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01 Lynda Tavakoli 05 Lynn Rothwell 06 Mark Goodwin 08 Stephen Murray 10 Sarah Usher 11 Vivien Jones 12 Cecilia Danell 13 Beth MacFarlane 14 Jan Harris 15 Edgar Martins 16 Stephanie Conn 18 Rebecca McGetrick 19 Dominic Connell 20 Edgar Martins 21 Kevin Graham 22 Aoife Mannix 23 Orla Fay 24 Mhairi Sutherland 25 Emma Must 26 Ruth Stacey 27 Rebecca McGetrick 28 Eleanor Rees 30 Gail Mahon 31 Róisín Tierney 32 Martin Boyle 33 Ann Egan 34 Ian Clarke 35 Lynn Rothwell 36 David Andrew 38 Mhairi Sutherland 39 Luke Prater 40 Belinda Loftus 41 Enda Coyle-Greene 42 Lynn Rothwell 43 Stephanie Conn 44 Peter O’ Neill 45 Moyra Donaldson 46 Gail Mahon 47 Emma Must 48 Edgar Martins
Ante Mortem
Editorial Abridged 0__29: PRIMAL
The bodies of the naked on the low damp ground…In the violet hour to the violent sound
Along a death road
from post to post
Here we are in an epoch of the virtual and over-processed, co-populated by uncertain shapes and sounds,
the corbies sleep; their
lines of buildings, artificial languages, artificial lives. We shift about in mind-forged manacles, the cold and
shit-stained shadows
viscous layer of the urban closing us in. This is a chilled environment which numbs and envelopes us in the
flumped from flaccid wings,
thick residue of industry and development. We are distanced from our own bodies, left unfeeling in unchal-
leaching the stagnant earth
lenged survival and with an unsure sense of lost human heritage. For the faint lingering heat within ourselves
as the world grieves - testa
we search for the primal.
pecked away to haemorrhage
First our bodies, low to the ground and overwhelmed by the sensory, were marked with earth and the stains
the human pus within;
of others. We were flooding inside with hot blood diffused with the sublime, unlived and burning. Our skin,
this last evisceration
naked to the air and to the movement of gravel under pulsing palms and shredded feet; a charged weather
to the cleansing of itself.
encloses bare flesh, flailing bodies lit by a deep sun. As the primal overwhelms we see the sun uncover itself
For what we were
from centuries of grime and rust, beginning to sear the sky in clarity, caught in our animal glare.
we have again become,
We discover the primal beat. Our first rhythms, base and bold in the depths of our bodies, are caged in our
primordial in conceit;
bones and in our coiling quaking limbs. Our amber eyes catch each other with vital light as we reveal to our-
our bodies snagged between
selves the bright, hot coals under the rubble. Immersed once again in our primal humanity, we are locked and
the living or the dead,
tangled in cyclical smoke movements around the flames. We are howling.
our souls exposed and seeping, as the corbies in their sleep
Next: Abridged 0 – 33: Undercurrents, Abridged 0 – 32: Lockjaw.
begin to stir.
abridged 0__29 be reproduced without permission.
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no part of this publication may copyright remains with authors/ artists. abridged is a division of The Chancer Corporation, c/o Verbal Arts Centre, Stable Lane and Mall Wall, Bishop Street Within, Derry - Londonderry BT48 6PU website: www.abridgedonline.com facebook:abridged zero-nineteen twitter: @abridged030 telephone:028 71266946 email: abridged@ymail.com
Overleaf: Lynn Rothwell, from the series Voice Over, 2012
Lynda Tavakoli
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Haunmiamnal I
III
we move naked through wide we wrap naked we move
frame we move our naked tight tugging urge we purr through
selves through wide we wrap still leave our dead buried
wide cold through wide we gruff in souls gone we wrap our
our limbs crack like dry grasses our organs soft in our soft
naked arrival of blood
bodies no claws but talk our tongues little creatures we live
selves our organs our organs pull maps
our tongues little creatures beyond lords & gods we live night by or we can leave our dead buried under said even if their
where ground & flesh merge we tremble down hairs raising long
flesh is spread night is when we touch touch each other’s
distance we pant we pant
whispers we stroke our napes desperately press down each
others rising hairs our round of light is for ever watched from
our blood watched from dark our circle of hearts pulls dark into
our lit circle our circle of hearts pulls
our circle we pant we pant our dark lit circle we pant our selves dark that rings us but we have found a first human kiss it is
through distance we will stay we will push mixed bloods bloods
sacred to us so we nurture the molluscs in our mouths feed them thought to feel voice-warmth we wrap naked we wrap in
together one of us may run may pounce may cower to be sacrificed
whispers we will together through wide cold through webs
one night is the fur we nuzzle
our kind stars are claw-tips have to die
to keep this smell our frail ape-frames rotting us grovelling for rotting of ravenous eyes though one may have to be sacrificed one one of our frail ape-frames may have to die
