Saturday Poetry at the Grove Library, Peppermint Grove

Helen Hagemann’s Saturday Poetry Workshop this week 3rd March @ 1.30pm-3.30pm is called ‘Motherland’. The class will look at ways of writing the heartfelt and personal aspects our own country. Class involves further writing exercises on the patriotic/ political & historical heritage of one's original "motherland'. We will be reading and discussing poems by Dorothea Mackellar, Hyllus Maris, Amy Witting, Jo Shapcott (UK), Dennis O'Driscoll (IE), Michael Crummey (CA), e e cummings (US), and Marina Tsvetaeva (RU). Cost: OOTA $15, Non-OOTA $20.  All welcome!

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Poem for the Day - Visiting Loughcrew (from the Irish Suite)

Visiting Loughcrew

Shock of blue in the sky
after light misty rain.
The fields and drumlins
are a skin of green.

It's warm today for a hillclimb
to a strange cairn
of Megalithic art.

The woman at the kiosk
hands me the key, tied to
a large orange flashlight.
As if this is a passage
back in time.

I've half-circled Ireland
before arriving. Swerved trucks,
narrow bridges, my new hire car
saving my skin.

At the tearooms, cows with pink snouts
share the aroma of my morning
coffee, then send out a message
with the breath of mist.
 

Over the fields, I look down
on more Friesians, craggy hillsides,

dunes of hidden houses, clouds billowing
out like the plumping of bed sheets.
I take the first steps to unknown art

and fall in love with Ireland.

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