antipoetry

a bibliography

poetry_of_death

People breathe. Struggle. Write.
Talk. Read. Write. Publish.
Die.

While most will never even
know his name.

And will die as well.

Poetry: main collections
1966: Death of a Naturalist, Faber & Faber
1969: Door into the Dark, Faber & Faber
1972: Wintering Out, Faber & Faber
1975: Stations, Ulsterman
1975: North, Faber & Faber
1979: Field Work, Faber & Faber
1984: Station Island, Faber & Faber
1987: The Haw Lantern, Faber & Faber
1991: Seeing Things, Faber & Faber
1996: The Spirit Level, Faber & Faber
2001: Electric Light, Faber & Faber
2006: District and Circle, Faber & Faber
2010: Human Chain, Faber & Faber

Poetry: collected editions

1980: Selected Poems 1965-1975, Faber & Faber
1990: New Selected Poems 1966-1987, Faber & Faber
1998: Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996, Faber & Faber

Prose: main collections
1980: Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978, Faber & Faber
1988: The Government of the Tongue, Faber & Faber
1995: The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures, Faber & Faber
2002: Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971–2001, Faber & Faber

Plays
1990: The Cure at Troy A version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Field Day
2004: The Burial at Thebes A version of Sophocles’ Antigone, Faber & Faber

Translations
1983: Sweeney Astray: A version from the Irish, Field Day
1992: Sweeney’s Flight (with Rachel Giese, photographer), Faber & Faber
1993: The Midnight Verdict: Translations from the Irish of Brian Merriman and from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, Gallery Press
1995: Laments, a cycle of Polish Renaissance elegies by Jan Kochanowski, translated with Stanisław Barańczak, Faber & Faber
1999: Beowulf, Faber & Faber
1999: Diary of One Who Vanished, a song cycle by Leoš Janáček of poems by Ozef Kalda, Faber & Faber
2002: Hallaig, Sorley MacLean Trust
2002: Arion, a poem by Alexander Pushkin, translated from the Russian, with a note by Olga Carlisle, Arion Press
2004: The Testament of Cresseid, Enitharmon Press
2004: Columcille The Scribe, The Royal Irish Academy
2009: The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables, Faber & Faber

Limited editions and booklets (poetry and prose)
1965: Eleven Poems, Queen’s University
1968: The Island People, BBC
1968: Room to Rhyme, Arts Council N.I.
1969: A Lough Neagh Sequence, Phoenix
1970: Night Drive, Gilbertson
1970: A Boy Driving His Father to Confession, Sceptre Press
1973: Explorations, BBC
1975: Stations, Ulsterman Publications
1975: Bog Poems, Rainbow Press
1975: The Fire i’ the Flint, Oxford University Press
1976: Four Poems, Crannog Press
1977: Glanmore Sonnets, Editions Monika Beck
1977: In Their Element, Arts Council N.I.
1978: Robert Lowell: A Memorial Address and an Elegy, Faber & Faber
1978: The Makings of a Music, University of Liverpool
1978: After Summer, Gallery Press
1979: Hedge School, Janus Press
1979: Ugolino, Carpenter Press
1979: Gravities, Charlotte Press
1979: A Family Album, Byron Press
1980: Toome, National College of Art and Design
1981: Sweeney Praises the Trees, Henry Pearson
1982: A Personal Selection, Ulster Museum
1982: Poems and a Memoir, Limited Editions Club
1983: An Open Letter, Field Day
1983: Among Schoolchildren, Queen’s University
1984: Verses for a Fordham Commencement, Nadja Press
1984: Hailstones, Gallery Press
1985: From the Republic of Conscience, Amnesty International
1985: Place and Displacement, Dove Cottage
1985: Towards a Collaboration, Arts Council N.I.
1986: Clearances, Cornamona Press
1988: Readings in Contemporary Poetry, DIA Art Foundation
1988: The Sounds of Rain, Emory University
1989: An Upstairs Outlook, Linen Hall Library
1989: The Place of Writing, Emory University
1990: The Tree Clock, Linen Hall Library
1991: Squarings, Hieroglyph Editions
1992: Dylan the Durable, Bennington College
1992: The Gravel Walks, Lenoir Rhyne College
1992: The Golden Bough, Bonnefant Press
1993: Keeping Going, Bow and Arrow Press
1993: Joy or Night, University of Swansea
1994: Extending the Alphabet, Memorial University of Newfoundland
1994: Speranza in Reading, University of Tasmania
1995: Oscar Wilde Dedication, Westminster Abbey
1995: Charles Montgomery Monteith, All Souls College
1995: Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture, Gallery Press
1997: Poet to Blacksmith, Pim Witteveen
1998: Commencement Address, UNC Chapel Hill
1998: Audenesque, Maeght
1999: The Light of the Leaves, Bonnefant Press
2001: Something to Write Home About, Flying Fox
2002: Hope and History, Rhodes University
2002: Ecologues in Extremis, Royal Irish Academy
2002: A Keen for the Coins, Lenoir Rhyne College
2003: Squarings, Arion Press
2003: Singing School / Poems 1966 – 2002, Rudomino, Moscow
2004: Anything can Happen, Town House Publishers
2005: The Door Stands Open, Irish Writers Centre
2005: A Shiver, Clutag Press
2007: The Riverbank Field, Gallery Press
2008: Articulations, Royal Irish Academy
2008: One on a Side, Robert Frost Foundation
2009: Spelling It Out, Gallery Press
2010: “Writer & Righter”, Irish Human Rights Commission

