Editor Pat Boran sets out his stall in the brief introduction to issue number one of this attractive new journal, The Level Crossing. A new journal should appear in both hard copy and digital formats, he counsels, and it should mix poetry and poetry-related prose. “It shouldn’t look like it was produced in the 19th century,” he writes, with a little divilment.
Boran delivers on what he promises with style and vibrancy, quite aside from stimulating verse and prose pieces. There are dazzling black-and-white and colour photographs – abstract images, portraits and the editor's own airy, light-encrusted views of Bull Island to accompany a selection of his Haiku.
Vincent Wood's tribute to his senior – and indeed namesake - comrade in verse, Macdara Woods, captures the brio and excellence of one of Ireland’s most exciting poets. Macdara recently launched his latest volume, Music From the Big Tent, which is also published by Dedalus Press. Music From the Big Tent is clearly one of the greatest volumes of verse to be published in this country in recent times. Big-Top Music, a poem from the collection - all Dylanesque Beat and swagger- is reprised in the new publication.
The Poems of Place section features poets from Ireland, the UK, the USA, and Poland responding to the theme of place. Bill Tinley’s The Drumcondra Commandments urges us all to give ourselves a shake, to wake up and smell the sun’s rays. The poem manages a nice distinction between the breaking dawns which open the poem – ‘Forget your breaking dawns‘ - and the vision of a Dublin sunrise which closes the poem. A brand-new coin of sunrise has been struck./Shake out your cans, collect its currency.
Yolanda Castaño's short lyric, Recycling, is translated from the Gallego (or Galician in English) by Keith Payne. Rendered in English it is a resonant work which appears to opens a fascinating window on the process of poetry-writing. Alternatively, the lyric may be expressing the poet's distilled experience of writing in a minority language struggling against dominant languages in the immediate surround, namely Portuguese and Spanish. In any case, there is clearly a firm steer on the original Gallego in Keith Payne's neat translation. Payne’s accompanying article, Incorrigibly Spain, mingles news and reaction to the recent post-General Election fall-out in Madrid with reflections on the new wave of Galician poets, who are mostly women. A poem by María Do Cebreiro is also included and there are two wonderful photographic studies of both these Gallego poets.
In his two English languages poems republished here, the Korean poet Hanyong Jeong (born 1958) shows himself to be a perceptive student of Everyman in his strength and weakness. A Meeting in Naju’s Bar sees the narrator/poet meeting up with his younger self and his future self, a conceit which is well wrought into an accessible, companionable poem. We all laid our memories out on the table./We agreed to keep our wife and children out of it. The poet’s so-called Future persona declines the jar. Future-I’s nerves had weakened from too much drink/ so he sipped bean sprout soup.
One must commend editor and poet Pat Boran on his fine new vessel - may she sail well and gather many followers. www,dedaluspress.com
Paddy Kehoe
