Circle Sessions Album Launch @ the International Bar Dec. 1st 2015

The International Bar, Dublin - 7:15 PM

The Circle Sessions is a performance collective of poets, musicians, comedians and other performance artists. Meeting every Monday night in the International Bar (Exchequer Street, Dublin) between 8pm and 11.15pm, be prepared for performances of all kinds. 

After two years, the Circle Sessions are proud to present their first album - download on iTunes and learn more about the collective here.

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Daniel Wade on American anarchist-laureate Philip Levine's They Feed They Lion

This a short piece I wrote on Philip Levine's timeless and volcanic poem 'They Feed They Lion", as originally published on the Bogman's Cannon website in October 2015.

Here's the original post.

Philip Levine’s They Feed They Lion, from his 1972 collection of the same name, is a poem requiring multiple readings in order to be fully appreciated. As a singular work of art and seething indictment of racism, its focus is the race riots of Detroit, also known as ‘The Great Rebellion’, occurring in July 1967.

Levine (1928-2015), a former US Poet Laureate and Pullitzer Prize winner, died in February of this year from pancreatic cancer. He has often been perceived as a Whitmanesque champion of the struggles endured by America’s manual workers, but his scope is far wider, extending across the range of social divides in American society, in all their septic injuriousness. He described They Feed They Lion as a “celebration of anger”, and indeed the poem is a harrowing depiction of gathering doom, of apocalypse, of a chaos that is unwittingly sown by ignorant and unthinking hands.

Levine’s words throb with an irate physicality, and yet he lists such portentous details as “the acids of rage, the candor of tar”, or “the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower/Of the hams the thorax of caves,” with the keen, cool eye of a court stenographer.

For me, what makes They Feed They Lion so unique is its lack of moralisation, its refusal to proffer a unified and cut-down solution to such a complex crisis. The words themselves and the horrors they describe are enough for a conclusion to be drawn.

Levine often accuses himself as being, through the lens of his own privilege and social standing, partially to blame for the cause of such unrest. Especially striking to me is the line: “From my five arms and all my hands,/From all my white sins forgiven, they feed”. He is not alone bearing witness to injustice but also admitting complicity. He too has fed an encouraged fed the growth of the eponymous lion, a signifier not of progress or a brighter future but of self-fulfilling chaos.

Nor is the poem to be read as simply a curious artefact from the literary and political past. They Feed They Lion resonates as strongly as ever in 2015 – consider the current refugee crisis, the multitudes fleeing from all manner of political turmoil seeking a better existence abroad, only to be met by drowning, traffickers, and reprehensible xenophobia of both official and unofficial hues.

The sense of gathering disaster in Levine’s poem, deployed in the rich vernacular of black America as well as the incantatory tempo of the Biblical prophets (“They lion, from my children inherit”), is, to me, one of Levine’s finest accomplishments as both a poet and a man with his eyes open wide to the injustices of the world.

They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,
Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,
Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,
They Lion grow.
Out of the gray hills
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,
Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,
Out of the bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to stretch,
They Lion grow.
Earth is eating trees, fence posts,
Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,
“Come home, Come home!” From pig balls,
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,
From the furred ear and the full jowl come
The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose
They Lion grow.
From the sweet glues of the trotters
Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower
Of the hams the thorax of caves,
From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”
Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,
The grained arm that pulls the hands,
They Lion grow.
From my five arms and all my hands,
From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,
From my car passing under the stars,
They Lion, from my children inherit,
From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,
From they sack and they belly opened
And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth
They feed they Lion and he comes.

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Interview on Near FM's Writer's Block literary programme

Here is the podcast of my 'Writer's Block' interview on Near FM from the 3rd on July, 2015. I'm interviewed by host Morgan O' Reilly. Also featured are Oran and Shannon from Flying South, the mental-health themed arts and open mic night, hosted on the last Friday of every month in Stonybatter. 

http://nearfm.ie/podcast/?powerpress_pinw=15955-podcast

"The Outer Darkness" broadcast on Dublin South Theatre Radio

My first radio play, The Outer Darkness, a poetic historical-drama  about the creation of Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper and starring actors Naoise O' Duinn and Tony O' Neill, was originally broadcast on Dublin South Theatre FM on Tuesday 23rd of June, 2014.  It was recorded in the studios of Dublin South FM, with Rob Curry and Paul Walsh on sound, with original music composed and performed by Justin McCann. Additional sound effects were kindly provided by freesfx.co.uk. The Outer Darkness will be broadcast at 7pm, 23rd June, 2015 on Dublin South 93.9 FM.

It was broadcast back-to-back with The Twang Man, a radio drama written by my good friend and colleague Kenneth Nolan, which was also produced and recorded by Dublin South FM. Both plays It was later streamed online at dublinsouthfm.ie. Listen here.

