The Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction Competitions are open for entries until 16 September. Updated information and Festival schedules are posted at www.allinghamfestival.com.
Author: Editor Corncrake Magazine
Fermanagh Writers Meeting in Person Again
We meet most weeks in Blakes of the Hollow, Enniskillen, (alternating afternoon and evening) and monthly via Zoom.
Meetings for July:
12th – online via Zoom, 2.30pm
(email fermanaghwriters@aol.com for login details)
19th – in Blakes, 2.30pm
26th – in Blakes, 7.30pm
Prospective new members are always welcome.
Monument to Home
We return home-home for the day,
to pay our respects to another one gone.
On the way down from the funeral,
we pass each other, stop, turn, stare,
recognise childhood friends by their eyes. Continue reading “Monument to Home”
The Spring Issue of Corncrake is now Live!
My thanks to everyone who made it possible
The Spirit of the Place
For the ancient pagans, they say, every sacred place was haunted by a familiar spirit – the genius loci – something less than a god but equally uncanny: some dryad, naiad, elf or goblin. Dinnseanachas or placelore was one of the earliest forms of Irish vernacular writing. Every hill, river and road, sacred or not, once had its story. They still do. So this issue of Corncrake is all about Place, or rather particular places, and what they mean to people. Continue reading “The Spirit of the Place”
A Townland Journey – Derrylea
Landscape – Memory – History
Becomes a landscape heard and felt and seen
Sunshine and shade one harmonizing green
John Clare
The legend of the land endures, in men and clay,
In heart and marrowbone, in acre, perch and rood,
Offering and accepting always
A passion never spent,
A song of sacrifice, the hot testament
Of blood.
Brendan Kennelly Continue reading “A Townland Journey – Derrylea”
Under the Burren Forest
High in the cool breeze
under the Burren Forest
I lie, waiting
as millennia pass Continue reading “Under the Burren Forest”
Autumn by the Roe
The leaves are glowing, yellow, red and gold.
The river’s laughing through the narrows
Where the rocks are frilled with white.
My path is splashed by giggling waves
Of tea-brown water dashing down the glen. Continue reading “Autumn by the Roe”
Haibun (winter)
The shivering of a frosted lake as nesting swans trouble its unfamiliar surface, their beaks long, orange beacons in forensic sunlight. Continue reading “Haibun (winter)”
China Girl Sleeping
Dragged down by the weight of the world on her shoulders
She climbed onto the dragon’s back and saddled herself
Behind the mighty, ferocious head of the rumbling beast
She curled herself cat-like, eyes closed, ready to leave Continue reading “China Girl Sleeping”