Abridged 0 - 22: Nostalgia is a Loaded Gun

Abridged 0–22

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Abridged 0 – 22

Contents Simon Leyland

05

Simon Perchik

25

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain

06

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain

26

Mark Stopforth

07

Simon Jones

28

Dorothy Smith

08

Louise Manifold

29

Peter Kearns

09

Tori Grant Welhouse

30

Maria McKinney

10

Samantha Ratanarat

31

Gerard Smyth

11

Mike Alexander

32

Samantha Ratanarat

12

Yvonne Kennan

34

Gregory McCartney

13

Maeve O’Sullivan

35

Louise Manifold

14

Gerard Smyth

36

Howard Giskin

15

Leonie Tang

37

Leonie Tang

16

Clare McCotter

38

Gerald Dawe

17

Cathal Duane

39

Noel Heaney

19

Kevin Graham

40

Fiona Larkin

21

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain

41

Maurice Devitt

22

Fabian Peake

42

Paola Bernardelli

23

David Farquhar

43

Mike Alexander

24

Angela France

44

Cover Image: Keith O’Faolain, Love Is...(2011)

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Abridged 0 - 22: Nostalgia is a Loaded Gun ‘You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief’

We have built an entire economy on the enigmatic pull of nostalgia, on that ‘heap of broken images’ that intersect like shattered glass on our consciousness.

The recent burial of said economy is proof of the flimsy, fickle nature of nostalgia.

Nostalgia is a ‘dead tree’ that we cling to in desperate hope that some kernel of a longed for but ancient reality will drop from it.

It is a cyanide pill that offers us no hope of touching what it is that we have lost.

It is the air breathed by the past, whispered in our ears on frosty November nights.

It promises reprieve but delivers nothing we can touch. It cannot be trusted.

It cannot be believed.

Nostalgia is a Loaded Gun.

Next: Abridged 0 – 20: Abandoned Clare; Abridged 0 – 25: Desire and Dust .

abridged is Maria Campbell (Editor) & Gregory McCartney (Project Coordinator) no part of this publication may be reproduced without permission copyright remains with authors/artists abridged is a division of The Chancer Corporation Designed by Fiona O’Reilly at Verbal Media A division of the Verbal Arts Centre, Derry/Londonderry c/o Verbal Arts Centre, Stable Lane and Mall Wall, Bishop Street Within, Derry - Londonderry BT48 6PU Tel: 028 71266946 verbalmedia.co.uk website www.abridgedonline.com facebook abridged zero-nineteen Telephone 028 71266946 Email abridged@ymail.com

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In Lieu of Coin Go blanket the green belt market garden Search the forest for the ancient cummerbund Kiss the Coral sea goodbye Shake hands with the new gardener Shed a tear in the waiting pond Fly a kite enamelled in a distant gaze Get out from under this heavy template Slightly giddy like a frontage road Withstand the brutal love of the plaintive estuary Dispel and fold the caution horses Balance the safety matches, Lourdes side of the severed cupola Wage war with flecked ions in extraordinary vapours When night comes to unhappy cities The land is dark and absent A man climbing a mountain Yodelling inside a silo Artesian springs leap nebulae All phantasmagorical The humming of circumflex Laughs heartily along with the structures of everyday life Which build upon each other and rebuild The constructions of cities subsides Hours turn on a gigantic plumb line Dangling over enchanted tarpaulin Mesmer lost track of the beam here Monument to loss Surge and bewildered Airtight as the drum Crows fly by at night

Simon Leyland

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Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Still from The Suspension Room video series, 2010 Courtesy Domobaal Gallery, London

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The Anatomy of Leaves Summer, as a child, sat beneath a canopy of cool oak trees, the picnic rug a plaid runway for wasps.

Adult conversations washed over me like the soft whispered breeze of the leaves.

Bored, I’d start to pick out the flesh of a leaf, a sculpture in reverse, taking out more than was put in.

Not some daisy chain poesy, this was a lesson in basic anatomy, to search out the spine, the vein and the artery.

Carefully I teased out each green stomata, lifting the lung from its root.

Often a ventricle snapped, scrunched up, collapsed, and in a fit of frustration, teeth spat out hissed blasphemies, no choice now but to start all over again.

Once completed, the skeletal membrane, held up and pinned in the light, was as fine as the lead in a cathedral window, and the sun and the air poured through, taking all the colors around, within.