 

 

21st century Poetry

Tautology

For poets make sad mechanics with their lyric lore
– Byron

tautology_lyric_poetry_byron

A rock is heavy
hard supposedly static
with jagged edges
and deaf surfaces
like a stone or a pebble
in fact they are the same thing

language is light
flimsy supposedly manifold
with soft melting angles
and loud exteriors
like a concept or a word
in fact they are the same thing

poetry is buoyant
insubstantial supposedly spontaneous
with brilliant measures
and reiterative layers
like a sadness or a depth
in fact they are the same thing

 

 

 

21st century Poetry

barely begun poem

new_poetry

I have a street and no metaphor
a layer of moonlight but
no tremulous..

This is a street and
not a metaphor
not a shivering slate of moonlight

I’ve seen my street bare without metap..

The street is cold without metaphor
drenched in the shudder of moonlight

This street is devoid of metaphor
a meaningless stretch of cold trembling
moonlight

I have a street but without metaphor
even tho I’ve left a ripple on its moonlight

A street sleeps without metaphor
moonlight awake floating away like a trembling mist

these streets are meaningless without metaphor
the light of the moon is afraid but isn’t visibly shaking

A street has no meaning and cannot be a metaphor
because it’s drowning in the yellow of its moonlight

I walk upon a street and find no metaphor
half of its moonlight has been wasted on rats

This street has an absence of metaphor
because moonlight is nothing but the light of the moon

Upon a street I walk without a metaphor
all the while thinking that the moonlight
is the simile of a smile

The street is empty; empty of metaphor
only a light is seen and it’s not from the moon

A street is a place where nobody cares for metaphors
and the moonlight is a spot you leap over

Somehow this street lost its metaphor
but I found the moonlight tattooed on my skin

A street is no metaphor
and a poem is not moonlight

 

 

21st century Poetry

a thing imagined

new_poetry_2013

Preferably soft,
jelly-like
but resilient to heat
and the precarious nuisances of the jungle
tender but defiant
able to camouflage among
stones and clouds alike
its softness must be delicate
but decisive not necessarily static
as it can be allowed rigidity at times
equivalent to that of taut velvet
not too colorful nor flaunting
the impenetrability of black or white
capable of evaporating without dispersing
(i.e. losing its cohesion without sacrificing its wholeness)
different from the rest of its kind
without becoming an example of freak
it should waver at twilight at the risk
of turning ambiguous but never incomprehensible
its upper part magnificent
and evasive like the current of time in a dream
its lower part glorious and ubiquitous
like dawn in a desert’s sky
preferably sophisticated without being pompous
straightforward without being wholly divested of enigma
and existing mainly between
the eternal and the transient.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

