MARIE COVENEY
Marie Coveney was born in Co. Cork and studied at the Crawford College of Art. Her work has been published in Poetry Review, The Shop, The Stony Thursday Book, Southword Online, The Shamrock Haiku Journal, The Irish Examiner, The Business Post TV Review. In 2012 Dedalus published twenty one of her poems in, Dedalus Measuring, New Irish Writing 1. She won The Listowel Single Poem Prize in 2008 and was shortlisted in: The Patrick Kavanagh Award, The Listowel Poetry Collection, The Cork Literary Manuscript Award, The Fool for Poetry Chapbook Prize, The Listowel Single Poem Award, The Bridport Prize, The Strokestown Poetry Prize and The Gregory O'Donoghue Prize in 2015.She was also highly commended in The Dromineer Festival Poetry Competition. She has read at The Cork Winter Warmer Poetry Festival, The Kinsale Arts Festival. She was one of ten poets who read at The Next Generation of Poets, chosen by The Shop magazine, at the West Cork Literary Festival.
Days of rain, indigo skies.
Sluice gates are lifted at Inniscarra Dam.
The slack river rises, rushes the bend
at Dead Man's Hole.
It creeps into vaults in the Abbey's graveyard—
a small resurrection of bones.
Plastic bags snag on riverbank willows,
they flutter like prayer trees.
A lake spreads over the Lee Fields,
the dinosaur sculpture, a sea monster.
Water gathers and snarls inside city walls,
breaches at Bachelor's Quay.
It slides beneath doors, wallows in hallways,
rising and rising to window sills,
where hackled cats stare as African violets
sail from jardinières.
Out on the roof tops crows heckle—
ruffled lords of a drowned world.
©2016 Marie Coveney
More by Marie Coveney in Southword Journal
'Homes' by Marie Coveney, read at the Winter Warmer Festival (YouTube)
Purchase Measuring (Dedalus Press)