Irish Author - Gerard Beirne

Gerard Beirne

Set the hounds at the oxen, let the prey upon them.
Flush the pheasants from the tules, loose the hawks and falcons.
Cast the peacocks from the tower, quaking as they plummet.
Baste the carcass on the slab, made tender in the fear of death.

Moulded into being,
I melt beneath the thumb.

A tuft of golden beeswax
rising to touch the sun.

Meditation #21 Nothing Is The MatterThere comes a rope hung heavy on the beam of night/I am at a loss to know just who 
should hang from it/the draggle tailed wench seducing life with lusty fervour/or
the skip kennel boy obeying its every flunked up order/never a barrel the better herring/

In our talk the stench of its very odour/ the torment and the dross returned with equal favour/
the buffoons have come home to rest/their anacoluthic rack stretched until the bones crack 
and break asunder/their terrible words do not come back/ show no respect for dialects/a hex 

Antiphon poetry magazine

The crystalline lenses of minnows and fallfish, thin delicate films of albumen.

A meniscal loupe exposing the Garden of Eden through a minute aperture,

a dark chamber known to pharaohs and Arabian nights. The scattered rays

of sunlight. An Argand burner in a magic lantern, glass globules melted

Need some summer reading advice? Our authors can help! Today, Brian Bartlett (The Watchmaker's Table) leans heavily for the poetic:

Brian:mer my reading has been something of a grab-bag, as summer reading (and readings in other seasons, for that matter) should be. Have greatly enjoyed reading (which with poetry often means continually re-reading) three new books of Atlantic Canadian poetry, Anne Compton’s Alongside, Sue Goyette’s Ocean, and Eleonore Schoenmaier’sWavelengths of Your Song, along with Toronto poet John Reibetanz’s exquisitely layered Afloat.

Also got absorbed in Gerard Beirne’s brilliantly original, disturbing and moving novel Turtle, which I’ll be recommending far and wide. Returned to one of my favourite writers, Amos Oz of Israel, to read in translations from Hebrew two of his more recent novels.

The Antigonish Review is a literary journal containing short stories, poetry and articles from Canadian writers and also writers from around the world.

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