With Seamus Heaney at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Foster Place where I was exhibiting a solo show and Seamus did a lunchtime poetry reading.
Ready for The POETS Lunch at Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel, Killiney, Co Dublin.
March 2018.
Prior to the POETS Lunch March 2018.
March 2015: Mothers Day 2015.
An award winning sonnet by Seamus Heaney.
01.09.13: Today we remember Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney.
Some poems by Roger.
Is Love Really in the Air?
Love, I love you
I really love you
I really, really love you
I said I love you
Of course I love you
Sure, I love you
Believe me, I love you
Definitely, I love you
Yes, I love you
But, … do you love me?
Roger Cummiskey, Poet.
Poetry award presentation first place.
Best Poetry winner – Roger Cummiskey.
Under Construction. A poem by Roger Cummiskey.
Featuring:
Under Construction
Rudi and Kofi
Is Love Really in the Air?
Truth
The Edinburgh Celtica
Es Morte
A Painting of a Young Poet
Introduction:
Writing poetry for Roger comes from the heart.
Roger’s involvement in the Arts spans a lifetime and has included Board membership of Eucrea Ireland Ltd, – the European Communities’ efforts to include participation in the arts by and with people with disabilities.
He was also involved for many years with Very Special Arts, Ireland and Europe. VSA is the charity founded by former US Ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy-Smith in 1975, and which now has a presence in over 50 countries around the World.
“I take inspiration not only from Ulysses but also Finnegans Wake, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners and the many poems written by James Joyce.”
Special Thanks: I wish to thank ShadowPoetry.com for giving me the opportunity to participate in their latest publication, “Before the Last Shadow Fades”.
This is their third volume of poetry. It was published for Christmas 2002. It is available from the www.shadowpoetry.com web site.
I also include below a compilation that I made of the musical and poetic language from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce.
This poem, Under Construction, was read at the inauguration of the Irish Friendship Day in Mijas – 13.04.2013.
ARTROGER
Video of Roger Cummiskey reading his poem “Under Construction” – a tribute to James Joyce.
I am genius I am Joyce.
A Dubliner of some renown
Hated, reviled, admired;
Poet and critic.
Ten years I had to wait for
Dubliners to be published
For pittance
Because I’m genius
Because I’m Joyce.
Yes, James Jaysas Joyce.
A Portrait helped,
Years and years to complete Ulysses
The greatest daytime novel of all time.
Teaching English as a foreign language
In Trieste and Zurich.
Patronized by a woman of Faith
Though I had none, Harriet Weaver.
Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare in Paris
My office
And Nora my model, inseparable;
Hemingway carried me over his shoulder
Drunk, we sang, argued, danced,
Played the piano and guitar.
Dublin, my town, 1904 my year
And 16th June my day;
But all wanted to know, in their
Ignorance if they featured,
And did they what.
They suffered for their lack of faith
In James Jaysas Joyce
Because I’m genius because I’m Joyce.
Mine eyes are a bitch
I’ve moved and moved
Borrowed and borrowed
Written and written.
Blind Homer helped the plot
And Ibsen influenced
So did Gogarty ha! ha!
Beckett learned.
Wild geese abroad.
Bloom was Israelite
One for Molly.
Budgen my pal.
Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach
Kept debtors at bay.
Then the greatest night time novel
Of all time got out of the Traps.
Anna Livia Plurabelle and H.C.Earwicker
Thought their way through the night
Towards the sea
Work in Progress.
Tim Finnegan had lived at Watling Street
Twins Shaun and Shem come into their own.
Because I’m genius because I’m Joyce.
Yes, James Jaysas Joyce.
© 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004.
Author: Roger Cummiskey, 1998
Construction updates: January 2000, September, 2000, April 2002, January 2004.
Originally published for Bloomsday 1998 by The Irish Times Newspaper
ARTROGER
Frail the red rose and the
Twins that gave
Pleasure to all
After the rave.
Sleep and rest
Time will move
Just do your best
Get into the groove.
© March 2002.
A tribute to my twin grandsons.
