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Abridged aims to commission and publish contemporary/experimental poetry plus contemporary art freed from exhibition ties and especially commissioned for the magazine. We encourage poets/artists to investigate the articulation of ‘Abridged’ themes. For example our last few issues have been concerned with Time, Absence, Magnolia and Nostalgia. These themes focus on contemporary concerns in a rapidly changing society. We are offering an alternative and complete integration of poetry, art and design. We experiment continually. We also stray into the exhibition format producing contemporary, innovative and challenging work accompanied by a free publication. www.abridgedonline.com
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Abridged 0–26
1992 - 2012
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Cover Images: David Hepher, Aylesbury (Homage To Robert Gober), 2008-10, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery www.flowersgalleries.com
David Hepher 01 David Hepher 28
Gerald Dawe 05 Graham Nunn 30
Joanna Karolini 06 Sarah Mixtapes 31
Shelley Tracey 08 Gerard Beirne 32
Maurice Devitt 10 Dan Harvey 33
Fiona Ní Mhaoilir 11 Afric McGlinchey 34
Joanna Grant 12 Gráinne Tobin 35
Rachel McDonnell 13 David Hepher 36
Gerald Yelle 14 Vanessa Gebbie 38
Kristin Abraham 15 Conor McFeely 39
David Hepher 16 Benjamin Norris 40
Moyra Donaldson 18 Anne-Marie Glasheen 41
Dan Shipsides 19 David Calcutt 42
Joanna Grant 20 Aideen Barry 43
Dan Shipsides 21 Joyce Parkes 44
Brian Kirk 22 Annette Skade 45
Doireann Ní Ghríofa 23 Denzil Browne 46
Barbara A. Morton 24 Elizabeth Welsh 47
Theo Sims 25 Blaine O’Donnell 48
Kimberly Campanello 26 Contributors 49
Becky Kilsby 27 David Hepher 56
Contents
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We are reluctant to acknowledge Rust. We are reluctant to see it and reluctant to face it, letting it consume the space framed in our sightline. So we push it to the edges, and avoid the contradiction of our control that is Rust. The waste of our existence is pushed to the edges of our cities. We see
them on the periphery, dark figures cloaked in the brittle residue of deterioration. The human world is rusting; people, places, things, rusting and rotting on the periphery. Our backward glances leave us unnerved by the sinister image of grey carcasses seeping with orange reds. Tattered forms, broken,
fragile, finished. There is an eerie resemblance. A premonition. We know this eroding virus, it is routine enough to name. Rust is in our skin, the passage of time making abrasive records on steel flesh. The air
whips our iron bodies, breaking our sense of power. Steel razors are muted and frayed under time’s persistent grind, objects of strength peppered with the omnipotence of rain, of wind. Our fickle illusions
of permanence are skeletonised. They become ghosts of crumbling orange in an obedient return to the earth under nature’s tyranny. The body electric fails and falls. And nature is adamant in its weight, a hard and physical heaviness. An absolute presence. Rust, an elemental weapon of mass demoralization, confirms the unutterable reality that we are merely passing through. In the context of nature we are a
small movement, temporary occupants. Rust forces us to dispute the significance of our industries, our wars, our structured societies, our manufactured supremacy. They are fossilized dreams, unnatural fossils flaking to dust. Rust is our mutability. Rust is our diminution. The natural translation of colour and state.
An evolution of the elements.
PDFs of this and previous issues are available on www.abridgedonline.com as free downloads. We will be quite busy in the coming months. News of our activities can be found on the website,
Facebook page and Twitter Feed.
Next: Abridged 0 – 28: Once A Railroad
Abridged 0 – 26no part of this publication may be reproduced without permission
copyright remains with authors/artistsabridged is a division of The Chancer Corporation
c/o Verbal Arts Centre, Stable Lane and Mall Wall, Bishop Street Within, Derry - Londonderry BT48 6PU
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…there’s a voice in the distance quiet and clear saying something that I never ever wanted to hear….
Abridged 0 – 26: Rust
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Promises, Promises Over the rusty sky cranes lie idly by forlorn estates where grass spikesthrough patios and abandoned electrics hang like wasps’ nests in rooms and hallsthat no one moved into after all, like the half-lit caverns of office blockswith the reflected moon in walls of glass. Gerald Dawe
Overleaf: Joanna Karolini, Kafka’s Love Letters to Felice, (Works on Paper, Dimensions Variable), 2003
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Bell
At Dachau, a rusted bell still tolls, swinging wild and clanging in a cage of steel.Footsteps between the barracksharsh down gravel corridors, dissonance of past and present, guard, commander, prisoner, visitor, soldier, guide. So easy to get lost in here, my father texts me.So much of it, and all the same. He texts without abbreviations,spelling out the facts so hard to comprehend.The SS guards were trained in here. A school for cruelty.Three years my dad lived here till they killed him.They slept shoulder to shoulder on hard and rotting bunks.They say the grass grew rusty red on Execution Ridge.
