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Martin Burke

Martin BurkeMartin Burke was a widely-published Irish poet/playwright who lived in Belgium.  He passed away in 2017 (June 4, 1951 - April 26, 2017) 

His book, The Easter Ballad, was published by Words on the street Press, Galway.

From I Ching in Cervena Barva Press, he writes:
 
'Biography is always of two kinds. There is the external biography of places lived in, books published and plays preformed. This is legitimated and this is included - but it is not the full story. True biography occurs in the mind that confronts certain issues and then gives them form in books and poems.  So it is that when I say I live in Flanders I am not just referring to the northern Flemish speaking area of Belgium. When I say Flanders I am touching an imaginative source that covers place and history, archetype and existential fact that roots into all the work I do.'
December 2013 update: "The Dream House" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by the Origami Poems Project.
 

 Martin's microchaps & selected poems are available below.

Origami Microchap
Selected Poem(s)

Yew Tree Vision

 

Click title to download PDF microchap.

Yew Tree Vision

 

Opening Lines

The yew tree
The pool
The burnt stones
The evening gathering about the shire
The light forking into lesser light
The door opening into history
The name opening into other names
The memory
The prophesy

Measure the space
Six paces from the gate to the first head stone
Measure your mind
It is wandering over the fields like a drover in search of cattle
Measure the ground six feet deep and deeper
Measure the fall of a stone you do not hear the thud of
Measure the water measuring you when you reach into its depth
Martin Burke © 2013

 

Patmos

 

Click title to download PDF microchap.

Patmos

The Dream House - Opening Lines

   
The light exonerates
What the dark claims -
Enter and be still

The corbelled roof
Holds you to a centre
That is off-centre

A point you cannot pass beyond
A point between experience
And expectation

You are here
And not elsewhere
Where passage begins

Where times restores
The wounds and scars
Of time
·
To lie in stone for half a million years
                is one desire
To be its carver is another –
But what’s known beyond the clang
                of the hammer
Martin Burke © 2013