Drawn to the Light Press Issue 11

Connemara

Teresa

Patrons: Anthony Wade

Arthur Broomfield

Attracta Fahy

James Finnegan

Simon Lewis

Editor: Orla Fay

Published by Drawn to the Light Press

ISSN 2737-7768

Next issue: June 2024

https://drawntothelightpress.com

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Drawn to the Light Press is edited, designed, and produced by Orla Fay.

Cover design Connemara Blackface Rams by Teresa O’Connor Diskin.

The works included in this issue are copyright of the poets and artists ©2024 and may not be reproduced or changed in any way without the permission of the individual author.

Drawn to the Light Press is ©2024 of the editor. All rights reserved.

Editorial

It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart. - Rilke

Three poems by Tomás Ó Ruairc, which seemed to run into each other and could not be separated, make up a feature of the issue. Meanwhile themes of displacement, nature and the changing seasons, and love are interspersed. This is the first issue to have a photograph as its cover design. This issue is more text based.

I had yesterday begun the editorial with some heavy thoughts along the lines of I write this editorial in a labour of love, as I proofread the issue and agonise at times over the weight of the work that has been placed in my hands. No doubt it is responsibility and every place the word touches screams ‘I am alive’. And today I find that the courage of doing should not be questioned. Spring is on her way with her light touch.

Spring has come back again. The Earth is like a child that’s got poems by heart; so many poems, so many verses, patient toil winning her prizes at last.

Strict, the old teacher. We loved the whiteness in the old gentleman’s beard, its bright snow. Now when we ask what the green, what the blue is, Earth knows the answer, has learned it. She knows.

from Sonnets to Orpheus (Part One, XXI) Rainier Maria Rilke

Orla Fay 15/02/’24

As Winter Changes the Trees

The whole place still whispers of you ivy haemorrhaging, green going to russet stares into hollows silence crescendos Bare ash limbs silhouette against the dark wishing you were here in the silence of the night falling

The door creaks a welcome ice chairs around a bare forsaken table only the faint honeyed-aroma of beeswax lingers from its once pulsating heart

Here the place we sat together where we first knew baked oven smell of bread, lovingly prepared by her

Athena’s hands, sifter of husk from grain

The place we cried joy, sang sorrow where love and loss sat together wisdom always in its own place and we gave thanks

Your white tablecloth threaded with gold

Teresa O’Connor Diskin

Listening

Alone on the salt marsh a solitary dwindling curlew throws its cold loneliness across the empty room of the sky, a wailing, whistling cry that stills my boots, stirs concealed memory, lifts out the time when I cried out in grief-laden loneliness with no-one hearing, for no-one was listening, but I hear you, and raise Mam’s shillelagh in silent greeting beneath a greyed sky.

Anthony Wade

Knock Ma

January Saturday glazed in jagged sunrays we climb the sanded ways of Knock Ma songsters bonded by dots of the stave our chanting cords fine-tuned, as resin boosts the fiddler’s air, friendship flourishes. Sheltered beneath cloaks of oak, whistling boughs in sweeping moves, we share soft news sense huddled creatures hidden between furze inhale metal-scented lichens caked on stony flesh of summit where green hugs the violet sky we connect, find bearings in rainbows sealed with cadence on the hill of Maeve.

Anne Donnellan

Valentine

Like clustered jewels, the rowan berries shine amongst green boas of leaves. Sunblushed, russet-warmed, candied apples in miniature, carnal red, they warn and entrance. Forbidden fruit of February, only colour for miles. And on drab, grey days, this ruby-throated tree throws caution to the wind, sings of sweetness in her garnet blossoms, revels in blood-red ripeness - but promises poison in scarlet kisses even the hungriest bird knows to avoid.

Siobhán Mc Laughlin

Falling

I wake to March.

Lengthening light on morning mouth corners, voiles of cloud stretched across sunlight, a lamp illuminated late after dinner.

Spring draws back the duvet of dampened dark, the depression of last December, and I see purples plumping in the garden, ivy inching around buried bird baths.

I reach forward into the days, grasping after grains of golden thought, each evening held empty in pleading hands, watching time extend, but not towards me.

Kate McHugh

Spring 2020

She saunters in, blissful as a puppy while we retreat, frightened of the invisible in our midst, her game to tease and coax the earth out of a long dark, unveil a non-stop fashion show.

Sweet as the scent of viburnum flower, a heady cocktail of azalea, camellia, fluted cups of magnolia overflowing in the sun.

