by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
\nISBN 978-0-9935103-9-7<\/p>\n
Sold Out<\/strong><\/p>\n This sequence of poems emerges from the poet\u2019s attempts to find out more about the elusive and enigmatic figure of his grandfather, to \u2018fix his likeness\u2019 as it were. Using documented fragments of a private story and his own considerable powers of imagination, Michael Bartholomew-Biggs creates an engaging tribute to an ordinary life that takes him closer to his own roots. It is a narrative that might have passed relatively unnoticed yet which nonetheless is integral to the wider sweep of history as it touches on currently sensitive issues of immigration, national identity and terrorism.<\/p>\n “Recently, I\u2019ve been enjoying Michael Bartholomew-Biggs\u2019 The Man Who Wasn\u2019t Ever Here(Wayleave Press). I love the quality of the press\u2019s pamphlet production and cover artwork (by Mike Barlow), and I found the pamphlet gripping in terms of character and narrative. My \u2018I\u2019ll just dip in\u2019 turned into my completing an initial reading of the whole pamphlet in one go \u2013 which for me is a sign of a collection that is way more than a sum of its parts. Both the characters and settings are beguiling vivid \u2013 from the striking and moving imagery in the questions at the end of the opening poem (\u2018Birthright\u2019) with its initial hereditary \u201cquart of blood\u201d, through painfully beautiful poems like \u2018\u201cDied From Scalds\u201d\u2019, the dramatic and strange facts juxtaposition in \u2018Press Reports\u2019and many other wonderful poems\u2026 back round to \u201cthat quart of blood again\u201d and Thomas\u2019s Postscripts speaking back at the writer. So much that I enjoyed here and so much that I admired.” Sarah James<\/p>\n \u201ca remarkable act of imaginative recreation.\u201dJames Roderick Burns, Ink Sweat and Tears<\/p>\n Kiltyclogher, 1998<\/em><\/p>\n Conversation stalls; then one Two Americans today Collective recall of his name There is general agreement Around eleven thirty I can\u2019t put down the Guinness
\nRoot Finding<\/h4>\n
\nmusician mentions the return
\nof the man who never did come back
\nand bar talk cruises off again.<\/p>\n
\nturned up in a Sligo taxi
\nto brandish angst about an ancestor
\nwho might have been from hereabouts.
\nMy own more diffident allusion
\nto a local grandfather
\nhas met with courteous consideration.<\/p>\n
\nattaches to a patch of woodland
\nround a roofless house. Ungraciously
\nI speculate this acreage
\nmight serve as common patrimony
\nfor any visitor blown in
\non a gust of curiosity.<\/p>\n
\nthat Mrs Rooney would remember
\nsomething if she wasn\u2019t dead. She washed
\nher own hair right up to the end.<\/p>\n
\nthe barman opens up the door
\nto let some smoke escape. But not the clients.
\nThe musicians\u2019 throats are flushed enough
\nfor them to sing as well as play
\nwhile I engage in dialogues
\non Cromwell, Irish beef and Eddie Jordan.<\/p>\n
\nlike a resident, but try
\nto feel at home and ponder what thin kinship
\nI might claim around the bar stools,
\nindulge what small celebrity
\naccompanies the late return
\nof the man who wasn\u2019t ever here.<\/p>\n
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