BY SORCHA NÍ CHEALLAIGH
‘Painting my fears and anxieties’
villanelle for Untitled III (Ulster) 1977 by Neil Dallas Brown
“I am painting my fears and anxieties … working thematically tests me … to continue creating variations and permutations within a closely related range of images without lapsing into tedious restriction or repetition.”
| in dreams of love, i hold the blast – machine gun learning broken mad your body stooped and forged in glass my halo dividing cruciform past, the marksman’s trial, a hanging sash; in dreams of love, i hold the blast smothering ink in parallel dash, scapular grazing fingertips last; your body stooped and forged in glass your body hung slashed in half; lovelorn fading sepia hands, in dreams of love, i hold the blast; redeemer found iconoclast, b-27 silhouette banned, your body stooped and forged in glass variations only retrace the draft, our bodies rise, eventually pass in dreams of love, I hold the blast; your body stooped and forged in glass. |
This was written by a participant on our Creative Writing Programme. It was inspired by the above piece, click the image to view it in the NMNI online collection. Read other works from the programme here: Virtually (Re)writing history: A series from our online creative writing programme
