{"id":34037,"date":"2025-09-21T05:53:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T05:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/34037\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T05:53:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T05:53:10","slug":"jessica-traynor-molly-twomey-alan-gillis-dean-brown-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/34037\/","title":{"rendered":"Jessica Traynor, Molly Twomey, Alan Gillis, Dean Brown \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Arcana (Bloodaxe \u00a312) is Jessica Traynor<\/a>\u2019s striking, ambitious elegy for an old school friend who died by suicide and speaks here through the persona of Lydia Deetz from Tim Burton<\/a>\u2019s Beetlejuice. Poems imagining a new Major Arcana are interwoven throughout the sometimes funny, always heartbreaking dialogue between Traynor and Lydia. <\/p>\n

\u201ci asked for it by wearing black. by wearing a veil\/ (demon thirst trap) by hanging around\/this older man. i swear he had charisma … someone has to mind the strays.\u201d (i\u2019m lydia deetz and all my friends are dead). The acute loneliness is palpable, \u201cOh borderlines … they drag everyone down with them.\/and I think, how can you drag me down\/when you\u2019re the one who left me behind?\/The therapist is … talking about manipulation, the long empty barrow of your need.\u201d (The drunk psychotherapist dooms you at the party). <\/p>\n

Their teenage relish for the occult has become a dark prefiguring and yet a bolster for Traynor\u2019s solitary journey to the underworld. The \u201cmarishes\u201d of Ezekiel 47.11 (swamplands which cannot heal) are a key reference, representing a seemingly dead-end grief, \u201cAfter dark,\/you\u2019ll find me … at the old Jewish cemetery.\/I\u2019m deader than any of them\/\u2013 thieves, thralls and hurlers.\/While my children sleep, Lydia,\/this is where I go \u2013\u201d (The Marishes). <\/p>\n

But this perished, stagnant place thaws near the end as Traynor gives birth and the marishes freshen into an exhilarating reimagining of Joyce\u2019s Anna Livia Plurabelle, \u201cthe baby comes and elsewhere you go\/i think of the sea hunched at clontarf\/tides paused to let you both pass\u201d (to you, one year on) thus earning New Arcana its dark yet buoyant, watery ending, \u201cWhat does the cell know\/as it swims in the Petri dish?\/I know points of light, I know laughter.\/My flesh and my closest flesh\/are laughing at you still\u201d (On Halloween).<\/p>\n

\"MollyMolly Twomey <\/p>\n

Molly Twomey\u2019s Chic to be Sad (Gallery \u20ac12.95) continues the incendiary style which distinguished her first collection Raised By Vultures. Recovery is never easy, and when the danger lies within basic sustenance it feels impossible at times, \u201c\u2018I wish you didn\u2019t have to eat,\u2019\/you said \u2013 that I could recover\/without food.\u201d (My body\/severed). <\/p>\n

The past is an active dominatrix in Twomey\u2019s poems, painfully close, \u201cits tongue against\u201d her ear, \u201cits thumbtacks on her back\u201d in \u2018When the past stops smacking … \u2019 \u201cwhen all I want is to be alone\/by the old gunpowder mill\/with boygenius, a can of fizzy mango.\u201d <\/p>\n

Consumption in all its forms is key here, visceral frustration rising from tight angry poems where private battles clash swords in public arenas of consumerism, \u201cSeven years in recovery.\/All I crave is a lit match\/to throw at the grocery store.\u201d And the most dramatic consumption here is the very real flames which consumed Twomey\u2019s family. My Brother Facetimes to Show Me Our House On Fire, among other poems, throws the cyclical nature of the recovery a curve. It\u2019s not just the past that dictates, contingency rules too. Twomey wonders if her post-surgery brother could \u201c … have woken …\u201d \u201csomehow\u201d led their parents \u201cto the side door\/\u201d. She watches his video \u201ctwo buses away, choking on tofu,\/watching fingers of smoke drag the scaffolding\/\/of our childhood into dirt.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Michael D Higgins\u2019s poetry album Against All Certainty: To hell with policy wonks for president, get a few bardsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Meanwhile as Ireland\u2019s housing crisis means that \u201cEvery year the rent gets harder to afford\u201d. (Lease), another lost home lives on in Twomey\u2019s finest quietest poem, a sonnet named for the owner of that house, a cooling counterpoint for all that fire, \u201cI took her softbacks,\/sweaters with her name stitched into the neck,\/Ann meaning due in Irish, that word\/that keeps flickering on the bus sign.\u201d (Ann).<\/p>\n

\"AlanAlan Gillis <\/p>\n

Dedicated to the late Michael Longley and reflecting Longley\u2019s preoccupation with flora, music and rhyme, Alan Gillis\u2019s Over Here (Gallery, \u20ac12.95) brims with wild flowers from the opening \u201cRuined greens, thistle-pokes\u201d (Whin) to the \u201cbittercress and wild carrot\u201d of the final, Walking Out One Morning. <\/p>\n

