Anne Enright : The Wren, The Wren

In a June edition of The London Review of Books I came upon six poems by an Irish poet I didn’t know. Philip McDaragh certainly sounded Irish, and two of the poems were translated from Irish of the 12th and 9th Century respectively. I had always loved the Irish air, Lagan Love, and one little poem was called The Bird of Lagan Lough.

the wee bird,

yellow-beaked,

blurting sweet

melody over

grey water

is a blackbird

hidden in gorse

(yellow, of course)

Catherine Chidgey : The Axeman’s Carnival

The story begins with a little  magpie chick falling from its nest.

…not even a chick but a pink and naked thing, a scar, a scrap a scrape fallen in roots and wriggling, when I was catching my death and all I knew of the sky was the feel of feathers above me, the belly of black as warm as a cloud above me….