Irish

LOVE POEM FROM BONMAHON

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LOVE POEM FROM BONMAHON

 God in his heaven never bettered this;

Never hit perfection more square-on.

Rugged cliffs lip the strand,

Opening to fields behind,

The Atlantic, white-layered,

Sweeping into the bay,

Its hurry washed-out

By the tug of sand, gently rising,

Before it.

 

A tangle of marram crowns the dunes,

Tousled, like windswept hair;

Whilst, on the slopes nearby,

A line of white cottages

Vie for prominence with the old church

 

Yet, it is the call of the waves

That steals most of the aces;

Those riderless white horses

Sweeping relentlessly in,

With their whispering lisps;

‘I love you, please don’t go,

I love you please don’t go’

 

And I, watching the ebb-tide dragging them back,

Silently mouthing in their wake;

‘She loves me, she loves me not,

She loves me, she loves me not…’

 

 

 

IN PRAISE OF IRISH THEATRES

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IN PRAISE OF IRISH THEATRES

For more than twenty years

I have emptied pens on virgin pages;

A million words at least

And many more chewed in frustration

Then spat into the dustbin of the ages.

Words are cheap and wordsmiths cheaper still

But we like our efforts to be appreciated

And performed  ( better still)

Yet to Irish Theatres great and small,

I do not write plays at all;

You have ignored my work

Yet the English do not shirk

To place my plays centre-stage

And Americans too have premiered a few

Which makes me ask you nicely

Irish Theatres, what the FUCK

Is the matter with you?

 

LOUIS MACNEICE – BAGPIPE MUSIC

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Frederick Louis MacNeice 1907 –1963) was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of “thirties poets” that included Auden, Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis nicknamed “MacSpaunday” as a group.                                              “Poetry in my opinion must be honest before anything else and I refuse to be ‘objective’ or clear-cut at the cost of honesty.” He has inspired many poets since his death, particularly those from Northern Ireland such as Paul Muldoon and Michael Longley

BAGPIPE MUSIC

It’s no go the merrygoround, it’s no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crepe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with head of bison.

John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey,
Kept its bones for dumbbells to use when he was fifty.

It’s no go the Yogi-man, it’s no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.

Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,
Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.
It’s no go your maidenheads, it’s no go your culture,
All we want is a Dunlop tire and the devil mend the puncture.

The Laird o’ Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.
Mrs. Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,
Said to the midwife “Take it away; I’m through with overproduction.”

It’s no go the gossip column, it’s no go the Ceilidh,
All we want is a mother’s help and a sugar-stick for the baby.

Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn’t count the damage,
Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.

It’s no go the Herring Board, it’s no go the Bible,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.

It’s no go the picture palace, it’s no go the stadium,
It’s no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It’s no go the Government grants, it’s no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather.

67 – A COLLECTION OF 71 POEMS

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Now available on amazon

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POETRY REVIEW                            67 by Tom O’Brien
The Co. Waterford-born playwright and novelist, Tom O’Brien, who had two plays produced in London last year, has brought out a curious collection of poetry, titled 67. A collection of 71 poems from Tin Hut Tales Publishers. Written over a period of twenty-five years he describes them as  being “of their time” and some were written “in the heat of the moment”, scribbled on bits and scraps of paper on buses and trains, or on the building sites where he worked. There is a surge of anger, a sideswipe at society, and at other times tender memories of a rural Ireland he had left behind, knowing there was no golden dawn, no rose-tinted place to return to. At other times, the poems are like graffiti and have an instant savagery and frank use of language. At other times, they are like notes to the 20 or so plays and books he has written. Why he is not better known in his home county is still a puzzle to me.
The opening poem Russian Roulette As A Cure For Depression catches your interest ” The first time I pressed the trigger/ I knew I was immortal”. He has graffiti poems, Bollocks To The Poll Tax and an ironic transitional poem from a rural community to heartless urban wastelands in Put Another Log On The TV. Then a poem like Don’t Make Your House In My Mind, hits the sad side with lines like: “You promised sex without frills” and “Shared lives going down the long slide”. A poem like Old Acquaintance reads like the synopsis to a play, but it is a poem you will return to and find another ‘home truth.’
The Clonmel and Fethard writer Joe Ambrose, who went to college in De La Salle, in his story Shapeshifter, tells of Irish people moving to England, and it catches well the sentiment that Tom O’Brien tries hard to suppress – ” They tried to live in England, the bucolic Irish provincial lives they’d actually left behind on Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore. Hillbillies let loose upon the slick city. Peasantry who like peasants all over the world lived to eat, shit, sing, breed and die”. Tom O’Brien catches that dichotomy time and again, especially in My Time – “This then is my time/ A ribbon of memories/ Stretching back to an age/ I can hardly remember/ Anymore”.
I am glad Tom O’Brien didn’t ‘tidy up’ these poems that echo a line ” Sorry sir, there is no more room for memories/The past is full up”.
I am also enthused that Waterford City and County Council have funded Stagemad Theatre to present a Tom O’Brien play later this year.
Liam Murphy  Munster Express