Yellow the defining colour of her wardrobe – star of celandine, heart of daisy, chalice of tulip, hooded crocus, flame of forsythia,

ray of dandelion, paten of buttercup. A chic yellow like that dress on the TV ad. Yellow, the signs of pandemic.

Nora Brennan

Swallows

The mouth of the turf shed swallowed summer light, and the red throats of the fledglings opened in hope. Their supersonic song guided the dark flutter of wings; the flirtation of forked tails troubled the air. Mouth-tomouth midges nourished them towards flight. They composed their black symphony on the stave of wires and left.

Now the winter air settles darkly in the turf shed. The nests are abandoned, white smears smirch floor and walls. Dank dust inhabits the space. Light angles day by day to highlight its frantic, random motion. Grey dust of war rubble, red dust of drought Billow along the flight paths. There is no proof That the black beat of wings will return To pattern the air. Just hope.

Rose Malone

Flamed out

One night, outside a tent, we found ourselves gazing up at endless stars. Looked back down to earth, two sets of eyes flickered, awed, towards the kids and on, into the lambent dancing of the fire. Anywhere, in fact, but lighting on each other.

Matt Gilbert

Borderline

Even the windows are crying, the blasted sand cannot take any more — steel-white wings scraping the sky. On the ground, concealed blades mow the grass, humming while children play on either side of the border, until they stumble in the path — where white leaflets tell them to get out — far away, in space, sands rain within a soft planet. To bring a child into a world should be an act of hope. No choice but to go in —

Go in with lots of questions. Go in with all questions blazing.

Tomás Ó Ruairc

Bethlehem

Salt crystals sparkle in my hand before I drop them down on wet red cranberries, freshly washed in the silver colander. Half-moon onion slices weave like scythes through layers of cabbage, purple as a bruise. All smeared with spice dust carried in jars from lands afar — where men fight for daughters or water, and the thirst for revenge is as quenchable as vinegar.

While they get busy on that part of the story, others are also looking for god, buried beneath the rubble.

Tomás Ó Ruairc

Down in the garden by Heuston Station

Tinkling Down by the Sally Garden in a hi-vis the man plays on under his black hat, while the steel rafters cold us all waiting, waiting for a call or new lights.

Mid-stroke he stops, bows his head over the white keys — listening — to heeling, engineering, footfalling, flapping,

pulsating pixels — while we wallow in the echoes of his notes.

Tomás Ó Ruairc

Always, Away from Somewhere

Some people dream of climbing Everest. Gauguin wanted to reach the end of the civilized world. And 3,000 miles from the coast of Mexico he found the island of Hiva Oa.

A winter scene he began in Brittany set in the snow with two oxen trudging towards a shadowy Christmas shrine. But it’s them alright, Mary and Joseph cradling the Baby Jesus.

Then, there’s a woman heavily pregnant fleeing her home in Gaza City with no Joseph or donkey leading the way to shelter.

Mary Melvin Geoghegan

Good Night

(After a visit to the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. September 2023.)

You blink in the light –the dormitory is transformed. The photographer and his assistant have worked all day to get it right: a few rugs soften the planks; white sheets, draped over iron bedsteads, to frame your bowed, dark heads.

You kneel with your sisters, mumble the new words you have learned. The camera flashes, snaps, everyone is pleased –the picture will be called ‘Good Night’.

Little Blackfoot girl, they burned your beads and moccasins, cropped your hair and bunched it with ribbons; fastened you into a white nightgown –yards of calico fall in pleats from the lace collar and smocked yoke to cover your feet; and your hands –plump, brown, baby hands – are cuffed in long, gathered sleeves.

But you have grown tired of kneeling. You lean back on your heels to look at the camera.

Little Blackfoot child, your eyes hold mine until I bow my head.

A.M. Cousins

Phonebook

My grandfather died before I was born.

For years, we kept his name in the phone book. His number was our landline.

Was it to honour him?

Or did my parents enjoy the element of elusiveness

The anonymity it gave them.

They were effectively unlisted.

Oh but how hard could it be? You might ask. Surely, people can infer.

But let me tell you

There are quite a lot of similar-sounding names there. Most of them were not related

The fact thereof, I am somewhat relieved

They were the ones who liked to throw punches

And not just sing songs.

My parents like to keep their heads low.

And so my grandfather remained alive

Though dead since 1985

Nestled in the pages of the big phonebook.

