Trad
Baby
sweet full frontal lyrics launches successive sound of high notes and holidays,
high notes and holidays, zingera’d to slither pierce a spirit found in clear
transparent spinning on pure crystalline edge
Each
finds its way in, synchronising, harmonising to juxtapose its own recessive
being. In time the newly found flute
pulls to the fore an image of skirt lifting arms tossing twirling cross caught
upwards a continuity of pulsing rapture with a harshness of breath long after
supporting instruments have opened their closure
An
upturned inversion rolled over
Tracing
the cordant discordant roll creating hard-listening-found strangeness,
identifying a change in the energy of sameness and strumming a background solo
held low against the water when strings take over and accordion basses, rooting
it all in a wash of fluidity until wind erupts a difference, rising white
flecks crested out, the contrary motion opposing but forwarding in constant
height, rise hanging hung crashing into pale streaming blue, tumbling down
whiteness bubbling through to soothing ripples on the shore
A
difference now in something more staid sea forgotten, less jumpy less sliding
less less. More the separate expression
of a thought gaining speed as it races ahead of itself, elongated as energy is
spent before reaching this land locked state, and finality overtakes as it
spreads from the thought less sure shades more fallow in slowing strummm
Now
and now the hometown slides on mandolin, half note up a half note down, growing
awareness of recurring bloodrush, first ever motif, then later, another. Country-side comfort in an air neatly sewn
and cross stitched together by care painted bleached worn wood. Sometimes jigged or juddered sweated off
springs in marginal well held frame
Now
fiddle me do
Then
sprung into action hand on machine ear turned to outpouring foot tapping
systolsis influenced by all I’ve ever known sharped to a higher state. The constant chord austrial polkaed then building
through continents, before skudding to a vodkaed finale
Reeling
in the salmon it jumps and turns, gasps the momentary lack of tension, regroups
below the flow of a well known tune before being rewound. Playing second fiddle to the main man while
pulling out the estuary to see. All gaps
are complexity filled and it almost escapes but constraint is applied it belies
reigning in a seeming refinement with only the tune, the rhythm, the fracture
in the run up to heightened pitch where all join in resolving to always stay,
to always play together intertwine each others surround sound all movement
complicit in filial found fullness
Poetics
My
poetry has always focussed on using language and sound to mirror content. The
above piece needs to be read aloud, I feel.
Meaning
is less important than the flow of the piece; the flow of words, of thoughts
almost captured, then disrupted, of tongue tripping vocals, of a language
stream heard in a space where time ceases to exist, or ceases to matter.
Streaming
language reflects my consciousness, gathering materials from my Irish heritage,
my childhood by the Atlantic sea, the wild winds of Donegal, traditional music
festivals, and then, the encountering of many new cultures throughout my life. This
has evolved into a poetry of storytelling in many cases
Shape
is important in my work. It offers a fullness on the page, or a terse
sparseness, depending on the requirements of the poem. Rhyme is always present
whether sound, meaning, or associative rhyme.
My
poetry offers movement, the promise of progression to another artifice, another
consciousness, another concept, and sometimes it delivers.
At Edge Hill
Edge
Hill University was a fantastic place to study for my MA in Creative Writing.
There were then, as now, the usual lectures, interesting assignments but also a
variety of workshops, readings, and an opportunity to be with well established
poets – Allen Fisher, Scott Thurston, Robert Sheppard - and authors. I remember
specifically the time when I finally ‘got’ defamiliarisation, and when I,
rather late in the day, realised that my understanding of others’ poetry was
valid as anyone else's. As an Alumna of Edge Hill I was part of a poetry and
poetics group for a long time, and continue to go to readings at the Rose
Theatre.
 |
| Dee reading at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool |
See another reading photo
here. Read more work, 'Three Poems'
here, one of the very posts, and 'Three Texts' from the same sequence as the one above,
here, and about a talk Dee gave at the Poetry and Poetics Research Group's tenth anniversary talks season,
here, on
Pages.
Recently updated details of the MA in Creative Writing may be read
here.
