Poetry Please Radio 4
Invisible Belfast Radio 4
It’s February, Christmas is over and it has taken all your money with it. But fear not... reassurance cast a soft glow on the horizon as Poetry Please featured three poems just for the worriers.
The first, I worried by Matt Harvey, was a list of concerns including that his shares would drop and ill winds would fill his patched-up sail.
But sure: “In spite of all these fears, things nonetheless went badly wrong.”
You had to smile.
In Things: Fleur Adcock gave her fears ghostly faces.
“It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse
and worse.”
So that by the time we got to Sheenagh Pugh and her poem, Sometimes, we might have needed a bit of lifting up from the grimness of it all. It was a simple, heartfelt wish for joy and comfort – straight from the heart and taking wings on the final days of winter. (Please someone don’t say it will snow in March).
Pugh writes:
“The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.”
Invisible Belfast started with an American student and took us on a magical journey through the streets of Belfast inspired by the The Star Factory by Ciaran Carson.
There was a note in the book found in Bookfinders, the buyer got a £1 off because of that – surely it should have added to the value.
“You must search the terra incognita in the cracks among the broken and discarded objects at the heart of the city,” read the note.
And from there, we were whisked off on a hunt down side streets and alleyways past a hole in the wall caused by a bullet and on to old Smithfield, home to pet shops and sweets in big glass bottle shops and gloss black vinyl records and Joe Kavanagh’s boast that he would buy anything... and that included a two-headed sheep and even a coffin.
But did it have a notice saying: “Only used once”?
Forget the Beatles, this was a small gem of a magical mystery tour of our own city.