And that was fine for a while

Even amusing in its way until the phone company called to say

They were rolling out broadband our way.

Can we speak to Edward, please?

He's not here.

When can we expect him back?

Dunno. The second coming?

I am only authorised to speak to Edward.

After much ado

And back and forth

Because the internet was of utmost importance, and

After 20 years prior having been interned We finally laid my grandfather to rest. And retired his name from those big white pages.

Stephen Carragher

Down from the Mountain Donal Greene

Down from the Mountain

— For Bim Collins

All that day we followed the mountain’s line on the sky, the clear blue roof of the world, as further and further it climbed on ahead of us, a high promise furled in the shimmering heat that glanced the pine trees like lightening or water unstirred by anything except time. You said we had plenty of that, just words, but enough to keep us there behind you to the summit, only inches from cloud-whirl to downpour to lost child crying, none of which occurred to us. Afterwards, you smoked a cigarette, drew a breath, fine as your keen hawk’s eye on the swift decline.

Enda Coyle Greene

Drowning Cork

The engorged reservoirs at Carrigadrohid and Inniscarra dumped half a county's water in the River Lee — a frothing stallion surging silver fields. While every inflamed tributary, raging brown with nature's phlegm, coughed up its muddy lungs — rubbish, bushes, branches, trees once tall and stately—

two naked men with beards like exultant Potamoi, all flailing arms and shouted joy, clung to a tangled mane of wreckage. hurtling round the bend towards the deadly weir.

Louis Mulcahy

Stranger/Danger

The post school-run chat

Drifts across the pristine avenue of This much sought-after estate.

It’s the kind of place

Where the residents colour co-ordinate

Their designer Wax Jackets and Wellingtons, Before rolling out

The correct Wheelie Bins

Every other Monday night.

It’s the type of place

Where Golf Widows dream

Valium dreams

And children are reared

By Spanish or Brazilian au-pairs.

It’s the sort of place

Where the inhabitants share

Fear struck WhatsApp chatter

About strangers

In their midst.

It doesn’t matter who they are, Tarmacadam purveyors, Window Cleaners, Gardeners, Line-Sellers, Hoodie-Wearers, Travellers, Asylum Seekers, White Van Men, Someone is sure to message:

“All I know is, they are not from around here.”

Eoin Devereux

The Thomas Street Fugitive

She has a habit of dipping into dim city churches for meek indulgence on torpid, desultory afternoons, obscure impulses unsicklied over. A supplicant is usually to be found about the place, or two or even three. Pensive or clammily devotional, seldom intrusive, they mutter their prayers, mind their business like the furniture, and would be missed if they were absent. She falls to aimless rumination, drifting in and out, half-thought by half-thought, idling away directionless moments, unwittingly aping those penitents and lovers of sublime indifference.

No doubt they imagine they know her too and resent or acknowledge nothing. True, firm, earnest; sure, permanent fixtures, never blunting her purposeless purpose, if anything, they help.

They help her to find in the flicker of a sanctuary lamp or the gleam of daylight behind a stained-glass window or the distant coolness of a sculpted icon or the chastening elegance of an untouchable apse

an opening perhaps, a chink in the armour she hides behind.

Stephen Finucane

Eighty Days i.m. Kenneth, 1990

During the trips from flat to flat, the visits to the homes, the stories and reports, so many people he got to know.

Chats ranged from soaps to sport: where Stephen Hendry made a mighty score. Chats ranged from Neighbours to the Irish Times: the rise of houses to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“Come here till I tell yis,” followed by a moan or a joke was punctuated by measured nods and his words: “indeed”, “precisely” or “of course”.

So little of him I got to know in between the visits of the family homes. Only when he noticed my love of the young, he said he had godchildren of his own.

We members would meet in the Westbury hotel, where the pianist played so many tunes and I remember a number that he named, Around the world in eighty days

So little of him I got to know until he started to send his regrets. After a Wednesday, I began to ask, but I believe no visitors was his request.

Not even eighty days could pass, yet no practised accent marked the end -

until our president read an embossed letter: many figures donated by Ken.

Sinéad MacDevitt

February Mirror

for Mary K

A brand new holiday, this St. Brigid’s weekend. Out in late sunshine, at the Spring Fair, drinking coffee: my friend and I, our purple & orange jackets. Absorbed in drawing with coloured pencilstwo bright young girls, cousins Hope and Rose.