But Gillis\u2019s voice is his own, threaded with a demotic which is particularly keen in North Street, \u201cWhen the street smears my eyes, flinty and grim,\/deeper rhythms of hither and yon assuage\u2026:\/the shops\u2019 wafts of song, … So that\u2019s sausage \u2019n beans, wi no beans, \u2019n extra sausage?\u201d <\/p>\n

The ground shifts constantly in these existential poems, \u201cDeskwork lets me put\/bread on the table, and it\u2019s not\/as if I\u2019m chained to the desk\/in my mind … I can be anywhere.\u201d (The Desk). The surface of the desk can be contemplated closely, until \u201cit becomes vast,\/interdimensional\/like outer space or how a coffin lid might be\u201d and then cuts to a meadow \u2013 in what feels like a double exposure \u2013 humming \u201cwith unread\/\/messages … wings of blue tits, furze spines, my insides like willowherb …\u201d <\/p>\n

Yet the coffin lid is a solid reminder of the deaths which haunt Over Here. Short, tight-lipped lines nail the stealth of Covid 19 in Virus, \u201cAlong Ravenswood Avenue … Glenvarloch \u2013 nothing approaches. Pull the blinds.\/No. 35. No soul stirs. 37. Night looms. 39.\u201d First Epistle to David, dedicated to the poet David Wheatley, ponders a 21st century existential angst. Could Flann O\u2019Brien\u2019s atomic fusion theory in The Third Policeman explain why Gillis\u2019s \u201chead and backbone\u201d might be 75 per cent smartphone? If Pat McCabe\u2019s novel PogueMahone repeatedly asks, \u201cWhy do birds sing?\u201d yet there is no answer, Gillis proposes: \u201cNow we\u2019re here it may well be our function\/not to boo-hoo, but keep on, called upon\/in view of the abysmal, to find the fol-\/de-rol in things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DeanDean Browne <\/p>\n

Dean Browne\u2019s After Party (Picador, \u00a312.99) is full of surprises like the \u201cafter party\u201d which turns out to be where \u201cour cherished stuff attends\/when we\u2019re gone\u201d. A committed surrealist, Dean\u2019s carpet bag of the past unloads in tight lines of half rhyme, \u201cYou inhale fathers\/of tobacco-smoke from suede.\/Your foot snags on a dress\/as though it pleaded \u2013\u201d (Shadow Box).<\/p>\n

Clearly influenced by Charles Simic, the dedicatee of A Cigarette, he borrows Ciaran Carson\u2019s description of a cigarette \u201c\u2018a little rush of infinity\u2019\u201d, Carson\u2019s ghost haunting the lines, \u201cI couldn\u2019t say where they are now, if still hooked\/on the tonic blossom of that first sweet pull\u201d. <\/p>\n

But it is Matthew Sweeney who is the presiding figure, remembered exactly and musically in Pinball, \u201cHe liked the plink under his thumbs;\/he talked bumpers, flippers, kickers\u201d. And Browne\u2019s voice has its own odd note which shines especially bright in his home ground of Tipperary where the surreal is rooted in the local. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0New poetry: Ciaran Berry; Cherry Smyth; Afric McGlinchey; Ralf WebbOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Scuttle begins strangely and beautifully with eight-year-old, dust-allergic Dean, \u201cfingers smutty from Suttons Premium Polish Coal.\/In that bungalow\/shadowed by mountain, things\/clenched past function \u2013 \u201d. Striking juxtapositions of the abstract and concrete work at a deep metaphorical level, \u201cHand-me-down grudges.\/Where do you dispose of them,\/old keys? One\u2019s blue-green brass\/with smoky thumb stain,\/ chunky, no discernible fit\/with anything begun since me.\u201d <\/p>\n

Local crowd scenes are conjured effortlessly, succinctly, \u201cLocal occasion commemorating\/one or other of the helpless rabbits\/history bloods its lurchers on.\/Laughing boy on dad\u2019s shoulders,\/\/mother withdrawn and scrolling\u201d (Anniversary). Dean\u2019s ear for dialogue is especially acute, driving the ludic, hilarious quatrain, It Cannot Be Salvaged, which stays in the mind like a tune, \u201cMake me scrambled eggs, she never said.\/I will so, I said,\/and never did.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Arcana (Bloodaxe \u00a312) is Jessica Traynor\u2019s striking, ambitious elegy for an old school friend who died by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6489,15821,61,60,80,25164],"class_list":{"0":"post-34037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-book-reviews","9":"tag-flann-o-brien","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-tim-burton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}