Poetry Wales

Siobhán's poem 'Rump' in Poetry Wales 59.3 Spring 2024. Extract below:

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'Inside were the bodies hung by the legs.

Sinew, hoof, remnants of soft tissue.

Swayed curtain of blue veins and fat strips,

the meat carriers part it with poised blades – ...'

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Poetry Ireland Review

Siobhan's poem, 'I've lived too near the wood to be afraid of owls'  is just out in Poetry Ireland Review, 142, edited by Mary O'Donnell

pic of cover attached

here's a quote if room     - retain the three line shape if you would

'Moths gather, bats awake, the night bees hum.

A haw frost falls until night’s coldest hours

when even the optimistic want to sleep....'

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Crannog

Featured poem in Crannog is inspired by Siobhan's time staying at the bottom of Emily Dickinson’s garden while researching the family’s Irish maids in Amherst library.

Nature is a Haunted House

 

Out on High Street, Amherst, there’s an inkling.

An insect-hung breath moves among stones, seeps

into soils, trips along rafters where bats are hiding.

On the space between tree trunks, winter’s debris,

the cold that burns has cracked the earth open.

Yet, just above, at tips of branches, is a greening.   

Mid-April, not yet Spring in western Massachusetts.

But in that breathing is the intimation, is the wait

and the arrival. The riddle she set is met.

 

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Today, humidity makes a frizz fest of my hair,

I will go to CVS for beeswax smoother.

Walking up High Street, sudden cherry blossom – 

when did this happen? And there, buttercups and

geranium about to bloom with reddening flowers.

All this as I pass your house, the Homestead. 

E.D. (if I may), I fancy you are at an upper window

looking out past the valley to the Berkshire hills, 

not thinking of this Easter day, but seeing the

colouring all the same, a rainbow flag on the First 

Congregational Church across the road.

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New Hibernia Review 

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Blush
Here is a rose to shatter roses
stiff in the frozen dawn of flowers.
Pinked like no pink of fleshed creatures,
this rose undoes even as it charms.

This bud forgot about winter,
felt the fey sun suck on its cells.
Turned in the yearn of the unwilling,
petals edged from unlapped folds.

Found itself out upward and amazed.
Pushed as though it were not pulled.
Pattern halts and day shortens
tightening in that bed of calls—

stalls the blush china rose
leaves an imprint crisp and thinning.
What is hawed beyond this rose—
What is winning?

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Distant Summers

Distant Summers: Remembering Philip Casey, Writer, Fabulist, Friend

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Launch of new anthology, "Distant Summers", edited by Katie Donovan, Eamonn Wall & Michael Considine, in Hodges Figgis, Dublin, includes Siobhan's poem for Philip, 'Grape picking' which she read at the launch reading in Gorey.

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Distant Summers: Remembering Philip Casey, Writer, Fabulist, Friend is a kaleidoscopic cornucopia of prose and poetry from writers, friends, and family members. A tribute to one of Ireland's great literary talents, the anthology also includes a detailed bibliography of his published work and unpublished prose. (Books Ireland)  includes work by Colm Toibin; Sebastian Barry; Eilean Ni  Chuilleanain; Paula Meehan; Katie Donovan; Eamonn Wall; Moya Cannon; Sujata Bhatt; Nessa O'Mahony; Siobhan Campbell

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Zocalo Public Square

Contagion

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When the arena of war shifted to the planet,
when we listened for the scrape of pangolin nails,
the black beat of rhinos, the crex of corncrakes
who would not lay again, I knew the ways
to become a warrior. Taking to social media
I made several different accounts
and watched the likes multiply as cells.
I charged my devices at a public port
though car drivers got angry while waiting.
I slapped Styrofoam cups out of the hands
of strangers. They could thank me later.

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But all the while, there was an undertow of sadness
as if the worst had already happened and
we lived in another dimension, a matrix if you will,
the simulations so good we think they’re real.
Is that the creak-clack of a beaver dam, you ask,
how high the note of a blue jay’s song? What whimsy
envelops the wild cow on a moonlit night
to dream into time before? She should not
be there, wild in a docile herd. Yet she hears
the scuttle of information running faster than
the stream, filling up space with its dark matter.
The world used to speak with several different voices.
This one hums. Sourcing/re-sourcing, who knows?

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Cyphers

'Discord' and 'The Unattended' features in Cyphers 89 June 2020. ‘The Unattended’ has been interpreted since by some readers as a post-Covid poem.

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Quill and Parchment

Celebrating National Poetry Month,  April 'Poets on Poets' issue (volume 226) of Quill and Parchment  Review of Heat Signature by Neil Leadbeater (April 2020)

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Smart Devices

 'Origin of the Mimeo' from Heat Signature Seren Books appears in Smart Devices: 52 Poems from The Guardian 'Poem of the Week' April 2020