Cousins Hope and Rose: two bright young girls with coloured pencils absorbed in drawing our purple & orange jackets, my friend and I, drinking coffee at the Spring Fair, out in late sunshine this Brigid’s weekenda brand new holiday.

Maeve O’Sullivan

Curlicues

Sometimes I write in long-winding riddles, doodle myself into endless circles − swirl them into the pool of a wet page.

My carefree scribbles slide the bloody ink into slow curlicues of confusion.

I hope to start to bleed a blooming blot . . . into a warm, wild and sensuous art as Rothko did with his ‘fusion on skin’.

And so, I kid myself with gloves on. I play like child − winging it − without conscious allusion.

John D Kelly

The Leafblower

You stand in the hardware alone proud erect ready to penetrate the deepest depths of deathly foliage and ejaculate it wherever you see fit.

With a name probably once reserved for a weapon of mass destruction you will wage seasonal war with the weather and for as long as

power and madness flows

you will think you have won.

Stephen McNulty

The Wrong Song

November is notoriously contrary, but this delicious afternoon I headed for the beach. You’d not suppose that marching to the tide-edge, preceded by a fifty-kilo brute buck-leaping backwards, would trigger musing. But as he sniffs my pocket, woofs and circles, frantic to play fetch, I find myself by chance upon a busman’s and, scanning sea and shoreline, seek an image, insight worth my while to work.

But worthwhile you might argue is contingent for, tilting from the light, I hollow, conscious in a heart-gripe that I witness the old year’s chant du cygne. And it’s not half a pang to self from season, from autumn’s brazen flourish to…a fresh barrage of disaffected woofs. “We set out to make the most of what this moment offers, not drag clouds that haven’t formed across the sun. Now, for both our sakes, refocus on the game plan. And throw the bloody ball.”

Daniel P. Stokes

Observance

In Memory of Hazel Ball

I study it like a novice –its hard, reflective surface, waking light, its missed calls. While I’m away messages queue in the ether: John Lewis with new lines; Labour, the Tate, trying to get hold of you, as I am.

These stills move easily, pangsharp, blurred – here you are in a gilded hour of March

digging the garden; outside our apartment on Via Sistina, we contemplate a neverending day – until I feel

the phone warm in my palm as you did – texting, searching and staying in touch.

Jeff Skinner

Green

When you watch me through olives, how do I not take on a green glow—, sickly, withering, old? You should look upon me with grief & unrest, say, I know you will be passing soon. Yet, the forest doesn’t jade your gaze; you still see youth, our life on meeting years ago when I was a different sort of green & you weren’t eating meat.

That is where my vision takes you, too: your hair & sweater avocado through no trick of lens or shading. We were under the leafy canopy of a color then, & it was love, green love, bright love in the black black black of times.

Ace Boggess

Rosebud

Like a newborn sleeps cradled in green leaves. Crimson petals overlapping, a spool of velvet arms.

In the silent hours, petals gently unfurl, some remain untouched by bird song or morning prayer.

I hold the closed face between my fingers.

Ansuya Patel

The Potential of Light

For six days at dawn it's a lottery to enter the core of the mound.

Outside, a wintering ground for whooper swans is a theatre of ritual.

This year my luck was in and I stood with others eyes accustomed to the dark.

The floor shimmered in a beam of amber that cutoff, relighting in the corbelled vault. Faces became dimly visible some in tears, others blessed themselves talked of hope or loss a strange bond formed in the vigil. At the back, I felt alone in a realm of spirits.

Was this primed for the living or the burnt bones

in broad shallow basins?

Gerard Walsh

Easy Peeler:

Grown (abroad) almost frozen, ocean shipped then switched from new produce to clearance before bought to be forgotten (basket mates green dust rotten) until one day absent -mindedly selected to pocket hike a switch back to the weather crest and sleet-cheek-crunch into bog snow uniformity before a pause for thumbnail split sinew, peel zest, a dilation: the citrus wind howling

in radiant affirmation of a moment.

Craig Cox

The Morning after Ennio Morricone

at one table a woman peels

an orange with a knife and fork holding the orange steady against the plate with the fork sculpting the skin free with the knife fully protecting painted nails

at another table

a woman with short arms and twisted hands carefully eats cereal from a bowl walks to the long table for more food zips her handbag shut places it on a chair

sits down drinks tea through a straw bends forward again takes a bite of toast which her husband strategically holds low with his hand steady against the table

James Finnegan

A Year in July

The car absorbs an instant thud, a dull shudder of disaster. Then nothing—time stares on.

