Poetic Ageing

‘I want a poem
I can grow old in.’ ¹

Poet and Professor Eavan Boland died a year ago yesterday.

‘But words are shadows and you cannot hear me.
You walk away and I cannot follow.’ ²

This obituary from the Irish Times is still accessible online and is worth a read if only because a great Irish poet who ‘broke the mould of Irish poetry’ did not get the recognition a Nobel Prize can bring.

‘Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.’ ³

I had something to say about creativity at the time. I still have faith in poetry and equally that the future will become the past of many others because such words as these have been thought, uttered, published and circulated.

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1. A Woman Painted on a Leaf [In a Time of Violence (1994)]
2. Love [In a Time of Violence (1994)]
3. This Moment [In a Time of Violence (1994)]