Cúirt literary festival kicks off the festival season in Galway, Ireland, where I live. This year, its 35th, events in their original format were cancelled because of the pandemic, but festival director Sasha de Buyl and team put together a terrific mini-festival entirely online.
I just caught up on the talks I didn’t see or hear live last weekend – live online, I mean – and you can do the same if you haven’t already. Nine are freely available to view on Cúirt’s YouTube channel, and two audio-only events can be listened to on Soundcloud.
It’s a feast of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Each talk is about an hour long and has one, two, or three authors speaking about literature, language, writing, and life, including short readings from their new work. If you’re not sure where to start, try Kevin Barry and Jan Carson talking with Peggy Hughes:
If you’re lucky enough to have books and time at hand, here’s something fun you can do in lockdown: book spine poetry.
*
All the Pieces Matter
I choose to live
a life in parts –
insects’ flight
from dream to dream,
through the woods
beyond the sea.
I only say this
because I love you:
All the pieces
matter.