The rat, his soft body, acrobatic and fat is tossed from hood to hatch, spun into extermination.

In the meantime, he could have rolled around the world.

I emerge on foot. His two-dimensional corpse lies printed to the roadbed.

It’s a year on. The carcass has faded. Last week, the harvest came and mounds of grain fell from the lorries.

One, made the whole nest’s cenotaph. His pound printed on my heart.

Fionn Andrews

Moles

Do moles get hit by shells?

Edward Thomas

i Mist rising off the fields cattle on their knees grazing under barbwire fences.

ii Field after field riddled with hills countless molehills in Flanders, where the First World War was contested. where Dutch is spoken softest.

iii Hard to believe there was so much

death & dying here on ground now alive with moles breathing in the same air they breathe out.

iv Their mounds soft to touch soft like earth put through a riddle or soft like ground coffee beans as if the earth’s tilled itself & flowered & is its own yield.

Tomas de Faoite

Flat earth

"If you cut away that belt of trees

You could see out to the islands there."

"But I like those trees", I replied, "They're like a screen, a wall of leaf."

He, landsman, dreams of lands

Beyond; I, townsman, like My barriers high; shelter From Capital's all-seeing eye

He needs to see horizon exits, Shark roads to other earths, But I have spent the day being global, Content to see the neighbours now

And watch a sun fold away With nowhere else to illuminate.

Fin Keegan

You make a light box

Two stars dangle from lichen you’ve refreshed in green paint, the colour frozen from its winter cheeks, and the moon, bringing the gentlest hue to your room, keeping you safe when the world was missing you. As she sank to sleep, you rose, pushed through another day of pretend. A child misunderstood, undiagnosed.

Sandra Noel

Closer now.

A girl on the bus catches dreams of stardust

On glittered lips, rough on their descent in Waves of radiance.

Maintaining their distance, spreading soft Fragments over delicate skin as cords from Windswept chains.

She swallows gusts of rainbows, and feels Wonder beneath her toes from a future she Cannot know.

She’s sinking deeper in this bliss, eager to Escape before

Her ropes are frayed, lost tethers to this plain, And tied to them are thoughts to begin again. It’s closer now.

She closes her eyes and returns to her dreams, Garnishing what’s left of her life with wisps From closing doors.

Lucy Rumble

Self Portrait at LXIV

I spit a glint of white gold

It sparks in my palm.

I stare at its paltry worth with rheumy eyes that glitter like diamonds. My wizened skin rolls into folds

- veined parchment scribbled it hangs loose on porcelain joints

brittle. My red blood still spurts but pools listless.

Kate Ennals

Standing up at midnight

Out at the back where everything’s given and the clacking of trains and the drivel of rain, a filthy backdrop. And you wait. Magnetised.

Thinking nobody’s proud of you.

If I had power I’d demolish those sly devils who bite heads off the delicate flowers wilting.

But for now It’s enough that you know who you are so their teeth grow blunt.

Jack Aziz

A Tale of Pennies

Yes, I was the one who pushed pennies into the air-conditioning vents of the car. They dropped one by one, slotted in their sockets like a coin machine. I didn’t know that a fistful of corroded copper held the power to break the car radio.

And yes, I admit,

I stuffed wads of stickers, sweets, fridge magnets and cabochons into the satin lining of my coat.

It was surprising, how easy it was. A matter of keeping your eyes straight as your fingers hooked, prying for treasure.

But it was you who gifted me that white coat with those deep, deep pockets – perfect for hiding wires. Jewels. Corroded secrets.

And I handed the penny more destruction than anybody realised

it was capable of.

Perhaps you mistook me for a penny, too.

Rosie Aziz

Doolin

Thistledown day trippers hurry to catch the ferry, out to the island watching the cliffs swell and shrink.

Sea birds circle as we make our way out onto the limestone pavement platter buttressing the shore. The sea waves with white fingertips, before retreating into hazy azure. Ochre grasses cushion the sharp edges of the Burren. You've never been before, and you gaze in amazement at the barren landscape, littered with treasures, harebell, devil’s bit scabious, knapweed, and a lone thistle. Past the herd of cattle, that young Italian

warned us about in broken English, we stop and sit, close to the cairns. On a rocky shelf, facing the sea,

I heave the skeletons from my wardrobe — heavy mahogany, with a bevelled mirror. My words slip through the cracks under our feet, filling the empty gap of decades of misunderstanding.

