Celebrating National Poetry Day: Between Fish & Bird (in Ireland)
Celebrating National Poetry Day: Between Fish & Bird (in Ireland)
By Sam Bleakley
Photography:
Jim Newitt
It’s national poetry day here in the UK. I’ve always felt
that the immersive experience of surfing lends itself perfectly to poetry. Just over ten years ago (September 2005) writer, surfer and
magazine editor (Dazed & Confused, Adrenalin and Huck) Michael
Fordham sent an eclectic crew of creatives on a freewheeling trip to Ireland. The
agenda was “be inspired, and come home with some work - such as writing, photography and illustration - that celebrates your relationship with surfing, the ocean and Ireland.…” Fordham
curated it all into the gorgeous September book.
Here's a poem I penned...
I
If Ireland were a
part of god’s body
It would be the
sod-bearing black belly
In which the rain
hissed; in which the moon rose;
Around which a
humpbacked storm broadcasts waves
Whose force could
break a man’s spirit in two,
Or wing him on a
green and greasy face.
II
We take wings from
surfing’s history -
Bonzers, twins,
spoons and pins - to slip between worlds.
Wings, strapped on
the back of our timeless wheels -
‘The Albatross’ –
searching for tough landings
Where the skirt of
Clare cliffs slips under foam heads
And the water seeps
up the cloth of the land,
Where it spreads,
to bog the unwary.
Testy rain stitches
into the skin
There it rests, so
that you must become seabird
And gain
black-beaded, weather-savvy eyes
To spy where the
wind nests, north at Donegal
Slipping into moss
green, roiling peaks.
III
Wind cuts through
the limegrass at Mullagmore,
The heavy air
bounces back the rising bass
Of the sea’s
motion, and I improvise
Across the bass
runs with in-synch tri-fins,
Raking the
snare-wires of the waves held taught
By a stiff
offshore. I drum big patterns.
Then a sudden
foam-haired barrel stands up
And I solo with it
by fingertips
At which point the
music stirs and pancakes
To dread silence,
and I am bird-fish,
Tar black shag
suspended between worlds.
‘Enough of heroes!’
– greywater phantoms
Occupy their
stations and descend,
Clipping my wings
and snapping me back to real time.
IV
The new northwest
wind spins a cloak of yeasty rain
That spits at our
windscreen clear back to Clare.
Intoxicated, still
drunk on sliding
Even as we are
blasted raw by the stiff
Onshores, we win
the barley spirit’s favour:
A switch of breeze,
turning sappy waves
Into combed lines,
the ceaseless rain pinging
Off the smooth
water, and we are again
Fish-birds rising
on the island’s skin,
Our spirits intact,
memories stained deep green.
