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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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AFRIC McGLINCHEY

Afric McGlinchey’s début collection, The Lucky Star of Hidden Things, was published by Salmon in May 2012, and evokes her upbringing in Africa. Her poems have been published in Moth, the SHOp, Poetry Ireland Review, Magma, Acumen and numerous other journals. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2011), was selected to read at the Cork Spring Festival (2012), and has been highly commended for several poetry prizes, including the Magma poetry award (2012) and the Dromineer poetry award (2011).  She won the Hennessy Emerging Poetry Award in 2011. Afric lives in West Cork.

imprint

                                      i

it overwhelms me, an instant of ocean,

delayed grief for the lost years

                                      ii

i dream you back into existence

i dream you back into

i dream you back

i dream you

i dream

                                      iii

i follow the stranger to an unknown past

each detail of the journey becoming a magnified ignorance

it’s taken this long to find that a solitary walk may result in a head full of light

the sun dazzles my footprints in a kind of flirtation.

on my head, a casket of plaited straw

                                      iv

i write until my fingers bleed, i write out my sorrow,

i write of our window-breaking passion, i write into the memory

                                       v

there is too much light, because your shirt is unbuttoned

and the grass is fiddling with the lawnmower

I listen to leaves settle, like the drift of a gown on roman tiles,

tell you: i can be in love, sometimes, and the sky is infinite, maybe

©2012 Afric McGlinchey

Author Links

Afric McGlinchey home page

Other work by McGlinchey in Southword Journal

McGlinchey at Salmon Poetry