Suddenly a fish twists in the rolling deep below us, like the salmon on an old ten pence piece. Flashing like a new penny.

Barbara Dunne

Bird Anomalies

Within the time-lapse video of the morning sky you observe a frame of bird, a bent flicker in the screen as small as a feather caught on an upstream.

It is gone before you can point it out, an anomaly amongst cloud, scar of black; you consider editing it out, keen to preserve your attempt at serenity –the drift of silent sky –but the way the wings bend could be raised eyebrows or two frowns, waiting to be turned into a smile by an unexpectant guest.

Colin Dardis

Actually Going Outside

We decide to do the cliff walk from Bray to Greystones even though the day is grey and the heavy clouds are low overhead with a distinct possibility that it will bucket out of the skies but we don’t care because we’ve set aside the day for this and a few pissy showers aren’t going to stop us from making the journey along the winding Wicklow coastline because we promised ourselves we’d do it and we want to stick to our guns this time because we’ve spent too long putting things off and wasting our time on Facebook and YouTube and prevarication and telling our friends all the interesting things we do when in reality it’s a virtual reality we’re fabricating that is more or less an entangled mass of tissued stories and tall tales and posed-for selfies to delude ourselves and others that we have an actual life but not this time because this time we are actually going outside.

Peter McCluskey

Notes on Contributors

Fionn Andrews is a writer from Dublin, Ireland. He recently completed the M. Phil. in Creative Writing programme at Trinity College Dublin.

Jack Aziz is an emerging poet from Lancashire. Writing is her first love but one of her passions is researching the history of the Northwest working class during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Jack’s poems are heavily influenced by this and her feminist perspective.

Rosie Aziz an emerging English-Kurdish poet from Manchester and an alumna of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing. Currently, her poetry has been published in the journal Capella by Between These Shores Books, and more work is due to be published in the upcoming issue five of MONO.

Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy (Brick Road, 2021). His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Indiana Review, Harvard Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.

Nora Brennan’s poems have been published in various magazines including, Skylight 47, Crannóg and The Stony Thursday Book. Winner of the MMCW Poetry Competition 2022, she was recipient of the Artlinks Bursary Award for Emerging Artist 2016 and selected as a mentee in the Words Ireland National Mentoring Programme 2020.

Stephen Carragher grew up on the Irish border. He writes stories and poems. His work has appeared in Wordlegs, Dublin Poetry Magazine, Uni-verse's Pocket Anthology and Street-line Critics

A.M. Cousins’s work has appeared in various literary journals including The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review and New Irish Writing. She is a frequent contributor to Sunday Miscellany and her

first collection of poetry – REDRESS – was published in 2021 by Revival Press, Limerick.

Craig Cox is a sound artist and writer working all over Ireland. His sound work, both independent and collaborative, has been hosted by various arts festivals and radio stations. His poems have been featured on Eat The Storms and previously in Drawn To The Light. Examples of his work can be heard on his Bandcamp page.

Colin Dardis is a neurodivergent poet and editor. He is the author of ten collections, most recently 'with the lakes' (above/ground press) and 'What We Look Like in the Future' (Red Wolf Editions). He currently curates the poetry blog Poem Alone, and is the editor of Rancid Idols Productions. He's on Instagram @rancid.idols.

Tomas de Faoite was born in Dowth, Ireland and now lives in the Netherlands. His latest collection Winter Solstice was published by Uitgevrij Van Kemenade in 2019.

Eoin Devereux's writing has been published by the Irish Times, Poetry Ireland & broadcast by RTE. He has collaborated with Gavin Friday to co-write & co-perform The Cedarwood Chronicles for U2X Radio. A Professor of Cultural Sociology, he contributes to the MA in Creative Writing at UL.

Teresa O’ Connor Diskin’s work has been published in Skylight 47, The Galway Review, Dodging the Rain, Vox Galvia, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, Irish Farmers Journal, Reach Poetry, Drawn to the Light Press, Mag Pie, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Poetry in Lockdown Archive, U.C.D. She was shortlisted for Poems for Patience 2019 and 2022. Her work is forthcoming in Dawntreader, Spring 2024.

