The theme of this collection is home. I grew up in Northern Ireland during the fifties and sixties. The troubles were already brewing during my childhood and finally erupted onto the streets in '68. I attended the first civil rights march on August 24th from Coalisland, my father's home town, to Dungannon where we lived in a council estate. In fact I remember as a school girl delivering leaflets advertising the event.
The aim of the march was to highlight discrimination in housing allocation in our area. Follow link below for the full story.
Here is a piece on the subject written as a Haibun
A Haibun is a Japanese genre that mixes autobiographical writing with Haiku.
Five pointers
KEEP PROSE SIMPLE
USE SPARSE IMAGERY
EVOKE THE SENSES
USE THE PRESENT TENSE
THE HAIKU/S CAN BE INSERTED ANYWHERE BUT SHOULD ADD MEANING
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-haibun-poetry
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-a-haiku-in-4-easy-steps#quiz-0
THE SKIPPING ROPE
It was a
mean spirited town. At its heart the burnt out remains of O’Neill’s Castle smouldered.
scorched earth policy
employed throughout history
our culture erased.
Centuries
later and the town cry was still, “No Surrender!”
Buildings
had eyes. As I stood at McAleer’s corner eating Pagni’s chips out of vinegar
sodden Irish newspaper and watching cats in the family hotel basement window, I
felt their presence. Panoptic surveillance emanating from the RUC barracks at
the top of the Square, bolstered by the Ulster bank beside it, and higher up
British armoured towers,
iron clad, cube shaped set to watch
we the occupied.
In 1968 the
town was a battle ground flanked on two sides by council housing estates: the
Ponderosa and the White City, pebble dashed rows and blocks built at right
angles to each other on low lying bogs, inhabited by the poorest of both
denominations who qualified for these after doing time in the vacated POW camp
out the Moy Road. Working class protestants
occupied more salubrious zones to the south, Mill town and Moygashel where red
brick industrial cottages nestled at the foot of the Windmill hill or around
the linen factory, Dungannon’s industrial sector.
Bigotry ran
deep in the runnels, in the rills, in the streams and the air we breathed would
soon smell of metal and burning flesh. The town was tense
like a skipping rope
strung tight between two players
Irish and Scottish
And we waited for one of them to tighten grip
or loosen hold.
