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From: Vol.06 N.01 – The Everywhere of Things

The Lagan

by Ivy Ireland

thick black ooze moves

gnats flick

above and above

right to fear

what is rising up

from beneath

 

this viscous murk

would embower

bury me under

as I sit here

all this long while

claiming

the river’s only depth

is my own reflection

 

unlike other

lovers of shadows

my mallacht

is this peering through

what stares back

also wondering

 

another curse I claim

is covetousness

I want this miasma

beneath beyond

between

gnats above and

slush gods

deep below

to call my own

 

some subtle spirit

must shape the Lagan

some sidhe

that might be kin

to this one self

who peers back

against all this

being known

Published: January 2019
Ivy Ireland

is a poet who helps run a second-hand bookstore café in Newcastle, NSW. Ivy’s first book, Incidental Complications, was published in 2007 and her more recent collection, Porch Light, was published in 2015 with Puncher and Wattmann. Ivy completed her PhD at The University of Newcastle, where she has worked as a casual lecturer in Creative Writing. Ivy was awarded the Australian Young Poet Fellowship in 2007 and has won the Harri Jones Memorial Prize and the local section of the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Ivy’s poems, essays and reviews have been published in Cordite, Overland, Going Down Swinging, Blue Dog, and various national and international magazines and anthologies.

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

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