Rescued poems

We had a fantastic launch on Friday 8 November 2024 of my poetry collection, ‘Grace Notes’, published by Salmon Poetry, at The Allingham Festival in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal. I was so moved at the number of people who made an effort to be there: my sister Susan Coakley and her husband Daragh, my brother Tony and his wife Marie, and my brother James flew over from England as a surprise, as well as several close friends. And of course my dearest Robert Rath.


Local writer Win McNulty and I decided we would structure the launch as an interview/conversation. Win drew out of me many key points about the collection and its structure, how I came to focus on Gráinne Mhaol and voices/voicings as themes, my ideas about writing with and through constraints, and my rescued poetry process. It was a great conversation, and I’m very grateful to Win for all her background work and her intelligent, thoughtful and considered questions. We’re hoping to post video highlights publicly soon, so I’ll keep you updated.

I'm very grateful to The Allingham Festival committee for including me on the festival programme and for providing a beautiful space. I feel very privileged that my book launched on the 200th anniversary of the birth of William Allingham.


I'm particularly indebted to Tony and Marie Liston for arranging the amazing wine and canapés reception, and for looking after all the logistics associated with the event.

And of course my deepest gratitude goes to Jessie Lendennie and Siobhan Hutson Jeanotte of Salmon Poetry for publishing my work in such a beautiful form. The book itself is a work of art.



Christmas is coming, dear readers, so you might like to buy a few books as gifts for the bookworms and poetry lovers in your life! Order the book directly from the Salmon Poetry website. They ship worldwide!

Posted by Jennifer Liston

It's finally here!

Ennistymon-based Salmon Poetry has published my poetry collection, Grace Notes. It will be launched at the Allingham Festival in Ballyshannon on Friday 8 November. I'm really looking forward to launching this baby into the world. It's been a long time in the making.

Grace Notes is a collection of poems that express fragments of the life of Grace O’Malley/Gráinne Mhaol. The Gráinne compositions place Gráinne at different points in her life and also situate her in a mediaeval past and a borrowed future via her dreams, or aislings. Interspersed with these compositions are ‘rescued’ poems. (I've posted many examples and written quite a bit on this site about my 'rescued poetry' process. You could also check out my rescued poetry website.) I chose 17 texts connected to Gráinne – a selection of factual or fictional biographies of her and a small number of contemporary historical texts – from which I rescued 50 poems.

Isn't the cover gorgeous? Salmon Poetry's Siobhán Hutson Jeanotte designed it. I requested that it wouldn't feature the usual pirate queen image bandied around whenever Grace O'Malley is illustrated, and Siobhán did a wonderful job with an abstract image that suggests movement and sea and waves without hitting us over the head with them.

You can buy the book directly from the Salmon Poetry website. They ship worldwide!

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Today is the last day in the NaPoWriMo-write-and-post-a-poem-every-day project. Thank you for reading them and for your kind remarks and feedback.

Although it'll be nice to claw back a few hours in my day, I will miss the daily discipline of the rescue process and the strange little poems that result.

The 30 April rescuees are quite interesting and mostly 'dark'. Their 'narrative-heavy' nature is not surprising to me at all; the very act of being presented with a bundle of disordered words seems to demand that I construct a story with them.

Today, for the final rescue (for now), I decided to load up the constraint with yet another: write a haiku (three-line poem with five, seven and five syllables in each line respectively). This was somewhat inspired by my poet friend Mike's use of haikus to finish up his poem-stories (they're great; you can read them over here).

Today's cryptic rescuee squeezed out from pages 179 and 104 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.

the words of a last toast insist that large fortune is laughter, love and nice wine

raise thy glass to life
death the cat and mouse farewell
my red shoe kicks straight

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Today's rescued poem was another challenging one – plenty of nouns and verbs but not really useful combinations of tenses, hence the 'clunky' feel of the flow. I know the format of 'husband-to-be' is not really correct, but I've allowed it anyway.

This rescuee slunk from pages 103 and 25 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.

You shall never be alone, he said

She smoked a wistful cigarette,
her head bent,
her breath light and rapid:
a crumpled creature.

He had walked with her
laughed with her
had pulled her to him
his dear lips had kissed her
had asked her to marry him –
her very own wish.
Nerves had gripped her
on the ivory morning
of her wedding day.

This blue evening,
she is watching out
for the husband to be
who never turned up.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I wasn't sure what kind of poem I was going to rescue from today's jumble of words: both pages of text were short so the vocabulary pot wasn't very big. And of course there were the usual pronoun/verb/tense challenges that I've come to know, expect and even love!

