The Belfast Review | 7 March, 2024
Welcome to Week 3 of our Spring Blog. Each week we will 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 'Inspiration.' As in, the spark that takes our creativity in a new direction, opens up a new way of looking at the world, gives us the permission we need to bring something new into being.
In other words – it's what lights your fire.
Featured poet: Shannon Carlin
We were excited to read this poet's work, taking inspiration from Ciaran Carson. Whether you first encounter Carson from his translations or many volumes of poetry, his use of language and place is striking and visceral. His is a poetry deeply rooted in humanity – the eye, the ear, to city, and even the foot. There is something about being a young person, setting out to find one's self and expand one's horizons. Exploring a new city, or just a city on one's own – free to see, think, and absorb. It's the art of feeding one's soul, to hold in mind a mentor and try to view the world as they might have viewed it. And all the while asking one's self – Is this how I see the world?
The questions, more so than the answers, are an essential part of the poet's journey, the artist's way, the writer's process.
Walk with us a bit. (Or as Carson might have preferred: Let's have a wee dander.)
Improvisation
SHANNON CARLIN
After Ciaran Carson
Those lines of Belfast Confetti
glitter on the page.
I was an first year only
dipping my feet into
the language of Linenopolis.
A lonely girl
released from school into a city
humming with your stanzas.
And they are bonanzas. I thought
of myself as a fan,
a mind which was still
a fusillade of question marks.
You took the lead,
sparked the cigarette,
kept the flames burning.
The occasional afternoon
after workshop, I wander
into Kelly’s Cellars,
and my mind raises a hand
to the questions you considered.
A city or a girl, who knows?
The streets of Belfast could not escape you,
that touch of permanent ink.
And what would you think
of the pens at work now?
These are the small dark rooms
of ideas,
which you illuminated
and opened with swift hands
and always in attentive care of us.
ARTIST BIO
Shannon Carlin is currently completing an MA in Creative Writing at QUB. She enjoys walking and taking care of her cat in her spare time.
Special thanks to the poet for trusting us with her 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 (3 Mar) with Art by Nina Staack
Wordy Tuesday (5 Mar) with Nonfiction by Sarah d'Episcopo
and Fiction by Marie O'Shea
Rhythm-Verse Thursday (7 Mar) with Poetry by PS Conway.
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