Daniel Wade live at the Jailbreak Sessions

Me performing onstage at the Patriot's Inn in Kilmainham, Dublin, in late summer, 2015. 

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"Imram" published in The Sea Anthology

Poem originally published in The Sea, a poetry/photography anthology edited by Steve Moore, published by Rebel Poetry and sponsored by Dublin Port Company in support of the RNLI. You can find out more about it here.

Imram

Here you see Brendan, reefing oxhide sails, 
The currach veering broadside on,
The glutted fish all ears as he preaches
Over the breakers’ foamy hiss.

The sun wends its brass doldrum.
An ember-eyed devil squats on the prow,
Its tongue a rutted, meatless fork,
And psalmody its frozen anathema.

Here you see Brendan, his name loved
By manuscripts and whorled icons,
Clutching the wind-wracked halyard, 
The sea his punishment and his promise.

The sails shiver. The oars prod a humpback
Islet, shaggy with the green of algae, 
To rear heavily and sink in white seizure.
A following wind dives low, interring

The boat’s flax-sheathed skeleton
In and among the grey fathoms, 
Slag-scorched waves buffeting
Her hull in a lather of sparks.

Here you see Brendan, cataracts
Of salt jabbing nostril and eyelid,
A rust-bitten halo now his bearing, 
The Eden-shore in his exhausted sight.

"Medal", "Dun Laoghaire, Ireland", and "Breadline Gladiators" Published in the Hennessy New Irish Writing page of the Irish Times

Three poems about family loyalty, the burden of history and enmity, as originally published in the Irish Times:

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/hennessy-new-irish-writing-poetry-winner-medal-by-daniel-wade-1.2187563

"Martyr-Meal" Published in Sixteen Magazine

My poem, "Martyr-Meal", inspired by the deaths of various leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, was published in April 2015 in Sixteen Magazine, an online publication dedicated to the centenary of same.

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"Shipping Lane" published in Bray Arts Journal

Poem published in Bray Arts Journal, which can be read here: http://www.brayarts.net/Library/Journals/October%202014.pdf

"The Waiting Room" published in HeadSpace Magazine

My poem "The Waiting Room", inspired by my own experience in counselling during my teenage years, was published in the July 2014 issue of Headspace, a Dublin-based publication edited by Naomi Elster and centered around mental health.   

The Waiting Room

Curious stares - from eyes that looked lidless,  

eyes lost on an uncaring middle distance - 

greeted me when I entered

the waiting room of the Lucena Clinic in Rathgar.

The radiator murmured hotly to itself,  

windows showed me a well-tended lawn, 

and other girls and boys like me, sad-faced

or impassive, felt the hands of shame

clamp our shoulders, anchoring us

to the soft leather seats, marking everyone

with their own clinical brand of psychosis. 

The sunlight cascading through the window

couldn’t puncture the shadow that gripped us. 

Little pearls of wisdom were murmured

into my ears when the moment

for appointment arrived.

I sloped down the quiet corridor

to whatever room was arranged for me.

At the end of each session, each weekly, 

blow-by-blow testimony,

a prescription for Risperdal, to infuse me

with the heavy temptation of sleep,

was handed to my parents. 

For the longest time, I thought it normal to attend

this weekly tribunal of exposition,

to give stilted, hangdog appraisals of my week,

to feel my lived experience held in tacit suspicion.

No doubt some of us needed to be there,

needed a counsellor’s the trained, certified help.

And nothing was ever said, for there was nothing

to say or share. None of us were alone

in the shadow we carried; that was enough.

But I sensed everyone’s brain hissing

behind their low-lidded gaze. Our eyes

locked briefly, like an inference of solidarity.

And I wondered what madness

had been assigned to each of us. 

Friends whom I’ve never spoken to,

whose faces I won’t recognise,

you needn’t be afraid any longer.

I am here, if you need me.

Interview on Dublin South FM's Rhyme and Reason poetry programme

This is an interview I gave on Dublin South FM's Rhyme and Reason Poetry Programme. I was inrterviewed by host Helen Dwyer. I read a few poems and play some songs I like by Leonard Cohen, Herbie Hancock and Bruce Springsteen. It was originally broadcast in January 2014. Here's the podcast.

 

"Summer Goes On" published in The Stony Thursday Book

"Summer Goes On" was published in Autumn 2013 issue of The Stony Thursday Book, a collection of contemporary poetry edited by Paddy Bushe and published by the Arts Office of Limerick City. 

Summer Goes On

All I have is a sink of shaving water,

And a future burnt to cinders.

The horn of evening sags over rooftops,

Dublin squats in her womb of colour.

Engraved among traffic lights and alleys,

My footprints leave their polluted prose.

I strut without shame down Bachelor’s Walk,

Chewing my loneliness like tobacco. 

