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    Going Around with Bachelors
    Going Around with Bachelors
    Going Around with Bachelors
    Ebook70 pages35 minutes

    Going Around with Bachelors

    By Agnes Walsh

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Shortlisted for the 2008 Pat Lowther Award and the 2009 Heritage and History Book Award [Writers Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador], nominated for LGBT Poetry (2008 Lambda Literary Awards) and longlisted for the 2008 ReLit Awards

    The spirit of the departed -- source, origin, heritage, history -- is the essence of this book, rich with the tang of Newfoundland speech.

    Agnes Walsh's first book, In the Old Country of My Heart, is one of the most read and best loved books of poetry to come out of Newfoundland. Going Around with Bachelors continues and extends Walsh’s distinctive subject matter: the past in the present, Ireland and Portugal in Newfoundland, weather internal and external, the Cape Shore. Here are poems of place and of people in place, of family both immediate and extended. They are also absolutely contemporary poems by a poet, gifted with a remarkably flexible and distinctive voice, who is planted, in her own words, "straight up and down into what’s new."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateOct 15, 2007
    ISBN9781771312912
    Going Around with Bachelors
    Author

    Agnes Walsh

    Poet and playwright Agnes Walsh was born in Placentia, Newfoundland. She has published three previous collections of poetry: In the Old Country of My Heart (Killick Press, 1996), Going Around with Bachelors (Brick Books, 2007), and Oderin (Pedlar Press, 2018). Her work as founder, artistic director, and writer for the Tramore Theatre Troupe (1999–2012) won her the Newfoundland and Labrador Hospitality Award. In 2011, her collection of plays Answer Me Home was published by Breakwater Books. She was the inaugural poet laureate for the City of St. John’s from 2006 to 2009 and was awarded the 2020 Hall of Honour Award from ArtsNL.

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      Book preview

      Going Around with Bachelors - Agnes Walsh

      Going Around

      with Bachelors

      Going Around

      with Bachelors

      Agnes Walsh

      National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Walsh, Agnes, 1950–

          Going around with bachelors / Agnes Walsh.

      Poems.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-894078-56-6

      ISBN-10: 1-894078-56-X

      I. Title.

      PS8595.A5846G63 2007          C811’.54          C2006-906536-5

      Copyright © Agnes Walsh, 2007

      We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of

      Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program

      (BPIDP), and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our

      publishing program.

      Cover image © Martin Cormier. Vue 2, from the series 36 Vues du Mont Sainte-Ann. Digital painting, ink jet printing on paper, 90 x 120 cm., 2005.

      Author photograph by Ned Pratt.

      Brick Books

      Box 20081

      431 Boler Road

      London, Ontario

      N6K 4G6

      Canada

      www.brickbooks.ca

      For Patrick and Simone

      CONTENTS

      I Solemn

      The Laying Out, 1956

      Almost a Word

      Dad and the Fridge Box

      Going Around with Bachelors

      To Boston

      Homecoming to the End

      Storm

      Longevity and Guts

      The Interview

      Thomas

      Pitchfork

      Love

      Wind in the Old Town

      Oranges in Barranco do Velho

      Al-Gharb

      For Anita

      Seaweed on Point Lance Beach

      Contacts

      Fireweed

      Patrick s Cove

      The Tilts, Point Lance

      begin with the world: let it be small enough

      Summer under Winter

      Tango

      Gull, Crow, at Table

      Placentia

      Looking on the Water

      St. Bride s

      For Val Ryan

      Me and Ye

      His Match

      The Wind Joined Us on Bere Island

      Entering Galway

      The Stealing of Crom Dubh s Head

      The Cows Were There

      Your Country

      Long Distance Lover

      Is it that we stumble into love?

      Evening and it is always like this

      Andalusian Rain

      Acknowledgements

      Biography

      I Solemn

      My mother scrubbed my face and braided my hair.

      She told me to put on my dark blue corduroy dress,

      the good thick one from Aunt Mary. She laid the crescent

      of hat on her head and stuck a long white pin

      with a pearled end into it. (And her head?) It

      went in so deep but she didn’t jump or cry out, or even wince.

      What she did was pull the veil down from its fold until

      it rested against her nose.

      And gloves. Hers black and mine white.

      "You must be very serious. And don’t be scared, there’s

      nothing to be scared about. It’s only death, and death can’t

      hurt you." She took me by the hand and closed the door

      behind us and turned the key.

      It was my first time for death. I was thought big enough.

      So we walked down Swan’s road to Mrs. Corrigan’s.

      The sun was all hallelujah and gave the grass that warm,

      green smell. My friends were swinging in the playground,

      singing "itsy bitsy teenee weenee yellow polka-dot bikini

      that she wore for the first time today. Look straight ahead,"

      my mother said, be solemn. And I was, although my shoes

      pinched. I looked at the clouds moving

      fast in the sky above and felt

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