Selected Poems 1963 - 2013 - Kevin Ireland

This handsome, substantial (300+ pages) collection
of Kevin Ireland's verse is published this week to coincide with and celebrate Kevin's 80th birthday.

I especially enjoyed the 14 page section of poems called Literary Cartoons and the publishers have kindly allowed me
to reproduce two of the poems below.

A serious literary slip

when the literary man
went soaring through the evening air
at a legal thirty miles an hour
(or very slightly more)

he had all the slow-motion time
in the world to formulate
a famous well-phrased
final thought

so imagine his embarrassed rage
not at the homicidal motorist
the broken motorbike torn shoulder
bruised wrist

but at the clown inside him
who suppressed his perfect set
of valedictory words and substituted
Jesus, this is it!

The literary man lies in

the man of letters
lay in bed
heart drumming
head bad

behind his eyes
a light shone
a sheeny, gummy
gob of pain

beside him sat
some books, a little
stack of poems
a whisky bottle

he groaned for aspirins
cold beer
a foamy bath
country air

oh, how he suffered
for his art:
verse is the harpiest

muse to court 


Thanks Kevin for fifty years of entertainment, and happy birthday !!