Cairn E-Book

Richie McCaffery

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 21

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Richie McCaffery's debut collection of poems, Cairn, begins in a dedication and ends with ghosts - in between lies hoards of artefacts and long-forgotten antiquities; a police whistle, a tarnished silver spoon, the bookmark lodged in a boring book decades before that sings of a lost age. These poems find their stories in the overlooked places of everyday, and take utter delight in the unexpected image and turn of phrase. Soaring, often short and bitter-sweet, the poems form markers in the landscape of love, lore and family, making mementoes to the buried and the living. Richie McCaffery (b. 1986) lives in Stirling and studies and works as a teaching assistant at The University of Glasgow. He is the author of two poetry pamphlets, Spinning Plates (HappenStance Press, 2012) and Ballast Flint (Cromarty Arts Trust, 2013). His poems have appeared in journals and anthologies such as The Dark Horse, Stand, The Rialto and The Best British Poetry 2012.

Leseprobe

Cairn

Cairn

Richie McCaffery

ISBN: 978-0-9927589-1-2

Copyright © Richie McCaffery, 2014

Cover photograph © Eleanor Bennett

www.eleanorleonnebennett.zenfolio.com

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Richie McCaffery has asserted his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published June 2014 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in Britain by:

imprintdigital.net

Seychelles Farm,

Upton Pyne,

Exeter

EX5 5HY

www.imprintdigital.net

CONTENTS

Dedication

Ballast Flint

School

Late Red Admiral

Wallet

Last Lot of the Day

St. Lawrence’s

Press

Album

Police Whistle

The Consul

Spoon

Bookmark

Ash

Salvage

The Truth So Far

Homecoming

Step-father

Saint Bavo

Black Sheep Inn

7 Pudden Wynd

Old School

Negatives

Noughts and Crosses

Miss Anderson’s Pen

Brother

Rust

The Weight

Cold Caller

The Rapture

Elizabeth Logan (1837 - 1839)

Bottle-digging

Arrival

Ink

The Professional

Plimsolls

Buttons

Seaside Hotel

Sampler

Edelweiss

In Praise of Sash Windows

Tesserae

Moon

X

Ivories

The Lonesome Death of Brian Connolly

Viv

Gil Martin

Pevsner Guides

Ties

Warkworth

Barney

Spinning Plates

The Lean-to

Sighting

Acknowledgments

Nothing corrects

the haircracks in the crockery.

– Alan Riach

DEDICATION

In an underground copy

of Lady Chatterley’s Lover

a shaky plum inscription:

‘To Renee, my sweet –

from France via the Dunkirk

holocaust, 2/8/40, Sid’

All that way in a kitbag,

through panzers and snipers.

Bullets hitting the water

like kingfishers.

BALLAST FLINT

They often took people from these shores,

pariahs of the law or kirk. Sent them down

into the holds of ships like ballast flint,

mined locally, as plentiful useless weight.

Nodules like bone joints, broken open

to dark quartz, the black iris of a Sphinx,

unknowable and inscrutable. The dud cargo

often dumped by the salt-chapped rim

of other seas where it did not belong,

still cluttering beaches. It once sparked

great fires, sharpened to double-edged blade,

a forgotten clan knapping arms in the swash.

SCHOOL

That boy who played the flute

much better than you ever could

died a few years ago by his own hand.

The seed your daughter planted

is now a tree they’re going to fell;

it undermines the road.

A ball dribbled by the wind

in the playground after the bell rang