for while god-
meat god-beast is eating wide
wide as animal-tree a nest in which
beast eats we may go on grovelling for a nest in which we can
we are fresh kill our organs are where ground & flesh merge freely
free love in which our young may stay
love the forest-smell’s trembling drops of blood imagine them as us
not be scattered as
pieces of meat the forest is figures tall wood figures we imagine
those beasts imagine them as us their bones our souls imagine them
them as us as us we imagine them as spears ravenous eyes
as spear in the dank lightening of souls imagine impossible electric
amongst woods suddenly trembling drops of dew we imagine we
blue of basic thought free arrival
of blood imagines the impossible
imagine we imagine we will imagine impossible a tiger in our dark the tiger tugging our hearts out the tiger tugging our hearts the tiger tight tugging in our hearts when we touch each other in the guts howl
hearts cowering from our burning minds
whisper at my thigh scream at my jugular human kiss reflected in a II press a crushed nose
our child’s cracked skull blood our
nostrils pull maps of dyeing & alive into a bristling pump of no-evil-no-good beyond lords & gods
a hollow eye-socket ripped breasts we cradle lit circle ringed by dark our
where ground & flesh
merge in guts howl at haunch howl at jugular greed a scratch
circle of fire-light ringed by growl-shadows our circle of fire fast
ringed by black
on snout ripped eyeball of long distance pant heart pulls pant heart pushes bloods mixed blood of run blood of pounce
gun barrel -metal take aim fire the ti
ger in our d ark hearts quiv ers we tremble cow ering from our
blood of cower night is fur to nuzzle stars are claw-tips tips of desires deep smell wide as animal-tree wide as rotting meat
animal-frame smell
wide as fresh kill the smell hot & cold & bitter & sweet & salt is solid bones smell a dank lightening of
souls gone animal-frame electric blue of basic thought quiver tremble-die live-in claws snap trap bliss hiss howl animal
Mark Goodwin
b urning minds
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ripped eyeball greed scratches on each others necks we desperately tight tugging urge purr gruff in gone of soul blood’s arrival
Ridgeback
The ridgebacks are rounding on O’Connell Street On the heels of their haunches in pockets of shadow Sucking John Player’s in gaunt ashen doorways Hollow eyed and hooded in the banners of Spartans Bold as brass-bastards of nobody’s King Needle born riddles of silver-striped flannel and kennels flung open To unleash the hounds of democracy’s nightmare in tinker-silk-slang And the boys of last summer are all dead or gone down Where the unborn are cradled by juvenile wraiths On riverside benches generations of junk starved degenerates Marauding as sane in the garments of dead men The claw-headed banged-up, the knocked-up and mad Whose Fathers suffered hallucinations of spouse and were lured And then legged it from black and blue sirens on roundabout islands Sitting by chip vans to sing for a supper of smacks to the mouth Or the blue throbbing vein of any old sailor Where children ran wild and were weaned by Hyenas The bloody clenched fist of first daylight born in rich bitumen Tattooed and toothless hook handed pushers Push cocoons of hookers in hand-me-down prams Walk wounded and drooling in unbuttoned silence Branded and rounding in chemical clouds Outside the burger chains that closed all the penny arcades
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Then slipping like eels beneath unsettled concrete To feed on the things you discard without blinking Into gutters where we spit every word ever uttered For the scamp-mannered ridgebacks to harvest the filth Swept under the rug of our fragile decorum In the tenement archives where we shovel our shit With our secrets as dirty as our incestuous wet dreams.
Stephen Murray
Opposite: Sarah Usher, Cross Dog, 2013
Short of Breath
After the tearful waking, we spoon, my little asthmatic and me, he tracks my breathing, and follows my rhythm with perfect trust. Quite quickly, he dozes and I track his thin breathing, hearing the whistle of narrowed tubes, the speeded-up thump of his heart. I doze against the curve of his back, he surfaces through discomfort, whimpers, I stroke, he snuggles back. I wake again and listen. Once he is calm, I am calm, I smell and absorb his warmth through my belly, they say it may pass with adolescence.
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He is only eight.
Opposite: Cecilia Danell, Deer Heart, Oil on linen, 35x35 cm, 2013
Vivien Jones
Deep Shadows
Only when your eyes are
Don’t steal me, quicksilver thief
hidden in deep shadows
slip-sly and dark;
can you see what you must.
I cleave to those who live in light, who warm their flesh with flame
Deep caverns that birds
and build on solid ground.
can wing their way towards.