Mark Stopforth

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Dorothy Smith, The Big Machine, Oil on Canvas, 2010

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Static Anticipation Yellow claw menacing-static-still no one about Bright bits of tin ragged red trees Machine-scene of cold green soft comfort Mist metal of paint-sounds to miss Oil-drip leaf-smells, years of rotting needles Cab coat over the chair heat-radio-thoughts Sealed comfort carved out to be happy Don’t engage worm and slugs and wood lice moving Silent-busy person… who left the scene Do they ever want to come back Here do they work entirely alone Stuff on the ground waiting to be crushed Wicklow sky-gentle and soft and lonely Picture of anticipation-layer sinking into layer

Peter Kearns

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Maria McKinney, Puppy dog box, gouache paint on cardboard, 2010

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A Sixties Dive In a Sixties dive, a Sixties turntable was spinning the vinyl: the poet from Montreal saluted the Sisters of Mercy, the troubadour from Minnesota was pitying the Poor Emigrant.

To pass the boredom, girls were dancing wildly, humming the chorus of a song from Merseyside.

It was a place to go on Saturday night to slake a thirst, tie a love-knot or to find a consolation.

A Sixties dive, a house divided into rooms of homely exile: dull surroundings of plywood and Formica but beckoning with its blandishments – German wine, home brew, apple cider.

Gerard Smyth

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Samantha Ratanarat, Dancing with Doggy, 2010

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The Stubble of Time These little lonely moments, the stubble of time They coarsen the soul Beached, uncomfortable on pebble I feel the sun tear into my skin Black-clad among the naked and burning I read Plath and take notes One reads ‘awkward inferno’ This sea could sell used cars Offering solace and substitute sex Eyes squint in the sodium haze Someone undresses in front of me Matter-of-factly In every aspect foreign I feel old and oddly indecent Luminous and lonely As I intently focus on Sylvia My dead summer companion Declares the air a mill of hooks On this stone bed I am the sandman The cross and the crescent moon Sinister, suspect, alone; a fragment Of dystopia; a universal irritant That makes them seek out lovers The beautiful bodies of others Or just a sudden shower Shivering, disturbing their bathing Quickly failing

Gregory McCartney

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Louise Manifold, Natural Cabinet Lizard/Wunderkammer Series, Digital Lambda Print 2010

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Great Pan is Dead Plutarch writes of the father of Aemilianus the orator Who tells the following story: It was evening when the Wind dropped as a ship drifted near Ionian Paxi A voice calling Thalmus the ship’s Egyptian pilot is heard from the shore Twice he sat silent then finally replied He was told: Announce Great Pan is dead; and this he did, words ringing Towards the wooded shore; a cry of lamentation broke loose Amazement too, from the stunned crew A story soon spread to Rome: Summoned, humble Thalmus Stood shaking before Tiberius Caesar, Who convinced of the truth of the story caused an inquiry to be made And what are we to make of this, a fragment?

That Pan, like Humbaba went down hard, whispering Nature death, yet Pan, sweet child of earth Tiberias’ scholars said, child of Hermes and Penelope, Is merely youngest of the gods.

Howard Giskin

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Déjà-vu (Terence Chartres Bradshaw 1932-2006) I should say first of all that the Bank of Ireland on the corner of North Street next to where your pal, Carly’s mother ran the photographic studio we all went to for annual portraits until that stopped, in the sixties, that that wonderful art-deco building is closed and boarded-up, the doors scrawled over – what do you expect after all the mayhem? – and the Grand Central Hotel,

the breast pocket handkerchief, and always the laugh, (the jaded look came later), sitting where I am now, your feet jive to the music of time, swiveling this way and that, on the steps one day of the Central library you approached me and my mates – ‘My uncle Terry’, a whiff of drink taken in Mc Glade’s, your grandfather’s spot, or Hercules of the horseshoe bar.

you used to frequent in the snazziest of snazzy suits, the film star look – it went years ago, alas, replaced by the dire shopping mall, no GPO, no grand hotel, just the date stones of buildings, laid in the nineteenth century when the city was all gothic, and your Mother and Father were conceived and started to make their way towards each other, and by the time you came about, the wars began, ‘The less said the better’.

