Playing the Octopus In These Days of Prohibition 'Small Hands'

'Small Hands'

These pairings search for definition and meaning whilst acknowledging the beauty and strength in never actually being able to capture either

as in the title poem where ‘missing men’ are sought in the “drab city of brick/ penned in by a summer’s haze

Their latest collaboration tells the more sombre story – in six-line rhyming stanzas – of a young lad from a Yorkshire pit village who finds himself caught up in the horrors of the First World War

Published by Bloodaxe Books on 23

Playing the Octopus In These Days of Prohibition 'Small Hands'He avoids the pipes. He has his reasons. He has heard the story Of the octopus who was locked into a room For a week to practice. When they let him out the pipes had learned To play the octopus. The thing about musicians is They respond to glory. In Playing the Octopus, her eighth collection of poems, Mary OMalleys sensitivity to the spirit of Irelands west coast is as attuned as ever. In a world both earthen and dreamlike, bodily and mythical, a