They land on the edge
Your moon-talk is alien, serene
of the opening and peer
and yet you roar on rocks like angels, caged.
through the darkness
In your depths, filaments, lamellae
to your heavy eyes.
flare with whispers, an underbreath, hardly remembered, trembles.
They’ll stay with you,
give you a diversion from
Children gather starfish, beach glass,
the task at hand, but
other wrack-line spoils,
as the shadows deepen
sailors catch shivers of wind,
even they will turn.
swimmers, sleek with oil, tread shallows with seal-cub innocence.
You’ll feel the shift of their claws,
their next to nothing weight
They fail to hear the muted pulse
slide down their yellow legs,
which chills me, that thrum
settle briefly in the fleshy pads of their toes.
where the sun can’t reach, the rhythm of the place
Wings slowly rise, strongly press down,
where life begins, then dissolves like salt.
and they’re gone, leaving a sharp puff of air against your open eyes still pressed against the back wall of the deeply shadowed cavern
Vast, illusive sea
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waiting to see what you must.
Overleaf: Edgar Martins: Lindoso power station: control room (frontal view) from the series ‘Time Machine: An Incomplete & Semi-Objective Survey of
Beth MacFarlane
Hydropower Stations’, 2011 © Edgar Martins (www.edgarmartins.com)
Jan Harris
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I hear their laughter from another room It strikes somewhere beneath my ribs; its music is palpable enough to season this sauce with its sweetness. I squirt lemon into the pot and feel the sting as the acid grips the tiny cut on my hand. I can imagine the scene – my husband rising in stature under her gaze. His wine untouched, he will drink from her eyes, those wide innocent eyes. Drunk on her approval and her zest for life he will become all that he was. In the pot, the pasta boils. The heat rises and the water starts to hiss and spit. The knife cuts through the crusty bread and beads of sweat drip down the panes of glass. Should I march down the hall or creep, to witness first hand this tender unravelling, this ancient dance of devotion? Or stand barefoot in the kitchen stirring pasta, lest it stick and turn the radio up, as some tribal chant rises in my throat? I follow the sound. He is vibrant. abridged __ p.19
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I recall that look on his face: those creases as familiar to me as the cracks on our bedroom ceiling. They are at their beginning. I see that my husband is her world and though tears threaten and sting I cannot tear myself away. And to think I introduced them. Delivered her into his waiting hands, bloodied, wrinkled, screaming, new. I, still dazed by the lights and by being Opposite: Rebecca McGetrick, Here comes the breeze, 2013
separate.
Stephanie Conn
Such was the dawning of the age of Icarus that tides could turn like milk left out in thunder. The moon lassoed, new gravities took hold. At home we were instructed our survival may require a lean-to made of mattresses. That we should stockpile kids and keep ourselves in check. At any time some bombshell might take out whole families. We kept calm, carried on, too busy watching jazz hands wave in mock surrender.
The Nuclear Family
The world seemed spent, resolved to never growing old. A fire sale, and the fire escape long gone. Mildly surprised to wake and see it still revolve, we had our mini kievs, said novenas, just as Fatima and TV said we must. Bent over us, a harem of cruel mistresses, determined to inherit, had their way. We shared old stories about hope, about
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a marble rattled in a jam jar, us.
Opposite: Edgar Martins: Vila Nova power station: transformer cooling control panel from the series ‘Time Machine: An Incomplete & Semi-Objective
Dominic Connell
Survey of Hydropower Stations’, 2011 © Edgar Martins (www.edgarmartins.com)
Raw Can’t lock it up or lock it in: like air, it will out. Flesh becomes the barrier between desire and conflagration.
Lost
Somewhere an old gallows swims with dusty light, debased in bloodstains. Death is close, so close there is nothing left to lose: the ground is alive with grief. A brief sky lingers, shot with hope. Breath becomes the slipway to possession, calculating iniquity. There is an urgency foundering where love once withered and died. A perfume of opened earth cultivates like fog. Backwards owls hoot in a forest fanned with moonlight. There is a freedom in being whipped by black branches, to feel sweat mix with blood; to become aware of the heart attacking the future; to know the thrust of it will never let go, yet wants to, despite everything.
Those elephants, small and brass, so much heavier than you’d expect. You use them to weigh opium, your addiction to forgetting. Like the stones in your pocket when you wade out into the water. Coldness filling your lungs as you come back to the same place to die. You stand in the doorway on the edge of a room where you once watched the love of your life take a final breath. You prefer not to read maps, their names are not your names. They do not mark the trees from the forest, that morning when you dug up the path.
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full of wild creatures walking in circles. You head for the mountains knowing that they remember everything.
