Kelleher

Lovespoon/Llwy garu

My sculptor sweetheart carved me a lovespoon, Looped fishing reel round the neck, hung it on the spare room wall. ‘Getting the handle smooth was the hardest’. The wood curled like Treaddur Bay on a friend’s wedding morning, Even the groom longed to be in the water, Thinking of the wetsuit in his garage as he stood to make a speech. I traced the chips and cuts of the bowl, Sounding the lighthouse bell near Puffin Island, Wind in the grasses at Whistling Sands. Now the spoon sits on my mantel in Birmingham, I haven’t seen my past cariad for eighteen years. I open a present sent through the post, Slide open the box to a miniature landscape: Pembrokeshire coast. I dip my finger in the sea.

Professor Ceri Morgan works on literary geographies, place-writing, geopoetics (site-responsive creative practices), walking studies, and geohumanities. A longstanding member of the Montreal research group, la Traversée, Ceri has worked increasingly on geopoetics as a participatory practice since 2014, leading workshops or ‘happenings’ on a variety of themes, including mining, food, persistent pain, and deindustrialisation. In April 2020, she set up an online writing group, Microclimates, in response to social and spatial restrictions prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Ceri has published some fiction, creative nonfiction, and prose-poetry. Her prose-poem, ‘Avenue Bernard’ was broadcast on RTE Radio 1 extra and RTE Radio 1 in Spring and Summer 2020.

Hid from view and blown in air; a spot of drop tumbles down to the pit of pouch, twisting around until it meets the chamber of lung; Putrid air makes the bellows slowly rise and fall; it crushes lungs to steal good life; make one happy to die for a mortal life. Dirty hands scrubbed and washed; need, masks, gloves, aprons, to support clean hands. To stop Covid-19 entering the tombs of sponge; where people clutch their chests on fluid ground abound; Broken tree branches of the lungs crushed to dust; and become carbon; part of the earth’s crust once more. The lingering smell of death to graves the new chimney sweep arrives and slowly clears the souls up best; Clinging to walls of white smooth paint; tainted with the black streaks of death; people wonder if death will Passover over or take them; soft, slowly, loud, or hard. People clapped and tapped to support the frontline army; in a bid to ward off deaths band of army; Hail!, rainbows showed the colours strong only to be left with one; Black! There was no full sight of death; as it blitz by day and night. Death swept away all of life. Flights to other countries were stopped; air pollution given the chop; Frustrated neighbours boom aloud, even the dogs not allowed; except for door callers and now it’s a crowd! Who will post your daily fight; as death took off on a cold air flight; and left us all shell shocked!

Joanne Kelleher is a small business owner of Cooling Towers Productions. She has been in business for over 11 years providing a range of persistent knowledge-on-the-go in the form of Literature reviews, Reports and Creative development. A professional member of NAWE for 8 years: Presented two workshops at NAWE conferences in 2015 & 2019 on Research methods for writers in education. Joanne is by profession a qualified chartered environmental health officer and level 5 manager status from working in Local government.