Daniel Wade - Poet, Dramatist and aspiring Novelist

Daniel Wade is another wonderfully talented writer and with whom I have had the pleasure of knowing and discovering. Despite the fact that Daniel has yet to have a book of poetry published, for he is predominantly a poet ( although he is also a playwright, having a number of theatrical productions behind him ) he is hugely prolific and original. Born on the southern coast of Dublin City, he has grown up with the sea which is a predominant theme in his work. I know of no other poet working in the country who treats this subject as much as Daniel does. So, this certainly sets him apart. But that is not to say that he only writes about maritime subject matter. Here is his blog ( below ) so you can explore his writings further, and here is the latest piece of film which was first shown at this year's Dublin International Literature Festival in Dublin's historic Smock Alley. Daniel very kindly dedicated a Baudelaire inspired poem to me on the night, which I appreciated very much. Enjoy!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwjhW3KHU4g

His review of my book Divertimento - The Muse is a Dominatrix can also be found in here.

 http://www.danielwade.ie/

Michael J. Whelan - Soldier/ Poet - a Historical figure

When the Soldier/ Poet Michael J. Whelan  invited me to help him launch his debut collection Peacekeeper, I was very touched, and proud. Along with Christine Murray, Michael is one of my favourite contemporary Irish writers. Here is my launch speech ( below ) which was published in an Irish historical magazine, I can't remember which one - as I do not have a copy, never having received one!....

Michael's second collection, also to be published by Doire Press, is to be launched in Tallaght during the Red Line Book Festival on 8th October, later in the year.

Arma virumque cano!

Peacekeeper by Michael Whelan,

 Doire Press, 2016.

War is the father and king of all ( Heraclitus ).

Every age has its wars.

Since the first existing literary text, believed to date from Babylon in 1300-1000

BC, The Epic of Gilgamesh and onto Homer in 750 BC, till the arrival of Virgil,

whose opening line to The Aenied forms the title of this text, in and around 40

BC, to our own Táin , or Cattle Raid of Cooley,  in the first century AD; war

and war poetry have been with us.

Look around at events going on in the world today… Syria, Georgia, Iraq,

Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine these are just some of the areas currently

Embroiled in Conflict.

Not very long ago, you only had to pick up a newspaper to read about the latest

victims  to terror of one kind or another up in Northern Ireland. We read the

headlines year after year, down in the south, and simply thought to ourselves

there, but for the grace of god go I.

The poet whose work we are gathered to hear reading to us today was

involved in two major conflicts, those in the Lebanon and in Kosovo. Michael

served as a Peacekeeper with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (

UNIFL ) and with the Peace Enforcement mission in Kosovo ( K.FOR) and it

from his experiences of both these conflicts that the majority of Michael’s

poems in his debut collection of poetry Peacekeeper come.

It is a very great honour for me to be here, at Michael’s request, to help launch

the book with him today. I first became aware of Michael’s poetry while editing

an anthology of contemporary Irish poetry called And Agamemnon Dead for the

French writer and publisher Walter Ruhlmann for mgv2>publishing. Walter and

I were attempting to put together an anthology of Irish poets and writers who we

both felt were not getting a chance to present their work on a suitable platform,

and which we hoped to be able to offer them with the anthology.

When we hear the term ‘war poetry’, most of us would immediately think of

WW1, the names of poets like Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Rupert Brooke,

Siegfried Sassoon and our own Francis Ledwidge. Why is this?

There are, I am sure, many reasons. One, surely, is as it was the first fully

mechanised and so modern war, in which millions of men were so

systematically massacered, and on an industrial scale. We are all familiar with

the horror of life for soldiers in the trenches, and it is mainly due to some of

the poets listed above. WWII is less associated with poets, perhaps, than the

‘Great’ war, but from it also came a formidable body of work. Poets such a

Dylan Thomas, for example, described life during the Blitz, for war had a new

side to it now, as civilians as well as soldiers were also among the casualties.

