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Best of Irish Poetry 2010
Editor: Matthew Sweeney

Songs of Earth and Light
Barbara Korun poems translated by Theo Dorgan

Done Dating DJs
by Jennifer Minniti-Shippey
Winner, 2008 Fool for Poetry Competition

Richesses: Francophone Songwriter Poets
Edited and translated by Aidan Hayes

Munster Literature Centre

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CATE HUGUELET

Raised on Chicago's south side, Cate Huguelet relocated to Ireland in 2005 to undertake an MA in writing at NUI Galway. Her work has appeared in the Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, and the SHOp, and she placed second in the 2007 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition. She currently lives in Dublin.   

Hiking

We walked in the Shawnee woods that day

single-file over the forest trail,

stumbling at roots

and shrieking over snakes

and singing out a nasty song

for someone called Lord Melvin.

We came to a lake

and stopped to wade

and the copper water

stained our calves brown.

We sunned then

on a blanket of moss,

and teacher told the secrets here:

Devil’s Icebox and Fat Man’s Misery,

carved in the hills from ancient ice;

the three leaves of the sassafras,

jewel weed and its healing juices.

And she told us of

the ghosts in the trees:

Roosevelt’s pines,

and boughs bent by the natives

until they grew that way,

pointing toward fresh water.

And when we walked again

we were smaller;

we didn’t sing,

just listened to the slap

of canteens at our thighs

as it echoed out over the sandstone bluffs

that had grown up

grain by grain.

©2009 Cate Huguelet

Author Links

Huguelet's shortlisting as Over the Edge New Writer of the Year

Photos of a Huguelet reading for Over the Edge in Galway

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