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Poetry Day Ireland 2025 Poster Poems

 

The Sun’s Return

Waves of hawthorn break on ditches 

                              edging the fields with foam.

 

Wintering grass that slept underground 

                              thrusts upward to the light. 

 

A blizzard of seed-heads blows skyward then 

                              falls in dandelion snow.

 

Greenness throbs underfoot, laughter peals blue,

                              yellowness stabs the air.

 

The month of May rolls back the burial stone,

                              the entrance to the heart.

 

– Lorna Shaughnessy

First published in Lark Water (Salmon Poetry, 2021)

 

The Laying Hen

No amount of tea, no dawn-pink sky,

could tempt you up a moment early.

Late already, you’re on the bike,

conquering the hill in five minutes. To me,

it’s theory, what you do all day – check

the library’s roost, make sure the flock

of books is not missing a single chick? 

 

Hours later, you freewheel home. I’m lost

in pages as usual, dinner forgotten. When

my grandmother was young, a wife who

earned was called the laying hen.

The bills, the rent, are all paid by you

and I have space to scratch in dry earth,

uprooting words, whatever they’re worth.

 

– Rosamund Taylor

First published in Cat Flap Issue 4, 2024

 

Tea Break with Tin Mug

          — for M. G.

 

What were we doing

during all those years

if not breathing? 

 

This is a mystery

ascribable to nothing

more than chance,

 

articulate as steam

from the kettle no one hears

over the out-tray’s scuff.

 

Our history’s like tea

that drizzled-on cold milk

will stifle, stun —

 

in spill-proof mugs

it tastes of tin, of time put in

in offices, in skin.

 

– Enda Coyle-Greene

 

Duplex   

          Cleft phlox (Phlox bifida)

 

In spring I fly open and burn pale purple, 

petal-edges curving like C clef.

 

          Curve over pebbles, my little C clef

          I sing to the skipper (which flocks, which flocks), 

 

icing for the skipper (Which phlox? Which phlox?),

explosion for root rot, powdery mildew. 

 

          My taproot powders erosion’s eye. Still, you

          log and you crop and you dam and you mine.

 

You log and you crop———I damn you to mine

my oval emerald almanac.

 

          My emeralds go across fall———the knack

          outrages you like the cocklebur’s sting.

 

I’m outrageously bright and bursting

to fly open in spring and burn pale purple.

 

Note: Cleft phlox is native to the USA, so I’ve used ‘fall’, not ‘autumn’, in the poem’s eleventh line

 

– Stuart Barnes

First published in Modron Magazine, 2024

 

MAY DAY

On the first day of May

the people of the crofter townland

are up betimes and busy as bees

about to swarm.

This is the day of migrating,

'bho baile gu beinn,'

from townland to moorland,

from the winter homestead

to the summer sheiling.

The summer of their joy is come,

the summer of the sheiling,

the song, the pipe,

and the dance,

when the people ascend the hill

to the clustered bothies,

overlooking the distant sea

from among the fronded ferns

and fragrant heather,

where neighbour meets neighbour,

and lover meets lover.

 

– Gabriel Rosenstock

A ‘found poem’ by Gabriel Rosenstock from the Carmina Gadelica

 

I Carve a Future into the Year

Annually, the rewilding. As one, 

the hills & mountains blink away 

 

their sleep—irises pink-petaled 

& dewed. I have circled again 

 

to this beginning, no longer 

flighty child nor phasing youngster

 

so desperate to disappear. 

This, the month of my birth, 

 

renews a certain faith in mutability:

we will return from the brittle days,

 

land & body both. Hunted as I am,

I rarely indulge in the lush imaginary 

 

of my own days ahead, & yet I have 

pictured the city at dawn, too early for fear,

 

how I might move like a myth made

body while the streets fill with feathers.

 

In the sky & the green, all is shot through

with cleansing fire. I can smell it on my skin: 

 

the roving circles a bird makes to gauge

its ground before alighting. 

 

– Jo Bear

 

Hawthorn

I can see the hawthorn tree

wind-angled inland in the field

 

of lazy beds that bulge like ribs.

Maybe the tree had yet to root

itself while she – nameless, undocumented,

 

sustained by dried dulse – felt her spade

jolt from buried chunks of Conamara

granite, her family ar an bád bán

 

or an long chónra. With callus-lashed

palms, she’d have to dig them out.

The field ripples and I pick a wild orchid

 

from the tree’s base knowing full-well

it’s bad luck. April tacks for Bealtaine,

the only day a hawthorn can

 

be cut down, before the white petals

are tinged pink. Fuchsia and montbretia

lend a sweetness to the coastal breeze,

 

the morning dew lingering on the orchid –

God knows what I’ll do with it.

 

– Stephen de Búrca

First published in Threshold, 2022

 

Thank You

Then it is May.