There was Rene Char in France,  a voice from the resistance. Aresny

Tarkovsky, father of the famous film maker, who reported back from the

Russian front, and Karl Krolow writing from the German side. But the majority

of writing which came from WWII was written in prose; one thinks

immediately of the American writers Joseph Heller ( Catch 22 ), Norman

Mailer ( The Naked and the Dead ) and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse 5 ),

which all recount the horrors and the absurdities that the soldiers had to endure.

Again, the impact of civilian literature is also considerable, considering the

apocalyptic and all encompassing nature of the war; Primo Levi’s Is This Is A

Man, and the Diaries of Anne Frank being two of the most known books to

come out of the war.

Yet, when I spoke to Michael about his influences, he spoke to me of the

American soldiers who had just returned from tours of Iraq and Afghanistan,

such as Brian Turner ( Here, Bullet ).

And this is the thing which struck me immediately about Michael, as an Irish

soldier- ‘poet’ he was alone. I couldn’t think of any other contemporary Irish

poet, at least, who were writing in the country with a similar kind of

background or experience, as Michael’s. To the best of my knowledge there are

none. So, in this, Michael is truly an original and authentic voice in

contemporary  Irish poetry, reaching back to a tradition that is as long as

memory itself. And Michael is very much part of that tradition, that poets like

Brian Turner too belong too. For Michael is writing as both a survivor, and as a

witness.

The first thing which strikes you, when reading the poems of Michael Whelan,

is the very natural poetic ability Michael has, particularly when treating highly

sensitive material, such as the impact of warfare upon children.

His poem Chocolate in which he describes an encounter with a couple of

children, sheltering in a bombed out house perfectly illustrates Whelan’s

capacity, in the space of three short sentences, to completely encompass a

particular microcosm of the atrocious events which happened in Kosovo in the

last decade of the previous century. Events which we said in Europe which were

‘never to happen again!’

Michael’s style of writing is unencumbered with artifice. It is minimal,

essential…. And yes, it is brutal.

In the Poetics, Aristotle famously speaks of the cathartic element when

he is attempting to analyse and define the nature of tragedy, which tragic

writing has; ‘ …effecting through pity and fear ( what we call ) the catharsis

of such emotions.[1]’

Listening to the poet reading his own work, about his experiences in Lebanon

and Kosovo, makes us dearly realise the price that one pays for human freedom.

Peter O’ Neill 

22^nd February, 2016.

Here is Michael's wonderful website:

https://michaeljwhelan.wordpress.com/

---

[1] Aristotle: Poetics, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by James Hutton, W.W. Norton, New York, 1982, p.50.

Dorsaf Garbaa - La fille de Carthage

 

 

La fille d’Héraclyte

Par

Dorsaf Garbaa

Transversion Peter O’Neill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biographie

 

Qui suis je? je l'ignore ou qu'il est à vrai dire si embrouilleux de décrire tel qu'il fallait ...exigeant .

24 hivers passés depuis que jai vu la lumière et je ne peux aujourd'hui  me voir aux doux reflets de mes incertitudes sans évoquer ma passion des mots, de ma Tunisie,  de la mer méditerranée  aux éternels,  des dunes  sablées au Sahara du Sud et de mon Père.

 

Née à Tunis, entre des bras carthagenois et grandie auprès d'un homme épris par Hannibal et ses milles batailles et  triomphes, je  devrai certes appartenir á  cette suspension de temps inédite. Ce décalage temporaire et spatial de ma réalité et mon surréalisme qui m'est suave confusion .

 

Je vois ces mégots froissés au sol, l'amertume du tabac au creux de mes narines me chantonne doucement les anciennes comptines à  Bizerte, cette ville côtière qui suscite les songes royales d'un moment inachevé et qui a marqué mon enfance

Là-bas où le Français de ses délices a pris route dans mes veines. Là  bas où  j'ai passé  quatre ans de mon enfance entre l'univers verdoyant et la mer azurèe d'un coin si calme, si désirée.

