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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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COLETTE OLNEY

Colette Olney, “Irish, ex-convent girl, mother of three”, is based in Bandon and teaches Adult Education writing classes in term time. She also facilitates writers’ groups in local public libraries and has been writing poems for “years on end”. She has enjoyed some successes with publication in Cyphers (Ed. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin), Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Times and The Stony Thursday Book (No. 6, Ed. Tom McCarthy). Shortlisted at Strokestown Poetry Festival, Colette also won the overall international Davoren Hanna Poetry Competition “thanks to Charles Simic and Matthew Sweeney”. She has had readings at Temple Bar, Dublin; Triskel, Cork; Kinsale, Kerry and Roscommon. “To turn a buck”, she also contributes reports and features to “a local mag- The Bandon Opinion” and began her working life (late 1970’s) as a theatre critic with RTE local radio.

In Skellig

"We went into the rock ... "

A shadow as you climbed,

Your soul unbidden enters

With you, over the berm

Under a cold lintel;

The known world scaled

To sun-starved space:

Stone-rendered

Silence.

Blue, Gold,

White, Green

—rubbed to a smudge.

Within the chock

Of cobbling, tenebrous

And damp, you test

Your blindness – scan

A filmic still of stone and sea

And sky for some relief – the spectacle

Of your poor fellow-pilgrim

Or a flighty member

Of the raucous ruling flock.

The odour

Of earth, of man

is the same.

The screams, the mutterings,

Have faded, no bird flashes

At the aperture, the needle eye,

Through which, a moment past,

You must have entered,

And through which you hope to leave. 

Level pegging,

Cloud

and ledge.

Your soul, you beg

To tag you, link arms,

Shoulder through, step with you,

See you across; disembark

With you when the time comes.

That bright smear

On the lesser blue

is your boat returning.

©2010 Colette Olney

Author Links

'Search Party': poem by Colette Olney

Olney in Best Irish Poetry 2010

Profile at The Poetry Society

Olney on 'Cork Moments', RTÉ Radio 1 (25.03.05)