So this demure little rescuee slipped from pages 279 and 43 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.

In the arms of an instrument

Now she is at rest,
her coffin shut solemnly
like her old violin-case,
hidden by flowers
as magnificent as the variations
she could play;
she was the violin
holding the key of the strings
holding the key to locked doors
that opened as you listened,
beckoned you in
and lifted you up to die in this
single
treasured
moment.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I found today's poem difficult to rescue; I think that knowing I'm close to the end of the poem-a-day project may have quite a bit to do with it. (There are only three left to rescue after today's!)

The nouns weren't very interesting (yet I used almost all of them, except for a few abstract ones); the pronoun–verb combination didn't work the way I would've liked; and there weren't many useful conjunctions (I really needed 'until' but it wasn't there).

All of this is so obvious to me when I re-read the poem, but it's a curious one all the same.

This one shuffled from pages 210 and 49 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.

Sometimes life is dreaming an idea

It was morning when she broke through her chrysalis-shell.
She looked about her, surveying the garden.
She mused, but then leaped from the rose,
willing herself at one
with day, with earth, with fate.
A bird with blue feathers called her vulgar
but she shook her gentle head
and grasped the flame of her belief to herself.
Sometimes despair surrounded her
but then she would remember
to be kind to herself.
At noon she found her talents:
making verses from an idea
making names for nameless things
making a voice for someone;
this was her life from that hour
to the next,
making,
making,
making.
Then she struck the dead end of evening.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I found it a bit challenging to wrangle today's rescued poem out of the jumbled-word mess. None of the words particularly inspired me, there was no 'you', 'we', or 'they', and there was a distinct lack of useful prepositions.

For some reason I seem to have maintained the sing-song rhythm of the last couple of days.

Just a reminder that these poems are not really edited much at all, and if I were to edit them, I'd have to make sure I replaced words with other words from the two pages of text so that the rescue process isn't compromised.

This little rescuee jingled its way out of pages 52 and 108 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.

When a word is a bullet

Her pillow sobbed with grief at night
her bed lay hard and bitter
her wound could not be bound or dressed
her sunken heart had languished.

Every word of his were flowers,
his lips were lines of sunshine.
When he called her, she would smile,
gladdened; dancing; trembling.

Futile, now, to speak about
the sun, the apple-blossoms;
he had whispered to her: l o v e.
Then he had laughed, and left her.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Today's little rescuee is quite extraordinary.

Not for the quality of the poem itself, but for its content and focus.

Robert and I had what you might call quite a vigorous conversation earlier in the evening about the Catholic church (within which I was raised) and my anger at, and feeling of betrayal by, this institution which has shown itself to fail so terribly in living up to its own teachings and in caring for its congregations.

The bundle of jumbled vocabulary available to me today happened to contain some key words relevant to the topic and voilà! a rescued poem mysteriously relevant to my present state of mind.

This poem incanted its way from pages 167 and 26 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.

I remember a caring Lord

I wake and pray to a doubtful God
How bitterly I talk that lovely language:
Say His name devoutly! Be afraid!
I have held him tightly to my heart.
Now my eyes are full with tears of poison.

He was all to me; He was my all:
My soul a golden morning in His prayer;
His voice a turquoise evening in my home;
A time when love would keep and would not leave.
Now my eyes are full with tears of poison.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

When I started to write today's poem I didn't hold out much hope for it at all, which makes the result all the more surprising. Useful pronouns were fairly limited; there was no 'you' or 'your', no 'we', no 'them'. But again, I never know what to expect from the rescue process, and even with all these constraints and challenges, salvage was possible!

As I've said before, I stay true to the words and forms that are in the source text, which is why the poem includes an American spelling of the word 'favourite'.

This little rescuee played out from pages 99 and 147 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.

Cello

The tones of her voice were golden with yes
but the glow in her eyes was my favorite;
her hand was a rudder, drawing her to me;
her fingers were rippling cloud.

She played me, boy, red-gold and easy,
she played me, as pure and as fair
as a sheet in the wind
as a thought in the mind,
she played me, boy, red-gold and easy.

She clasped me to her, lightly and eager.
I felt her young solemn shiver.
Her heart dipped into me, over and through me
I purred in the black-gloved silence.

She played me, boy, red-gold and easy,
she played me, as pure and as fair
as a sheet in the wind
as a thought in the mind,
she played me, boy, red-gold and easy.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Today's poem is quite surreal. Finding verb/tense combinations that would work was challenging; for example, there was no 'am', 'are', 'they', 'there', or 'will'.

