Archives for March 2011

Bright young stars Jesse Eisenberg & Anne Hathaway have found true love in Rio. I could almost be a tabloid sub editor and lure you all in on some prurient headline. I've found myself caught out enough times about various celebs and their couplings, only to find it's a clever ruse to get me to buy the mag/newspaper. Little do the magazine editors know, I can do a quick once over in the supermarket queue and scan celeb gossip quicker than Perez Hilton can blog! 

So when I say the above two famous Hollywood starlets have found love, it's only as the voices to a pair of blue macaws in the new cartoon animation "Rio". I took my 2 girls along this morning to see the press screening at Yorkgate at 11am. Who cares what time it is! Even if yesterday 11am was actually 10am, (clocks going forward), we're getting ice cream & popcorn! 3D glasses on and "Rio" began in a technicolour riot, birds of all plumage singing and samba-ing past my peripheral vision. I looked at my 2 girls, who, even at 6 and 3 , are totally au fait with the 3d glasses. For them this is how cinema is. I was the real kid there. 

I have a much loved and much read card. One of 400 numbered copies. A poem "Horseshoe" by Michael Longley with an engraving by Jeffrey Morgan. I got it at a party in Christmas 2006 to celebrate 35 years of Blackstaff Press. My limited edition is number 247 out of 400.

Over the year s I have put it out on display, then put it away carefully , only to find it again and bring it out for public airing. I put it out on the mantlepiece, then find that it's fallen behind the family photos, and other clutter, and so I put it away carefully again. The cycle has continued for the past 5 years. I really should frame it and hang it safely on a wall, but there's something about the feel of the paper (225 gms mould-made Zerkall paper with a deckle edge) that stops me.

This morning I found it again, behind a wedding photo and re-read it. 

Later this morning I read the poem again, as it's one of th poems in Michael's new collection. "A Hundred Doors". I was glad to see it and glad too that it's got a wider airing than the 400 privileged few at that party in Belfast 6 years ago.

Horseshoe

"I find a rusty horseshoe where skylarks

Rise from the sheepshitty path, God-sparks,

Sound-glints for bridle and bridle hand.

I am the farrier in this townland".

I love the "sheepshitty path". I think I've walked too many of them, but only Michael Longley can make them sound magical.

"A Hundred Doors" by Michael Longley is published by Jonathan Cape