Effekte der Kunst
(wäre eine
moegliche Überschrift)
(2003)
Beruhigende Zufriedenheit in mir
Mensch, sie hält mich fern von dir
keine Sorge, mir geht es gut,
auch ohne dich, bekomme eine Wut.
Verstanden wie das Wasser vom Meer,
fühl ich mich, weil ich die Kunst so verehr.
Wer schon übergeht voller Neid,
ist Materialist, für ihn vergeht die Zeit,
diese Person kann Kunst nie geniessn,
nie wie Eis in Hitze zerfliessn.
Ingrid Bergmaennlein @ Cafe Yesterday
email: ingrid_bergmaennlein_@hotmail.com
Between the Lines festival
2004
special thanks to festival organiser Deirdre Molloy (left in the picture) for helping us out
with
poems and references.
TO A PARTING OF PARALLEL STREAMS
Kevin McGimpsey
For Mairtín Crawford
In a land locked submarine they laid her out
to displace dark waters and sink on you
When Kingfishers ablaze buzzed the towpath
sounding our depths around her grave
One hundred segmented legs in tumult
scampering across a tarmacked desert
You, crouching thrilled by the furrowed tyre
to absorb this midget view of Brobdingnag
Shreds of strawberry in splintered ice
tequila song fire, second bottle of Chablis
We were Byron and Shelley in a storm
overlooking the philistine, drum beaten host
My house was yours, yet your feet never came
fixed on bar room tiles worn to your tread
And there you still jig your sure-footed slide
to the Belfast Maenad awhirl in her spin
Gentle friend, I mourn the brother of my heart
reading his poem under a parasol of leaves
Fragile words in vigorous, passionate hue
that ended too soon, in the full torrent of life
Á Mhairtín mo chara, a dhearthairín,
ní bheidh bua ag an bhás.
White
by Mairtin Crawford
The idea of glass upon glass, unseeable
and silence repeated, unbelievable.
An infinite apperance of nothing
so much as guitars, amps, good drumming.
An impossible Egg from Ballymena
a southpaw from Ardoyne.
The imprint of a tiny
dinosaur's foot
on the front of an astronaut's boot.
Between The Lines reader 4/4/04: Kevin McGimpsey
Author: Mairtín Crawford
Into the dark by Michael Harnett
i.m. Michael Hartnett
It was a Wednesday
the thirteenth of October
a blue winter morning.
I walked the lanes
over the hill of Howth,
had breakfast by the sea,
wrote letters, bits of poems.
All this before the house
came tumbling in:
not by curse or magic
venom or lie
wizard or warlock
storm or blaze
but by pure dark –
Paula rang to say
“Michael was dead.”
For years I’d watched him
sacrifice his old-age to poems.
I know they’ll tell me
he’ll live on in them,
that when I open his books
birds will flutter from the pages,
otters scurry from the riverbank,
prayers open like leaves,
old voices fill the air –
his cigarette smoke will curl
round me like a lonely ghost.
But tonight I feel it is not true,
for I can go nowhere to meet him,
the streets are all heartbreak.
His eyes and his voice are gone;
the voice that nailed
his poems in the air.
Watch for him tonight, O Lord,
you’ll know him by his light.
When Sometimes All I Can Imagine Are Hands
by Tony Curtis
There is a winter within me,
a place so cold, so covered in snow,
I rarely go there. But sometimes,
when all I can imagine are hands,
when trees in the forest
look like they’re made of wood,
then I know it’s time
to take your photograph
and sling it in a bag with socks and scarves.
My neighbours must think it strange
to see me strapping on my snowshoes,
to hear me roar at the huskies
as I untangle the harness.
But when all you can imagine are hands
it’s best to give a little wave
and move out into the whiteness.
Tony Curtis
On 2/4/04 @ Between The Lines it was dedicated to Mairtín Crawford
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Wrong End of the Telescope
by Naomi Foyle
Little details always gave you pleasure.
Snails on the cliffs at Whitehead,
crawling up.
Catchy phrases:
Easy peasy lemon squeezy
Okey doke.
Toto. “She’s a Pomeranian, you know.”
Bok choi in the fridge.
That Muldoon poem about trees
you read to me three times
perched on the edge of the bed.
Small things also enraged you.
Perceived slights.
Accidental brushes with indignity.
Dog shit
in the wrong place
before the Ulster-Scots debate.
I learned not to laugh.
If you had tunnel vision
it was a mountain shaft on fire
Across the years, you cast your net of words
trawled me in, your applet, your bot.
We chattered like an endless flock of birds
aloft on currents of desire
caught in flight, white hot.
Now I search for messages you left:
to vampires and rock climbers, hugs and kisses …
and I somehow feel a pixel less bereft
knowing you downloaded psychedelic truffles
from secure-connection savvy druidesses.
Leaving Belfast
by Naomi Foyle
After reading that Muldoon poem
Wind and Tree
to a festival hall full of people who loved you
carrying your notebooks, old school essays
NASA research
strapped to my body
like a lifejacket
or a bomb
carrying the trust of your mother
wrapped up in my promise
to decipher your handwriting
gather your poems together
I find myself weeping
from one eye
in the airport lounge
on the plane
and on the train.
All the next day
back in Brighton
my left eye overflows
with clear water
tears oozing one by one
like snails down my cheek.
Did you get caught in a draught?
my landlady asks.
Yes, the door
between winter and spring
was open a crack.
A cold, sharp wind
drove me back up the Lisburn Road
to pick up my luggage
and call for the taxi
to take me away
from the people you loved
the place where you lived.
(final poem composed after Between The Lines 2004)
the Between the Lines Festival April 2004
special thanks to Deidre Molloy
-
Two lies is about those war graves which are lost (of meaning)"
- and some time we shall wonder why all these wars of the past
were thought
for.Written
by David James (Belfast Autumn 1998)
"Love
is enough" - Inscription on the gravestone of the parents of
Alexander
Irvine.
"Dulce et decorum est, Pro Patris mori" - Inscription on the
gravestone of a soldier killed in battle.
Two
Lies
by David James
Love
is enough! This lie is grained in stone
Above a grave and like the grave is lost
Of meaning, like that imagined by those
Who gather round cold clay and withered bone
And think sweet and godly thoughts of their own
Dear ones and fool themselves that God has caused
That lifeless pit to be a place for joys
Of lost loves and loves that might have been.
And
as I read these words I thought as well
Of that other lie, that would make excuse
Above the last remains of those who fell
"Pro Patria!" but not with God or sweetness,
But with bitterness of green mustard
Gas - and the knowledge that they were for naught.
Blue by David James
My
Heart is sad and it is blue
For
it is far from You
Only
with Yours, is my Heart
Mine
also, for it is Yours in part.
Poetic
landmarks
by Iain Campbell Webb
He
dreams in red and green,
from signal box to signal box
lines speak to lines.
In-between the up and down trains
he remembers the touch of her touch
the such and the nonesuch.
A station away an engine sits
fondling cold metal
a special kind of attachment,
purring like a big cat
after eating the miles.
In
bedrooms every evening
Lovers shedding skin and rolling stock,
animated locomotives that slip off the track
give birth to tender tenders.
Horizontal rails run parallel
Learning curves of spheres and hemispheres,
carriages that pass in the night
all those brief encounters
on the plattforms of infinity.
He changes stations
seeking love like light,
like the diesels hungry for diesel.
Hearing the song of steel against steel
he recalls the touch of train on train
the gentle rain on rain,
let sleeping sleepers, sleep.
c) Iain Campbell Webb - Newtownabbey 1999
Performed at the Belfast Poetry Festival
Crescent Arts Centre 1999
Anthology of Belfast Poetry
all portrait by DKav @ zebras54, except Mairtin Crawford by Belfast Fortnight.
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