Daydreams and marijuana in the Waterworks, tripping down Limestone road, the RUC band playing in Alexander Park, lying stretched out in the Grove, for that was the Summer of Love, blue skies all the way from Napoleon’s Nose to Scrabo, cadging admission to the Small Faces, Pink Floyd in the Ulster Hall, Hendrix in the Whitla,

Now, a short life later, at the drop of a hat, a mere seventy years on, you go and bow out on us, the messenger boy, the boy entrant, the spark, the dancer, the chatter-upper, the dab hand, the butterfly, the only boy – you go and push off with no fly-past, no Dam Busters, but an unceremonious last tour, to your old school, your old buddies, like boys again in the Forces, the white cuffs showing just so, the quiff,

‘All along the Watchtower’- and hearing your step in late, about four in the morning, the light in the back room had started to spill from ceiling to floor, in your wake, cigarette smoke and aftershave, like it was only yesterday: women pushing huge prams, men in suits with lunch boxes and, of course, The Sky at Night, which I will never forget, from my little perch, my secret eerie at the top of the house.

Opposite: Leonie Tang, Reference ND/1/4, Series 1: Photographic Negatives, Subseries 4: Street/Landscape Photogrsaphy, 2010

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But no one asked after you, or said Hello, they just kept on - and who would blame them, in the squalls of rain before the sunlight came along with a sudden gust up North Street and down by discount shops and ragged car parks and the view all the way to where we once lived like everyone else, or so we thought, swimming away in our own underworld, the Czech vase in the bay window, the sun-blinds, the grandfather clock on the landing, waking up in arctic bedrooms to milky skies and freezing mornings, everyone heading to work, on packed buses could it have been so, through autumn and winter, spring and summer? - women sitting on spruce porches in behind their front gardens and the kids, like a breed unto themselves, hanging out down the back, when the nights lengthened and you’d arrive in, from somewhere very different than this orderly world that’s gone now - like you collapsed in a heap on the bathroom floor, like you acting the lig, ‘Who goes there?’, like the pop of the gas-fire being lit in granny’s bedroom, the white columns that turned sky-blue, the scraggy nights of racing clouds, the kitchen lights going on, one after another, at the same time, the shadows on the ceiling, the shining car parked where it shouldn’t have been, the sound of someone whistling down the lane and the whole thing starting up all over again, every morning without fail, come sun, rain or hail, without you or I, without the blink of an eye, the blinds drawn for mourning – that’s what should have been done,

Noel Heaney, I’m not so good with faces anymore, Mixed media, 210mm x 297mm, 2010

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all the way down the gardens and avenues, just for you who’d sailed through, smoozing with the best of them until demob’ came with the banner WELCOME HOME and you’re back on Civvy Street…

That day I swear I saw you all of a sudden, the weather turned from foul storm-cloud to brilliant sunshine like a flash of light and in a second gone as we beetled along to the megastores in one-time fashion houses, the fast food outlets on the mosaic ground floors, the medical hall, the Ulster Club, the Scottish Prudential, the red brick luminous in the falling rain, stumbling up the stairs in fits of laughter, gone like all the people dressed for the part, gone like a ship slipping out to sea into the dark, gone like that Easter break, rolling eggs down the hillside until they smashed into smithereens, the long silence of Sunday afternoons, the fog horns blasting in the New Year, the slow erosions of that life into fear by which time you had well and truly gone, and what remains, who can ever tell? – to see it all again - the turning in a street corner, the light on a landing, a door that was never quite flush, the names cut one summer in the softened flashing of the top window, and all the things that seem the same, moon light on rooftop, the shouted question, a slow silhouetted figure that moves across the blinds, the brazen air of early spring as everything becomes new once more.

Gerald Dawe ‘Déjà-vu’ means ‘already seen’ from Greek παρα ‘para,’ ‘near, against, contrary to’+ μνήμη “mnēmē,” “memory”. The poem was originally published in Poetry Review (UK).

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Fiona Larkin, Full of Holes, 2010

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Letters from Australia I remember how you spoke of emigration, as a devil you could exorcise with a short-stay visa and a notebook of addresses; and how, in the later months, you would talk about it endlessly, your tongue tripped by guilt, your arguments assertive yet unconvincing.

“It’s the quality of life that will bring me back. The people and the quality of life”.