 

De ces jeux d'enfants dans l'école privée  des "Soeurs"  et les petites filles a jupes marines qui renvoient le pâle reflet d'un souvenir saveureux.

 

Tendre douceur me revient . A l'odeur de la clope en train de s'éteindre au coin de mes lèvres, je me retiens à m'éprendre aux rêves  de l'enfance un peu trop lointaine pour ma mémoire qui flanche. 

 

J'ai fais trois ans en marketing avec neuf ans de désir pour l'écriture.  J'écrivais depuis que les choses ont commencé  à  résonner dans ma tête. Depuis neuf ans et mes feuilles blanches sont submergées par des lettres inondées.  Qui diffère d'un saut d'humeur à  une joie exaltante.  Oscillations d'humeur. Caractère lunatique marqué par ce que je lisais.  Je dévorais les livres et je m'en  réjouis.

 

Je me suis toujours imaginée être aux souffles de la littérature, un navire qui s'expire.  C'est  ainsi . Car mes parents sont tout deux à  tendances littéraires.  Ma mère avait fait des études de droits et mon père. Ah mon père,  et son amour pour l'histoire ancienne.

Parler avec lui ressemble  à  une évasion vers la couleur rougeâtre sanguine d'un combat indécis. Vers une guerre de jadis. Vers la période punique ...vers Carthage  et ses colonnes d'Hercule :Sicile puis la Sardaigne, la Corse, Malte et les îles Baléares.

 

Lui il a l'histoire,  moi je n'ai que mes mots poétiques.  C'est mon héritage ou peut  être  ma bènidiction.

 

Comme un orchestre. Même si je n’en ai jamais vu, c’est comme un orchestre. Ça bouge pareil, ce sont les mêmes mots, les mêmes sonorités, les mêmes lumières. Ce sont les mêmes et les mêmes choses, l’un vient de l’autre ou de l’autre vient l’un, ça se confond dans un amorphisme parfait, c’est une homogénéité perpétuelle qui fond sous l’ombre du désert et  gonfle au soleil d'un torride août en Tunisie.

 

 

Puis il y a les livres qui me sont tels des murs blancs d'une  chambre pudique , perdus dans  leur teinte blafarde, transparents sans leurs ombres cristallisées .Gustave Flaubert et sa simplicité ènivrante, Alphonse de Lamartine avec sa sensualité désespérée et Charles Baudelaire.  Oui lui ce dernier est tout une langue universelle, une grâce  de la femme...frappant les coeurs rêveurs. 

 

C'est  moi qui s'identifie sur leurs lèvres et eux qui m'irriguent de sensualisme éphémère , tempérament de lascivité... Les trésors de Baudelaire.

Ça  fait de moi la fille de Carthage aux flots Baudelairiens. Unicité absurde de Dorsaf Garbaa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biography

 

 

 

Twenty four winters have passed since I first saw the light of day

and I can still only see myself reflected back through my many uncertainties.

 

Born in Tunisia, I grew up living with a man, my father, who was still under the spell

of Hannibal of Carthage, because of this I am used to inhabiting multiple worlds.

 

My relationship with time is also spatial, imbued with visions of the Sahara

and the Mediterranean, all helping to possibly explain my innate surrealism.

 

For example, when I see cigarette ends littering the earth, and the scent of tobacco

enters my nostrils, I can almost immediately recall the nursery rhymes I learned in BiZerte.

 

This ancient port and city is the most northerly point in North Africa,

 and it arouses, for me, all of the dreams of my childhood.

 

It was in this place that all of the delights of the French language entered my blood,

It was here where I spent four years of my childhood,

 

There I was caught between the verdant fields

and  the aZure of the sea, so calm in its tidy little corner.

 

It was here that I played all of those childish games among the Sisters

dressed in our little blue skirts, which reflect back those souvenirs to savour.

 

A tenderness returns as I pull on the cigarette which dies between the corner

of my lips, as I try to hang onto these childhood memories.

