A Modest Review

I've just got my print copy of A Modest Review the first issue of which contains a poem of mine. This is, at least for the moment, the only issue of the magazine and it is available as a free download on the website. There must be a joke here about extremes of modest but I'll leave that to others.

I'm delighted to have a poem included especially as there are only three poems and three prose pieces included. One of the other two poets included is Louth native Adrienne Leavy who lives and works in the USA. We published some of her poetry in Boyne Berries. Her To My Nieces is a gentle, understated reflection on home, leaving and returning which ends:

and the empty present
is where the journey ends.

Jessica Traynor is the other poet included. Her poem Settlement also has a quiet, deep movement; two sentences whose simple phrases and gentle flow prompts re-reading and re-consideration:

We are measured
in measuring the future.

Another poem by Adrienne here and Jessica here.

My own poem, Journey, which got third prize at the Goldsmith Poetry Competition last year, is quite a contrast, louder, more obvious, almost demanding attention, it takes a simple idea and plays with it, looking for chuckles, laughs and finally sympathy:

Imagine if I could lay down all clothes
I ever wore to carpet the way back
from here to Carrowloughan, in reverse
chronological order,