Kevin Graham
Aoife Mannix
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Your dreams are ivory,
Of the Crow
I saw your eye black as a black glittering diamond, your rich eye like a sharp beak hammering at my heart fine splinters. I saw a shadow of your existence as you swooped to the rubbish, kindred hungering for a morsel and you pulled away from the shadow of me. opened wings of sun treacle and were gone. In the split second I recognised you, knowing the shadow of men and women. I became the scarecrow all straw and empty, the field a cacophony of your kind
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and the wind sang in pain though me.
Opposite: Mhairi Sutherland, Vanguard (bomber) Painting based on a series of Royal Mail Mint
Orla Fay
Stamps. ‘Submarines: Centenary of the Royal Navy Submarine Service.’ Issued April 2001.
Warming Butter
You took the golden packet from the cold, applied your pressure slowly over eons, orogenies
Bikkja
It was imperceptible at first the slight lengthening of teeth,
between your palms, long axis aligned
then a pelt of hair grew shielding her legs,
with your fingers as rock
catkins of fur hung under her armpits.
against rock urges tiny transformations in its crystals,
An unknown thicket he had never seen
coaxes garnets out of iron
or explored appeared between her legs.
or hornblende from quartz. Nothing would work
Where was the smooth dune of sand
without this elemental action.
he once skimmed his fingers over?
All minerals are stable only within limits: that golden band has long since melted
Every question answered with a growl,
though it’s possible to taste its salt.
each dinner put down with a bark. At night he kept his eyes locked shut
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as he listened to her curse and howl.
Emma Must
Overleaf: Rebecca McGetrick, Take what they give you, 2013
Ruth Stacey
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Queen Fisher I squawk at the sun’s rest over the avenues,
my children gone, rowed off in a small boat,
sunk at dawn,
unborn in yolk, un-brewed they cluster in cries
carried like rats in my beak
as I fly fully-fledged
along the shore of the river,
openly raging,
bare-breasted, alive;
my crest lilts as I peck in the silt
for my babies
burrowed under, fully drowned, always fed.
They bleed into mud in the clutches of crabs;
un-fleshed down rots as the salt rides in,
and I raise my talons towards
the scarlet-sodden sunset
and caw at the dry lands,
the muscle-bound height of the landmass
but there is no bright sound;
no beat on the air, no current or pulse,
just mud banks, old terns, a rusting bike,
which leads to the woods
where my nestlings should soar on the wind
a ferry boat like a seal’s muzzle
in fresh water where salmon spawn.
I laid my eggs in the nest of the city. It ate them for protein. I fly at dusk, beaked head razor sharp,
Eleanor Rees
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desire dead.
Opposite: Gail Mahon, Tooth and Jaw, 2012
As Is The Arechaeopteryx Beaded with sweat, I meet your eyes and contemplate your true beginnings, when you clambered from the primal soup, with your light covering of primitive fluff, your vacant face and upward stare, those feather-barbs drooping where your wings had sat, your bewildered cry. As surely as any German quarryman cracks stone from stone in Solnhofen, your nature’s split right from the off: that sulphurous whiff, those red lagoons which surface only in your dreams, your tendency towards fight or flight when under pressure. Perhaps an intermediate species, we are still becoming something - what? I don’t know, but an angel would have cried to smile like you do, and today swallows swoop in Bavaria as Arechaeopteryx never could. And look, as if by chance, looking at us -
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that robin’s lizard glance.
Opposite: Martin Boyle, Beast, 2013
Roisin Tierney
Background
Spring Heeled Jack
Land is everywhere about us, uneven line bedraggles borders familiar as our palms’ turn. Nothing will wear away the depth of its possession, soil’s sweetness is within us, we came from it.
We want to tend the clay,
The cocked brim of a zoot suited dandy, his bull dick cane’s swagger limping under a tide of pink giggles and there he is devil winged and goose bumped, a vampire tramp all tasselled swags and weepers,
hunger to possess its stretch,
sharing his dark cornered lair
know it will be our possessor,
with bricks and kittens,
rooted in our background.
and homing on shadow choked streets,
Behind symbols of our status,
a whispered tease shivering through barley,
clay trickles fine as spider’s silk,
tough as tendrils of a creeping plant.
leaving alleys
Sift of soil through the close
bloodslicked and silent, a slit grinning
link of our fingers
ecstasy wet.
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marks us in our own place.