I see my father pacing slow behind barbed wire,marking out his father’s absence.He will bring back a postcard of the sculpture at the entrance:splayed skinny limbs and heads tossed back, a Guernica in steel.He will place his memories and imaginings side by side, shifting and rearranging, nothing making sense. His lost father is a face repeated in an album,decayed by fingerprints and years. A tiny form, a blur of charcoal hair, An arm around his bride’s small shoulders,Tall behind his seated wife, my infant father shawled upon her knee,only a few months before he went to Dachau,a dissident transported for his thoughts, the words he spoke, his name.
I see my father on the train today from Munich to the camp.I see him thinking, not thinking, perhaps nodding, but not speaking. My father seldom speaks. He is an old man in a stiff grey coat,His hard cracked hands bunched on his knees, tannin of the garden in his nails and on his skin.His eyes narrowed from years of planting, measuring out, scrutinising growth and change. Every Sunday in the churchyard at my mother’s grave, weeding and amending, the trowel, still gleaming eight years later, standing cleaned and ready during the week, hissing all through winter into hardened soil.
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My mother faded like a wine-red rose turned to paper,bleeding black into the petals’ edge. Dark mouth, crumpled paleness. I’ve lost my sense of her. She comes so seldom in my dreams, a phantom at the edge of things, like a language I’ve forgotten through disuse.
For years my father scrutinised all those crackling films about the war,translating history into family narrative,making meaning from a time beyond all meaning, seeking his father’s face in all those stacks of corpses,grey skin on forms as long and hard as giant reptiles,noses sharp as beaks, hands curled like claws.
In the crematorium, oxblood red bricksand a heavy chain before the ovens,corroding at the links.The memorial stone tells a story:“Ashes were buried here.”The last fact that he texts me: “We waited for the train back in McDonald’s.I had some tea. It burnt my tongue.”
When the message comes,I am drinking coffee in the Ulster Museum,tired of puzzling over images of the Titanic wreck,trying to distinguish moss from rock from hull from shadow.A haze of water murks the truth. Then the cinema in the art gallery,Bill Fontana’s Silent Echoes.An old bell swings as easy as a flower on its stem,silver turned to green and bronze, found poetry in the dark.
Shelley Tracey
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Yesterday’s Mirror
The city wakesto a transcript
of metal and stonecast for posterity - across a twisted seathey search for life
ignorethe arrogance of time
till, in the inkof evening
a shout breaksthe faulty silence
and framesthe cracked reflection
of bare handsclutching sky.
Maurice Devitt
Opposite: Fiona Ní Mhaoilir, HIPPOCAMPUS, Extracts from my visual studies notebook, Paper corroded
by the use of oil, turps and other materials, 2012
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The earth is the colorof the sky whichis the colorof the dirt
They tell uswe breathe the dirtup here. Moon dustand dried-up shit.
With intake of breaththe silt. Coats the spongypink of the lungs.
On the dustiest dayswe cough up mud.
If it ever rains itstreaks. Dirty tears.
Some days there’s a mountaintipped with wisps of snowoff on the horizon. Some daysjust a flat grey scrim. Hazeover the ghosts of old dead rivers.
The dust chokes out the satellites.Unusable, your dish becomes a nest.No internet for days—laptops turn to paperweights.We rediscover writing. Tracing the shapes.
In the blackoutsour grey-booted feetlearn the dark and the rocks.
One of my boys brings me an old dead bullet.
I bored a hole through the top, he says,so you can wear it on a chain. With luckthe only one you ever stop.
Children, I tell them in my lecture,many thousands of years agothe people here believed
in a place they called the House of Dust.
The place where all our souls went downto wait for who knows what. Slowlyfeeling the change. Some said the waiting ones
began to sprout soft doves’ feathers. As if maybeto fly. One day. Wings the pink and gray.
Of the swirling dirt.
Joanna Grant
Hard to Say Where the Figure Ends and the Background BeginsHelmand Province, Afghanistan
Opposite: Rachel Mc Donnell, Nighttime stirs, Gouache on edited found photograph, 2012
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Ice, wedged under roof tiles under pressure pushing moistureright hand corner facing the bowl,impossible not to see given the ceiling’s pitch: cracked andwater stained, dried anddiscolored, so I have to keep an eye on it especially in winter. The roofer’s sure the only cureinvolves your sister’s daughter pulling tops off crèmes,and the one digital hole in all six walls, and the paint, the smell ofboiling cabbage, of my father’srented kitchen,imitation of his mother’s with its bathroom off the kitchenwhich we’re not ashamed to drown in smoke. Let’s forget it. Hit the pavement. The streetscrowded with that indoor look though quiet despite it.
There should have been poems, a parade called Death to Headache,bands judged from a platform from which we leap to new enigma. Backers reneged when Allies won the right to a march. There’s a breach in the crowdwide enoughto walk through, and I’mbringing my camera. I want that corner in a saffron veneer. I want that erstwhile peace-loving Lilliputian on the commonto open the Ferris wheel lying half unfolded in its glossy valise its pond-like stillness glinting in his gaze.
Gerald Yelle
HAIRCUTS NOT DISCOVERED BY ACCIDENT
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In Which His Pilgrims Suffer a Feast of Reason
Dear Prophet—you have canary lungs,sensitivities no one can bear to witness,sallow pockets under your eyes, your knuckles grind like gizzards.
