For Culture Night 2025, Guest Editor Belinda McKeon has curated a number of works from emerging creative talents of note - read 13 Ways of Looking at Ghosts by poet Róisín Leggett Bohan below.
13 Ways of Looking at Ghosts
(after W.S.)
I
Where there is one ghost, there is always more than one ghost
perching on the generous lap of elsewhere.
II
They ride the bus to the hospice, whisper
there will be an onwards into the grieving ears of passengers.
III
Ghosts take walks in the electric light of dusk.
In summer, they marvel at the dives of swifts.
IV
A child and a ghost can be the same.
A woman and a man see this, but in different ways.
V
Dog ghosts sprint through fuchsia-hedged
fields, play catch with their humans.
VI
Ghosts don't bruise, don’t wear hearing aids,
have no need for wheelchairs, or IV infusions.
VII
Ghosts are good listeners.
They will wait for you on the landing for when you are ready.
VIII
On the hill of Lough Hyne,
I see a ghost lifting the echo of a curlew’s call.
IX
They silenced the trees to build office blocks.
The ghosts cried.
X
Ghosts host funerals for the animals killed crossing roads.
In verse, they keen.
XI
For dear ones in hospital beds chasing breaths, raise the window
offer emerging ghosts an opening.
XII
It was morning and it was raining. Ghost sat in beech tree with blackbird,
watched droplets fall like little liquid mirrors.
XIII
As time turns — my own hands will press
lightly on the shoulders of the living.
About The Writer: Róisín Leggett Bohan is a writer from Cork. In 2024, she was runner-up in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and Listowel Best Poem Award and was a finalist in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her work appears in Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, Magma, Aesthetica, The Pomegranate London, and more. Róisín was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series 2022 and the Seamus Heaney Summer School 2024. She is a UCC graduate, and HOWL New Irish Writing co-editor.