Anne Donnellan lives in Galway. Her debut poetry collection Witness was published in December 2022 by Revival Press Limerick. Anne’s work has appeared in several poetry journals including Skylight 47, Drawn to the Light Press, Orbis and the NUIG Ropes

Literary Journal. She was the 2023 winner of the Allingham Poetry Competition.

Barbara Dunne is an artist, writer, facilitator, and widowed single parent. Her poetry has been published most recently in Howl 23: New Irish Writing, The Storms Journal, Crannóg, and New World Order She was shorted listed in 2022 for the Open Window Award. She is currently working on her debut poetry collection.

Kate Ennals’ Daughters, a debut paperback/kindle novel can be purchased from Amazon. You can also purchase Elsewhere, Kate's latest poetry book here

https://www.dempseyandwindle.com/kateennals.html. Other published poetry collections: At the Edge, Lapwing, Threads, Lapwing, Elsewhere, Vole Imprint, November 2021. Coming collections: Practically A Wake, Salmon Poetry.

James Finnegan, Dublin born, was the second-prize winner in the 2022 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition and the second-prize winner in the 2022 Allingham Poetry Competition. A second collection of poems, The Weather-Beaten Scarecrow (Doire Press, 2022) was shortlisted in the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award in April 2023. James, and Livinia, whom he is married to, and their five-year-old springer spaniel, Daisy, live 5 km outside Letterkenny in Co Donegal, Ireland.

Stephen Finucane is Irish and he has worked in education for the past thirty years. At present he works in Co. Wicklow in adult education, organising courses for unemployed adults. He lived in London in the late 1980s and early 1990s, teaching in an innerLondon comprehensive school for seven years. He has also lived and taught in Germany and Cyprus. He now lives in Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.

Mary Melvin Geoghegan has five collections of poetry published. Her last collection As Moon and Mother Collide was published with Salmon Poetry (2018). Her next collection There Are Only a Few Things will also be published with Salmon. She won The Longford

Festival Award for Poetry in 2013. She is member of the Writers in Schools Scheme with Poetry Ireland and has edited several anthologies of children’s poetry.

Matt Gilbert is a freelance copywriter, who also writes a blog about place, books and other distractions at richlyevocative.net. He's had poetry published by Acumen, Atrium, and The Storms among others. His debut collection 'Street Sailing' was published by Black Bough poetry in 2023.

Donal Greene has had a successful one-man show, 'All at Sea'. His photographs have appeared in The Stinging Fly, The SHOp, Bare Hands Anthology, and Cafe Review (USA).

Enda Coyle-Greene has published three collections of poetry: Snow Negatives (2007) winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2006, Map of the Last (2013) and Indigo, Electric, Baby (2020) all from the Dedalus Press. She received a Katherine and Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship in 2020. Co-founder and artistic director of Fingal Poetry Festival, she lives in Skerries.

Recent poems by Fin Keegan appear in Howl, Propel, Cold Mountain Review and Amsterdam Quarterly. He lives with his family in Newport, Co. Mayo.

John D Kelly lives in Co. Fermanagh. His poetry has been published widely. Among many awards, he won the Listowel Poetry Short Collection Award in 2020 and was a finalist in the Montreal International Poetry Prize, 2022. Most recently he won 2nd prize in the Plaza Audio Poetry Competition 2023 judged by Anthony Joseph.

Sinéad MacDevitt has been writing since 1993. She has taken courses in Poetry, Short Story, Novel, Non-Fiction, Playwriting and Screenwriting. Her work has been published in Boyne Berries, Extended Wings, A Fistful of Stories, Prose on a Bed of Rhyme, Revival Literary Journal and The Reform Jewish Quarterly. She was short-listed for the Swords Heritage Festival short story competition in 2001 and highly commended for the Jonathan Swift prose

competition in 2009. Her poems have been commended by Francis Ledwidge, Sheriff from Navan, LMFM poetry and Rush poetry competitions. She was awarded second place for the Desmond O’Grady poetry competition in 2013. She was a winner of the Little Gems poetry competition in 2016.

Rose Malone writes poems and short stories. She has been published in Drawn to the Light Press, New Square and in Channel magazine.

Peter McCluskey is a contemporary fiction writer from Dublin, Ireland. He has published four contemporary fiction novels to date. His first volume of poetry is set for publication in February 2024 and is titled, The Flickering Tide (Location 27 Books).

Kate McHugh is a 23-year-old writer from Galway, Ireland. With a degree in Creative Writing, English and French, she is currently teaching English in a university in Nantes, France. Previously published in ROPES and Southword, her principal desire is to publish a collection of poetry and auto-fiction.