Dear series of concentric circles—you are plaguedby the voice of an oystershell—we no longer see, we die, we follow your wagon—your God is not you, but we hitch and listen.
Dear apology—you are a seriesof souls; you know pretty words, curiosities. Fear is the root of prophecy, you say, but the root of infinity, too, we know.
Dear in the world but not of the world—you have never been suchkissed-off light; burnedor not burned we will never know when to unlock. No one has a psalter for tongues or notions.
Dear thumbprint—Dear egregious tree—How does truculentcome into the world? Tucks in its body as a bird does?Just before flight—
Kristin Abraham
Over: David Hepher, From Aylesbury (Homage To Robert Gober), 2008-10, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery www.flowersgalleries.com
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Red
Comb of cockerel,oriental poppies, winter berries,robin’s breast. Speck of lifein the yolk.
Blood beetle rubiescrushed for crimson,death in it;mordant alum fix.
Vermilion from the mingledblood of elephant and dragonmercury and sulphurdug from the earth. The hand of Ulster,hand of history.Red rag to a bull.Caught redhanded.
Years of sky warnings and delights.Blood letting,pressure
thicker than waternot thick enoughto carry the weight of us.Soaked. Flowing.
Lips with wine, desire, remembered rhythms,the first rivuletdown a pale leg,
a sigh of relief.The stain life makes.Blood thickens. Slows.Dries. Rust. Clot.
Touches of red into the housein compensation. A vase,two cushions. Red frames for five black dancing herons and one black horse.
Moyra Donaldson
Opposite: Dan Shipsides, White Star Nation, Paint on Steel, 2012
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EndsFOB Shank, Khost, Afghanistan.
Sometimes I think something must have diedunder the walkway to our classroom tent,especially when the early spring rains rollthrough the valleys and soak us the smellsbubble up—old mushrooms, wet dog, that danksomething you get when you turn over a rockand the cold wet rolls off its mossy underbelly.
Death lingers here like some bad smellnobody wants to talk about, like allthe latrine reek we more or less learnto put up with, like the smell of hot garbagestirred by the sun, old half-chewed scrapsroiling in the landfills, what’s not burntpicked over by the shiny crows, the onesrippling blue-black with plague alongtheir greasy wings and grayish feet.
Out back behind the huts you never knowwhat you might find tossed out, a crazy towerof rusted-out bed frames slung up againstan abandoned K-9 shed, an old paw printby the twisted gate that leads to nothing any more,caterpillar tracks from a passing tank cut into the dirtby an old burned-out Jeep, the composting heapof an abandoned pallet of mosquito repellant,poison and old cardboard soaking into the loosening earth.
All these old odds and ends of men. What’s left behind.No matter how hard you try you never get all of them.This one time, Russell says, when I first got put on mortuary.This one time I got the call. And I went out and took a lookat what they’d thrown in the back of the truck. And I couldn’t tellif I was looking at his ass or his face. Part of his jaw had done felloff and a tooth rolled out when I pulled out his vest. That’s the truth.
Spring rain and mildew smell means it’s time to fight again.And right on cue the explosions ripple through the eastand soon I’m sure they’ll reach us here where our little tentsflap and shudder in the squalls gusting through the Kush.
But would you look at that. The sky just cleared and for onceit doesn’t smell that bad. The twisted scraps of chain-link fenceglisten and drip, the old dirty water in the puddles one big slickof rainbow. The kitchen guys goof and wrestle as they slice.One of the Filipina girls who cuts hair and does massage strutsdown the path between the laundry tents with her earbuds in,rocking out to her Engrish bubblegum pop. Baby you are sexin my eyes. She’s wafted on a cloud of Bounce and soap.Benny and Reeves get the guys into teams to play hacky sackin the dark, their little heads and feet splashed with reflective paintand peeping out of the blackout like so many new stars,or lightning bugs doing a mating dance in the softer airof home summers. And, in the morning as I unlock the door,I can see something pushing up through the scattered rocks.I know it’s probably a weed, but from here for now in thismore forgiving light I swear it looks like it might be a flower
Joanna Grant
Opposite: Dan Shipsides, Brown Star Nation, Paint on Steel, 2012
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Rotten apples
born too late at end of daythe dead fruit fallsblown by the wind laid out on corrugated tin covered against gunmetal rain gathering a fine dust of winter fliesturning I cansmell it still
Brian Kirk
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Sean—chló
Luíonn brat deannaigh
Ar dromchla an clóscríobháin,
Méarchlár meirgeach
Sa sean—chló gaelach
Le eochracha marbha
Don séimhiú, don síniú fada -
Cnagadh ciúnaithe.
Rusted Relic
Drifts of dust muffle the old typewriter’s surface
Each dead key is encrusted with rust
A forgotten Gaelic font
Of blurred syllables
And bygone symbols
Muted music.
Smothered percussion.
