Poems 1980-2015

By Michael O'Loughlin

Michael O'Loughlin has earned an enduring reputation as one of Ireland's most important poets and writers. Poems 1980–2015 brings together and celebrates a poetic career spanning nearly four decades and includes new, previously unpublished poems. Exploring major themes such as identity, language, exile and return, O'Loughlin's work has an exceptionally strong international outlook and a fierce dedication to social and historical justice.
From the youthful poetry of his early Raven Arts collections which ushered in a new urban aesthetic in Irish poetry, to the poetic explorations of European history and identity, and the mature reflections of a masterful poet, this volume finally reveals the true extent of his unique and superbly crafted oeuvre, the work of one of the most original and vital voices in contemporary poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Island
• Release date: Feb 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781848405448

Book preview

Copertina

Michael O’Loughlin was born in Dublin in 1958 and studied at Trinity College Dublin. He has published five collections of poetry, including Another Nation: New and Selected Poems (1996) and In This Life (2011). He has published numerous translations, critical essays and reviews, as well as writing screenplays and journalism. His poems have been widely anthologised and translated.

He has been Writer in Residence in Galway City and County, and Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. From 1980 to 2002 he lived in Barcelona and Amsterdam, and now lives in Dublin with his wife, the singer and writer Judith Mok. He is a member of Aosdána, the affiliation of artists in Ireland.

Praise for Michael O’Loughlin

‘O’Loughlin’s work is the real deal, somehow coming honestly out of and transcending its context, to straddle the line between clear-eyed honest utterance and starry-eyed word lust. What O’Loughlin publishes is slow poetry and it’s worth the wait to be privy to such stilly depths. In This Life is wonderful.’

Ailbhe Darcy

‘In This Life, therefore, is a string of jewels, dropped somewhere between Killiney and Foley Street by our wanderer in far-away lands. Carrying precious stones back from the desert, O’Loughlin reminds us yet again, that exile like death will always be part of the human condition. We are enriched for having these witness documents of his sea-faring and night-flying.’

Thomas McCarthy

‘Here, O’Loughlin reveals a tenderness that tempers his engagement with history at the same as it enhances his portrayals of the mundane.’

Philip Coleman

Poems

1980-2015

Poems

1980-2015

Michael O’Loughlin

Poems 1980-2015

First published in 2017 by

New Island Books

16 Priory Hall Office Park

Stillorgan

County Dublin

Republic of Ireland

www.newisland.ie

Copyright © Michael O’Loughlin, 2017

The Author asserts his moral rights in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000.

Print ISBN: 978-1-84840-543-1

Epub ISBN: 978-1-84840-544-8

Mobi ISBN: 978-1-84840-545-5

All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

British Library Cataloguing Data.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

New Island received financial assistance from The Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon), 70 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, Ireland.

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Contents

From Stalingrad: The Street Dictionary (1980)

The City

The Irish Lesson

The Hungry Grass

Instamatic Deaths

Medium

Cuchulainn

Mandelstam

The Journey

Yellow

Babel

Copenhagen Dreaming Of Leningrad

From Atlantic Blues (1982)

The Front Line

From Limerick, 1919

Venus In Concrete

Hamlet In Dublin

Boxer

End Of An Affaire

The Fugitive

Two Women

After A War

Tibidabo

From The Diary Of A Silence (1985)

An Irish Requiem

The Shards

From A Café

Posthumous

The Diary Of A Silence

Two Poems For Paddy Graham

The Smile

Three Fragments On The Theme Of Moving Around In Cities

One version of a myth

The East Wind

Intensity, Exaltation

Elegy For The Unknown Soldier

The Black Piano

Valparaiso

Anne Frank

Exiles

On Hearing Michael Hartnett Read His Poetry In Irish

Latin As A Foreign Language

The Real Thing

Glasnevin Cemetery

From Another Nation: New and Selected Poems (1996)

Cigarette Elegy

The Song Of The Earth: Epitaph For A Dubliner Of The Fifties

Night In The Suburbs Of Dublin

A Protestant Graveyard In County Monaghan

At The Grave Of Father Hopkins

Words On An Ancient Tomb

Glasnevin Cemetery Revisited

Afterimages

Death Of A Poet

Snapshots From Jewish Amsterdam

Dublin 1982

Dublin 1987/The Salmon

A Love Song In Ireland, 1988

Dublin 1990/Emigration

Ut Pictura Poesis

The Words

An Emigrant Ballad

Wolfe Tone

Displacements

Umlaut

The Irony Of America

To A Child In The Womb

Birth Certificate: Amsterdam, 22 June 1988

Iceland

From In This Life (2011)

Elegy For A Basset Hound

England, Our England

Talith

In This Life

Messiah Of Manhattan

The Cormorant

The Moscow Suburb

Eight Poems by Mikelis Norgelis

A Latvian Emigrant Bids Farewell To His Beloved In Riga

A Latvian Poet Writes An Ode To Capitalism

A Latvian Poet Does The Joycean Piligrimage

A Latvian Poet Encounters Róisín Dubh

A Latvian Poet Reads Yeats’ A Vision In The Oliver St John Gogarty

A Latvian Poet Spends Xmas In Foley Street

A Latvian Poet Listens To Irish Songs

A Latvian Poet Climbs Killiney Hill

The Widows’ Prayers

A Stone For Queen Maeve’s Tomb

The Muse

The New Cemetery

Parnell Street

New Poems

The Traveller Girls At The Siberian Ballet

Dublin 1812

Psychopomp

The Black Heralds

The Literary Life

The Getaway

Conleth O’Connor (1947-1993)

A Hospital In Amsterdam

Acknowledgements

For Judith and Saar

From

Stalingrad: The Street Dictionary

(1980)

‘Every tradition forbids the asking of certain

questions about what has really happened to you.’

John Berger

The City

after Cavafy

You say you will leave this place

And take yourself off to God-knows-where

A Galway cottage, a village in Greece

– Anywhere but here:

Paris, Alexandria, Finglas,

The grey eroding suburb

Where you squandered the coin of your youth.

You wander down to the carriageway

And watch the lorries speeding by.

Swooning in their slipstreams

You raise your eyes in a tropical dream

To the aeroplanes overhead.

But too late you realize

That you shall never leave here!

This, or next, or any other year.

You shall pass your life, grow old

In the same suburban lounge bars

Draining the dregs of local beers

Fingering a coin in your otherwise empty pockets.

And no matter how you toss it

It always turns up the same:

The plastic sun of Finglas

Squatting on every horizon.

The squandered coin of your youth!

The slot machines you fed have rung up blanks

Not just here, but everywhere.

The Irish Lesson

I thank the goodness and the grace