This rescuee materialised from pages 97 and 89 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.

end note

At night you always dream the same dream:
you write in your overheated notebook
work on your overlighted masterpiece
drink scarlet wine from the broken inkstand
breathe the evening air strange with music
swing in the ballroom with the dancing piano
meet a violet-haired woman
who smiles at you, growls at you, and forgets you
all in one day.
You eat, you live, you walk, you think,
month after month,
year after year.
At last you put away the pen
that sang your round, fat, end note.
Here is your landing-place.
This is the view from your mansion, your summit.
And it is enough.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I have nothing to say about today's rescued poem except that it caught me completely by (tearful) surprise.

It appeared from pages 164 and 111 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.

They called her 'the girl with the hair'

I find my mother in the blue-edged garden
at the front of the white house of my childhood,
oh so innocent!
She speaks: I remember my children, you know.
I remember you, my own one.
I remember your father.
I ask her how she is.
I ask her where she is.
I ask her to forgive me.
I fear she will leave too soon.
Surely she had more life to live?
I know then that this is the past:
that those flowery pathways to her are broken for ever;
that I can unbandage any wound but it will end up withered;
that an angelic death-bed does not care
about her, about me, about anybody;
that my dreams are a sinister prison.
I run after her, but already she is shadowy, dying.
Then I wake with the bitterest tears and a sorrow-touched heart.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Today's rescued poem turned out to be an age-old story waiting to be told – although it wasn't without its vocabulary challenges. In particular, there was no 'him', hence some unwieldy construction/repetition, but that's how it goes.

And a reminder: none of these daily poems are heavily edited. To do so would require spending a lot more time to rework while staying true to the rules of using only what words are available in the jumble from the source texts.

This one ascended from pages 100 and 168 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.


Lure of the lakes

My friend the pale octopus
dreamed me up from the abyss.

He read me a story
from the Book of Desolation
of a passionate knight from long ago
who had the eyes of a scorpion
and the heart of a lover;
who had sat by those lakes for years
watching, watching,
staring, staring.

The depths whispered to the knight
with their shadowy voice.
They took his blood and breath
for their own.
He drowned
but his soul bloomed in gladness at their gates.
The lakes filled up his spirit
and then he saw what had never been seen.

He had given them his soul.

My friend the pale octopus
rubbed his old eyes,
rubbed my old cheeks.

When I had sunk back to the depths
I gazed up in reawakened desolation:
That man was me.

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Trigger warning: personal/domestic violence

Today's rescued poem was difficult to pin down and it ended up going to a difficult place – hence the trigger warning. I have never been in this situation myself, but the poem wanted to go there anyway.

This poem called out from pages 42 and 85 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.


the blight of yet another moment

with a child’s heart
and the hands of a mother
I face danger
singing aloud
like a poet adored
yet voiceless
my blood is a spoonful of soup
for your luncheon
eat, my love
eat my love, love
why don’t you
you are hungry again
so now you are beckoning me
now you are hammering your clenched fists
like a jealous boy
I have feared you for years
hammering your clenched fists
day in day out
hammering your clenched fists
to my head, my throat
singing aloud
I face you
the swinging danger
voiceless

Posted by Jennifer Liston

I had quite a bit of trouble with today's poem: the tenses of some verbs didn't suit, there was no 'is' or 'am', and the nouns and adjectives were rather pedestrian.

The resulting rescuee is somewhat surreal and has the hallmark darkness of most of my rescued poems – so different from the musicality and flow of yesterday's 'Bravura'.

This rescued poem floated from pages 295 and 14 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.


how inevitable, the silent despairing

she murmured her tone-poem under her breath
no sound but the not so merry-go-round

her days swung by in a confused dream
his afternoon hand on her tender head startled her

she said: tell me, was there a promising us?
she touched his heart, but it would not remember

she spoke his name, but it would not answer
she drowned in a troubled stream of music

Posted by Jennifer Liston

Today's little rescuee seemed to be ready and willing to perform for me. I thought I was in trouble when I realised the words 'play', 'played', 'his' or 'their' weren't available, but 'playing' was there so that had to do.

I didn’t even consider the title until the end; the word ‘bravura’ played (pardon the pun) beautifully into the little story I had told.

This poem sang its way out of pages 285 and 67 of The Devourers and Marie Tarnowska respectively, both by Annie Vivanti Chartres.


Bravura

Father’s fingers own the audience:
bow on strings like spine of wing in flight,
like fireworks that break through the deep-blue night;
in the dream-light, spirit shivers, drunk
on difficult but clear and fragrant notes;
no penumbra in the sky, now, even
stars are watching, fixedly, playing through
the heart and hands of this one, gentle man.

Posted by Jennifer Liston