Ann Egan
Overleaf: Lynn Rothwell, from the series Voice Over, 2012
Ian Clarke
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The Running Fight with Life and Death for Jane, on heroin
1. The womb closed quietly. Time is that direction away from it into chaos; quick and you’re dead again before age shuts you away from innocence. Consider your mirror calibrating the depth of falseness. You withdraw, it’s hidden away. You approach, it stares you in the face. I had a zone in the heart left over. Death remained there only a moment – but reserved it against then. How should death let you grow old, befriend, converse with him daily. Whatever you ask, his age will always be unknown. The befrienders hunger for your obedience: a Jesus Stone waiting for your kiss, lie down in the deep, consider what authority binds you. No comforter comes. Should he come, delighting you, that shall prove desire to its conclusion: the world swallow you up… 2. What have we made from our myths – a shelter from openness. Their binding orders, unlettered calms, deranging simplicities intoxicate, dwell, hunt about our freedoms. Which way then is outward, hunting onwards from grief to agony, never come home again. More terrible than myths is the world that never
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eaten away; flesh occupied by strangers. That it should happen, innocence captured by knowledge; swallowed up by love, the child never seen again. And the mountains, rivers & trees, cities, roads & signs, the rooms, mothers and men going about them. The fuse within burns out the bright machinery of deliverance: the cure traces a cold journey to destruction. Opposite: Mhairi Sutherland Swiftsure (hunter-killer) Painting based on a series of Royal Mail Mint Stamps. ‘Submarines: Centenary of the Royal Navy Submarine Service.’ Issued April 2001.
David Andrew
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grows old. Put into service the I, its body
Calvin’ s God
I brought death to a fly; then, as Ignatow, felt the gnawing need to write on it. Swinging, with ballpark precision, not expecting to crush a quick-wing, I only wanted it away. As it lay, not yet dead, I struck it twice further to purge Life from a sentient bundle of buzzing nerves. Laying down small cardboard weaponry, I peeled a prayer from disconcerted lips as a ripple of Life-force returned, premature, to the River. Recollections came of the day I saved a life – a housefly, dying from exhaustion, hunger - both – gifted custody of emotion as it went through the motions of death. Insect death, without breath, or brain, yet no stranger to life, even if instinctual. A drop of milk, where it could reach, abridged __ p.41
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was all required to revive a thrive-and-die metabolism of cold blood that simply s l o w s till upturned tendrils are stifled, and nerve-endings are still. Calvin’s God, I gave, I took. Unsheathed, unholy, spitting vigorous saliva into fecund creases of the mother, I swore.
Opposite: Belinda Loftus,
Luke Prater
Transfixed 2, 21 x 28 cm, charcoal on paper, 2009
On those nights, not lit by any moon through Malahide along the coast,
Hedgehog
past Howth, the city stood against the dark— so many strands strung with diamonds resting on a plain black dress. Our house lights shaped an up-turned boat out of two Nissan huts welded together, it seemed to float over marram and scutch; beyond the fence the real sea touched and kept touching sand. Wrapped in each other and in our walk, we were back in the garden when I noticed driftwood you almost kicked —
but it glittered,
a coat of spines, a body
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had eyes set into we would nourish with bread, milk, time.
Enda Coyle-Greene
Opposite: Lynn Rothwell, from the series Voice Over, 2012
Blinking in the Dark
In the Fields of Ephesus
For John Sexton
If you have placed your hands, at their urging, on the new wet skull,
The illuminations uncovered at Ephesus, the way
small as a cats, and recoiled in surprise at the slippery touch
The light unfolds each leaf set against the cloud
of matted hair, despite the months of waiting, of willing this moment
Formations of Bruegel and Callot, further reveal
to arrive, then you too can go back to the start of it all;
That nature too has memory in aesthetic.
to that moment in the dark, eyes shut and alert to every touch
Here in Ephesus we are not in Eden, I am reminded
when I caught my breath, and you took it and made it your own
Too that the apples are all gone. Under the boughs,
and surged blindly on, splitting to become whole; of course,
The years delicious harvest is indeterminate;
we were totally unaware in the instant we set you ticking (busy talking)
Fresh shit mixed with all manner of pain today,
but that night I dreamt of rain, or heard it on the window pane –
Followed, possibly, by more Tom Morrow. Or,
persistent drops that fell and found the swell of a lake or river and made
Perhaps strawberries! Take a punnet and mind
for the open sea; I thickened as shadows pulsed on screens and lines peaked
Where you place your feet. Oh and by the way,
and fell long before the quickening that made you, finally, real –
Don’t ask why there is a bearded lady crucified
and you held on tight, where others had faltered, and were content
Against the sky, flailed ceaselessly by Dominatrixes;
to watch your tiny hand open and close in that watery room until the walls shuddered
Nor why too Vico’s giants hail Prometheus.
in their bid to expel and you emerged and cried out into the light – our cord cut, they carried you off to count your fingers and toes, the vertebrae of your still-curved spine, checking for tell-tale signs that you might be less than perfect; they did not see the cord take form or hear it hiss as it slithered upward, past my breast, and I lay caught,
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lead-legged and tied to machines, as it rose up, ready to swallow me whole.
