The Belfast Review Team | 14 March, 2024
Thanks for joining us for Week 4 of our Spring Blog. Each week we feature a handful of new creative works by artists, photographers, writers, poets, and song writers. Different days of the week highlight different creative forms: Feast Your Eyes Sundays (art, photography), Wordy Tuesday (fiction, flash, nonfiction), and Rhythm-Verse Thursday (poetry, song lyrics).
This week we're exploring the theme of 'Environment.' It's a topic that seems to be influencing a lot of work submitted to us. In our debut issue, we included a section where Nature and Magic combined in original ways to draw our attention to the plight of Mother Earth. However, for this week we're broadening the scope to include works that interrogate one's place – both in the outer world and nature, as well as the effect is has on the interior environments we inhabit and create.
Welcome to wherever you are.
Featured poet: Hiram Larew
One of our habits as a literary magazine is to read submissions blind – meaning it doesn't matter if the author is a poet laureate or a never-published emerging writer. It's the quality of the work that matters, and whether it speaks to our editors and matches the vibe of our magazine and mission.
This poet's work definitely speaks, and it just so happens his poetry is widely featured. According to his website, he has been “Nominated for four national Pushchart Prizes, his poems have placed first in competitions offered by Louisiana Literature, The Washington Review, and others. He has organized or been featured at countless readings, poetry gatherings, and conferences across the U.S., and has been interviewed on radio, on the Poet and the Poem at the Library of Congress, on blogs and elsewhere.”
The two poems featured below were ones that we felt said something important about Ireland – as a home, a myth, and a landscape, and also about the sense of division and unity – the historical environment and the ways it push-pulls on the present, and presents opportunities for a new way of looking at the future.
Let's take a stroll along the shore, both familiar and new.
Achill Sound
HIRAM LAREW
When the roads curve like sound
and dip as if lifting to bow
Whenever all thoughts round or cluster
or when hearts call down
is Ireland
And as rich when poor was
or as wise as bare heads in snow seemed
and as twigs so frail broke into song
and as true as any blight or potato could be
was Ireland
So when sand laps the senses
or salt drips the edges as dreams
Whenever hope streams through such heavens
and moss comes home
or hearts beam down
is Ireland.
This poem first appeared in Words for the Wild (2021) and then elsewhere including the poet's collection, Mud Ajar (Atmosphere Press, 2021).
You or Me
HIRAM LAREW
We all need to realize
that most people worldwide
pick their teeth --
Nearly everyone does
everywhere
And if that seems too odd a way
to leave war alone
Then someone should maybe point out
that each of us
everyone young or old
Sits down at the day’s end
as birds head home.
This poem first appeared in Voicing Art (2022), then in the poet's collection, Patchy Ways (CyberWit Press, 2023.
ARTIST BIO
Hiram Larew lives in Maryland, USA. Information about his poetry can be found at www.HiramLarewPoetry.com
Special thanks to the poet for trusting us with his work.
Thanks to all of you readers for reading! Be sure to like, follow, and share.
Check out our other posts this week:
Feast Your Eyes Sunday (10 Mar) with Photography by Clayton Joe Young
Wordy Tuesday (12 Mar) with Nonfiction by Jonathan Lipps
Rhythm-Verse Thursday (14 Mar) with Poetry by David Harrison Horton.
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