You left Dublin on one of those brittle February days, when the city seems in final, frozen suspense, before the uncertainty of Spring, and passed the walk between check-in and boarding, babbling nervously of your return, as though the journey was an unavoidable blip to be broached and dismissed as soon as possible.

One kiss, a magnetic hug, and you were gone, your promise to write left echoing in the empty corridor.

The first letter arrived with almost indecent haste, a forlorn despatch from the back of an airport taxi the familiar bouncy style, the dearth of punctuation, the words careering wildly across sparsely-filled pages “... they don’t understand me I speak too fast I had to repeat the address three times and it’s so hot. How I miss those comfortably cold February mornings”.

Then nothing for a year, just a cursory “Greeting from the Gold Coast” and a “G’Day from the Reef”.

Nothing, until today, when a twenty-page update on your life, belly-flopped through my letter-box and informed me concisely, somewhere between a dissertation on barbecues and a cathartic remark on the Irishness of Australia, that you had met someone and wouldn’t be coming back.

Maurice Devitt

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Paola Bernardelli, Loaded, 2010

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LA MORTE I walk the woods, still wet after rain the night before, the first release after long abstinence, talking to myself, an imaginary lecture on Symbolist obsession, iconography, Classical references, rape, a swan feather adrift downstream, a languid Ophelial lily reflecting millennial sky, how it was all classified as erotica, then legitimized as literature.

I look for a body in the ground cover, pale as it should be at the base of a black oak. One stroke of early sunlight cuts the glade to knock & hold her down. Translucent eiderdown.

Mike Alexander

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* A click and its likeness can’t change, curled the way rain yellows though you hold on almost make out the grin that could be yours --it’s been years, minutes and even with your arms apart you have forgotten the smell the fleece-lined gloves filled with dry leaves half paper, half iron half pinned to this snapshot still bleeding from a thumbtack and your shoulders --you don’t recognize the hand left holding up the sky to look for the other bringing it a morning ripped from wings and mountainside that can’t close or open or dry :the rust still waving, gutting the cheeks whatever day it was.

Simon Perchik

Centrespread: Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Still from Untitled video diptych, 2008 Courtesy Domobaal Gallery, London

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21 York Street I went to York Street Saw the house where I was born And watched the river flow Under the bridge where clocks were turning Women talking dogs were barking Watched the faces come and go.

And all the words like bubbles rise Advice and orders tender lies the truth Don’t tell me which way I should go.

Outside a butchers shop I saw a girl who looked a lot Like someone that I used to know.

I recognized expressions Eyes of boys in men forgotten now God knows how many years ago.

And as I paused Deep breathing air My voice it roared But wavered only softly down the street that I call home.

Simon Jones

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Louise Manifold, Bottled Bird/Wunderkammer series Digital Lambda Print 2010

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Games We Played Red Rover, red rover.

Redlight, greenlight.

The object was simple, intention an engine.

Could outside get in?

Could the chain be broken?

Twilight sputtered with impossible light.

There was no holding back, acceleration on two legs, a tanned careening towards the underbelly crucifix of locked forearms.

The sky, knocked ajar, clotheslined all forward motion.

The back was turned.

Friends grew in the grass, pallid as mushrooms.

Could boldness rule?

Could the brave win out?

Feet emptied the night air.

The axis was aware.

Bareness made the difference.

Movement was naked, a slow tickle, lunging towards the turned shoulder, flashing surprise.

How muscles had memory.

Kick the can.

Tori Grant Welhouse

The countdown scattered.

Lonely numerics called out to dusk.

Could lost be found?

Could the hidden be discovered?

There was breathing in the boxwood, the slow drift of leafage, heaving with the body.

Far away from home an eruption for the finish, moon one pale sourball, can clattered across the surface.

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Samantha Ratanarat,The Twins, pencil drawing on Fabriano, 2010

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DU TEMPS PERDU A good son keeps his developed smile, Kodak, regardless, staring into the flash cube sun behind her. I flinch, my jaw unclenching, out of focus.

She places herself so she blazes.

It hurts to look at her, even after she takes away my glasses, my tortoise shell, & backs me up to the studio wall.

No blindfold. No final words. ii Over the mantel, dark presences, human trophies of a great white hunter, glossy-eyed, decorate our living room, the television-flicker over our faces. Great-grandmother sits for her portrait, corseted, Victorian.

