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Merman |
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| Jean O'Brien |
ISBN: 978-1-908836-03-8 Page Count: 98 Publication Date: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 Cover Artwork: Ray Murphy |
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About this Book
From the mythological Merman of the title poem, which won the 2010 Arvon International Poetry Award, to the imaginative “Fragments” and on to more serious poems such as “My Mother Ate Electricity” these are all engagingly written using the acoustic play of consonants and vowels so necessary for bringing life and music to the poems. Accessible and often strongly narrative they are always alert to the comic and everyday even when broaching hard subjects such as illness, mental illness and death. As always in O’Brien’s work, images of nature and landscape as well as relationships and a lively engagement with the ways of the world resonate with grace and candour.
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Author Biography
Jean O’Brien is a Dubliner now living in the Irish Midlands. She has published three previous collections, The Shadow Keeper (Salmon, 1997), Dangerous Dresses (Bradshaw Books, 2005) and Lovely Legs (Salmon 2009). She has an M.Phil in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin. She facilitates creative writing classes for a wide variety of organizations from the Irish Writers’ Centre, Dublin City Council and various County Council to Mountjoy, Limerick and the Midlands Prisons. She was Writer-in-Residence for Co. Laois. Her work is broadcast on RTE Radio, Sunday Miscellany and elsewhere. She did a collaboration with the artist Ray Murphy on an interpretation of her winning poem Merman which was held in The Arthouse, Stradbally. She was the 2008 recipient of the Fish International Poetry Award and in 2010 she won the biennial Arvon International Poetry Award.
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Read a sample from this book
Hinamatsuri - The Japanese Doll Festival
Nusha, our daughter loves the ceremony of the dolls,
the loving couple, the prince and princess seated
in tiered splendour at the apex, lolling like melons
with their robes puffed out around them,
painted faces almost smiling, lacquered lips red as cinnabar,
their night-dark hair is real and shines as if lit by stars.
Nusha brushes her hair until it glows, taps her wooden getas,
wriggles her toes. This is her day for praise and future-wish
our job is to guide her, watch her grow and push
her off into the river of life, like the dolls of long ago.
Ever year we stow them away, once made of straw,
but now something more substantial, something lasting.
The next row seats five musicians, garb not as sumptuous,
as the royalty, but gorgeous nonetheless, each one holds
an instrument that Nusha says she can hear, hear the strings,
hear them sing. Our ears are too old for such sounds;
we listen as leaves rustle in trees, and a tumult of traffic goes by.
The last step holds the helpers, clothes more like our own Yukatas;
plain, serviceable. They proffer the food, mochi sweets, peach
blossoms, brushes for the royal couples hair, oils and unguents.
Nusha holds a western doll, tall with golden hair, slim waist,
generous chest, she says I need to grow up soon, it’s urgent.
Blue Bobbin
Its dull case an ornament
in the corner, its use almost
forgotten. someone has taken
the table of the Singer Sewing
machine, once everyone had one.
If you lifted it out you could turn
the handle instead of footing
the treadle. Gone, along
with the table is the drawer
that held bobbins, my delight,
as a child sifting the
spools of rainbow thread.
When my mother sewed
she favoured the blue bobbin.
All our curtains, whatever the colour,
were backed with blue stitches.
I helped her thread the needle
through a maze of eyes and hooks
down to where the thread vanished
into a small silver box.
Like a magician pulling an endless
stream of hankies from his sleeve;
it conjured another thread
and together, they and we,
formed the stitch.
At night when mother was busy
I used to slide the lid on the silver
chamber to see if I could figure out its trick.
I only saw the small half-moon lever
moving back and over
and like a hidden slice of sky,
the edge of a blue bobbin peeping out. Copyright © Jean O'Brien 2012
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