Thanatos

thanatos_poem

House, an ambulance of thorns and the chairs. The dust
a coat of ghost upon furniture, reality – the hairs
in my nostrils a trembling unto death. Laughter,
a www or another milieu ripe with decadence
and the ballet of bullets in a new nation – forever?
The moon has grown without tasting an apple and
it explodes, one day, without leaving enlightenment
arrrrrrgh. or ash
in elevator low the masterpiece of low sound
the foreseen doom of leaving veins into
narrow corridors warehouse of worms wonder
the same bullshit because they die
and become little food
for grass/trees and
there goes the waiter with a white shirt
always a man with a face and a pack
of cigarettes and always Schopenhauer
in theater thinking of Thanatos et triviality
aid to disease and milestone quintessential
orb of alleviation, my dear anxiety
where like an angel will I see the light
and fly away morose like
some morsel masticated selflessly
because this house is curtain
and the blood is shiny
like mirror a sound
tired from abyss
in my hand
and tiny
thing
or
soul.

Contemporary Poetry

almost

concept

I’m tired of the world
Listening almost analytical,
Blinking and blinking,
Yawning.

And telling stories.

I want to turn off the world,
like a light bulb.

I want darkness to be orthodox.
Like a blanket I
fold into heretic squares of vision.

I’m tired and about
to doubt.

And the sun
Is a big smile
I cannot fuck

I want to smile.

But the dumb
lung is coughing
the truth
away in dirty
streams of saliva.

Fences were beautiful
concepts of once.

Only one time.

To be, shortly.

I almost cried.

Contemporary Poetry

load of la

random

he knife of shy
it tries to cut
through smoke
and so many
whole bars
are full of assholes.

I have smiled waiting
for a drink

Feeling puke inside.

The world seems drunk
at this single cell.

so fine and pregnant
an Old English
a loaf of fool.

Nobody ever
came here.

To notice
the good
I burnt.

AntiPoetry

adagio in thirst

hungry_animal

At the piano
I sat and it went
tiriti gruween
brung.

Got up
like a maniac,
picked up
Vallejo

his stubborn
ache voluptuously
around his human fingers

I dropped the book,
the invisible rain
outside was falling
like stones

and I could have
slammed down a
shot of whiskey

but bottle was empty

scratching the olive
skin into red patches
of hurt

and decided everything
was a circumnavigation
‘round nothing

that I had to kick
language out my house
like a dirty old dog

these things like winds are words

and I wanted hard life
tonight, like fury
dripping from my cheeks

and it was raining
ridiculous worms
writhing in eight ecstasies

it was the night

to leave in flight
like a rapacious animal
to dark and faithless
jungles

at the very least,

a night
without ideas

and again to the piano,
I sat and made clouds of sound,

dirilin dorem, silafu.

 

AntiPoetry

outta here

beyond_language_poem

Let’s be tired of words.
Of how we started endless
galaxies from an eye that is smaller
than the grain of infinity.
Of sadness that is a mess
nailed to the CORNER of
LIFe.
Let’s be weary
of how eyes open
and close into new
continents of light
and junk like hung
in memory’s mausoleum.
Let’s put a Beard on Happiness
and let it sail without rum
into the range
of yellow.
L’et s be tired of language,
‘tis
but a mayor reason
to abandon reason,
look how wide
the measurements of our bodies
have curled like hair around
the concept of love.
Let’s be grotesque
born figments fancying
fragments of fire
making fury like florid
petals atop the function
of the facts.
Let’s sing silences.
In vaults of fine emptiness.
Let’s abandon
the distance that is mirrored
in the instance,
faintly so feebly fleeting
into utterance.
Let’s be flying error
that spat onto text
like orgasm.

AntiPoetry