by Rose Rushe
Photo: Salmon Poetry
EXAM mocks and the real thing are nigh for hundreds of thousands of students. Limerick based poet Edward O’Dwyer has penned a beaut of a poem, musing in an unvain way on the idea of his own works being placed on the Leaving Certificate curriculum. The angst is wrapped sweetly: his as wordsmith; a teacher mulling over work to be done; the fretting ‘unfocused’ class; the reduction of art to mnemonics.
O’Dwyer was selected by Poetry Ireland for their ‘Introductions Series’ 2010 and was since shortlisted for both the Hennessy Award and the Desmond O’Grady Prize, among others.
His first collection, ‘The Rain on Cruises Street’ was published by Salmon Poetry last year, as was ‘Bullet Points’ in Limerick City of Culture’s anthology, ‘Dream of a City’.
Bullet Points
There’s a day many from now/ that I might on the Leaving Cert English course,/ the tepid topic of classroom debates.
My poems sliced open, pinned apart/ like works or frogs,/ under unfocused microscopes.
I’ll be teenage headaches/ and paper jets flying through the air.
I’ll be the agony over a word/ written differently,/ the indifference given a word/ agonised over.
I’ll be a photocopier’s bulimia/ on freezing Monday mornings,/ a teacher’s long pause/ before tonight’s homework conceived.
I’ll be a series of bullet points/ on a blackboard,/ in a revision book,/ on the inside of a sleeve.
From Astrolabe Press 2014, ‘Dream of a City’
