Cyphers 100 was launched on December 13th in Dublin. Five invited poets read their work from issues ranging from 1 to 100 and the voices of Leland Bardwell and Pearse Hutchinson were heard in recordings. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin read from THE CELLO SUITES by Macdara Woods. After fifty years we are ceasing publication. We wish all […]
Cyphers
Cyphers 94 published on 4th December
Cyphers issue 94 was launched on 4th December in Books Upstairs, D’Olier Street, photos by Jean O’Brien.
Rough Magic
By Gerard Smyth for Lynne Parker (Who names the storms, who names the winds and stars? – Derek Mahon) When naming the storms the meteorologistschoose from Shakespeare, the Bible, the Greek gods.This one will come bringing monsoon rainand leave us needing candlelight.The worst of it will be the floodpawing the back door to get in.It […]
I dTÚS NA nDÉAGA
By Pól Breathnach Gearrchaille ’s stócach i dtús na ndéaga faoi éadach rocach ar shop in éindí. Caithriú na beirte: cíocha a’ péacadh, fionnadh ag eascairt in ascaillí ’s i mbléine. Fiosracht is fionnachtain, diurnú ’s freagairt, tráthnóntaí samhraidh ’s a muintir sa gcathair. B’ionadh liom do ghliondar is do ghníomha prasa. Ghlac tú liom […]
The Geologist In Lockdown
By Nell Regan Shanganagh Cliffs The last great melt is scored through each layer of these cliffs – these shelly drifts below our home, cut clean by the knife of the sea. I scan for sun bleached stone, delivered from a desert long gone, find a speckled piece of the Firth of Clyde but my […]
REED BUNTING Emberiza schoeniclus
By Mary Montague REED BUNTING Emberiza schoeniclus: from a sequence after the species’ singing styles (2) I Sing Me To More Myself I begin in the dark / as I began in My / own dark unformedness / making a syllable / after a syllable / after a syllable / which is the kind of faith / […]
Red Camellias
By Seán Lysaght I saw you this morning when a shaft of light shone on the red camellias just after sunrise. I recognised the lipstick and a kind of shy emergence from the hedge-depths where they sheltered. The poplars were already applauding the main parts of the day to come, wind and sun, and a […]
Light is what days are made of
by Moya Cannon Light is what days are made of –it pulls the daffodil up out of dark earth,prompts the eagle and the stub-tailed wren to nestand draws the humpback whale north with its song. Stones, warm on the morning sea-shore, know it.Our sun is so much older than them –such tempests of grief it […]
Dormitory
By Nell Regan The rooks that rise above the serried ranks of homes augur unease as though soil itself has not settled, knows not what memory knows (or what the body recalls and expects) except come spring: when a nudge of weed and wild flower show through, a ghosted version from below. At each roundabout […]
Notes From India
By Sujata Bhatt for Pearse Hutchinson, February 2012 2:00 am in Mumbai and the crows are still loud. They circle the trees – hundreds of them around our house. A crow has died and all the others keep cawing, cawing through the night into the morning – endlessly they keep on calling for days. I […]