Author: Editor Corncrake Magazine
What Yet May Be
When Michael Faraday was demonstrating the newly-discovered effects of electromagnetic induction, one of his audience voiced his concerns. This business of magnets and copper wire was interesting, certainly, but what possible practical use could it have?
‘Sir,’ Faraday replied, ‘of what use is a new-born baby?’ Continue reading “What Yet May Be”
Darkness considered
Just before spring we must learn to love
the palpable dark, where blue lacy shadows
unfurl extravagantly in hoarfrosted ditches
until there’s only the path shining home.
All My Friends Are Dead
Linda went missing after she moved in with Patrick. Continue reading “All My Friends Are Dead”
Aftermath
They are here
Still.
They have no choice.
Was there a prayer
Unspoken or unheard?
A voice in fear or anger, or despair?
For still you find
The silence is not dead
The wind is not the wind.
Continue reading “Aftermath”
Tribes and Tribulations
This week I visited Helen Merrigan Colfer’s Tribes and Tribulations exhibition at the Strule Arts Centre in Omagh, and I was wowed by it.
Helen’s sculptures explore the emotions and stresses modern life generates, using a combination of realistic detail and clever symbolism.
The Empty Cradle
The restless image comes to my unquiet mind:
A child’s cradle, the old-fashioned wooden type
Hand-joined in some grandfather’s tool-shed;
Under Tattenweir Bridge
I cast my fly under Tattenweir Bridge
and as it floats back to me,
overhead, I hear a forty tonner roar
carting packed pallets of “best before”
to vast warehouses of plenty Continue reading “Under Tattenweir Bridge”
Wedding Present
I felt my tooth chip. Another piece of porcelain
breaks loose as the dinner plate bounces on the bottom of
the fake jawbox. This single remaining plate, a history
of chips hidden underneath its rim, splattered with
cropped leeks and spotted with burst barley from a
broth. Thirteen moves, two jaw-boxes, twelve
dishwashers and three children, the azure blue
forget-me-not and cherry red honeysuckle now faded
into a late winter. Continue reading “Wedding Present”
Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience
The Carlisle Memorial Church, Belfast, is an overlooked victim of the conflict here in the North, situated as it is in an ‘interface’ area where the strident voices of the Catholic Church and the Presbyterian Chapel drowned out the often gentler tones of Wesleyan Methodism. Closed in 1982, it fell into disrepair, so much so there was talk of it being replaced by social housing. Continue reading “Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience”