Shadow and crow

I recently returned from a trip to Ireland. Ending with a stop-off in Yorkshire, my trip began with five days participation in the University of Limerick Winter Writing School. In between, I worked on my novel Some Things the English, and photographed a some of the winter light and its illuminations.

 Shadow and crow, Doolin, November 2018.

 

The Pier, Doolin.

  

Crow and Cliffs of Moher.

 

Cliffs of Moher.

Brú na Bóinne, Newgrange. 

 

Yeats' Tower.

 

Coole Park.

 

Coole Park.

 

Oscar Wilde woz ere, Dublin.

  

Famine Memorial, Dublin.

 

 Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton.  

 

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton.

 

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton. 

The trip had many highlights, but I'll leave you with the last one. I finally got to see Norman Ackroyd's "Muckle Flugga", the inspiration behind my poem "Outliers":

Outliers

Bathed in Burra Firth’s foamy mouth,

Flugga’s mermaid coifs

her hair aloft ophiolite rock, diabase and dark

mafic glass crackles like static in magic

light at her feet. Two giants

crashed here like her kids,

obtuse, competitive

Saxa full of confidence,

Herma, better-lived. The only ones who told her they loved

her. Long gone,

they’re sleeping now on lava

pillows. Silly buggers,

they couldn’t see

she was dragging them down with her. *Blows*:

Out Stack and Muckle Flugga; the emoticon

for kiss is the same as it is for bitter. So south

of the far north, the sea, too, cries with laughter. 

First published in JAAM, Issue 32