E. Shaun Russell: “I could say all manners of pretentious things about myself, but when it comes right down to it, I’d rather you just read the poem. Hopefully more than once, and maybe even aloud. If you do, and if you enjoy it, then you’ll know all you should really care to know about its author.”
Jane Clarke: “Though I didn’t write my first poem until I was 41, poetry has been part of my life since childhood on a farm in the West of Ireland. The rhythms, imagery, and language of Yeats, Kavanagh, and also Frost and Dickinson resonated with the world around me. When I began to write it was as if I had found an underground stream waiting to come into the light. I write for the pleasure and struggle of finding the words that will sing.” (web)
Alison Davis: “The title of this poem, as well as one of its lines, is directly taken from an article about streaks of light that appeared over the Bay Area. Of course, we blamed it first on Elon Musk, but that is neither here nor there. I’m grateful to Iman Hassen for her windy first reading of this poem, which knocked all the lines loose and allowed me to rearrange them in freedom and in love.” (web)
Anne Casey: “I was born and grew up in County Clare on the western seaboard of Ireland in a family and hometown steeped in Irish history, poetry, and mythology. I graduated from University College Dublin and worked in the capital for several years before emigrating to Australia where I live currently. Here, I am researching the lives of Irish famine refugees to Australia for a PhD in Creative Writing (poetry and creative non-fiction) at the University of Technology Sydney where I also research and teach. Covid years aside, I return annually to visit family and friends, and to read poetry, in Ireland. Though currently exiled, I consider myself wholly Irish. I am a regular contributor to Irish cultural engagements here hosted by the Irish Consulate. As a journalist and poet, my work (including regular contributions featuring in the Irish Times’ Most Read) is profoundly Irish in its lyrical aspect (which echoes my unassailable west Clare accent!) and in its political voice. I grew up in the ‘rebel county’ which suffered greatly under British rule. One third of our people died during the famine, largely as a result of colonial policies. My family home was burnt to the ground by British soldiers in 1921, my 13-year-old grandfather barely escaping; my other grandparents regularly told me stories of being held at gunpoint by the Black and Tans and being beaten for speaking in our native tongue, which had been outlawed during British colonisation. Throughout my childhood, I was surrounded by poetry and imbued with the understanding of how poetry had been used for millennia in our country as a source of hope and a voice of political resistance. My poetry is interwoven with the accents, myths, history, mores and preoccupations of half my life spent in Ireland (forever pulsing through my veins) and has always been unabashedly political.” (web)
“The Rebirth of Venus” by Luisa GiulianettiPosted by Rattle
Image: “The Kitchen Goddess” by JoAnne Tucker. “The Rebirth of Venus” was written by Luisa Giulianetti for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2023, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
__________
Luisa Giulianetti
THE REBIRTH OF VENUS
I blew that half shell. Took to the waiting shore
found new digs and never looked back. Feet
happily calloused and belly full. In this kitchen
I reign supreme. Stir my own pot. Garland
my tresses with wild rosebuds. My monarch
gown wings marigold as I glissade
across the maple floor to the awaiting catch.
I hold a fanned scallop between my thumb
and forefinger, slide the knife and twist. Prize
open the hinge. Free plump flesh from its frilly
skirt. Rinse, dry, salt. Sear the lot in cast iron.
Tang their sweetness with fresh orange. Pair
with earthy fennel. Create counterbalance.
Like dancing. Like mercy. Arms boughed in offering
Comment from the artist, JoAnne Tucker: “I was delighted and surprised at the range of emotions and different journeys that were expressed in the poems which I reviewed. The pastel painting was part of a show calling for work on the theme of the kitchen goddess. I approached the painting from a whimsical point of view placing a dancer in a frying pan. The poem that I have selected captures the playfulness of the painting. It is called ‘The Rebirth of Venus’ and the opening lines refer back to the painting ‘Birth of Venus’ by Botticelli. I have fond memories of seeing that painting when I visited the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. I laughed with delight with the phrase ‘found new digs.’ While the Botticelli painting was not on my mind when I created my kitchen goddess, the reference shows how two paintings inspired the poem, and I love that. In the poem, the poet has the dancing goddess opening a scallop and of course the original Venus is standing in a scallop shell. In addition, the poet also captured so well the feeling of the dancer in the kitchen ‘reigning supreme.'”
David Butler: “Poetry is most interesting when it engages the auditory imagination, so that I try to evoke, using the sounds and rhythms of English as it is spoken in Ireland (and, occasionally, the Irish language itself), what might be termed acoustic portraits of local themes.” (web)