Our mother, a girl, unblinking in military uniform, holds at rigorous attention, clarinet in gloved grasp. All our baby pictures, graduations, framed, crowd too close to radiance.

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iii Victorians commissioned child portraits, captured in velveteen diminutive of adult couture, plush, handtailored to the tiniest detail, a favorite toy, a complimentary nosegay, a grammar book, caught in mid-play or mid-study, impeccably mannered, colorcoordinated, rouge blush discretely added to pallid cheeks with the painter’s brush, anything to help surviving family remember. iv Early photographers hid under a cloak of darkness, pried a lens cap off its lens, then asked the bright world to stop in its tracks, at least until the cap was back in place. How many lives did your exposures save from death?

Primitive souls, stolen, sold on a black market, my tribe, we squint, blur, sabotage your attempts to take us alive. We know what hungers hide behind the cloak.

Mike Alexander

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Yvonne Kennan, Wanting Contact, 2010

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Manicure This is a springtime poem for you, mother, about the happenings of last Christmas when you had to leave the family home after a fall. In hospital for a cure, you left behind the unopened gifts, your husband, the house and your life.

“Less of the manic and more of the cure” was what you said when I gave you gifts of nail clippers and emery board, mother, that day when your mind was clearly home.

No guarantee it will stay that way for life, let alone until next Christmas.

Music’s been a big part of your life.

The Lehmann, a bequest from your mother, kick-started many sing-songs, a true gift; taking turns, with harmonies at Christmas.

Now the doctors are administering their cure, and we’re hoping you’ll soon be home.

Where will you be next Christmas?

Will you still be seeking to cure The late depredations of this life that you’ve lived, so rich in gifts?

Will you be back in your own home, or in another suitable for grandmother?

It’s strange not having you at home, where the accoutrements of your life lie all around. We’re in need of a cure to ease your absence, mother.

You were missing at Christmas your blank new diary, our gifts.

Mother, your best gifts didn’t come Christmas-wrapped: your lifestyle, your place in your own home secure.

Maeve O’Sullivan

I’ve kept all your letters and gifts in the various places I’ve called home, and every year a sweet card at Christmas.

You’ve nurtured me throughout my life, now it’s my turn to try and mother you, my role to heal and cure.

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Sitric’s Kingdom In Sitric’s kingdom our games were simple: Spin-the-bottle, Blind-man’s buff.

Every night behind the infirmary the sun went down but never in a hurry.

That’s where I wore my sheriff’s star, my Robin-of-Sherwood hat, where I saw the hearse and funeral car taking forever to pass, heard carols at Christmas in the Church of St Nicholas and great bells that shook our window on the world of trader, merchant, brewery men delivering stout; the god of repairs who could mend and fix.

The midwife too who lost count of cries she heard for mother’s milk.

Gerard Smyth

Opposite: Leonie Tang, Ref ND/1/1, Series 1: Photographic Negatives, Subseries 1: Air Force and Military, 2010

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Something Back in memory of Julia McAteer (née McGuigan) Today your daughter said everyone wants something back the site she sold where an old house tilted like a womb our now gone backfield that oblong of pristine green the root of a lushing lilac bush earthed for a hundred years a white-scarred gelding traded how many snows before you died gaining in granite a syllable you never had in life an absence filled with ibis and orioles and waxwings your name in that girl’s ear a rare fleeting foreign thing you would never have claimed your own anymore than you did the two bedrooms sleeping five the living room clean of ornament and antimacassar the two postage stamps of grass separated by a short path where a boy hatched joy from a gnarled brush shaft the books you read but did not own or want to own circulating like wandering stars through silver poplars their light barred always from your grandson’s satchel empty of paper and pencil those tools of an intellect I doubt you would have wanted back knowing his dawns break in water clear and deep and wide where no man with line and plumb will ever come.

Clare McCotter

Opposite: Cathal Duane, Untitled, 2010

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A Failure What struck me was not the flat palm or the brace of a raised arm, but the shock that they could drop and soothe like a balm the wordless rooms we shared, and rock me until its rhythm caught his breath.

In winter, this lent me precious heat.

I floated through nightmares of terrific death; of driving off the pier to beat the smell of my own blood, crashing into a darkness that swallowed me whole.

I awoke like a flame, tongueless, clawing in the suffocating damp of my body’s soul, begging the meek cushion of light to turn night into day and day into night.

