GO TO MLC HOMEPAGE

ONLINE BOOKSTORE FEATURED TITLES

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

Create your badge

ADAM WYETH

Wyeth, born 1978, lives in West Cork. He was a recent prize-winner of the Fish International Poetry Competition, 2009 and a runner-up in the Arvon International Poetry Competition, 2006.  His poems have been anthologized in The Fish Anthology,  Something Beginning with P , the Arvon 25^th Anniversary anthology and  Landing Places. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Poetry London, Magma, The Stinging Fly and The Shop. He was a featured poet in Agenda and selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series, 2007. He teaches Creative Writing and is on the Poetry Ireland Writers in Schools scheme. Wyeth also writes a regular column for the Southern Star. His first collection, Silent Music, is forthcoming from Salmon in 2011.

Pinter's Pause

It was the height of summer.

We sat in the garden reading a play.

I played him and you played her.

Before long you said, ‘Do you know about

Pinter’s pause? – those silent moments –

pregnant with words unsaid ... ’

I wasn’t really listening, I thought I saw

a fox in the undergrowth—

stopping by the hedge to eye up his purple gloves.

Everything was in flower.

We read the play right the way through.

I was him, she was you.

Looking up during each pause—

I imagined him creeping beyond our garden

wriggling under the gap in the fence

behind the clematis and convolvulus—

or whatever it was? The twist of hedgerow,

the turn in the lane, the height of the day.

Just then, everything stopped,

caught between the hands of a clock.

The sun was at its zenith;

I thought if I put my hand out,

I could catch it and put it in my pocket.

I didn’t want to say anything, to break the spell.

Then it moved on—like a great cog

in a grandfather clock. The season was passing,

our lives were turning before its eyes.

Those soft paws padding the undergrowth,

gingerly treading between the hedgerows—

beyond the clematis and convolvulus

©2010 Adam Wyeth

Author Links

Adam Wyeth MySpace page

Poetry Ireland Writers-in-Schools Directory

Wyeth in Best Irish Poetry 2010

Wyeth's Dirge of a Domestic Husband (Spoken Word CD)