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Stick on Stone
the Viva Voce Winner 2010

by Mike Gallagher

Mike Gallagher, Hartnett Viva Voce Winner 2010 has been published extensively throughout Europe, America and Australia. Born on Achill Island, County Mayo, he lived for 40 years in London and personally experienced the sense of displacement, despair and anger that emigration visited on previous generations, an experience that is now being forced on a new generation. His poem "Stick on Stone" which was chosen as the winning Viva Voce reflects these emotions.

Stick on Stone

We knew each other only as men
Emigration saw to that:
Him in London, me in Achill,
Me in London, him in Luton.
Even living together, we remained
Strangers in a rented room,
Speaking, not talking,
Robbed of our relative roles.

Sure, there were memories -
One golden Dukinella day
When Mick, the Yank, called;
We straddled a low stone wall,
Talked of Wimpy and McAlpine,
Roads and bridges,
Digs and pubs;
The boy was man!

A lunchtime booze in Wandsworth;
Three of us now living in London,
Yet chatting only the once.
Inheritance was split, spoils divided,
Unequally, but with good humour,
Pádraig was always his favourite – and mine.

Nights in Castlebar hospital
After the emigrant's dreaded summons:
Come now, while he still knows you.
Between the awkward silences,
Came words of stuttered support;
And he survived - again and again.

I almost made it, that last time,
Got to Westport before news
Of our final silence.
Now, as I walk in Dromawda,
His gnarled stick, a stolen spoil,
Taps the unsaid
On the tarstone road.

© Mike Gallagher

Hartnett Viva Voce Winner in the Open Competition Mike Gallagher reads his winning poem

Festival News

Cora Fenton performs amidst the audience at the opening of Michael Hartnett Literary & Arts Festival 2010

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