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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing April 2023
Learning to read, poems by Noel Monahan
Learning to read
It rained cats and dogs
Outside in the farmyard.
A downpour of red, orange, yellow, green, blue…
And I was tricking about in the sitting-room,
Taking books down from the shelves
Books the size of bibles:
Sunday At Home, Leisure Hour, Cassel’s Magazine …
My mother said the books were of little interest:
Who’d want to be reading about A Poultry Market in Paris?
Or looking at a picture of a wild cat with a dead bird?
I loved to colour in the black and white drawings
Of wings and tails of birds
And I wrote: CAT, AND DOG AND MOUSE
At the bottom of a page.
I imagined people sitting in chairs around the table,
All listening to me read out loud:
CAT AND MOUSE AND DOG …
I used to think I could hear the books read back to me
Long before I could really read,
Used to imagine their voices hesitating sometimes.
When I grew tired of reading
I started to draw and colour with crayons
A house on stilts with windows and a door
And when the rain stopped pelting down
I put the books back on the shelves
And headed outside
To read the colours of the rainbow.
A beautiful distraction
What inspired thought entered your head?
Drove you to look beyond yourself.
Was there some disaster, a disease spreading,
Famine in the long ago?
Did the sun set fire to your head?
Did you dream in the shadow of the moon?
Or were you utterly lost in a fog
Astray on the Corleck Hill?
Today onlookers stare in wonderment
At your empowering head with three faces
It’s that beautiful distraction
They tirelessly crave and love:
Something to think about,
Something to talk about.
© Noel Monahan
Noel Monahan is a native of Granard, Co. Longford, now living in Cavan. He has published seven collections of poetry with Salmon Poetry. An eight collection, Celui Qui Porte Un Veau, a selection of French translations of his work was published in France by Alidades, in 2014. A selection of Italian translations of his poetry was published in Milan by Guanda in November 2015: “Tra Una Vita E L’Altra”. His poetry was prescribed text for the Leaving Certificate English, 2011- 2012. His play: “ Broken Cups” won the RTE P.J. O’Connor award in 2001and Chalk Dust, a long poem of his, was adapted for stage and directed by Padraic McIntyre, Ramor Theatre, 2019.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, Noel had to reinvent his poetry readings and he produced a selection of Short Films: “Isolation & Creativity” , “Still Life”, “Tolle Lege” and A Poetry Day Ireland Reading for Cavan Library,2021. Recently, he edited “Chasing Shadows”, a miscellany of poetry for Creative Ireland. Noel adjudicated The Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2022. His ninth poetry collection, “Journey Upstream” will be published in 2023.
None better to sit and hear reading poetry but Noel Monaghan.
His magnificent voice and vocabulary is music to the ears.
HE can take you on a journey by sinking your soul into every word that flows from his lips.
One of the greats may his abilities shine on from his penship.
Margaret Hayden.