Christodoulos Makris joins Ava Vidal (UK), Baloji (Belgium/Congo), Xavier Baumaxa (Czech Republic), Joelle Taylor (UK), and Kārlis Vērdiņš (Latvia) for In Spoken Word at the British Library, May 13, as part of European Literature Night.
RTÉ’s Poetry Programme discussed a selection of literary journals that included The Penny Dreadful, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Bus, The Stinging Fly and gorse.
To celebrate the publication of Claire-Louise Bennett’s first collection of stories, Pond (The Stinging Fly Press), we’re sharing her reading from the essay ‘I Am Love,’ (gorse no. 2) filmed at our launch last year.
TRUMPET
I want to believe there’s something in the bunker,
in the cowslip’s bell. stockpiles of shivery paper,
caffeine, nicotine and romance. and not just romance.
onion
juice and doubled tongues for the scurvy and
amnesia.
I want a double ration: The world to keep going;
the world to end in my time. I don’t want to miss it.
At eight forty-five in the evening, I stood at the hatch window of the medicine room, doling out little paper cups of pills to the loose queue of patients in the corridor. It was fifteen minutes from the end of my shift, my fourth twelve hour shift in a row. I was jacked tired. Of course, Gerry noticed.
‘No snoozing on the job Nurse Nally. What if the right pill goes to the wrong man and the wrong pill goes to the right man? What then?’