 

I started writing as soon as things began to reverberate in my head.

I spent nine years filing notebooks in a sea of words, words which oscillate

 

Across the blank pages as alternating as my many moods,

Like some lunatic character, marked by what she has read.

 

For years I devoured books, and I always imagined myself

leading some kind of literary life.

 

Both my parents too loved books.

Both studied law.

 

Ah, my dear father with his love of history!

Speaking with him was always like plunging into some bloody film

 

Conjured by images from the Punic Wars evoking Carthage,

with its Columns of Hercules; Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia.

 

He had the full weight of history behind him,

I had my poems. Such is my inheritance, perhaps it is my benediction.

 

I see it all, sometimes, like some fantastic orchestra,

as it works in the same way;

 

There are the same lights and sounds,

the same subtle sonorities, playing suddenly in great musical shifts.

 

It is a perplexing homogeneity which is first grounded in the desert shades

before exploding then under the torrid Tunisian sun.

 

Finally, I wish to speak about my books,

the white walls of which are filled in my Spartan room.

 

I would loose myself slowly in their illuminating tints, all transparency

having been lost by their chrystallised shades.

 

Flaubert is among them with his inebriating simplicity.

As is Alphonse de Lamartine with all of his depraved sensuality.

 

And then, there is Baudelaire.

Yes, it is with this last one that a whole universe is invoked.

 

The feminine grace slashing all of their poor dreamy heads.

And it is I who identify with him upon my lips,

 

Exhaled , as if in a plume, all of the ephemeral sensuality,

All of the lascivious pleasures...

 

I the girl from Carthage immersed in a sea of  Baudelaire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Placidité

 

Et c’est  quand, sur son corps ,elle  glissait

 La petite  robe noire  à pointillés

Que sa  peau tournait en  prodigieux écrin,

Renfermant des trésors aux milles et un parfum.

Les arômes qui s'en dégagaient

de les  envoûter sans permission,

Eux , ces hommes de mer...ces soldats d’enfer

Ceux qui pudiquement ne se lassaient

De s’aligner aux orbites de ses sphères...

Les  emportant vers les vallées  des délices...

Respirant...la vanille, la rose, le jasmin, le pain d'épice...

Et tant d'autres qui leur  incitaient  à la consommation.

De part ses courbes subtiles,

Elle les rendait instantanément fébriles.

 

Elle , enivrante de ses longues jambes de satin

 ...les  attisait sur un tango d’évangile,

Les  courtisant de son regard angélique

Sans pour autant être ni sage,

Bien autre que docile...

 

Dans ses ébats amoureux...

De ses collants en muette dentelle

Elle se révèlait au nid des hirondelles

Dévoilant sa sensualité de reine

Un dévorant plaisir fougueux ..charnel.

 

Toute femme à ses secrets  bien dissimulés

Mais pour elle c’était bien  différé

avec sa petite robe noire à  pointillés

Elle... des lèvres des marrés

 Jaillissait tel un nectar aux saveurs brisés 

 

 

Dotée d'un cœur qui étincelait pour que l'on flatte.

À ne la point prendre  pour autant vulnérable,

Car elle avait certainement

En ces  creux inabordables

Cette  détermination de femme ... inexorable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ‘Placidity’ – The Mothership

 

 

 

It is when she slips into that little black shimmering dress

that her skin becomes transformed into a prodigious vessel,

birthing the cargo of a thousand and one perfumes.

 

The aromas which escape entrancing , without having her permission,

the fishermen in the port, those poor labourers

some of whom, due to modesty, could not even conceive

of any alignment of spheres,

there in the sumptuous valley

where blossom:

 

vanilla, ginger and jasmine... the scent of roses...

 

And many more besides,

which could incite the urge for consummation.

 

 

All of these mere fragrances,

not even having mentioned her ingenious flanks,

which, once gleamed, merely prolong the fever.

