Speak Other Voices
(The last Poetry Now Festival, Dun Laoghaire, March 2011)
Speak other voices
From other mouths,
Mouths that shape the language
Of other countries, other lives.
We know nothing about each other
But we know these words -
The ones that makes the sssss
The ones that make the oooos –
The suck and pull of sibilants
The essence of the vowels
The soft touch of emotion
The sucker puncher verbs
The humour and the sorrow
Self-deprecating veins
The quick flick of an eyebrow
The slow burn of the page.
We are always, always watching
And listening for the sign.
Here, we find the signals everywhere
Their words, your words, are mine.
© Helena Nolan
Heaney wins 'Irish Times' poetry award
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Helena Nolan's poems and short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, Abridged and The Moth, as well as on the Spoken Ink audio website and The Guardian Poetry Workshop. Last year she was shortlisted for Strokestown, runner up in the Fish poetry competition and came second in the Patrick Kavanagh Award. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from UCD (2008).