Stephanie Conn
Peter O’ Neill
Silences
1 I’m in the M & S café, talking to the dead, putting my point across over a skinny latte, carrying on the sort of one sided conversation that the dead are expert in; refusing to refute or affirm 2 I knew a woman who used language as a knife to cut love’s tongue out, to leave love speechless except in the bloody bag of its own heart. Love driven to madness by the pain of silence is a beast in a cage, a flail to the back, an avalanche. 3 I’m spending a lot of time on my own and scribe and which is which.
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in these tissue thin days of manuscript
This time I’m saying nothing, keeping right out of it.
Moyra Donaldson
Opposite: Gail Mahon, U Tube Bird, 2012
Worry Lists
Contributors to years spent visiting an orthodontist bent on straightening my wayward teeth – those nights of grinding before each visit in case a misbehaving apple had nudged a wire out of place; to clarinet lessons with that over-eager music teacher, Mr Leverton, who tried hard as he could to make me practise till one time when my mouthpiece broke he lost it; to that brown leather eye-patch on my NHS glasses, too late in the day to fix my wonky eye, but I thought it was all my fault I could never read H E Z, let alone L V E C N O. I took it all out on my thumbnail, removed so much of its cuticle
David Andrew, born in Manchester (UK) in 1939, went to school in Lancaster and Macclesfield - and graduated, in philosophy, in 2001. Working in public administration: first in the NHS, principally in the Civil Service, he retired from the Department of Health in 1996. Work appearing occasionally in the 60s, more recently he’s been published in: Magma, PN Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Rialto & The SHop. A collection, Through the Looking Glass, was published by Brimstone Press in 2010. Martin Boyle (b.1982, Donegal Ireland) lives and works in Belfast. He completed a Masters of Fine Art in June 2008 at the University Of Ulster, Belfast. He has exhibited both locally and internationally. Recent work includes Scope Art Fair, New York (2013) Instances of Agreement, Taiwan (2012) Household Contemporary Arts Festival (2012) Arrivals, Ormeau Baths Gallery (2010), “Truth does not matter”, Golden Thread Gallery (2010), Switch Festival (2009), ‘Capitalyst Arts’, Catalyst Arts, (2009), ‘OK. Video COMEDY’ Indonesia (2009).
with my teeth that it swelled right up and I had to have surgery. My reward for being brave was a stick of hard beige caramel with a darker seam of filling running through it.
Ian Clarke, born Wisbech, Cambridgeshire and published widely in magazines and anthologies and two short collections: A Trickle of Friction (Hub Editions 2004) and A Slow Stirring (Indigo Dreams 2012).
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Stephanie Conn lives in Ballyclare. Her poetry has been published in a wide range of magazines and journals. Recently she was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Prize, highly commended in the Mslexia Pamplet Competition and selected for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions Series.
Emma Must
Moyra Donaldson is a poet and creative writing facilitator living in Co Down. Her Selected Poems was published in 2012 from Liberties Press, Dublin. A new collection, also from Liberties Press, will be forthcoming in 2013. Ann Egan, a multi-award winning poet, has held many residencies in counties, hospitals, schools, secure residencies and prisons. Her books are: Landing the Sea (Bradshaw Books); The Wren Women (The Black Mountain Press); Brigit of Kildare (Kildare Library and Arts Services). Widely published in Ireland and abroad, editor of twenty-one books, guest editor of, The Midlands Arts and Culture Review, 2010, her next poetry collection, Telling Time, will be published in 2012 by Bradshaw Books. Orla Fay is a member of Boyne Writers’ Group. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of magazines such as Crannog, Revival, Boyne Berries, The Stony Thursday Book, Ropes, Orbis and Carillon. She keeps a blog at http://orlafay.blogspot.com Mark Goodwin’s latest landscape exploration is a chapbook called Layers of Un (Shearsman). A ‘linguistically playful’ translation of poems from English into English, called Clause in A Noise, is about to be published (Knives Forks And Spoons Press). He works as a community poet in Leicestershire.
Dominic Connell lives in County Kildare and has published in Magma, Envoi and The Stinging Fly.
Kevin Graham’s poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Independent, Poetry Salzburg Review, Interpreter’s House, Magma and others. He was selected for the 2012 Poetry Ireland Introductions Series.
Enda Coyle-Greene was born in Dublin. She has published widely in Ireland and elsewhere and is a frequent contributor on RTE. Her first collection, Snow Negatives won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2006 and was published by the Dedalus Press the following year. A new collection is forthcoming from Dedalus in 2013.