ARTROGER
Love, I love you
I really love you
I really, really love you
I said I love you
Of course I love you
Sure, I love you
Believe me, I love you
Definitely, I love you
Yes, I love you
But, …do you love me?
© 2001
ARTROGER
A truth
Cut to the truth
Examine the truth
Fuck the truth
Get the truth
Here’s the truth
In truth
Is it the truth?
Just the truth
Kiss the truth
Love the truth
Make the truth
Nothing but the truth
Oh, the truth?
Quick truth
Real truth
See truth
Tell the truth
The whole truth
True truth
Untruth
Your truth
True?
© 2001
ARTROGER
The Arts of Scotland
What did I see?
The finest paintings
We sought and looked for
The efforts again and again
And stood beside them
Proud Pol’s army
And kept them in Edinburgh
To think again.
The walls are bare now
The screens are quiet and still
O’er times that are past now
Which we so dearly held
And stood beside him
Proud Pol’s army
And kept them in Edinburgh
To think again.
Those days are here now
And here they will remain
For we can still rise now
And do the same again
And stand beside him
Proud Pol’s army
And keep them in Edinburgh
To think again.
© 2001
To the air of Flower of Scotland and apologies to the Corries!
ARTROGER
él está muerto:
When I see
The sea
I think of Thee
Alberti.
Hasta luego!
Nov 1st 1999
Following the death of Raphael Alberti aged 96, Spanish Poet.
ARTROGER
Bury me in the old church-yard
The bell! The bell! Farewell! Farewell!
O, we got a good breath of ozone round the Head today
A thimbleful, just to whet your appetite, they say.
In the silence, pick, pack, pock, puck.
Blackrock, Stillorgan, Goatstown, Dundrum and Sandyford
Carrickmines, Stradbrook, no more battles on the rocks.
They would meet quietly as if they had known each other
And made their tryst in some more secret place.
He would fade into something impalpable
Under her eyes and then in a moment he would be transfigured.
Christian brothers be damned
Newman and Byron
The telegraphpoles held the galloping notes
Of music between the punctual bars.
The sunlight breaking suddenly on his sight
Turned the sky and clouds into a fantastic world
Of sombre masses with lakelike spaces of dark rosy light.
He wanted to sin with another of his kind
A cry for an iniquitous abandonment.
In the silence their dark fire kindled the dusk
Into a tawny glow.
What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world
If he suffer the loss of his immortal soul?
His soul was fattening and congealing into a gross grease
Grazing out of darkened eyes, helpless, perturbed and human
For a bovine god to stare upon.
It would rain forever, noiselessly
All life would be choked off, noiselessly.
Noiselessly floating corpses amid the litter of the wreckage of the world.
Lucifer, non serviam: I will not serve.
Time is, time was, but time shall be no more!
The greatest torment, poena damni, the pain of loss.
Ever, never; ever, never.
The Reverend Stephen Dedalus, S.J.
His destiny was to be elusive of social and religious orders.
Destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others
To learn the wisdom of others wandering among the snares of the world.
A day of dappled seaborne clouds.
Words, was it their colours?
No, the poise and balance of the period itself.
Stephaneforos. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create
A living thing, new and soaring and beautiful,
Impalpable, imperishable.
He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted
The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence,
Low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep;
Hither and thither, hither and thither;
A faint flame trembled on her cheek.
I hope I am not detaining you
A flaming bloody sugar.
This race and this country and this life
Produced me. I shall express myself as I am.
Yellow insolence.
Art is the human disposition of sensible or
Intelligible matter for an esthetic end.
A soft liquid joy, the soft space of silent spaces
Of oceanic silence, of swallows flying through
The seadusk over the flowing waters.
The stout student who stood below farted briefly.
Did an angel speak?
I’m a ballocks.
I am and I know I am And I admit that I am.
Darkness falls from the air
Brightness falls from the air.
I will not serve
My defense
Silence, exile and cunning.
I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience.
Author: Roger Cummiskey, September 1999
Compiled from “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce.
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