Soul Songs

By Kieran Beville

Soul Songs...places the poet and the reader very much in the moment at this particular point in history. But Beville understands that the present, and therefore any potential future, is shaped by what went on before, and for this reason memory plays a major part in how the poet addresses the current state of affairs, both private and public.

Whether the mood is contemplative, yearning, hopeful, or humorous the poet fixes a clear eye on his subject and brings a finely honed measure to his craft. He is at home in the natural world as much as in the world of politics and social affairs. He has a keen eye for image and his ear is attuned to the rhythms of language.

These poems are lyric poetry in the true sense of the word, heartfelt emotional outpourings of the poet’s soul. I encourage all poetry lovers to take some time to savour his Soul Songs.

Brian Kirk

A prominent subject in Soul Songs is love, which Kieran Beville treats in various ways. Not all of the poems deal with love, however, and there is a touch of both the exotic and the humorous. Beville is the author of varied books of nonfiction, a novel, and another book of poetry (Fool’s Gold). Soul Songs will be a fine addition to his reputation.

Knute Skinner

• Language: English
• Publisher: Limerick Writers Centre
• Release date: Sep 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005823931

Kieran Beville

Kieran Beville is author of Write Now – A Practical Guide to Becoming a Writer (Limerick Writers' Centre, 2019). He has had a substantial number of poems and articles published in various newspapers, journals and magazines and four collections of poetry (Revival Press). His book, Pulling Back the Clouds is a short biography of Mike Kelly, collector of the die-cast model aircraft display at Shannon Airport (LWC, 2020). In 2022 Beville was appointed Ollamh (Poet Laureate) for Limerick.

Book preview

Kieran Beville’s second poetry collection Soul Songs begins with a question in the form of the poem Always? The poem itself is a series of questions which culminates with the biggest question of all: ‘What I ask, am I, to do?’ It places the poet and the reader very much in the moment at this particular point in history.

Not surprisingly the poet and the collection are very much grounded in the here and now, with poems as up-to-date as you will find anywhere, such as America, You Do Not Own the Moon, written in the wake of the killing by police in Minneapolis of George Floyd, and Angel of Death (Covid-19) written out of the recent and ongoing public health crisis which has impacted on us all. But Beville understands that the present, and therefore any potential future, is shaped by what went on before, and for this reason memory plays a major part in how the poet and the speaker in these poems addresses the current state of affairs, both private and public.

The title Soul Songs carries many connotations, black American 1960s music and the passion with which it was performed immediately springs to mind. Soul music grew out of the emotional core of the Blues and reflected the experience of hurt and love equally. These feelings are apposite here. But this is not song, this is poetry and these poems are lyric poetry in the true sense of the word, heartfelt emotional outpourings of the poet’s soul. Inevitably a lot of the poems are concerned with love and hurt, the memory of love and the hurt following the loss of love. As I read these poems I was reminded of Yeats, which is always a good thing: ‘A pity beyond all telling / Is hid in the heart of love:’ (The Pity of Love). I was also prompted to consider William Blake and his Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and how he uses the lyric form to create a panorama ‘shewing the two contrary states of the human soul’.

In Soul Songs we have poems of innocence such as the touching memory in Brothers that ends:

‘We bickered until the receding tide took our ball.

Crunching brittle leaves on the silent journey home.’

Or the bracing invigoration of a dawn climb to the summit of a mountain in Perspectives:

‘Dawn, tuning its strings

in the dim metallic light.

Heart pounding in taut skin,

drummed with bone –

rhythm of the bodhrán.’

Or, again, the promise of love in She:

‘Softly sleeping in the night, like a flower,

unfurling at first light,

lifting her head slowly towards the sun.’

Beville has obviously lived a full and interesting life and many poems here are fuelled by memory, meticulously reimagined and scrupulously wrought with a fine ear for the music of experience. Love arrives is all its beauty, reflected in the metaphor of the moon in Blushing Moon:

‘Then you came blushing into my night

and spread before me

the constellations of the sky

illuminating pathways to another destiny.

And I have come to love

the beauty that you etch in silver filigree.’

Sometimes the lyrical purity reaches its height in the shortest poems, as is the case with Glory