The Lines

Tracing The Lines is the title of the second exhibition I attended in two days, a series of semi-abstract line drawings by architect John Dorman, who responded to a number of poems in the recently published 'If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song' (by Dedalus Press). I was delighted to be one of the four poets John invited to read on opening night. The drawings were pinned to the wall beside the poems which inspired them. Mine was the earliest of three of poems the editor Pat Boran selected for inclusion in the anthology. It appeared in my first collection, Airborne, published in 2001. Here's the poem:

From Mount Street Bridge

That night three girls were swimming there
between the tall reeds

in the canal, bare arms and legs waving
palely in the dark water,

laughing, shaking their heads, shouting
an affectionate ‘fuck off’

to someone standing on the bank. We loitered
to breathe it in: soft skin

and loud voices ambering in the dark water,
close to the road, the streetlights.