NON-GUCCI POETRY !

Teri Murray reading from her new poetry

collection at the Cuisle festival earlier today.

THE

AUTHORITY

OF

WINTER

The last leaf has fallen from the apple tree
an old man shifts
trying to defy the weight of soil
bare arm-pits where fruit once crouched
skin puckered over flesh
blemished even in the womb
where stars are fashioned from pips

all that sweetness spit from sap
too heavy for a fragile stem
dropped for birds
to stab at;
and fingers where nails once split
and curled into blossoms
now point, accusing the seasons of treachery
and flout the authority of winter.

Teri Murray

SHE DOES . . . AGAIN

Maybe it’s the time of year but poetry is very much on my mind lately, and right on cue comes the Cuisle Poetry Festival here in Limerick. This is an annual event and consists of four days of readings and workshops, by local and national poetic luminaries. Today I attended a lunchtime reading by Teri Murray at Isaacs bar next to Teds on O’Connel street. I previously heard this lady recite her work at the White House Poetry revival a few months ago, and she was like a breath of fresh air then. Shortly before Teri read on that occasion a local established ‘poet’ read his terribly ‘clever’ piece with all the impact of a wet dishcloth. She delivered her poems with a passion and an immediacy that left me wanting to hear more.

So it was a real pleasure to hear this lunchtime reading from Teri’s new collection ‘The Authority of Winter’. This woman is a ‘natural’ and writes with that light touch of the true artist, serving up the real meat of poetry in her work. Even in this twenty minute reading so many phrases leap out and stay in the remembrance, lines like… “the soles of my sandals / leaving silver imprints / of crescent moons…ink stabs wounding the spaces / between her words…all that sweetness spit from sap / too heavy for a fragile stem…I was a Fuchsia / held on a graceful stem…” Teri delivers her poems in a strong confident style, realising I think ,that the power of her words will beguile the audience.

In a humorous piece she nods to Paddy Kavanagh and includes in the poem an overheard snippet of conversation at a literary reception in Baggot street, concerning herself… “How can she claim to be a writer / with an atrocious Dublin accent like that?” The lady herself instantly retorts… “Well, I have news for you, missus, / I can and I do…So if ever we meet on Baggot Street / maybe I’ll remember you / clutching your Gucci bag / and Guccier poems”. And during this lunchtime reading Teri Murray proved again that she can, and she does !

Gerard O'Shea