Kevin Graham

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Ailbhe NÍ Bhriain, Video Still form Palimpsest video series, 2008 Courtesy Domobaal Gallery, London

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Away in Texas Are those the monarchs, tilting angle-winged between skyscrapers? I hold my hands in imitation.

‘Where?’ he says, ‘I’ve seen none.’

But they are there in thousands, a few at a time, the sun spitting orange through stained glass veins.

I keep seeing Medina; Ephraim, I think.

He’s upside-down today, still smiling in his Korean War army cap. Twice since I’ve been here he’s died – right way up both times. I don’t want the others, only Medina.

And all I can see of Shuckey Duckey is the glitter of his golden jacket in the dark; he’s upside down too, yet from this angle I could swear he’s a dummy. I’ll ask our friend the photographer. She took the picture.

How come I don’t know this Howdy Doody?

Y’all dropped his name on the concrete, oblivious to the way letters scatter. Something to do with early kids’ TV (what does it matter?) – a kind of Archie Andrews with teeth.

We all made an evening of red hair and freckles.

By sundown the big room had swallowed the dead, the comedians and the cardboard streets.

I carried the fisherman across the floor and laid it, gun drawn, by the door.

Fabian Peake

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David Farquhar, Untitled from Fatigue Detail, 2010

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Fishing He holds it by its tail scrapes a knife down to the dull eye Silver showers to grass catches sun vanishes -blood and slime on the table Scales clung to hairs on his brown arm float on the air fall from my eyes and I am not five a long way from his garden.

I see him now through this cracked mirror -- distorted silvered

Angela France

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Contributors Mike Alexander lives in Houston, Texas. He has recently published in River Styx, Measure, & Southword.

Seven Towers Ltd. (Dublin) will be publishing his first full-length collection, The Necessary Slice, in 2012.

Paola Bernardelli is an Italian photographer who’s been living and working in Derry since 2002. She’s currently completing a Master of Fine Art at the University of Ulster, Belfast.

Gerald Dawe’s most recent collections include Lake Geneva and Points West. His Conversations: Poets & Poetry will be published later this year. He is a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin.

Maurice Devitt is a retired banker, who completed the Becoming a Poet course with Faber & Faber last year and is now reading for an MA in Poetry Studies at Mater Dei. Cathal Duane is a visual artist and graphic designer living and working out of the West of Ireland, with a degree from the Sculpture and Digital Media course at G.M.I.T, 2010. He has worked on a wide range of fine art and graphic design projects, such as the Adaptation Project for Culture Night, Galway 2010 and the N.U.I.G arts festival Muscailt, 2007.

David Farquhar, is a recent graduate from the University of Ulster. He is interested in endurance and the exploration of human limits, David Farquhar’s photographs search for an honest account of human experience where strength faces vulnerability. He has a show with Artlink at Fort Dunree, Co. Donegal in April 2011.

Angela France writes poems, reads poems, studies poems, edits poetry journals and runs a poetry reading series but the day job sometimes gets in the way.

Her second collection, ‘Occupation’ is available from Ragged Raven Press and a pamphlet, ‘Lessons in Mallemaroking’ will be out from Nine Arches Press in Summer 2011.

Howard Giskin has taught in the Department of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina since 1989. He has co-edited An Introduction

to Chinese Culture through the Family (SUNY Press, 2001), edited a volume of Chinese folktales (NTC/ Contemporary, 1997), written on Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges, and published poetry. He has taught in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America, and lives with his wife Vicki in Millers Creek, North Carolina.

Kevin Graham has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, The SHOp, Magma, The Stinging Fly and others.

In 2010 he won Arts Council Literature Bursary Award. He lives and works in Dublin.

Tori Grant Welhouse earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University in London. Her work has appeared in Children, Churches and Daddies, Literary Mama, The Greensboro Review, and she was a recent runner-up in firstwriter.com’s Eighth International Poetry Competition.

Noel Heaney likes to make lists, incessantly, but tends to misplace them just as regularly. Born in Derry, he is a Masters graduate in Design Communication, currently living and working in Vancouver.

Simon Huw Jones is a vocalist and lyric writer. He was born in Birmingham in 1960 but grew up in a hamlet in rural Worcestershire where, in 1980, he formed the alternative rock band ‘And also the trees’ with his brother Justin. Since then AATT have released ten studio albums and toured extensively in Europe and the USA. He has also worked as a commercial and industrial photographer and has exhibited photographs he took whilst working for a humanitarian organization in India. He now lives with his family in Geneva, Switzerland.

