2015 MELITA HUME POETRY PRIZE SHORTLIST FOCUS: JULIE MORRISSY

SELECTED FOR POETRY IRELAND INTRODUCTIONS 2015

Julie Morrissy is a poet from Dublin currently living in her home city after spending several years living in Canada and the USA. She has been selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions 2015, and her poetry has featured or is forthcoming in Cyphers, The Dalhousie Review, Abridged and The Honest Ulsterman. The poem below is from her shortlisted unpublished collection.

Moving Day

it is straight forward:

boots or die

boots or your toes stick together

like tongues on ice

boots or an all-inclusive

with trays of crab claws and prawn cocktail

delicious sweltering heat just a plane ride away

I write letters home

inquiring about the handheld heat packs from childhood

postage costs one dollar eighty-five cents

and five to seven business days - not counting Family Day

another provincial quirk

like the wine rack

and the difference between the store and the dep

I meet my friends at Aunties and Uncles and pretend

pour Aunt Jemima’s over my pancakes;

this is not maple syrup

- this is regular syrup

I sit on the steps of my walled-in apartment;

in Montreal, they are all corridors

in Toronto, walk-in wardrobes

keep sifting through six people’s mail

waiting for the heat pack to arrive

Comments

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

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