Then we are standing in the rain —

mother & son. Our sacks of cassava tall

& heavy by the roadside.

It is the year gall midges, mealybugs & green

mites show her farm mercy. It is the year

the kids wouldn't stop

making jokes about my threadbare school

uniform. The year before, wasn’t akara & bowls

of watery akamu all we could afford for Christmas?

& wasn’t that offering, however hollowed, a miracle

performed by the cracked hands of this woman

who rose before everyone even in harmattan mornings

in our small house? Did we give praise,

& do I not give praise now to her, me wearing

the old raincoat while pellet

after pellet smacks her skin, waiting & praying

travellers from Warri or Ughelli stop

to buy our freshly peeled cassava?

 

– Othuke Umukoro

 

We Carried May

          for Ariel, resident cat of Tyrone Guthrie Centre

 

in our mouths. Nightwalks. You padding behind, belly dipping

the tips of dandelion seeds. Your slinky trot followed by a sudden

sprint-gallop. Out of nowhere, your electric whiskers bunting

 

every sprouting thing: ankles of trees, sleeping buttercups. That fawn

moth you played with, let go — watched it beat upward before you rolled

on your back, as if to say: I give you this, only this — take it. You taught me

 

to pause, listen, to bustling shafts of long grass, the bending backs

of rushes, sift of branches murmuring above us reminded me that chaos

becomes too tricksy at times. You offered me your magnetic eyes —

 

nocturnal vision, until I got my bearings with beauty I was not made

to see. You took my ink-hand blotted with limp words down

to the boathouse, where water lisped and eddied through pockets

 

of the boat slip. And as evening slapped up rain, you rowed the currach

out to the middle of the lake. We inhaled the quiet landing before

you mewed in Morse code: imagine if we could forgive ourselves everything. 

 

– Róisín Leggett Bohan

Published in Beginnings Over and Over: Four New Poets from Ireland (Dedalus Press, 2025)

 

LÁ BINN BEALTAINE

Ar an taobh seo den Bhealtaine:

I ndubhlán an rógheimhridh

Sruth ón sliabh ag tuileachtain

Gluaiseann mong mhná Mhanannáin

Níl trá gan mórshuathadh tonn

Gach macha lán de linnte

Go scairtfidh cuach os clúid na coille.

 

Ar an taobh thall den Bhealtaine:

Srutha teo ag tál gan scíos

Cranna cumhra úll fan slí

Úire ag scéith i mbarr gach luis

Teilgeann grian gheal a ga

Ceolann lon laoi lán

Milbheart fial gach bláth.

 

Ach inniu Lá Bealtaine Binn

Nach leor sin, leor sin dúinn?

 

– Alan Titley

 

Lá Bealtaine

Lá Bealtaine ab fhearr liom éag

An ghorluisne a bheith gan fuarú ar mo ghrua

An chéad drúcht gan triomú faoi mo dhá throith

Ceol na mochfhuiseoige gan críonadh ar an aer.

 

Lá Bealtaine ab fhearr liom éag

An seanfhuacht gan éitheach a bheith i mbroinn an ghormsháile fós

An duilliúr a bheith ag floscphéacadh go hóg

An samhradh a bheith ina ráithe romham go deo.

 

Faoi chéiteamhain ón ab fhearr liom éag 

Ach éag go féiltiúil, a dhuine,

Go fras agus go féiltiúil.

 

– Diarmuid Johnson

 

 

                          MAYDAY!

 Mar tá an ship ag dul fé

tá fáinne an lae ag tachtadh an tsaoil

ag imeacht le teas agus tinte agus aer

fainic fén spéir mar a gcasfar na seolta leat.

  

                                                                Éirigh suas agus

                                                                éist leis an gcoileach ag glaoch

                                                                na bláthanna ag teannadh isteach leis an bhféar

                                                                coiscéimeanna seannaigh coiscéimeanna broic

                                                                agus ná bí ag broic le do chairde.

 

Fiú nuair ab fhearr leat a bheith id mhurúch

agus titim fé thoinn i ríochtaibh ar leith

i riochtaibh ar leith is d’eireaball a iompú

leis an saol is a raibh ann de shiamsaíocht.

 

                                                                Ná luigh ar do dhroim gan féachaint

                                                                in airde ar na scamaill tamall

                                                                ná líon do scámhóga gan nóta a ligean amach

                                                                thar do bheola is do dhéad.

 

 

cruthaigh clairinéad samhraidh | séid anam i bhfáinne an lae

                          mar tá an bád ag dul fé 

 

– Gormfhlaith Ní Shíocháin Ní Bheoláin

 

Poetry Day Ireland is supported by The Arts Council Ireland, the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Iarnród Éireann, RTE Supporting The Arts and Dublin City Council.