More Information about Simon and the band can be found at www.andalsothetrees.co.uk and www.facebook.com/pages/and-also-thetrees/71836477700 Yvonne Kennan, originally from Dublin she completed a degree at Limerick School of Art and Design and the MFA at the University of Ulster in 2009. Currently working with PS2 Gallery and Belfast Exposed. The work considers choice and structure in contemporary society.

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Peter Kearns graduated from Trinity College with an English Honours degree in 1990 and followed this with an MA in Film & TV Studies at Dublin City University and a Higher Diploma in Adult & Community Education from Maynooth College. In the mid 1990’s Peter established THE WORKHOUSE, a disability arts support for research/development and training of disabled people throughout Ireland, Europe and Asia. He is a film/theatre director and writer & disabled academic/ activist, plus part-time lecturer.

Fiona Larkin, born in Dublin 1976, is an artist based in Flax Art Studios, Belfast who’s work primarily finds form in video, photography, action and improvisation.

Simon Leyland is a ne`er do well and lives in a small cottage in Connemara Louise Manifold’s work draws its origins from over looked and unbelievable subject matter- ranging from rare delusional illnesses, obscure phenomena and manifestations of medieval melancholy as a means in which to comment upon human awareness in contemporary culture. Born in Galway Louise holds a first class honors degree in Sculpture from the Galway/ Mayo institute of Technology, and MA in Fine Art from Central St Martins Collage, London, England. She has been the recipient of numerous grant awards including The Arts Council of Ireland Bursary awards 2010, Galway City Council grant awards, Culture Ireland Grant. In 2009, she was one of the four artists shortlisted in A.I.B. prize. Louise is currently undertaking a guest fellowship at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, in Brooklyn New York.

Clare McCotter’s haiku, tanka and haibun have been published in the leading short form journals in Ireland, Britain, Canada, the United States, India and Australia.

She won the Irish Haiku Society Award 2010, and was commended in the Haiku Presence Award 2010. In the same year she judged the British Haiku Awards.

In 2005 she was awarded a doctoral degree from the University of Ulster. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on Beatrice Grimshaw’s travel writing and fiction. Home is Kilrea, Co. Derry.

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Maria McKinney makes sculpture, drawing and installation. Exhibitions include the Lab Gallery, Dublin (2010, solo), the Context Gallery, Derry (2008, solo); Ev+a, Limerick (2010), Futures, R.H.A. (2009), Preponderance of the Small, The Douglas Hyde Gallery 3 (2009), Resolutions at the Katzan Arts Centre, Washington DC (2007). She received an Arts Council award in 2010 and is currently a member of Broadstone Studios, Dublin.

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain studied at the Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, the Royal College of Art, London, and Kingston University, Surrey. She has shown widely both internationally and nationally and was selected for Futures 10 at the RHA in 2010. She was a recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Bursary in 2010 and is currently working towards a forthcoming solo exhibition at Domobaal, London. She lectures at the Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork.

Keith O’Faolain is from Western Ireland. Sometimes he tries to exercise the right side of his brain, most often through image, sound and code.

Maeve O’Sullivan’s poems and haiku are widely published, and she is a former poetry winner at Listowel Writers’ Week. She is a member of the Poetry Divas. Her first collection, Initial Response by Alba Publishing and will be launched in Dublin in early April.

Fabian Peake is an artist and writer living and working in London. He trained at Chelsea College of Art and The Royal College of Art. He taught for many years in the Fine Art Department of Manchester Metropolitan University where he was a Senior Lecturer. He has exhibited in Great Britain and internationally. He has published in magazines in England and U.S.A. Carnage Hall magazine, New York and Silver Web magazine, Tallahassee. He has written introductions to childrens’ books and special edition poetry books and written for the Guardian newspaper. A pamphlet of poems was published by Manchester Metropolitan University to accompany one of Fabian Peake’s exhibitions. His work can be found at www.fabianpeake.co.uk and http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub/Unpub_053_Peake. pdf

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Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker and elsewhere. For more information, including his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his website at www. simonperchik.com.