 

 

But then to further intoxicate and inflame, dear reader,

contemplate if you will her two aquiline limbs, like Doric columns,

breaking into an envangelised tango,

casting a further spell on those few still remaining in the port

with any semblance of reason, for  they too will also be finally unhinged,

our made sheepishly docile.

 

 

And, if all of this should not suffice,

imagine those two legs enveloped in stockings,

stitched together with mute lace,

and whose lucious whisperings call to only you

with every scissors like movement.

 

Such is the revelation,

which swam freely through the open nets of the fisher kings.

 

This Queen of sensuality,

passing over the waves of their collective imagination,

whose very storehouse of images finally rupture

through the firewall at the thought of such carnal pleasures...

 

Every woman, God knows, has her secrets to conceal.

But, she was different, particularly when she was dressed in that

little

black

 shimmering dress,

 

Bearing her lips on the tides

awash with all of the nectar induced from broken dreams,

those the shipwrecked,

and she endowed with a heart,

which craves only a good word.

 

And yet, on no account be taken in that she is one so vulnerable,

for deep within her, behind this prohibitive hollow,

there moves also,

the determination

of inexorable woman.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vol des sens

 

Obscure clarté

Se dégageait du ciel lointain

Étales flambées,

Bellement ,s’affligeaient

Faisaient de ma dissonance

Fatale morosité

 

Fanatiques fardeaux,

Aux gesuelles des houles

Ondulatoires,s’enjolivaient,

Et mornement ,De mes illusions,

Se nourrissaient, se naissaient..

 

Sinistres creux,

Sphères raffinées,

En symbiose, se dissipaient,

S’envolaient loin de moi

Tel qu'un las bonheur 

 

Caresses placides

En ma cervelle s'accointaient

De ma chair, s’abritaient

Pour, de sa faim nocturne,

Et à ses baisers de fer, 

Quand les murs s'humidifiaient,

Je saurai, contre lui ,se mouler..

S'extasier ...

 

Et puis cette succession imagée

D’un souvenir ardent, inachevé,

Qui, autrefois, m’était confuse préciosité

À maudire le temps, et ses absurdités

Qui ont fait de mon bèat instinct

Paradoxal illogisme,

Une volupté dérobée...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Flight of Reason

 

 

 

Sheer obscurity

freeing itself skyward,

now spreading, in beautifully

afflicted flames, brings to my dissonance

a fatal moroseness. 

 

 

A fanatical burden,

undulating in great swells,

gloomily embellishes my mood

in which all of my illusions

are nurtured and born.

 

 

A sinister crevice

protrudes in the refined sphere,

in symbiosis, dissipates,

flying far ahead of me

like a weary joy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Placid caresses

and my brain renews contact again

with my skin, sheltering from

the nocturnal hungers

with their kisses of fire,

when the walls humidify,

and I am once again wet,

up against him,

ecstatic.

 

 

And then the succession of images

of ardour, the unachieved  memory, 

before my precious confusion,

spoiling time with all of its absurdities,

making of my blissful instinct

a paradoxical illogicism;

a de-robed volupté.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nostalgia

 

 

when all of the torrid ardour returns

circling in abundance through my veins

 

with every aspiration gone up in smoke

blown into every recess by one famished puff

 

the first feverish moments of our mating

from the impoverished shifting of my fanatical lips

 

when all is seen again through this pale filter

experienced through an alternating cadence

 

all of your troubled passion and our sweet drifting

through this doubled view my hunger is re-affirmed

 

entwined in a solitary and almost obscene breathe

when memory transports me from my nocturnal fogs

 

to be goose-bumped anew by your succint fingers

disarming the remaining modesty of my breasts

 

stirring the now polarised flesh

from out of the first agonising brushings of skin

 

when the wax from my sporadic fires

bursts anew in your eyes enflamed

 

at the complete mercy of our organs

electrified by the sights released through diaphanous eyelids

 

confronted by your irritatingly transluscent looks

making happily of my entire body

 

a slow drunken and painful lascivity

with you lips