JANE Clarke’s debut collection offers quietly affecting poetry, often in the minor key, about growing up on a farm in the west of Ireland.
Called The River, it is published by Bloodaxe Books at £9.95 and won the Listowel Writers’ Week Poetry Collection Prize in 2014. This is a sample from it.
THE RINGER
It was my mother taught me to watch
blood-breasted stonechats on a barbed-wire fence,
to listen for the mournful song of a linnet,
A meadow pipet’s pseeping alarm.
I couldn’t count how many I’ve caught,
ringed, sexed, measured and weighed
but I’ll always remember the first time
in the woods beyond Skibbereen,
when I opened a mist net at dawn,
held a goldcrest hammocked between
finger and thumb, a rosebud in my palm.
Olive nape, yellow crown, eyes
black and glistening as Kilkenny marble.
I held my breath, lest I harm her,
turned my hand so she lay on her back.
She settled as if lulled into a trance.
I opened the cage of my fingers –
a heartbeat, and she was gone.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article