Jan Harris lives in Nottinghamshire and writes poetry, flash fiction and short stories. In 2012 her work appeared in Abridged, 0 – 25: Silence; Universe Magazine; Ribbons, the journal of the Tanka Society of America; Ink Sweat and Tears, Bolts of Silk and A Night at the Movies, an e-book published by The Poetry Kit.
Cecilia Danell is a Swedish artist based in Galway city. She identifies herself mainly as a painter, but also works with film and installation/objectmaking. In 2012 she had two solo-exhibitions; in the Talbot Gallery, Dublin and in the Wexford Arts Centre. The latter was made possible through the Wexford Arts Centre Emerging Artist Award, which she received in 2011. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Ireland, most recently: Solstice, Cork, Tulca Festival of Visual Arts and 126 Gallery Members show, Galway. She was awarded a Bursary (2010) from the Arts Council of Ireland as well as a Project award for the project Build your own: Scandinavian loneliness (2011) and a Tyrone Guthrie residency from the Galway City Council (2012).
Vivien Jones lives on the north Solway shore in Scotland. Her first poetry collection was – About Time, Too (2010) the year in which she won the Poetry London Prize. She is currently working on a second poetry collection. She has two short story collections to her name. www.vivienjones.info Belinda Loftus is an artist living and working in County Down. Her work is largely concerned with humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Transfixed 2 is from a sequence exploring the myth of the Minotaur, where human, animal and divine fuse and fissure. Further information can be found at www.bloftus.co.uk
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I can trace my propensity for writing them – in biro – back:
Gail Mahon is an artist born and based in Derry. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in Ireland, Europe and China. She graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in Contemporary Applied Art and returned to Northern Ireland in 2006. Gail’s sculptures and installations explore elements ranging from the domestic to the monumental with issues around duality in human and animal consciousness. Her recent solo exhibition in 2012- Elemental Twitch - was supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. She is also a co-founder of MAK9, a curatorial group operating out of Belfast, working with established and emerging artists to create site-specific exhibitions and opportunities.
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Aoife Mannix is the author of four collections of poetry and a novel Heritage of Secrets. She has been poet in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live. www.aoifemannix.com Edgar Martins was born in Évora (1977) but grew up in Macau (China). His work is represented internationally in several high-profile collections, such as those of the V&A (London), the National Media Museum (Bradford, UK), the Dallas Museum of Art (USA); Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon), Fundação EDP (Lisbon), Fondation Carmignac (Paris), among others. His first book—Black Holes & Other Inconsistencies—was awarded the Thames & Hudson and RCA Society Book Art Prize. Martins’ subsequent monographs were also received with critical acclaim. These works were exhibited internationally at institutions such as PS1 MoMA (New York), Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon), Museu do Oriente (Lisbon), Centro Cultural Hélio Oiticica (Rio de Janeiro), The New Art Gallery Walsall (Walsall, UK), The Wapping Project (London), among many others. He was the recipient of the inaugural New York Photography Award (Fine Art category) in May 2008. In 2009 he was also awarded the prestigious BES Photo Prize (Portugal), as well as a SONY World Photography Award (Landscape category). More recently, Edgar Martins was awarded 1st prize in the Fine Art— Abstract category of the 2010 International Photography Awards. The artist was selected to represent Macau (China) at the 54th Venice Biennale. Edgar Martins works and lives in the UK. Rebecca McGetrick is originally from Wexford and now lives and works in Kildare. She studied Photography at the National Collage of Art and Design, Dublin and Fine Art at Dun Laoighaire Institute of Art Design and Technology. In 2012 she exhibited during PhotoIreland Festival and her work has been featured in F-Stop magazine and Source Photography Magazine.
