Master Film

Solmaz Sharif

my mother around that blue porcelain,

my mother nannying around the boxed grits and just-add-water pantry

of the third richest family in Alabama,

my mother at school on Presbyterian dime and me

on my great grandmother’s lap singing

her home, my mother mostly gone

and elsewhere and wondering

about my dad, my baba, driving a cab

in Poughkeepsie, lifting lumber in Rochester, 30 something

and pages of albums killed,

entire rows of classrooms

disappeared, my baba downing Bud Light by the Hudson

and listening to Fast Car, my baba on VHS

interviewed by a friend in New York, his hair

black as mine is now, I’m four and in Alabama, I see him

between odd jobs in different states

and on the video our friend shows baba a picture

of me and asks how do you feel when you see Solmaz?

and baba saying turn the camera off then

turn off the camera and then

can you please look away I don’t want you to see my baba cry

Poetry Ireland Review Issue 121:

Edited by Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland's first issue as editor of Poetry Ireland Review aims to encourage a conversation about poetry which is 'noisy and fractious certainly ... but a conversation nevertheless that can be thrilling in its reach and commitment'. There are new poems from Thomas McCarthy, Jean Bleakney, Wendy Holborow, Paul Perry, Aifric Mac Aodha, and many others, while the issue also includes work from Brigit Pegeen Kelly, with an accompanying essay on the poet by Eavan Boland. Eavan Boland also offers an introduction to the work of poet Solmaz Sharif, while there are reviews of the latest books from Simon Armitage, Peter Sirr, Lo Kwa Mei-en, and Vona Groarke, among others. PIR 121 also includes Theo Dorgan's elegiac tribute to his friend John Montague – a canonical poet, in contrast to the emerging poets Susannah Dickey, Conor Cleary and Majella Kelly, who contribute new work and will also read for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series as part of ILFD 2017.