The punters are a forest of sunburnt limbs,

Accents fluid as alkali, eyes jacketed in black glass.

My hands are steady, my eyes swallow 

The detail of faces, unnamed as balaclavas. 

August goes on, in unstoppable colour. 

Four corners of boredom salt the edge. 

The life I find myself leading has shrunk,

As I learn silence as a second language. 

"Trucker" published in Boyne Berries, Autumn 2013

My poem "Trucker" as published in the September 2013 issue of Boyne Berries, an anthology of contemporary poetry edited by Kate Dempsey and published by the Boyne Writers Group. 

Trucker

During the a.m. stage of the night

Ford Transits make a move; 

On the M50, shuttle buses flee for the airport.

The motorway is black, the life and limb 

Of cement. Driving through hard-bitten April,

You drink raw coffee, the night divided

By toll booths, and the Boyne River Bridge.

The sun cleaves the skyline,

The container is leashed and ready.

Calmed by cigarette smoke, you forget dusk,

When crime and intimacy are most awake.

You’re a man paid to make journeys,

Delivering barrels of Guinness to rural pubs,

Packaged food to out-of-the-way Centras.

We need you to deliver our meat and drink,       

Owe our slaked hunger to your engine,

The growl of your exhaust pipe,

Your headlights slicing the torrential shade. 

Ploughing through mud bulky as snow,

You chase atmosphere with atmosphere,

Scrape motorways like an anti-hero.

Punters are absent here. Only 18-tonners,

Concrete mixers and diesel engines roar beside you.  

And dawn is your frugal canvas, radiating

A country you can neither love nor leave behind,

Early mornings in Belfast, late deliveries

To Provence, every road is a concrete guide.

And the cities extend their neon welcome,

While home awaits your return, clear

And unburdened, in your long-haul freedom.

"Mosh Pit" published in Bare Hands Poetry

Read the poem here.

"Flying Columns" published in the The Seven Towers 2014 Census

"Flying Columns" was published in the fourth Seven Towers Anthology. Seven Towers is non-profit publishing house based in Dublin. 

Flying Columns

        And it’s funny how, no matter what terrible injustice

        is in the dying, the rest of us continue to forget. I

        know some corners of this country where people

        were executed and where the trees now look so

        beautiful that I often wonder was I dreaming all that

        blood in the long ago. But I suppose that’s what

        politicians hope for: that we will all forget about

        injustice so that they can continue to do nothing.  

           - Michael Harding, The Irish Times, Nov. 20th, 2012.    

Enjoy the greenish-gold of summertime, lads.

No more houses stand for us to burn; 

only smoke rings drift and stretch

across dew-rinsed hectares.

My hand is more claw than limb,

clamped in the same hooked position

from months of gripping the butt

of my shotgun -

the Lee-Enfield I held to salute

at the funerals of comrades, at parade,

and with which I now take aim.

Hit-and-run gunfire spurts

from behind a tuft of furze,

while Mills bombs erupt

in a white upsurge of gelignite,

devouring armoured cars

and RIC lorries in their black,

nose-to-tail pageantry,

eating into khaki tunics and coats

like waterless bark.

Blood is the sacrament I hope

to receive out here,

and so I dress my wounds 

with the mad candle of faith.

What, then, will the eye surrender to? 

The years of playing at soldiers are over.

We’re rebels now, uniformed and eager,  

gunmen marching on foot through rocky

boreens and crouching at the foot

of every hill, perching on our stomachs,

enmeshed by a field’s green limbo.

After dark, the roads are neither asleep

nor awake. Still as statues, we drink

down the cold. A cap is angled like a helmet,

an unlit roll-up clutched, quivering, between

a man’s lips, our fingers tight as our fury,

oak-hilted rifles held at a tilt to the road.

*

At times, it feels like the country we fight for

is trying to dismantle us with lashings of night-

time rain, mist swarming like a burial sheet. We   

know the Empire’s obituary is at last being written,

a blank page inked with self-governing prose.  

Our struggle shall be gilded by the poets,

with their linguistic smoke, their rhyming mirrors,

our enemies’ blood mottling Hibernian pillars.

*

A uniformed corpse lies prone in a frosted ditch, cold, open-eyed.

We deliver justice at its most rough.

Our phoenix-slogan will shrivel into cliché, but never obscurity.

Let our word of mouth tempt you, force the hand

of hatred to clench into a bristling fist. The world is old enough

to outlast us all, but still young enough

to outgun us in every ambush we inflict from the wayside.

Let us abide, then, by our engulfing decision.*

Author's note: During the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), armed land units, known as 'Flying Columns' were formed as detachments of the Irish Republican Army to combat the British security forces occupying Ireland at the time. 

*The poem's final line is a slightly altered version of the final line in a speech delivered by Michael Collins to Dail Eireann on December 19, 1921.