Fiona Scoble, Dave Donovan & Dedalus poet Mary Noonan read at Galway City Library this coming Thursday, Nov 15th 2012, at 6.30 pm, as part of the ongoing Over The Edge readings. There will also be readings by students on the MA course in Writing Class 2011/12 from their forthcoming anthology, Abandoned Darlings.
Mary Noonan's debut collection of poems The Fado House was published earlier this year introduces a poet of real achievement and great promise. Her poems may be characterised by an intense musicality and a determinedly outward look, the range of the work (poems inspired by music, by visual art, by myth, by time abroad, and by the magic of family, friendships and love) always matched by the telling details of credible experience.
Her poem, Carry, from the collection, is currently Poem of the Month on the Dedalus website.
Carry
To clear my head of talk, I walked the beach
and found a pebble, a cuckoo’s egg,
held it and saw it was a map.
An oval stone striated with slate-grey markings,
one side bears tracings that arch and criss-cross:
polka of narrow roads,
sandpipers darting in bleached grasses,
contours of a shoreline, the lines on my palm.
A gate opening into a small field.
The curve of the stone offers concentric swirls:
a talisman to ward off the evil eye,
or the nipple of a breast.
Here it is, an amulet, runes and traces
to light and guard you, a cuckoo’s egg
in the wrong nest, a gate opening
into a small field, a circle ploughed
round a lone hawthorn tree, a map
of the way between us. I carry it.
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