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ONLINE BOOKSTORE FEATURED TITLES

Best of Irish Poetry 2010
Editor: Matthew Sweeney

Songs of Earth and Light
Barbara Korun poems translated by Theo Dorgan

Done Dating DJs
by Jennifer Minniti-Shippey
Winner, 2008 Fool for Poetry Competition

Richesses: Francophone Songwriter Poets
Edited and translated by Aidan Hayes

Munster Literature Centre

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PETER SIRR

Peter Sirr is a freelance writer, editor and translator. He was director of the Irish Writers' Centre from 1991 to 2002, and editor of Poetry Ireland Review from 2003 until 2007. He has published seven collections of poems with Gallery Press. He lives in Dublin with his wife, the poet Enda Wyley, and their daughter Freya. Gallery Press will publish his new collection, The Thing Is, in 2009.

The Thing Is

The thing is this: you hold them to the light
and laugh, you bring them to me
one in each fist like the edges of a cross
as you wobble over then collapse
you walk the coronation crayon walk
a concentration within a concentration
miraculous: you’re pure crayon, nothing but crayon now
Somewhere over there is paper, somewhere
a line waits for a line like a bus that won’t come
but the thing is this: you throw them in the air
you examine them one by one, you put them in the box
and take them out again, the joy of it lifts you to your feet 
where you sway with possibility, conducting your colours
and the thing is this, the thing is always this

          

©2009 Peter Sirr

Author Links

'The Cat Flap': Peter Sirr's blog

Four poems by Sirr at Salt Magazine online

Sirr at Gallery Press

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