67 – A collection of 71 poems

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2nd edition now available on amazon; paperbook & ebook

LONDON HIGH-RISE

The graffiti spreads like muck along the walkways

In the lifts and on the stairs;

BOLLOCKS TO THE POLL TAX

TANYA SUCKS and CORINNE FUCKS

The stench of urine everywhere

This calcified menagerie

Bakes hearts as hard as concrete

Solidifies old attitudes, buries hope

Deifies ignominy

Here, echoes of hollow laughter

Ghost through the floors

Children play high-rise hopscotch

And stilettos click rhythmically

Along tuneless corridors

Another circus of misfits

Adrift in the maze

Cocooned in captivity

In this graceless legacy

Of the stack-em-high days

****************************

PARTING

The sun also rises over concrete

Over this puff-adder sky

And the pricked-up chimneys

Looking like piss-horns in the stark morning

There are no shadows yet

On this marbled plain

So tender in years

But so sparing with love

I shiver at the bus stop

Admiring this proliferation of granite;

So cold, so hard,

So like you….

THE ROUMANIAN

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THE ROMANIAN

 Kostas vendored hot air along with hot beer

In his kingdom ‘Ye Olde Crown by-the-sea’

His tales, though tall, always plausible

And intriguing to many more than me.

He had flown Russian Migs, no less

In Ceausescu’s secret armies in the past

Doing deeds that were less than chivalrous

Before the dictator breathed his last.

Sometime later he fetched up in London

With a wife who was other than great

And who spent his less-than-hard-earned money

At quite an alarming rate.

He took to his own devices

with his hostelry by the sea

and feathered his puffy nest

helped by others as well as me.

He repaid us with roubles that were rubbish

And dollars that were chaff

And then headed off into the sunset again

Leaving behind nothing but his knowing laugh

 

 

THE MISSING POSTMAN AND OTHER STORIES

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Upcoming review:

SHORT STORIES REVIEW The Missing Postman and Other Stories

The Co Waterford-born novelist and playwright, Tom O’Brien is still on a very productive streak, and not only has he had two plays produced in London this year, but he has brought out another novel, a book of three Waterford plays, and now a new book of short stories – The Missing Postman and Other Stories. His output is impressive and the work paints a wonderful picture of an Ireland that is quirky and malevolent, as well as giving a wonderful sense of place and time. I am surprised he is not a tourist attraction, and that no Waterford theatre company has scheduled a production of his. What is it about a prophet and his home place?

These stories read like notes to plays, and some are charged with characters and menace, as in the novella-length, The Missing Postman, that looks at the crazy world of Zeb and Zoe, who come to Ireland (Co Waterford) to avenge, separate, unhappy childhoods, and go on a ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ robbery spree. They hide out in a curious cottage of Martin Og, who has surprises in the house of a high-tech nature.

In a chilling exploration that is full of tension and foreboding, the mysterious disappearance of Martin Og’s brother – The Postman of the title is remembered.

