Live Encounters Poetry & Writing February 2026.
Compassion, poems by Richard W Halperin.
On January 19, the poem ´Now, Mother, What’s the Matter?’
from the new collection appeared in The Guardian as Poem of the Week.
Compassion,
or The Life of Richard Savage
For those who would like to read a portrait
written with love, sadness and mercy,
of a man who, in life, was often impossible
to get along with but who was sweet,
I would recommend Samuel Johnson’s
‘The Life of Richard Savage,’ a now-forgotten
poet. The essay intermingles Richard Savage’s
suffering with Samuel Johnson’s suffering
in writing about it.
One has known people for whom one has
great affection but who become, over time,
impossible. I have known a few such.
They had lost their capacity to co-operate
with friendship. In that regard, the exquisite
portrait of Richard Savage helps me. If mercy
can be a métier, may I begin to learn it.
States of Grace
I once had the good fortune to see
Julie Harris as Emily Dickinson
in The Belle of Amherst.
She was in a state of grace.
The stock market is illusion.
States of grace are quite real.
I write these lines in Ireland.
John F. Kennedy in his Ireland visit
in the summer of 1963
said he would be back soon.
Hope, good humour –
it is possible in politics.
There it was.
Over the last few days
several people have mentioned
that visit to me.
He is back.
He is all over the place here.
Bowls of Light
I think there is a bond between
Samuel Johnson’s common reader
and Seamus Heaney’s human chain.
The common reader – not experts –
determines what books shall live
over the centuries by continuing
to buy them. The human chain –
the passing down from one person
to the next of a favourite thing –
a book, a bucket, a story – gives
strength and reality to our
chaotic world. A friend once told me
that his mother, on Saturday night
before Easter, would place
a bowl of water on the kitchen
window sill, so that when
the morning sun hit it,
it would become, briefly,
a bowl of light. I am glad he
told me the story. I am glad of
bowls of light.
Quality and Magnitude
© Richard W Halperin
Richard W. Halperin holds U.S.-Irish dual nationality and lives in Paris. On 1 November 2025, Salmon Poetry/Cliffs of Moher brought out All the Tattered Stars: Selected & New Poems, Introduction by Joseph Woods, which showcases 92 poems published by Salmon and by Lapwing/Belfast since 2010 and 26 new poems. On 7 January 2026, Mr Halperin was Special Guest Reader in the First Wednesday Poetry and Open-Mic Series, White House Bar, Limerick.