Castles, courtyards and dreamy, meandering rivers featured in my few days in the Irish county of Tipperary this August. There was sunshine, morning mists, fairies in forests and exhibitions about the work of Irish women in politics as well as their roles back in the day. I was impressed. I also had a shopping expedition in Clonmel, buying some round colourful Kilkenny glasses, a bright yellow oil cloth and a lamp full of bubbling water and plastic fish which I bought as a memorial to our Cat and Angel fish whose heads were chopped off at Easter in a mercy killing event. We had cared for them for nearly ten years…and the kitchen corner where the fish tank used to live looked a little bare. This tube of bubbling water which changes colour (blue, red, purple and white) and has swimming plastic fish, is perfect.
So, I am back in Cavan, with my purchases, school has returned, the leaves are turning, and it seems poetry is beginning to lift its head above the parapet. I am reading ‘live’ in Bailieborough in September at a Poetry Town event (thanks to Poetry Ireland) with Northern neighbours, John D Kelly and Teresa Godfrey, both of whom published into the Pandemic. I am also thinking of running a poetry workshop in the autumn which will focus on Poets Living in Ireland Today, and I am having my third poetry collection, Elsewhere, published by an English publisher, Windle and Dempsey (isn’t it a great name?) under the imprint of Vole in November 21. So, the news is good! I am so grateful to Salmon Poetry who have agreed to publish my fourth collection in Spring 23 instead of my third and the experience so far with Vole has been very positive.
I am ‘sort of’ looking forward to the Elsewhere launch (more details later) but, I still feel hesitant, as if I’m walking through the shallows of a salty sea filled with lion mane jellyfish (they descended on our west coast this summer). I am not scared of getting Covid, but I feel anxious about re-engaging with the world. After all this time ranting and railing about being locked down, my little corner in Cavan, suddenly, seems attractive – no jellyfish, floods, soaring temperatures, forest fires, riots, revolutions here, though I did bring back a freshly picked Lion’s Mane mushroom rather than jellyfish from the Limerick Milk Market. I will fry and eat it tonight. Apparently, if I weigh it down with a cast iron pan while frying it lightly in oil, it turns into a steak! The magic qualities of the mushroom! Here’s a mushroom poem!
The oak tree stretches up into a sparkling crown
of green twigs and leaves, a fractured maze of beech and ash,
a scurry of leaping squirrels. Green ivy and lichen
floor the forest as I scrabble, bent through the crumble
of leaf and soil. A wriggle of skin wings crawl
from the myriad of rhizomes and roots.
My fingers penetrate earth. I scrabble deep
beyond the mycelial barrier,
to the intergalactic ecosystem below
and above that blows my mind.
While talking of food, would you believe I have been cooking a lot of Ottolenghi dishes this summer from his cook book SIMPLE. When my daughter gave it to me for my birthday, my heart sank, but it really is fab, different, and the ingredients easily available. Highly recommended. While I’m recommending books, my copy of the Happy Pear – Recipes for Happiness is completely food splashed and stained. Maybe in the next blog, I’ll let you know about books I enjoyed during the pandemic. I read over 85 books (not including cookbooks) and did little reviews of each. Looking back at it, it’s quite eclectic!
Kate Ennals 