Stephen Murray’s poetry first collection ‘House of Bees’ was published in 2011 by Salmon Poetry to widespread critical acclaim. His second collection On Corkscrew Hill will be published later this year, also by Salmon. He has performed his work on BBC and on RTE Television and Radio. He lives on the West coast of Ireland where he works as director of Inspireland creativity to teenagers across Ireland and the world. Emma Must lives in Belfast where she is studying for a PhD at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University. Luke Prater writes in many styles/genres and on many topics. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from British universities after a schooling in the Steiner Waldorf syllabus, the most of which in New Zealand. He lives in rural England with a Mac, a guitar or two, a silent fridge and a brain that won’t switch off. His poetry has been published in several places online and in hardcopy. Peter O’ Neill was born in Cork in 1967, and moved to live in France where he stayed for the majority of the nineties. Returning to Dublin in 98, he has lived there happily predominantly teaching and writing poetry. His debut collection Antiope was published early this year by Stonesthrow Poetry to critical acclaim. He has written three collections of poetry, The Trees of Ephesus being his fourth. His poetry has been published by such diverse reviews as The Galway Review, A New Ulster, Danse Macabre Online Review, The Original Van Gogh’s Ear Anthology, The Tenement Block Review and Angle. Eleanor Rees is a poet based in Liverpool and has published two collections with Salt, Andraste’s Hair, short-listed for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2007 and the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award, and Eliza and the Bear, 2009. She received an Eric Gregory award in 2001. She is currently working on a practice based PhD through the University of Exeter, Re-imagining the Local Poet and regularly works on collaborations and to commission. She also runs writing poetry workshops in the community. Lynn Rothwell is an emerging photographic artist from Dublin. She has exhibited in London and Berlin and won the Inspirational Arts Photography Award for 2012. Ruth Stacey lives in Worcestershire. She is completing an MA in Literature, Politics and Identity. She writes poems and stories in all the spaces she can find. More of her poems can be found at Ink, Sweat and Tears or http:/www.mermaidsdrown.blogspot.com
Mhairi Sutherland is a visual artist based in the north west of Ireland. Originally from Scotland, she has recently completed a practice based PhD at DIT, and as a researcher with Gradcam, NCAD, Dublin. Artistic concerns include questions of cultural visibility and invisibility within the landscape, and the contradictory nature of the evidence. An abiding and related interest in military technologies, practices and geographies are explored through photography, drawing and site-specific installation. Lynda Tavakoli (b. Portadown, 1955) is a teacher of creative writing based in Lisburn, Co. Down. She published her first novel Attachment in 2008 and her second, Of Broken Things in 2012. Her literary successes include RTE’s Sunday Miscellany, Listowel (poetry and prose), Eason’s short story competitions and regular broadcasts on BBC Radio Ulster. She won the Menc ap Short Story Competition in 2010 and was placed in the Mail on Sunday novel competition 2011. She is presently working on a poetry anthology which she hopes to publish later this year. Róisín Tierney is an Irish poet whose work has appeared in many magazines including; Poetry Ireland Review, The Sunday Tribune (New Irish Writers), Magma, Arabesque Review, Horizon Review, and The London Magazine. She was short-listed for the 2006 Strokestown Poetry Prize and won joint 2nd prize in the 2007 Brendan Kennelly Poetry Competition. Other prizes include a Poetry Life and a runner-up Bridport Prize in 2002 as well as an OXFAM Literature Poetry Prize in 2004. She read in Dublin as part of the Poetry Ireland Introduction Series in June 2008. Her poems are published in the following pamphlets; Gobby Deegan’s Riposte (Donut Press, 2004), Ask for it by Name (Unfold Press, 2008), The Art of Wiring (Ondt & Gracehoper, 2011) and Dream Endings (Rack Press, 2011). Dream Endings won the 2012 Michael Marks Pamphlet Award. www.roisintierney.blogspot.com Sarah Usher is an occasional zine producer turned occasional blogger, currently based between Dublin and County Meath. She works mainly in small notebooks, with glue and found paper objects, and rarely shows these to the world. She enjoys mistakes, misrepresentations and coincidences. In 2010 she graduated with MA Visual & Material Culture from Edinburgh College of Art, where her main focus was DIY culture. She shares some of the photos she takes on aharesrush. blogspot.com
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Beth MacFarlane, a jack of all trades, master of some, finds happiness in making things. Now in her 5th decade she has turned her creative energy towards words. She lives in Montclair, NJ, just close enough to NYC.
Abridged Personnel Project Coordinator/Editor: Gregory McCartney: On the field of honour where the ground is hard. Editorial Assistant: Susanna Galbraith: Settled cosily in Dublin as the end of the first year in Trinity College approaches. Watching, listening and absorbing as much as possible (Coffee dates with Blake and Ginsberg becoming a regular occurrence.)
Sara Greavu AND YOUR FEET UNABLE TO FIND THE GROUND Opens Saturday 23 March, 3pm, 2013 Artlink, Fort Dunree, Inishowen, Co. Donegal T. 074 93 63469 www.artlink.ie
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Image: Sara Geavu, And your feet unable to find the ground (collage test 2), 2012
The Other North Jesse Jones
VWAP Goldin+Senneby May 14 – July 27
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April 4 – May 5
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Front Cover Image: Edgar Martins Lifting bolt used to disassemble the generating sets, 1 Kg, 40 x 220mm from the series ‘Time Machine: An Incomplete & Semi-Objective Survey of Hydropower Stations’, 2011 © Edgar Martins (www.edgarmartins.com)