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Shortlisted for the 2018 Irish Times Poetry Now AwardIn his fifth collection of poems, David Wheatley twins his birthplace and his current home, Ireland and Scotland, to engage issues of globalism, identity, and language. He takes inspiration from the Russian Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, self-nominated President of Planet Earth, who in a state of apocalyptic rapture envisioned a new world culture, its rise and its dramatic undoing.In The President of Planet Earth Wheatley brings an experimental sensibility to bear on questions of land and territory, channelling the messianic aspirations of modernism into subversive comedy. We move between Pictish pre-history, the imaginary South American nation of 'Oblivia', and post-independence referendum Scotland.Wheatley marries classical, Gaelic, Scots and continental traditions. He deploys several styles - prose poetry; concrete poetry; translations from Middle Irish, Latin and French; sestinas and sonnets in Scots - to heady effect. The President of Planet Earth refashions language and the world it shapes, devising a transformative poetics.
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Seitenzahl: 103
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
for my brothers
PHILIP, GAVIN & JOHN
Sitting under the crook of the eaves
in my black and yellow jumper
I turn ultraviolet blue
in the gaze of a honeybee
I watch enter the roof.
Like a postman’s round, the sex
drags on all morning, its fine
filigree residue dispatched
journey by journey to our
asylum of honeycombed dark.
All round me masterpieces
of morbid secretions find their
invisible form, perfection raised
to the level of self-devouring,
a stomach digesting its body.
The bounty of innumerable
foxglove lips parted
slaveringly has brought us to this:
a jelly pleasure sea
I float on, hapless acolyte
of a queen I nourish and dread.
Am I so much as noticed, I wonder,
I and my furious labours? I feel
the jelly throb with her need for me, me
and those billions of others, my kind.
composed during the last illness of Eochaidh Ó hEodhasa
Poetry is touched by decline:
how can we come to her aid?
She is sure all hope is gone
in her poorly state.
Consider poetry’s plight,
fit only for the sickbed
as word of Eochaidh’s death is brought
to her who was his bride.
It is hard to witness the honour
once hers turn to scorn:
woeful indignity drawing near,
the cloud of abasement come down.
To Eochaidh above all men she gave
the flower in its prime
of her artistry and love;
and all to nourish him.
The hidden ore of his poet’s craft
burned with a gemlike flame
lighting up the art he left;
much died with his name.
Well he knew the schoolmen’s work,
who sat among the wise;
poet of the golden cloak,
a great lament shall be his.
He stumbled on the hazel of knowledge
in its secret grove,
and left its branches hung with flesh,
stripping the nutshells off.
Out of words both dark and subtle
the poet makes his art
with perfect ease, and in recital
omits no part.
It is no small help to his work
to add the gold relief
of learning to his every word:
such is the way of the beehive.
Bees all over brim their hoard
with the juice they collect
from the oozings of a milky gourd
or a flower unpacked.
They are examples to the bard
whose craft none can match;
no flower or fruit, soft or hard,
escapes his search.
It is he resolves the doubts
of those already skilled;
he who settles all debates,
he to whom all yield.
Who has not been touched by sorrow
at the master’s loss of life?
This disease goes to the marrow
and pierces like a spike.
Like a cow parted from her calf,
my wits are overthrown:
I make melody from my grief,
who now am orphaned;
and poetry is a widow unless
Maoilseachlainn’s son returns;
no one can make good her loss
but the man she mourns.
(from the Irish)
Crimson our halberds from the gore of the Saxons!
The firebrand soon secured and our sword arms aching.
Affliction our foes’ part and Fiach McHugh O’Byrne
honoured at the pig feast by rivers of mead;
shrill from the dark high glen the bleating of sheep
while in and out of the mist floats Lugnaquilla.
The Castle styles Michael Dwyer a common killer
and, be it hereby known, will spare no expense
in his apprehension. Caught, this felon will ship
to New South Wales there to lament, ochone,
at his leisure his exile from old Wicklow amid
Fenians who barely ’scaped hanging like Billy Byrne.
An old man I passed by the monument to the O’Byrne
deep in the glen, his face a sunburnt colour,
had about him so melancholy a mood
I felt the spirit of that mountainous expanse
convert us, strangers, into almost kin
in that quiet corner where a man could sleep.
Early one morning a fair maid I met on the slope
of Ballinacor, her dark eyes heavy with brine
from weeping for her dear one unjustly taken,
the blackbird of sweet Avondale who would call her
his leannán, his darling from the tree-top in accents
so soft that for that want of them she was unmade.
Farmyard cottages ready to view, all mod
cons, no chain. Give the recession the slip
where money doesn’t swear, it talks sense.
Take in the pine woods’ late autumnal auburn
round picture-postcard-pretty Lugnaquilla
between the waterfall and perennial bracken.
Driving down into Glenmalure, not speaking,
the road flooded, the wheels spinning in mud:
O Fiach McHugh! Waiting for the shower to clear,
getting out, walking, feeling the damp seep
through my boots down the accursed boreen
where I revved and tried in vain to turn on a sixpence.
And crueller than all weather loom again
those peaks on the line of the sky that still drive mad
the woebegone sheep astray where the gorse fires burn.
all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all
all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all
all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all
all air all air all air all air iolar all air all air all air all
all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all
all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all
all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all
all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all
all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all
all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all
all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all
all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all
all air doiléir all air all air all air all air soiléir all air
all air douleur air all air all air all air all solar air all
all air dealer all air all air all air all air all sailor air all
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler iolar ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler
Farmer, farmer, railway clerk, scholar.
Read and write, read and write, not known.
Lifting the latch between two centuries
and calling each of his pigs by name,
a waistcoated hireling strikes up
the songs of his people lustily,
lazily, lingeringly,
a phonograph needle biting the wax.
Pillar-box patriarch, thumbs
in his fobs, prepares a time capsule
in family memory
of shoe leather, whiskers and bacon,
Victoria’s head on the stamps
later refranked with a harp.
His pigeon fancier’s scullery window
still opaquely beshitten
a century later, wipe
with scouring pad or old rag as you will,
that flurry of wings and droppings
ominously thick in the air:
hup there, ya lad ya, to hell owwadat!
‘The subduction of Laurentia by Avalonia’:
a geological allegory – the nymphs among the stones –
or Aesop’s fable for our Young Earth brethren.
Archbishop Ussher and his creationism, how are you –
sophistry, sir, the fossils placed ready-made
in the earth the better to test our faith!
I make but a poor iconoclast, chipping away with
a pocket hammer on the storm beach of the Word,
but in the decay sequence of uranium atoms
I find an Ireland radioactive with promise
and threat: a quaking sod, a clock whose counting
down to zero no clockmaker set. In the name
of the god of deep time and Ireland’s short
tradition of nationhood I annotate dark
visions of her unification half a billion years since
for the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, and not
a Kaiser’s rifle or teapot-armoured car in sight.
Laid down amid impossible magma plumes
and ramparts of volcanic isles the Paleozoic schists
and quartzite of Bray Head, the Himalayan
igneous basalts of Connemara, brew
like heat blisters where one floating continent
smashes against another. Ah, long perspectives!
– yet when all that unpleasantness went off
over the river in Trinity Term, tufts of flame
visible above Front Square, a rifle-crack brought
a tray of petrography slides down on my head: