(S)worn State(s) extracted - three acclaimed poets, three poems

We present an extract from the new poetry book titled (S)worn State(s).

(S)worn State(s) draws upon social history, myth, and visionary poetics to remember, challenge, and reimagine 'worn' narratives of women’s experiences in the context of shifting historical and cultural landscapes in Ireland in the Irish Decade of Centenaries and beyond.

It features individual poems by the inaugural winners of the Markievicz Award: Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Kimberly Campanello and Dimitra Xidous. It also features a long collaborative poem Her-Text which was written in the Boyne Valley, Meath.

(S)worn State(s) comprises three individual books designed and letterpress printed by Jamie Murphy, assisted by Ellen Martin-Friel and Mikah Smillie. The books are housed together in a solander box accompanied by their collaborative poem Her-Text - find out more about this unique publication here.

The Monument

The plan for the weekend is to go to the monument built over the blown-up monument across from the building that is now a monument down the road from the statues that are monuments and the garden that is a monument and the centres of learning and making that are monuments and the café with its scones and its tea served in leaky pots. The march will assemble there with relevant flowers and speeches. The parade, not unlike the coronation stone, is a roving monument that brings people out of doors and requires identification. I have built a small monument to you that is easily misunderstood. Its language moves toward ever simpler states. I have crossed out to declare and written to say. I have removed all names in favour of she and he and they. And I, precious you, is a monument, a style, that moves.

first appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, 131 (2020)

Kimberly Campanello

Holy Communion In The New State

Among the archives, I find my sister: framed.

A child in a snow-lace gown and mantilla,

pearl rosaries falling like ashes from her hands.

Her hair is scooped free of ravens.

She is about to receive the grain of Christ.

She is about to swallow the black poppies.

Her face, stone-closed, knows everything.

And nothing. In this new language of sin,

she has learned how to make all the sounds

of a good girl pretending to be a bad girl

and willing to confess. If you lean closer,

you can hear the snakes rise up out of her

like a sour spring hissing out of cracked dirt.

(It's a bitter frost, when all that sass has to go).

And the irony stings. Little underage bride,

it’s all ahead of her: the dark communions

of womanhood, earthhood, motherhood, with hunger.

Little waif, wife to the stars,

.

mind how you tread. The ground underfoot is uneven.

And the church you are entering will not protect you.

Annemarie Ní Churreáin

line –

the line

is ancestral

& not

an artefact;

the line

is alive

& not

a pile of bones;

the line

is a throat,

a throat

& not

a spine;

the line –

the line

has a

language

all its own

& I could

begin –

be in –

anywhere:

my mother

a girl

my mother

the mountain

my mother

picks cotton

my mother

spins, spins

my mother

a line

a stream

that runs

down

my mother

the mountain

& my mother –

my mother

my throat

my throat

full of water

my mother

my mother

my mother

a girl

girl, an artefact –

Dimitra Xidous

(S)worn State(s) is published by The Salvage Press - find out more here.