Compass Lines #2

We're in Belfast for Compass Lines #2, where I'll be in conversation with Miriam Gamble and Nerys Williams, and where the poets will present their collaboration City of Two Suns, specially commissioned for the event and published that day by the Irish Writers Centre. In addition, earlier in the day they will deliver a joint writing workshop in the Ulster Museum to a group composed of participants in various existing writing classes in Belfast.

Compass Lines is a writers� exchange project aiming to establish links between writers and communities in the North and South of Ireland, while additionally examining relationships between the East and West of these islands, through workshops, public discussions, and the commissioning of new collaborative writing.

Developed by poet, editor and curator Christodoulos Makris in collaboration with the Irish Writers Centre as producing organisation, and with the participation of the Crescent Arts Centre as partner venue.


Compass Lines #2
Miriam Gamble & Nerys Williams
Wednesday 11 May 2016, Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast
7.30pm, entry via Eventbrite �8/�6 or on the door �10/�8

Miriam Gamble is from Belfast, but now lives in Edinburgh. She is a graduate of both Oxford and Queens University Belfast and in 2007 she won an Eric Gregory Award for her pamphlet with Tall-lighthouse entitled This Man�s Town. Her first full-length collection, The Squirrels are Dead (2010) won a Somerset Maugham Award in 2011, and Pirate Music followed in 2014, both of which are published by Bloodaxe.

Originally from West Wales, Nerys Williams lectures in American Literature at University College, Dublin and is a Fulbright Alumnus of UC Berkeley. She has published poems and essays widely and is the author of A Guide to Contemporary Poetry (Edinburgh UP, 2011) and a study of contemporary American poetics, Reading Error (Peter Lang, 2007). Nerys�s first volume, Sound Archive (Seren, 2011), was shortlisted for the Felix Denis (Forward) prize and won the Rupert and Eithne Strong first volume prize in 2012. She is the current holder of the Poetry Ireland Ted McNulty Poetry Prize.

Until the Frost Hit

I.

indian medicines were made
from roots and herbs
boneset
which the creeks called angelica
was used for a purgative
and likewise button snakeroot
used for the same purpose
dogwood root and butterfly root
including goldenrod were used
as you would use quinine to break a
fever
frost root
and a root they called doctor
dick root was used as a medicine

in eighteen eighty one
there was a smallpox epidemic
at okmulgee indian territory
and it came near wiping out the
entire population of this village

II.

i have seen grass so tall here
that you could ride through it
on a horse and it would be
over your head in places
when they made hay on some farms
they would cut until the frost hit
this was certainly fine land
for cattle ranches

we raised a little corn and cotton
we had horses that
did not know what corn was
in fact they would not eat it
we pastured some cattle
for years and at one time my husband
helped handle seven thousand head
for mister brown

in nineteen o seven
oil was discovered near morris
the first well was drilled
north of here



Drawn from interviews with Muscogee (Creek) Indians conducted in 1937-38 and archived in the Indian-Pioneer Papers, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma: I. Jake Simmons, born 1865; II. Leona Moore, born 1885. Submitted by James Treat.

Shell Filling

It went up one day. Gunpowder, TNT,
a shoe-lace, a ring, a spark.
Condemned the cornfields round about,
still bringing bodies out after a fortnight.
You don�t mind when you�re young -
you sing away as if nothing had happened.



From the oral history interview Audio Memories of a WW1 Munitions Factory Explosion, The Breckland View. Submitted by H L Foster.

Personal Call

Hello?

Hello.

I just wondered

what your middle name

was.

My middle name?

Yeah.

I haven't got one,

actually

I've got a confirmation name

but

that's not really an official name

and

that's Mary.

Oh

same as mine.


Alright, Susan.

Thank you.



From Kate Bush�s interview on Personal Call, a BBC Radio 1 phone in, 1979. Submitted by Luke Bailey.

Good old-fashioned idealism

It was winter,
and I went outside.

I said, �World,
I�m immortal.
I�ll always exist.
But you only exist because I see you.

If you don�t give me anything,
I won�t give you anything.�



Friedrich Liechtenstein being interviewed in Once an Ornamental Hermit, Now a German Media Darling by Sally McGrane, The New York Times, 25 July 2014. Submitted by Daniel Galef.

In the Shadow of Selene

There�s a thing about being alone
and
there�s a thing about being lonely
and
they�re two different things.

I was alone
�but�
I was not lonely.
I was very used to being by myself.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Far from feeling lonely
or abandoned
I feel very much a part of what is taking place
(I don�t mean to deny
a feeling of solitude.)

It is there,

reinforced by the fact ... I am alone now
and absolutely isolated
from any (known) life.

If a count were taken,
the score would be:
three billion (plus two)
over on the other side
and
One (plus
God knows what else...)
on this side.

That was the best part of the flight.



From Al Worden: 'The loneliest human being', BBC, 2 April 2013, and Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009). Submitted by Daniel Galef.

Barb why don�t you get an Italian greyhound?

I love the way they lean against you
with total love and adoration.

And I love those daft dogs
that kind of bounce with floppy ears.

And little dogs that sit in your arms
and tremble a lot.

I love love love those.
But then again � tigers.



Taken from Seven Silly Questions ... for Barb Jungr, 11th May 2011. Submitted by Andrew Bailey