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PAUL CASEY

Paul Casey’s poetry is published in five of his six spoken languages. His début collection is home more or less (Salmon Poetry, 2012) and he was awarded a Cork City Council Artist’s Bursary to complete his second, forthcoming from Salmon in 2016. A chapbook, It’s Not all Bad, appeared from The Heaventree Press in 2009, and in 2010 he produced a poetry-film version of Ian Duhig’s poem, The Lammas Hireling. His poetry is undergoing translation into Italian through Gilgamesh Edizioni and he has recently had poems published in The Pickled Body, Colony, Crannóg, And Agamemnon Dead, North West Words, New Eyes on the Great Book, Levure Littéraire and Brain of Forgetting. He is poet in residence each May for the Bealtaine festival, in three elderly homes in county Cork. He also edits the annual Unfinished Book of Poetry featuring verse written by transition year students from Cork city schools. He is director of the Ó Bhéal poetry series in Cork city.

      kudzu

Barely perceptible, it began at the window

frames, padding its broad leaves like moss

across the non stop-motion, bonsai forest floor

light greening to peripheral mist, eyes

consumed by pc screen, oblivious. Weeks streak

by as the low susurrus, virus-rustle covers

radio, bookshelves, printer and bonsai

a gradual stanglehold on the whole supply.

As it reaches the lip of the cold coffee cup, it takes

a while to find I cannot pry myself from the desk.

I watch as the forest of undergrowth

constricts like rhododendron my calves, binds

all below waist to the floor. I’m stranded.

Android just out of reach, not upgraded

to the robotic, limbed version in time. Voice

activation windows have all passed by. Roots

have plunged into every digital and organic

crevice. This is my final squeeze of art.

©2015 Paul Casey

Author Links

Paul Casey at Salmon Poetry

Paul Casey at Poetry Ireland Writers in Schools

Balcony TV Reading (YouTube)

'It's Not All Bad' pamphlet: free download (PDF)

'The Lammas Hireling': poetry-film