Me Diggity : Brandt Brauer Frick

Poetry Bus : Yard Brush

So this week's Poetry Bus prompt comes from NanU, and the theme is one of Excess. Of Far Too Much. Of Going Over the Edge. I've done something I've never done for the Poetry Bus before ( I think?) - i.e. I've used a poem already written. Reason being, I'm a wee bit 'writ out' right now - after a bit of a purple patch, thankfully - and, in keeping busy outdoors (while the Irish sky deigns to remain conducive to such activity) I remembered something written a few years ago, which seemed to suit this prompt, albeit on somewhat of a tangent. An ode to a loyal implement which has somewhat exceeded its life expectancy, perhaps only due to a lack of excess in its usage? To wit....



Yard Brush

Old friend, I know you longer than my wife.
I brought you from my parent's home - a gift,
for you were on the way out - your acolyte
had deemed you ill-equipped. Yet here you are

your handle slick and sheened by years
of palms that regularly furled to working fists
(though woodworm traffic in your cambered
head suggests a cheese particularly Swiss).

Your nylon bristles, once bright cherry red
and eager as a pup's tumescent tip,
are clogged and grey like ancient natty dreads,
but still upstanding - equal to the chore.

At least to any I might yet inflict.
For that you labour still speaks volumes too;
my yardwork - yes, the sparsity of it -
has kept our union true.


© P Nolan 2008



That's the implement itself, pictured above in all its woodworm-headed holiness. Still in (sparse) use - even earlier today. The reference to 'clogged and grey, like ancient natty dreads' refers to another brush entirely, one my father used when building our family home, which acquired said appearance from sweeping up after mixing cement. But hey, if a poem can't conflate a little......?

dlr Poetry Now : Fresh from Dún Laoghaire

Photo : Mischa Haller

The podcasts from this year's dlr Poetry Now festival have been uploaded to the festival website - they're all available to listen to here. Enjoy!

New Painting : La Madone de Lune

lamadonedelune (La Madone de Lune)
mixed media on paper, 210 x 145mm

Scamp : IGI recent work

There's a very cool selection of recent work from some of my Illustratorsireland colleagues over on the Scamp blog today. The image above is by good mate Fintan Taite - a section of a new comic strip which you can see in full on his site. Some of my favourites in this month's batch are a new book by by Isabelle Reyes Feeney and images by Steve Doogan, Diarmuid Ó Catháin, Stephen Synnott (loads of Steves in the IGI!) and inistioge-based Ale Mercado, whose work Stinging Fly readers may recall from his graphic fiction collaboration with Kevin Barry in the Winter 2010 issue.

Kevin Barry himself is interviewed in today's Irish Times about upcoming novel City of Bohane (along with appropriate shivering-writer-in-Leitrim-barracks-lifestyle-colour-angle). Sounds like a cracker!