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- Herausgeber: The Poetry Business
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
Shortlisted for the 2013 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. This first full collection sees Paula Cunningham reflecting on her upbringing in Northern Ireland, while casting a clear eye on family history and friendships. Its memorable short sequences include 'Fathom', which centres on her father, alongside many varied shorter pieces, humorous, erotic and always surprising. "She has formal gifts in abundance…when her eye is on her native Ulster, magic and frightening things happen." Paula Meehan Paula Cunningham was born in Omagh, Northern Ireland. Her pamphlet A Dog Called Chance was a winner in the Poetry Business Competition (1999). In 2011 she won the Hippocrates Poetry Prize (NHS section) and was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Prize. She has also written drama and short fiction; a short story appeared in the Faber Book of the Best New Irish Short Stories in 2005. She now lives in Belfast, where she works as a dentist.
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Paula Cunningham
Acknowledgements
Versions of some of these poems first appeared in A Dog Called Chance (smith|doorstop, 1999) and in the following magazines and anthologies: Poetry Ireland Review, Force 10, The North, FM magazine, The New Irish Poets, Bloodaxe (ed Selina Guiness, 2004) Magnetic North, Verbal Arts Centre (ed John Brown, 2005). ‘The Chief Radiographer Considers’ won the 2011 Hippocrates Poetry Prize and was published in the Guardian. ‘Gist’ was commended in the 2011 Edwin Morgan International Poetry Prize. ‘Fathom’ was placed third in the 2013 Ballymaloe Poetry Prize.
I thank the Arts Council of Northern Ireland who have thrice granted awards, buying me time to write, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig for productive, enriching and fattening residencies. A debt is due to my friends, Siobhan Hunter, Jean Bleakney, Brian Hollywood and John Brown who read and commented on early versions of these poems. Thanks also to the members and facilitators of the writers’ group at Queen’s University Belfast which I have attended sporadically over many years, most especially Carol Rumens and Sinead Morrissey. More recently, for their great generosity, my gratitude to Ciaran Carson and the cohort of reader/writers who meet each week at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s. Thanks also to Paul Maddern from whose bank of beautiful photographs I chose the cover image, to Malachi O’Doherty for making me laugh for the author photo, and to Paula Meehan, whose writing and example got me started.
Finally, to my stalwart friends and family. To the Hunters and Macdonalds who frequently mind the dog. And especially to my father, Jimmy, to whom I dedicate this work.
Published 2013 by
smith|doorstop Books
The Poetry Business
Bank Street Arts
32-40 Bank Street
Sheffield S1 2DS
www.poetrybusiness.co.uk
Copyright © Paula Cunningham 2013
Digital Edition © 2015
ISBN 978-1-910367-29-2
Paula Cunningham hereby asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset by Utter
Cover design by Utter
Cover image: Keel 3 by Paul Maddern
Author photo: Malachi O’Doherty
smith|doorstop Books is a member of Inpress,
www.inpressbooks.co.uk. Distributed by Central Books Ltd., 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN.
The Poetry Business is an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation
… This is a street you can’t step into twice … the unremembered, unredeemed, ordinary, neither true nor false, and unaccountable as love.
– Stuart Dybek
What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?
– Robert Hayden
For my father, Jimmy Cunningham
Finding the Well
My grandfather found the well
and attended the sick – a dowser
better known as ‘The Doctor’.
At Lisfannon he bought the house
my uncle won in a poker game,
the first in a row of identical tardises
over the road from the strand.
Not the old man whose cure
for the lump on my hand was the threat
of a thump with a Bible, and worked,
but younger and leaner, pacing the field,
the twist and lurch of the rod
his gift that slaked six houses’ throats;
at his desk or in homes
round Omagh and Carrickmore
between and after the wars,
when payment was often spuds or hay,
the odd poached pheasant or fish.
On the Shankill a patient presented
to me. Mr Lyons wore tweeds,
his accent rose west of the Bann:
Fermanagh, south Derry, Tyrone?
One of The Doctor’s patients from Carrickmore,
come up in the fifties to join the R.U.C.
His last word on Grandpa: he wasn’t
a hard man to pay. A big tin of Family Circle
appeared, at tea-break the following day.
Geography and Sweetshops
Lisfannon, Buncrana, Bunduff, Mullaghmore, Rossnowlagh.
The best places to swim were always over
the border. In the car killing time
we played I spy with my little eye …
and Spot the soldiers, their camouflage
too dark for August grass
… something beginning with
h … The wee white house, windows for eyes