Doireann Ní Ghríofa
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Corrosio
in the afterlife of a rainstorm a heartbeat counts down silence
any shift in light or shade
indicates a cloud moving across
or away from the face of the sun
by distorted notions of scale
large elements are miniaturised
small detail tragically magnified
and in-between
symmetric coronas of dark black smoke
reach from the horizon to the heavens
disregardless
in the afterlife of an afternoon sunlight oscillates these oiled boards
submerged memories give way
to that dream where
there are iron bridges
collapsing and in-between
fornenst a sumptuous stand
of dark black oak there are
jazz musicians there are
hydroscopic attitudes
resisting the boundaries
of our known world
Barbara A. Morton
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Theo Sims, Thaw, 2012.
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In the Hills
In the hills of Víznar, British Petroleum has set up shop where Lorca and thousands of others were shot. In the hills of Níjar, the legs of the dead goat slung under the tree have landed in a trot.
*
A watermelon cracked open by an oily fist flashes its guts in a truck bed. A pregnant woman buys 2 of them as elbows and knees poke her stomach from the inside.
*
A black-faced bird sits down at the table,gives out hell to me, says to throw awaythe funeral parlor advertisements attached to the flowers clutched by the dead.
*
A man holds out his lack-of-hand with its screw-in porcelain cup, asks for change.The child across from me dressed like a puta tells me to fuck off with her kohled eyes.
*
Three boys in identical shirts dance in the square where the church wall still says José Antonio Primo de Rivera. In death slang, they call the host, the body of Christ, a whore. They promise to shit in the skulls of our dead ancestors.
Kimberly Campanello
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Seized
iron brown fleck on your tongue - stult articulation, bitteras old gunmetal
arthritic clench, ill-disposed to sweeten joints - bending over backwards to lock down the status quo
wedged now in gallbladdertram tracks, crying out for Valencian orange oil
did you only know how to ask for it
instead, inedible tarnished pipsstick in your stiffening gulletand eyes flick corneal rust
dried bloodflinchingcrust
Becky Kilsby
Over: David Hepher, From Aylesbury (Homage To Robert Gober), 2008-10, Courtesy of FlowersGallery www.flowersgalleries.com
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Dingo
What have the gulls leftat this dark end of the day?
Your coat is rustedin patches now the waves
thin whisper arrives at your feet.You are lost in this story
head thrown back howlingthat miserable hymn.
Eyes more stone than sight, ribs showing the sick weight of breath.
Graham Nunn
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Sarah Mixtapes, Untitled, 2012
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Vision of Rust
Ferous filings heated in a closed damp crucible exposed to animal effluvia.An airtight mass caulking the rims, pipe sockets packed with rings of spun yarn.
Borings, turnings, salt ammoniac, vertical brackets bolted to the baseplate, fixed to the bearing for overhead girders. Flanges concealed with ornamental foliage,
metal leaves cast from the true fit of iron bedded on iron. Burrs, snugs, stubs.Oxydised barrels of cider, vinegarised bungholes open to the air. Baths of water
acidulated with sulphuric acid in leaden or wooden vessels, tubs settling on mud at ebb tide, bilge and keel, midship-sulphuretted hydrogen and alkaline sulphides.
The washspace plumbago of chaffed chains, pintles and eyes, an anchor galvanised,rivet heads highly wrought and refined, scoured with sand, deposited in lime.
Plunged into fused zinc, bent and warped out of shape. Nodules and carbuncles.Plumpen oatseeds sown broadcast on sandy loam, mildew, blight, wire-worm.
Earthen substances sponged and brushed, smoothed through bran and sawdust.Bricks, potters clay, the surface glaze of Babylonian iron-stained fictile wares.
Gerard Beirne
Opposite: Dan Harvey, (Ackroyd & Harvey), Magnet Mouth, Iron Filings and Slate, 2003
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The Gate
They need a context, to eke outtheir distant echo, undisturbed by cities or freeways,some place desolate perhaps, where boneshave settled well below earth,and bats hold on in the favoured dark, where a fox might bark; a placeto find comfort among moth-coloured shapesin the unlit gloom, haunted by the passingof a stranger at a gate, its brittle metal rocking on loose hinges,raven-blue grooves indented and weathered;or a stray, looking for a shelter to coil into,away from the cooling air;nature’s dissolution shared with human debris, relic of a blue kettle tippedto one side and growing moss;above the cracked mantel,a thorned heart.The gate stirs, lifts the torpid air
to a condition of unreason,and at any momentthey might step across,feel the weight of this rusted gateon a solid leaning arm. Evening draws in,darkness creeping closer,until the gate is all there is,and even that a shaky prospect,disintegrating under seeping ink. The night glides its wings,silent as an owl,only the wind to attend those ghosts,knowing there is something they need to say. The air curls round mounds, trees, stones, like little leaves, to carry sorrows,secrets, lost dreams.An unlocked gate shudders,creates a breach,invitation to leave.