Siobhán Mc Laughlin is a poet and creative writing facilitator from Co. Donegal. Her poems have appeared previously in Drawn to the Light Press, The Honest Ulsterman, The Waxed Lemon, Bealtaine magazine, The Ekphrastic Review and more. Twitter: @siobhan347.

Stephen McNulty scribbles poetry whenever he is not forcing a member of the public into a CT scanner. His poems have appeared in Boyne Berries, Drawn to the Light, ROPES, Strukturriss and Vox Galvia.

Louis Mulcahy is an Irish potter who sings and writes poetry. He has published one collection in the Irish language and three in English, the latest of which is The Potter’s Book (Doire Press, 2018). His fifth collection, he hopes, will be published in 2024. www.louismulcahy.com.

Sandra Noel is a poet from Jersey enjoying writing about the ordinary in unusual ways. She has poems online and in print magazines and anthologies and has been longlisted, shortlisted and highly commended in competitions. Sandra’s first collection will be published in summer 2024 by Yaffle Publications.

Tomás Ó Ruairc lives in Lucan, Dublin with his wife, Sara, four daughters and two dogs! He blogs at Sifting the Silence on Bazinga - https://bazingadotlife.wordpress.com/ He has previously published in Drawn to the Light and has published the poem ‘Conker’ in the Cathal Buí Poetry Publication 2021.

Maeve O'Sullivan’s poetry and haikai have been widely published, anthologized, awarded and translated. She has five collections with Alba Publishing, the most recent being Wasp on the Prayer Flag (2021). Maeve leads workshops in haiku, and is a professional member of the Irish Writers’ Centre and the British Haiku Society.

Ansuya Patel lives in London. Her work has appeared in anthologies and online publications Black in White, Drawn to the Light Press, Gypsophila, Half Way Down The Stairs. A couple of her poems have been shortlisted for the Alpine and Aurora Prize. Her poem Breast Scan came third at the 2023 Poetry Kit International.

Lucy Rumble is an emerging writer from Essex. Her poem 'My Nan, Remembered' won third place in the 2023 Tap Into Poetry contest, and her work has been published in Crow & Cross Keys and Myth & Lore Zine, among others. Find her on Instagram @lucyrumble.writes or at lucy.smlr.uk.

Jeff Skinner’s poems have been published in competition anthologies and in journals including Poetry Salzburg, Fenland Poetry Journal, Orbis, Acumen, and The Alchemy Spoon. Third in 2021’s Poetry Space competition, he received a ‘special mention’ in 2023’s Coast to Coast to Coast pamphlet competition. He lives in Exeter.

Daniel P. Stokes has published poetry widely in literary magazines in Ireland, Britain, the U.S.A. and Canada, and has won several poetry prizes. He has written three stage plays which have been professionally produced in Dublin, London and at the Edinburgh Festival.

Anthony Wade was inspired by the ‘Collected Poems of Francis Ledwidge’, joining Midleton Writers Group in 2016, with a first poem published in 2018; now a Forward Prize nominee with poetry published in print journals in Ireland, England, Scotland, the US, and Canada.

Gerard Walsh is from Donadea Co Kildare. His poems have been published in Writers Forum, Drawn to the Light Press, Apricot Press and he was a runner-up in Trim Poetry Competition 2022. He is a part-time library assistant, who also enjoys growing and selling seasonal cut flowers.

Drawn to the Light Press Issue 11

February 2024

Teresa O’Connor Diskin Anthony

Wade Anne Donnellan Siobhán Mc

Laughlin Kate McHugh Nora Brennan

Rose Malone Matt Gilbert Tomás Ó

Ruairc Mary Melvin Geoghegan A.M.

Cousins Stephen Carragher Donal

Greene Enda Coyle Greene Louis

Mulcahy Eoin Devereux Stephen

Finucane Sinéad MacDevitt Maeve

O’Sullivan John D Kelly Stephen

McNulty Daniel P. Stokes Jeff Skinner

Ace Boggess Ansuya Patel Gerard

Walsh Craig Cox James Finnegan

Fionn Andrews Tomás de Faoite Fin

Keegan Sandra Noel Lucy Rumble

Kate Ennals Jack Aziz Rosie Aziz

Barbara Dunne Colin Dardis Peter

McCluskey

€15 ISSN