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City of Bridges / Jo Slade

City of Bridges

By: Jo Slade

€12.00 €6.00
In this her fourth collection of poetry, Jo Slade explores the fractured landscape of memories and meanings. These are poems of the journey; always moving forward and deeper into an essential truth that is her own individual voice. There is a shamanic quality to these poems, meaning and metaphor combine to create a unique music, a language sometimes tentative, that enables her to understand the complexity of meaning itself. ...
ISBN 1 903392 46 2
Pub Date Sunday, May 01, 2005
Cover Image Jo Slade
Page Count 64
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In this her fourth collection of poetry, Jo Slade explores the fractured landscape of memories and meanings. These are poems of the journey; always moving forward and deeper into an essential truth that is her own individual voice. There is a shamanic quality to these poems, meaning and metaphor combine to create a unique music, a language sometimes tentative, that enables her to understand the complexity of meaning itself. Crossings are a necessary part of the journey. Sometimes risky, they require a kind of leap of faith, as in the act of poetry. But ultimately poetry sustains, even within the limitations of language, there is a way through to understanding. In "Crossings" we read:

You see too much
that is why the treachery of crossings
inhibits you.

Look -
the bridge is certainly wide enough
and utterly luminous.

Jo Slade

Jo Slade lives and works in Limerick. She is a poet, a painter, and a multimedia artist. She is the author of seven collections of poetry and two chapbooks of poems: The Artist’s Room (Pighog Press Brighton UK 2010); The White Cottage. Poems and Art Work (T-A-R Publications Ire, 2016); the chapbook, The White Cottage accompanied the installation/ exhibition of the same name which took place in The Sailors’ Home, Limerick in 2016; The Painter’s House (Salmon Poetry, 2013) was joint recipient of the Michael Hartnett Poetry Prize in 2014; In Fields I Hear Them Sing (Salmon Publishing, 1989); The Vigilant One (Salmon Publishing, 1994) was nominated for The Irish Times/Aer Lingus Literature Prize; Certain Octobers Poems and Paintings (Editions Eireanna Quimper, France 1997), a dual language English/French edition, which received a publication bursary from the Centre du Livre, Paris, France and was nominated in 2003 for the Prix Evelyn Encelot, Ecriture Prize, Maison des Ecrivains, Paris; City of Bridges (Salmon Poetry, 2005); and Cycles and Lost Monkeys (Salmon Poetry 2019). Her poetry has been translated into French, Spanish, Romanian, Norwegian, Russian, Italian and Slovenian. Her work has been published in national and international literary journals. Jo has been awarded residencies in Ireland and abroad. She is the recipient of Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursaries and Awards as well as Travel Grants from Culture Ireland and Limerick City and County Councils. She has exhibited her paintings, sculptures and multimedia work widely in both solo and group shows and her work is represented in public and private collections in Ireland, France and Italy. Her most recent exhibition of paintings, sculpture and assemblages, Nostos, was  held in the Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, Co.Clare, in 2020.


After Picking

Smokehouse apples in a bucket.
Things occur and pass away.
My Da said, "it's a story,"
he called it mysterious
the way appleblossom appears
even in snow.
It comes just as quick as it goes.

The apples in our orchard were different.
Beautiful they were, red and golden
and crisp as dry timber
sweet as honey on our fingers.
Sometimes I think he's here with us,
sitting under the silver maple
his head slung back casual
as if he'd like to stay.

Three buckets and a crimson moon.
Sometimes, if I see too clearly
if light changes those strange transparencies
I lose him again and again.
Every autumn it's the same story
of loss and gain,
of eyes full of apples red and golden
and noisy buckets full of rain.


Other Titles from Jo Slade

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V95 XD35,
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