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  • foghar eile / another autumn

    original Gaelic poem with English translation by the author mo chasan a’ leughadh leabhar-cumha ruadh an fhoghair my feet reading the russet elegy-book of autumn eòlas nan dùil sgrìobhte ann an làmh rèimeil nan tùs ag innse dhomh gu’n d’fhiach an sgeul ath-aithris, nach eil anns an lobhadh     ach bruadar  knowledge of hopes written in…

  • Ysgol Gân y drudwns / Singing School for Starlings

    original Irish poem with English translation by Gillian Clarke ar ôl “Bird Watching” R. S. Thomas A daeth taith fawrddwsinau o ddrudwnsi ben.          Nid sbienddrycho bell yn gorwelioeu plu sy.               Ond heddiwseicdreiddwyr eu cof               sy’n nodi sain                    eu hen ganiadau. Wedi clwydodeffro wnant,                         ehedanti bedwar ban, cydganant,hymian mewn ffurfafenfel taflen Ysgol Gân,llond galeri yn oedfa’r nos,a’r Gymanfa yn agosáu.      Altos…

  • Bóithre / Chaos Theory

    original Irish poem with English translation by the author faiteadhsúile feithidei bhforaois fearthainnei mBorneó the blinkof an insect’seye in the rainforest of Borneo chuir gála gaoitheag réabadh na tíre,ag pleancadhscioból tuí set gale forcewinds rippingthe country,battering tin sheds is monarchan iata,scoileanna réamhdhéantais tithe taibhsíó Cheann Mhalainnego Carn Uí Néid and shut factories,prefabricated schoolsand ghost housesfrom…

  • Introduction

    While it is only possible for this Ploughshares transatlantic issue to offer a snapshot of current British and Irish poetry, I have tried to make it as representative as possible. Most of the poets I’ve been able to solicit work from are included in one or other of the three most recent generational anthologies published…

  • About Neil Astley

    Poets love a revolution. Many poets I met, in the years I spent running the Poetry Society in London, seemed to foster secret fantasies of living in a time when samizdat pamphlets, typed on hidden typewriters and smuggled to readers who treated them as if they were stone tablets, could change the world. Most poetry,…

  • Summer Poem #3

    In the middle of my life I had the most marvelous piece of luck I entered a hotel and among golfers pregnant with beautiful minor worries watched the cheerleaders gallop as James Wright said terribly against each other’s bodies but really it was not except for their cries of happiness bouncing off the mountains surrounding…

  • Of Ownership

    after Joy Harjo   The verb has a long history of violence: to take is to grab, seize or capture, esp. by force; note its hard k set against the long vowel, a sign of intent, this cave of sound. He took her by the throat and shook her is one in a proliferation of…

  • Etching, Drypoint

    it starts in rage not anger or rancor or a bitch cornered whose fear-fuelled snarl turns fit nor the politesse of some pale Ramon screaming         no         more of a jonesing more veins stretched as pig gut over sphincter mince more a thumbnail that breaks the skin to pull a strip or length of rind to…