Liùsaidh
Published Poems
NEW FROM
LJ McDOWALL
Woden, Master of the Wild Hunt, narrates a tale for All Hallows Eve. The Hunt can come for anyone. Anna, Lady Ettrick, flees her home, pursued by her reiver-lord husband across the Scottish Borders. As the Wild Hunt closes on its prey, gypsy Davey Black attempts to bargain with the Huntmaster in an effort to save Anna. Set in an ahistorical Scotland, in mythic time, this is a Samhain Tale for telling by firelight on Halloween, when the ravens gather on the branch. Ask not for whom the hunting-horn sounds. It sounds for you.
This mythic fantasy story is narrated in poetic prose, and published under my other pen name, LJ McDowall.
My Shakespearean Sonnet, The Known Soldier has been published in Poets & War Magazine.
This poem sprung from a discussion on Vietnam veterans dying of Agent Orange poisoning. The discussion caused me to ponder how many military casualties of war aren’t actually counted in the statistics — men and women honourably discharged— but returned to their families with long term health problems; broken bodies and minds. While the sonnet is traditionally an Italian love poem, Donne and Shakespeare both used it in their metaphysical poetry because the first two quatrains posed question that the third answered. The use of the volta, or turn, is intended as a powerful shift in tone, with the final couplet the poet’s conclusion to the the answer. For all the sonnet’s brevity, it’s a complex form, and ideal for the treatment of complex themes. Unsually the editor of this literary magazine asked for a full comentary on the creative process, and you can find out a bit more about the processs of writing this poem in the comments section beneath the sonnet at Poets & War.
NEW FROM
QUARTERDAY
The Imbolc issue of the Quarterday Review is now available online. Featuring wonderful poets from across the English speaking world and thoughtful reviews of chapbooks and anthologies, Quarterday is a new voice in Scottish poetry. Our next issue will be Beltane, coming out at begining of May 2016.
The Quarterday Review is a quarterly poetry poetry magazine featuring English Language poets from around the world. Published on the four ancient Celtic quarterdays, this literary magazine focuses on mythic, seasonally themed poetry, in formal and classical styles. It is edited by LJ McDowall.
My English language ghazal in Arabic form, Riddles for the Dark Herbs has been published in Issue 57 — Flora Ghazals of The Ghazal Page: The International Journal of English Language Ghazals.
Entered for this special issue of the Ghazal Page, Riddles for the Dark Herbs explores the darker side to flowers and plants. Each of the couplets poses a riddle to the reader: can you guess which plant the couplet belongs too.
Botany and flora in general have always facinated me, and being something of a dark soul, I felt the strength, darkness and shadows associated with knowledge of flora needed to be celebrated in something a bit creepy.
My Shakespearean Sonnet, Love Sonnet has been published in Issue 8 (October 2015) of The Fable Online.
This poem is a traditional English or Shakespearean love sonnet, one of my favourite classcial forms.
In this poem the speaker, torn apart by a lover's quarrel, reflects on the nature of emotional risk. Games of chance and gambling imagery are abundant here, with the speaker reflecting at the end that despite the pain, they would still choose to risk their heart.
This poem came from reflecting on the risks we take for love and whether those risks are worth it.
I was fortunate to have two ghazals accepted for Issue 56 — Summer 2015 of The Ghazal Page: The International Journal of English Language Ghazals.
The first, Ghazal for a Hunter, is a traditional ghazal on classical themes of erotic surrender, with the voices of the Lover and Beloved interweaving in linked couplets. Written in a traditional Persian form, this ghazal is full of rich shades of loss, longing and power. References to moral and social judgement thread through this poem. I deliberately chose strong South Asian imagery, including the reference to the owl. In the West, the owl represents wisdom — but in the East the owl is a bird of fate, much like the raven is Europe. In writing this poem I recalled with nostalgia my time in India, where I had the opportunity to hear some of the greatest living ghazal singers perform.
Contrasting with Hunter, Ghazal for Ten Bad Dates is set in the contemporary West and demonstrates the versatility of the ghazal as a form for exploring the human condition, especially the relationships between lovers. This ghazal can be read either way: as the account of one bad man with a succession of jaded women, or the account of one jaded woman with a succession of bad men. I’ll leave you to guess which it is. Even as poem rooted in modernity, the ghazal cannot escape it’s metaphysical purpose.
Love's Plagiarist is a found poem, published in October 2015 in Unlost Journal.
Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning. The resulting poem can be defined as either treated: changed in a profound and systematic manner; or untreated: virtually unchanged from the order, syntax and meaning of the original [Source: Wikipedia].
Found poetry is especially problematic for a poet working in closed forms because it involves forcing your 'found' text into meter that might not naturally occur. In this case I cheated slightly. Love's Plagiarist is taken from fourteen first lines of the index of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, though I still had to transform them to get them to make sense. The poem speaks to erotic surrender, a traditional theme of early modern poetry. However badly I’m likely to damage my own reputation by writing this, I’m unlikely to damage the Bard’s.
Love's Plagiarist is a found poem, published in October 2015 in Unlost Journal.
Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning. The resulting poem can be defined as either treated: changed in a profound and systematic manner; or untreated: virtually unchanged from the order, syntax and meaning of the original [Source: Wikipedia].
Found poetry is especially problematic for a poet working in closed forms because it involves forcing your 'found' text into meter that might not naturally occur. In this case I cheated slightly. Love's Plagiarist is taken from fourteen first lines of the index of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, though I still had to transform them to get them to make sense. The poem speaks to erotic surrender, a traditional theme of early modern poetry. However badly I’m likely to damage my own reputation by writing this, I’m unlikely to damage the Bard’s.
The first of my heroic sonnet coronas to be accepted, Prince Charming, published in February 2016 by the feminist, Plath-focused journal Thank You For Swallowing is a gothic, modern retelling of the Cinderella myth, focusing on the character of the Prince. In this poem nightmarish gothic drug trips and dark erotic secrets in the basement lie juxtaposed with the Prince's acceptable public face as a social mover and patron of the arts. Tracking the Prince's life, all turns when he meets the Artist (Cinderella) a gypsy who becomes a classical musician under his patronage, and meets judgement.
Cinderella's story is reclaimed as a feminist narrative and explores the often complex, and unhealthy relationships between artists and their patrons. Prince Charming is my longest epic published to date.