Afric McGlinchey
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Fertilia Is Nothing Special
Future towns of coal and silver
Carbonia Argenteria
the one he called after himself
this place where anything might grow
Here Musso’s notions of order
drained egrets with mosquitoes
gave the town hall a watchtower
took people like cuttings to plant
in sticky malarial silt
A model village girders blocks
a sketch on squared paper
If hotel space is scant it makes
a reasonable place to sleep
Children and dogs play in its streets
the past is filtered out of them
as reeds around the town’s lagoon
suck filth and breathe it out again
sweetened to feed the fishing lines
suspended from the Roman bridge
left disconnected half-submerged
available for photographs.
Gráinne Tobin
Over: David Hepher, From Aylesbury (Homage To Robert Gober), 2008-10, Courtesy of FlowersGallery www.flowersgalleries.com
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Seaside theatre, end of seasonAfter ‘Untitled (Living Sculpture)’ by Merisa Merz
Wires hang from unmanned gantries,a phone rings, rings, gives up.In an air heavy with grease-paint, sweat and dust, boards creak, contract into winter.
To the front of the dim stage the janitor comes, silver knees protesting against the years. In a dressing room he found The Tin Man thrown over a stool,pearly face-paint abandoned near a fly-specked glass.
Somewhere over the rainbow comes out as a croak.He clears his throat, begins again. He cannot see the gods, where they used to sit,just the rows in the stalls they could not affordif they wanted a take-out after the show.
The tin janitor sings until the place echoes, until it’s time to lock the doors and post the key back through.He sings constellations to their rest in a painted sky he cannot see, but knows is there.
All the while this emptiness in his chest,where his heart used to be.Its absence, like rust,holding the shape of that which is lost.
Vanessa Gebbie
Opposie: Conor McFeely: Untitled 2012.
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ORES
We bore holes in us, as if attrition comes naturally.
Water does what water does, slowly builds more layers
while time comes on and throws us under inch-
thick crusts of residue. Slapped on fast, this way and
that, varnish up our weakest points so we can’t see
despite being flush against the panes – we stay
sitting, smoking slowly, refining the crudeness
of our gestures until we pump ourselves outside
even then, nothing can remind you of the day
when our selves glinted, shiny new:
hips crackle and spit, and something silver corrugates lips
with not quite words slagged out in heaps.
We grow inside houses, this much is clear, yet
our hair stays flat, we count the days in single strands.
Reduced to a specimen, a set of samples:
hours kept stock in breathing bowls, broken bones
pile up with kisses, the taste of iron.
My memories clamber under skies,
fuming full of smashed clay pots and the days
when our mouths moved, and music came
Benjamin Norris
Opposite: Anne-Marie Glasheen, Bird, 2012
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Stone
Lumped in my hand Growing hot suddenlyAs if a sun were insideA nuclear beginningAtomic explosion tucked in the fistOr a bird’s foetus curledIn the stone’s solid centreLearning songs Of the stone’s beginningIts pink lizard headTucked under a mountainI drop it to the groundIt takes rootSprout iron shootsRusty flakes of leavesStruggles out of its jacketSprouts eyes a mouthYawning amazed at the flimsy treesThe wind wriggling under its tailCrawls over the battlefieldOf petals leavesGrappling the earthWith its delicate hands.
David Calcutt
Opposite: Aideen Barry, Rigor Mort Adagio, 2012
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Aubade
Fly to Bee: Where you land
is what you see. A warbler
agreed, having seen rust
story trees, benches of iron,
clocks of castles, the Rock*
of a country, the brush of
a painter — who saw Bee
story a flower. Fly, an eye.
Frog, a water-lily. Fish,
a boat. Mosquito, a bower.
When the wind whirled
dust, a cricket landed on
the hub of a wheel attached
to a plane taxiing on
the tarmac of time and rust.
*Uluru
Joyce Parkes
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Peninsula
A tongue of brown tin curls on the far shed,ready to be ripped by the next high wind.On the pier rust rimes cars and winches.Scrap metal, grassed over by the ditch,slowly turns to burnt-brown grit.
Rust fills every gap in the fields, gnawsiron bedsteads, crumpled oil drums,a wheelbarrow rammed between stones.Paint cans, old tins of nails leave rings of rust on window ledge and doorstep.
Digging old ground, the spade jars,scrapes out chains; half hinges;broken shears; one side of a rusty tongs- left lying begrudged: never fully let go.
The salt wind brings me in. I look in the mirror, examinejaundiced eyes; psoriasis. I retch, taste the bitter tang,spit blood like coffee grounds.
Annette Skade
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Harvest
Start with this, bend. Work from the grained spine & back. The ridges of ribs take longer. Look up. She watches your fingers run along the belt of fibre. Silently, she kneels and picks asparagus tips. They click like cicadas, like a clock.
Start with this, squat. It is clear, today. Outside, you choose bare feet. The wood shavings rain onto your cracked heels. Cedars are dribbled with rust. That bird feeder you hung, dripped. The curve of arm sloughs off squash-coloured patterns.
Start with this, crouch. Feel the feathered tips; let them brush the back of your hand. Run your hands along their length, drink in their tallness. Take the small garden knife and snap off stems. Hear each one tick.
Start with this, stoop. Spring will bring rust – overwintered spores shine lime-green braille. She treats the ferns, wipes clean each stalk. Creases up over them, folds belly into belly. Marks rust with red tags. Harvests. Thinks of how we mark, tag, note.
Start with this, bow.
Elizabeth Welsh
Opposite, Denzil Browne, Photographic Darkroom Print, 20 x 16”, 2011
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Kristin Abraham is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus (Subito Press, 2008), and Orange Reminds You of Listening(Elixir Press, 2006); her poem “Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus” was selected for Best New Poets 2005. Additional poetry, lyric essays, and critical essays have appeared in such places as American Letters & Commentary, Rattle, Court Green, LIT, Columbia Poetry Review, and The Journal. She currently teaches English at Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne, WY, and is Editor-in-Chief of the literary journal Spittoon.
Aideen Barry has performed and exhibited her practice extensively both in Ireland and internationally, with recent shows at, Galeria Isabel Hurley, Spain ( 2012) Catherine Clark Gallery, US ( 2011) Millenium Court Arts Centre, UK (2011), the Butler Gallery (2010), the Mermaid Arts Centre (2009) and Headlands Centre for the Arts ( 2011). Significant international projects and group exhibitions include: LISTE, Basel, (2010), Futures, RHA (2009), Musée des Beaux Arts, Lyon (2009), The Wexner Center, Ohio (2009), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2008) and Artscene, Shanghai (2005). Her work as an artist takes the form of many media: film, video, performance, sound art, drawing, sculpture and lens based works. Barry lives and works in the west of Ireland.
Gerard Beirne is an Irish writer now living in Canada where he teaches at the University of New Brunswick and is a Fiction Editor with The Fiddlehead, Canada’s oldest literary magazine. His most recent collection of poetry Games of Chance: A Gambler’s Manual was published by Oberon Press, Fall 2011. He has published two novels including The Eskimo in the Net (Marion Boyars) shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award 2004. His short story Sightings of Bono was adapted into a short film featuring Bono (U2). This poem is from a new manuscript, The Death Poems. Other poems from this manuscript have been published or accepted for publication in a large number of international magazines including Magma, Cyphers, Causeway/Cabhsair, The Moth, Poetry New Zealand, Poetry Saltzburg Review, The Malahat Review, Ecotone.
Denzil Browne photographically speaking, likes to live in the past as much as possible. Words like megapixel and jpeg make his head spin and he has to retire to a darkened room. He is currently involved in reviving the utterly obsolete but very beautiful technique of cyanotype printing and exhibited the results in Artlink’s Gallery at fort Dunree in May 2012. In 2010 his solo exhibition ‘Abandoned Donegal’ was launched at Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny and published by Abridged; in 2011 it was exhibited at X-PO, Kilnaboy, Co Clare.
David Calcutt is a playwright and poet, and has also written three novels for young people, published by Oxford University Press. He has many radio plays to his credit, and is currently working on a project in Herefordshire creating poetry with people with dementia. His most recent work is The Ward, a play based on writings by Anton Chekhov, for Midland Actors Theatre. David lives in the West Midlands.
Kimberly Campanello was born in Elkhart, Indiana, where she grew up working in her family’s pizza restaurant. She now lives in Dublin. Her chapbook Spinning Cities was published by Wurm Press (2011). She was the featured poet in the Summer 2010 issue of The Stinging Fly, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in several publications including Tears in the Fence, Burning Bush II, and nthposition. She is an editor of Rowboat, a new international magazine dedicated to poetry in translation.
Gerald Dawe’s Selected Poems was published earlier this year by The Gallery Press. He teaches at Trinity College Dublin.
Maurice Devitt, a student at Mater Dei in Dublin, reading for an MA in Poetry Studies. Recently long-listed for the Doire Press Chapbook Competition, during 2011 he was short-listed for both the Fish Poetry prize and the Cork Literary Review Manuscript Competition, and was also runner-up in the Phizzfest poetry competition. Over the past twelve months he has had poems accepted by Abridged, Orbis, Moloch, Paraxis, Weary Blues, #firstcut, Stony Thursday, Ofi Press, Bluepepper and Smiths Knoll and is now working towards a first collection.
Moyra Donaldson is a poet and creative writing facilitator, living and working in Co Down. Her fourth collection of poetry, Miracle Fruit was published in November 2010 by Lagan Press, Belfast . Her Selected Poems is forthcoming in September 2012 from Liberties Press, Dublin.
Vanessa Gebbie is a Welsh writer and freelance writing teacher. She is author of two fiction collections and contributing editor of Short Circuit (Salt), a text book on the art of the short story. Her debut novel The Coward’s Tale (Bloomsbury) was selected as a Financial Times 2011 book of the year. Her poetry has been published both online and in print. www.vanessagebbie.com
Anne-Marie Glasheen is a photographic artist, prize-winning poet and literary translator. She is a regular exhibitor and her images, poetry and ‘shorts’ have been published in the UK and abroad. Her first collection of poetry Lines in the Sand was published in 2008 by Bradshaw Books, Cork, Ireland. She lives in London.
Contributors
Opposite: Blaine O’Donnell, All Things Are Pigment, watercolour, pencil and varnish on Somerset paper, 84x63.5cm, 2010.
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Joanna Grant’s work has previously appeared in Guernica, Verse Monthly, The Southern Women’s Review, The Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and was nominated for inclusion in the volume Best New Poets 2010. She currently serves as a Collegiate Associate Professor and Wandering Scholar for the University of Maryland University College, teaching soldiers English, speech, and humanities courses at various sites in Afghanistan. Thanks to Prairie Schooner for permission to use the poem.
Dan Harvey of artist partnership Ackroyd & Harvey makes time-based interventions that intersect disciplines of sculpture, photography, ecology, architecture and biology. Their work has been exhibited worldwide in galleries, museums and diverse public and found spaces. In 2011, they won the Mapping the Park public art commission in the Olympic Park, ten sculptures acting as a lasting legacy for London 2012. www.ackroydandharvey.com
David Hepher, born in Surrey, studied at Camberwell School of Art and then the Slade School of Art. He had solo exhibitions at Whitechapel, Serpentine and Hayward Gallery in consecutive years during the 1970’s and is featured in national collections including Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, Arts Council England and the Contemporary Arts Society. David Hepher’s work is to be included in Out of Britain, National Museum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and was recently shown at the Whitechapel Gallery, East London as part of a series of British Council Collection exhibitions to celebrate their 75th Anniversary. He will also be in Tulca 2012 Festival in Galway, Ireland. He is represented by the Flowers Gallery: http://www.flowersgallery.com
Joanna Karolini, born 1978 Wroclaw, Poland. Based in Belfast for the last decade, Karolini’s ambition as an artist is broadly ‘anthropological’: to understand the environment in which she works and to use that knowledge to make a positive contribution. In the public domain Karolini’s projects have taken place in public baths, or former, and involved ideas of cleaning and purification. Her work concerns the ‘invisible’ and almost unacknowledged manual labour of cleaning in relation to organised leisure as cultural phenomenon. Recent projects include Convergence: ‘Kafka’s Love Letters to Felicie’. Belfast, GT Gallery Limerick, LCGA. (2011), Clean Towels of Ill Nightmares, Russian/Turkish Baths, New York, Performance/Photo/Video/Sound (2010, solo), To All the Local Nymphs, Rimske Toplice (Roman Spa), Slovenia (2007, site-specific work).
Becky Kilsby’s poetry explores emotions, places and situations rooted in her own experience. British by birth and education, she has lived amongst a stimulating mix of cultures in the Middle East for over twenty years. She bounces between free verse and traditional forms such as the villanelle and sonnet.
Brian Kirk is a poet, short story writer and playwright from Dublin. He blogs at www.briankirkwriter.com. His poetry and stories have been published in Boyne Berries, Revival,
The Stony Thursday Book, Sunday Tribune, Southword, Crannog, Wordlegs, Cancan Poezine, Bare Hands, The First Cut and various anthologies.
Rachel Mc Donnell is a multi-disciplinary artist who recently graduated from the Crawford College of Art and Design in 2011 with a B.A (hons) Degree in Fine Art. Whilst completing her Degree in 2009 she co-founded Basement Project Space an artist-led inititive based in Cork City. She currently lives and works between Mayo and Limerick City, Ireland. Web :www.rachelmcdonnell.wordpress.com email: [email protected]
Conor McFeely is an artist living and working in Derry. He works with video, sound, sculpture and installation. His works have been characterised by an idiosyncratic use of materials and media. The contexts for these works have been varied and include references to cult literature, cinema, art history and social and political contexts amongst others.
Afric McGlinchey’s just published début collection is The Lucky Star of Hidden Things, (Salmon). She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has been commended in 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.
Sarah Mixtapes is an occasional zine producer turned occasional blogger, currently based between Dublin and County Meath. She works mainly in small notebooks, with glue and found paper objects, and rarely shows these to the world. She shares the photos she takes on aharesrush.blogspot.com
Barbara A. Morton writes essays, stories and poetry. She is the recipient of a Tyrone Guthrie Writers Award and in 2011 was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. Her writing is published in national and international journals and anthologies.
Doireann Ní Ghríofa grew up in County Clare. Her poetry has been published in many journals, both in Ireland and internationally. Doireann was among the prize-winners in the emerging writer category at the Oireachtas literary awards 2010, and was shortlisted in Comórtas Uí Néill, both in 2011 and 2012. The Arts Council has awarded her a literature bursary. She was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. Her debut collection, Résheoid and her second collection Dúlasair are both published by Coiscéim.
Fiona Ní Mhaoilir is a visual artist based in Belfast since 1997. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in both public and private collections. Walking:thinking,thinking about thinking, and not thinking - the site of a happy hippocampus. -extract from Ní Mhaoilir’s visual diary 2012.
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Benjamin Norris is a writer and lecturer currently residing in Budapest, where he teaches Indian Cultural Studies at a leading architecture university. His poetry and prose attempts to combine the mythic with the mundane, and to expose them to be two sides of the same coin. He has been published in several magazines, collections and on many online poetry journals. He is currently working on a novel and a screenplay.
Graham Nunn blogs at Another Lost Shark: www.anotherlostshark.com and has published five collections of poetry, his most recent, Ocean Hearted, published by Another Lost Shark Publications. In 2011, Nunn was the recipient of The Johnno Award for outstanding contribution to Queensland Writers and Writing.
Blaine O’Donnell (Northern Ireland, 1986) is a visual artist. He graduated BA (Honours) in Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in 2009. Recent group exhibitions include Spectrum of Activity, Black Mariah, Cork (2011) curated by Padraic E. Moore. Recent solo exhibitions include Table-Fables, Void Community Space, Derry (2011) and ZENITH, Ulster Hall, Belfast (2011/12). He currently occupies studio space at Void, Derry, Northern Ireland. www.blaineodonnell.com
Joyce Parkes has previously published her work in Literary Magazines, Journals and Anthologies in Australia, Finland, the UK, Canada, the US, Germany, and New Zealand. She is in dialogue with inclusion, rejection, irony and empathy.
Dan Shipsides is an artist based in Orchid Studios in Belfast and is also a lecturer and researcher at the School of Art & Design at the University of Ulster. Since 2004 he also has a collaborative practice with Neal Beggs as Shipsides & Beggs Projects. In 2004 he was awarded the ACNI Major Artist Award, in 2000 won the Nissan Art award IMMA (Bamboo Support) Dublin and 1998 won the Perspective award, OBG, Belfast (The Stone Bridge). Recent solo and group exhibitions include; The Third Space Gallery, Belfast (Bivacco|Star), Aliceday, Brussels (Vigil|Star), South London Gallery (Games & Theory), Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (Radical Architecture), Wings Project Art Space, Switzerland (Performance), Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol (Elastic Frontiers), Konsthall C / Lava Kulturhuset, Stockholm (Under plattan, ängen!), Platform Garanti, Istanbul (Hit & Run), Riga Sculpture Quadrennial, Latvia (European Space), Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (Beta), Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (Pioneers), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (Sporting Life). Smart, Amsterdam (Endure), Gimpel Fils, London (Nature/Culture), Melbourne International Biennial, (Signs of Life).
Theo Sims, (b. Brighton, England), recently ended his tenure as Director of the Context Gallery, Derry, (2008-20011) to focus on his own art. Sims Studied Fine Art at The Winchester School Of Art (Foundation Studies) and Brighton Polytechnic (BFA) before receiving an MFA from the University of Ulster, in Belfast in 1994. He moved to Canada in 1998. He was Co-managing Editor of BlackFlash magazine from 2001-2004 and Programming Coordinator of Winnipeg’s Aceartinc. From 2004-2008. Theo Sims has exhibited extensively across Canada and Europe in the past two decades. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Macleans, Canadian Art, C magazine, Border Crossings, Circa and BlackFlash.
Annette Skade grew up in Manchester and has lived in West Cork for 22 years. Her poems have recently been published in the Shop Poetry Magazine. In 2010 she was awarded first place in the Poets meet Painters Competition and her work appears in that anthology.
Grainne Tobin lives in Newcastle, Co Down. Poetry collections are Banjaxed (2001) and The Nervous Flyer’s Companion (2010). Member of the Word of Mouth Poetry Collective.
Shelley Tracey is a South African poet and educator who has been living in Northern Ireland for twenty years. Her poems and short stories have been published in a range of local, national and international publications. As coordinator of a professional qualifications programme for adult literacy tutors at Queen’s University Belfast from 2002-2012, she is an advocate for reading and writing poetry to enhance confidence in literacy learning.
Elizabeth Welsh is a freelance editor, originally from New Zealand and now living in South London. Her poetry and short fiction has been published in numerous online and print journals. She is currently writing a chapter for a collection of Katherine Mansfield essays and is a doctoral candidate.
Gerald Yelle teaches high school English. He has poems in recent editions of Citizens for Decent Literature, Prick of the Spindle and The Straddler. He is a member of the Florence (MA) Poets Society. Blog and links can be found at geraldyelle.blogspot.com.
Abridged Personnel
Project Coordinator/Editor: Gregory McCartney: Planning, plotting and mooching majestically.
Editorial Assistant: Susanna Galbraith: A levels complete and ready for literary paddling to become a consistent wade; ripples to waves. The horrors of funding
applications and photocopiers await.
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Residencies & Projects Programmed at The Intersection of Rural Archives, Agrarian Industries & Contemporary Art
David Farquhar, Garden Boat, 2012
For more info see www.artlink.ie or contact [email protected]
Discard Ad 2.indd 1 31/07/2012 11:06
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Residencies & Projects Programmed at The Intersection of Rural Archives, Agrarian Industries & Contemporary Art
David Farquhar, Garden Boat, 2012
For more info see www.artlink.ie or contact [email protected]
Discard Ad 2.indd 1 31/07/2012 11:06
What Became of the People We Used to Be?
Tulca 2012
November
Galway, Ireland
Curated by Gregory McCartney
Abridged
www.tulca.ie
www.abridgedonline.com
Image Nadege Meriau, Solanium Tuberousm VI, 2011
Tulca Ad 3.indd 1 31/07/2012 12:13
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inside front coverVoid Advert