Samantha Ratanarat is a graduate of The National College of Art and Design with a BA in Fine Art. Her work is primarily drawing-based and explores themes of behavioural restrictions, social boundaries, and the notion of ‘taboo’. Ratanarat has participated in inter-continental print exchanges with Maine College of Art USA, and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. The Twins won the joint James White Award for Drawing in the RDS Student Art Awards 2010. Recent group exhibitions include the Royal Dublin Society Student Art Awards 2010 at the RDS, Ballsbridge; and the Monster Truck Christmas Extravaganza V in Temple Bar. Dorothy Smith has been a full time artist for the last 15 years in which time she has had 7 one person exhibitions in the Hallward Gallery, Dublin, Origin Gallery, Dublin and most recently in the Courthouse Arts Centre in Co. Wicklow. Dorothy is a regular exhibitor in the Royal Ulster Academy, Royal Hibernian Academy, the Lavit Gallery, Cork, Iontas, Eigse and other selected exhibitions. Her work is in many collections including the New York Public Library Print Collection, University College Dublin and the Irish Contemporary Arts Society. Dorothy has worked in arts management for City Arts Centre, Dublin, Create and Arts Disability Ireland and has facilitated many creative workshops and training programmes.

Gerard Smyth was born in Dublin where he still lives and works as Managing Editor with The Irish Time. His poetry has appeared widely in publications in Ireland, Britain, and America, as well as in translation, since the late 1960s. He is the author of seven collections, the most recent of which are The Mirror Tent (Dedalus Press, 2007) and The Fullness of Time, New and Selected Poems (Dedalus Press), published this year.

He is a member of Áosdana. www.gerardsmyth.com

Mark Stopforth is currently Head of Art in a school in Gloucestershire and as a practicing artist have had exhibitions around the country including The Royal West of England Academy, Bristol. He have won several poetry competitions since taking up writing last year.

His influences include Ted Hughes, Simon Armitage and Norman MacCaig.

Leonie Tang: Edward (‘Ned’) Dunphy (1912 – 2010): The story of Ned Dunphy has never been told, a man of undiscovered talent, viewed in the eyes of most as an eccentric, yet undeniably, one of Ireland’s great photographers. Ned’s life began under British occupation of Ahmednagur, India, on the 17th of April 1912. His parents, Corporal Edward Dunphy and Nora Gilligan returned to Ireland in 1915, where his father served thirty years in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. From a young age Ned had many vocations, from artist, to photographer, to electrician, and even pro-cyclist. He was a member of several cycling clubs, participated in forming the first bike polo teams in Cork and Dublin, and resided in the top three Irish cyclists from 1933 -1939. During these times he was also employed by companies such as Harland and Wolff aircraft factories and Birkenhead oil refinery, eventually retiring in 1970 from the ESB, pursuing his childhood obsessions with Irish fighter planes and Riley motorcars. Ned’s family background in the military, extensive traveling and diverse cultural upbringing, coupled with his consistent documentary practice has produced a wealth of images that document a standard of ‘Irish life’ from the 1920’s up until the turn of the century. These previously, until now, unpublished works of Ned Dunphy, constitute an expansive collection of personal, historical, political, and cultural documents awaiting interpretation.

Artist Leonie Tang is currently working on a project which explores Ned’s archives - ‘Between Memory and Document’ will be presented in association with Donegal Artlink in Fort Dunree this coming May

ABRIDGED STAFF Maria Campbell is Abridged Editor and recent PhD graduate. She admires the 1950/60s rock and roll school of confessional poetry and is still immersed in her hopelessly hedonistic pursuit of happiness. Currently considering Desire and Dust.

Gregory McCartney continues apace the Abridged world domination enterprise, is in the midst of Abandoned Ireland and exploring the Merits of Tracer Fire.

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Residencies & projects programmed at the intersection of rural archives, agrarian industries and contemporary art John Beattie Denzil Browne Sarah Edge David Farquhar LUXe Ruth McCartney Maria McKinney Tina McLaughlin Susanne Stich Leonie Tang

Artlink, Tullyarvan Mill, Mill Lane, Buncrana, Co. Donegal T. 074936 3469 E: info@artlink.ie E: www.artlink.ie

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6 may—1 july, 2011

5-7 artillery street derry, BT48 6RG t. +44 028 7137 3538 www.contextgallery.co.uk info@contextgallery.co.uk

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