In Johnjo’s Tale, we get the sense of emigration and isolation, laced with the sickly nostalgia, for songs of an era of regret, heartache, and rights to property, keeping emigrants forever looking back to the old homestead. This notion of family possessions is forcefully brought home in a very short -The Dispossessed – where the message is driven home (pardon the pun) – you can never go back. Home is not and perhaps, never was, what you desperately wanted it to be.

The Homecoming, is another pithy story where the landscape of memory and the physical landscape of a Hill was quarried away to create a sense of false prosperity. For those who will come to know (and I sincerely hope so) Tom O’Brien as a fine playwright (which he is), these short stories will be viewed as source material into his themes and motivations. But they read as stories in their own right, full of human and bitter honesty, and full of dramatic tension and excitement.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Missing-Postman-Other-Stories/dp/1494463814/ref=la_B0034OIGOQ_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416147882&sr=1-11

IN PRAISE OF IRISH THEATRES

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IN PRAISE OF IRISH THEATRES

For more than twenty years
I have emptied pens on virgin pages;
A million words at least
And many more chewed in frustration
Then spat into the dustbin of the ages.
Words are cheap and wordsmiths cheaper still
But we like our efforts to be appreciated
And performed ( better still)
Yet to Irish Theatres great and small,
I do not write plays at all;
You have ignored my work
Yet the English do not shirk
To place my plays centre-stage
And Americans too have premiered a few
Which makes me ask you nicely
Irish Theatres, what the FUCK
Is the matter with you?

THE WATERFORD COLLECTION REVIEW

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THE MUNSTER EXPRESS 24th June 2014

 

ARTS & THEATRE COLUMN

 

 

COLLECTION OF PLAYS REVIEW Tom O’Brien

 

The Co Waterford-born playwright and novelist, Tom O’Brien has just had another successful three week run with another new play, No Blacks, No Dogs, No Poles, in London’s Pentameters Theatre. The play despite its provocative title with echoes of a time when ‘No Irish’ might have given it a London context, but this play is set in an Irish town. I was not able to attend its premiere, but Alan Cliff the (up to last year) Waterford-based playwright went along and gave me his considered opinion. Alan is studying theatre in Manchester.

He described the play as complex in structure with at least four aspects overlapping; the return of a son-in-law, who has married an Aboriginal Australian and this brings out themes of racism and bigotry; a revelation of another characters bi-sexuality; the introduction of drugs into the family via a hostage situation; the revelation of an illicit family member’s affair. The London reviews suggested some confusion with themes of racism, immigration, identity and a longing for the past, spiced with sexual repression.

To coincide with this production O’Brien has brought out a collection of three plays, all with Waterford connections, with the title, The Waterford Collection, and its three plays show the detail and proven ability of the author to forge a career for himself. I still find it hard to understand why no Irish or indeed no Waterford theatre group have as yet staged one of his plays. Stagemad Theatre Company were to do so, but it never came to rehearsal stage.

The cover is impressive with three pictures of the new bridge. The first play Queenie is a 5-hander and tells a poignant story of Victoria Dwan who has been institutionalised, and is now being ‘released’ back into the community. This features open-air stage dancing at Granagh Cross, as she wheels around an indigent accordion player in a pram. This seems so surreal and Beckettian, with a wild theatricality. Queenie is a troubled soul who has second-sight. The play is beautifully ‘threaded’ with music and songs.

The second play, Money From America, is a much darker play about two brothers and a farm. Lardy has spent a lifetime toiling on the Co Waterford farm for little reward, and his older brother Jack returns from America and sees the farm as his rightful inheritance. This conflict involves two female partners, who would not be out of place in a McDonagh play, and it has a dark and dangerous resolution.

The third play, Johnjo, is a one-hander, a monologue set in the late seventies, and is a study of Johnjo McGrath from cradle to grave, from the Comeragh’s to wartime England and the dark underbelly of the construction industry. This is a harsh unrelenting play, but it held my attention all the way, and it is filled with songs and music that is as nostalgic as it is ironic.

Such was the success of the recent Pentameters production that they will present another Tom O’Brien play in London in July, about the women in Brendan Behan’s life, and still no Waterford production.    Liam Murphy

available @  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent