Ronnie McGinn's Poetry Page
| If you have a poem you'd like to see published in The Irish Examiner then send it to:
The Poetry Corner
The Irish Examiner USA
1040 Jackson Avenue, Third Floor
Long Island City
NY 11101
or, preferably, you can email it direct to
ronniemcginn@eircom.net.
If possible keep your poem to 20 lines. You may choose any subject you like, in any form you like as long as it's original. We look forward to hearing from you. |
What a poem says is of primary importance. A poem makes a statement or a declaration; it expresses a feeling or a mood; it relates a story or conveys an idea. These, constitute meaning in poetry. But a poem is more than a statement, a declaration, a feeling, a mood, a story or an idea. If that were all, prose would be enough. A poem is itself; it is an act of magic, an imaginative creation. No one can analyse its magic fully. One thing we can say, however: a poem is made up of words. Words have not only meaning, but also form and sound.
Anita Daly of the Ballinlough Writers Group in Ballinlough, Co. Cork, has given us this week's image creating poem. We'll never look at a mouse in the same light again.
Dealing with a Mouse
(Ecologically)
you helped me hang the curtain
while I tell you
uncertainly
I have a mouse
not just me but
both of us are nervous now
you spread everything I have
under the sink in the cleaning cupbard
milton and dettol,
wipe everywhere
with a frisson showing your nerve.
The kitchen surfaces look shiny
onions split in half
to make circles around the scene
pick up germs
mouse trap set
a mouse wouldn't survive long in
our house
another friend worried
it has not enough food!
don't think about the injured rodent
it has taken over my safety
This other friend in whom I confide
tells me about humane
mousetraps where you catch the mouse live
with the offer that
she will drop him out of the trap
in the country
(with a supply of food)
from the car
© Anita Daly
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