Poem
Colette Bryce
When I Land in Northern Ireland
When I Land in Northern Ireland
When I Land in Northern Ireland
When I land in Northern Ireland I long for cigarettes,for the blue plume of smoke hitting the lung with a thud and, God,
the quickening blood as the stream administers the nicotine.
Stratus shadows darkening the crops
when coming in to land,
coming in to land.
What’s your poison?
A question in a bar
draws me down through a tunnel of years
to a time preserved in a cube of fumes, the seventies-yellowing
walls of remembrance; everyone smokes and talks about the land,
the talk about the land, our spoiled inheritance.
© 2008,
From: Self-Portrait in the Dark
Publisher: PIcador, London
From: Self-Portrait in the Dark
Publisher: PIcador, London
Colette Bryce
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1970)
Born in Derry in 1970, Colette Bryce lived in London for many years before moving to Scotland in 2002 where she held the fellowship in Creative Writing at the University of Dundee. She moved to Newcastle upon Tyne in 2005 when she was appointed to the North East Literary Fellowship. She now divides her time between there and London in her work as a freelance writer and editor.
Poems
Poems of Colette Bryce
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When I Land in Northern Ireland
When I land in Northern Ireland I long for cigarettes,for the blue plume of smoke hitting the lung with a thud and, God,
the quickening blood as the stream administers the nicotine.
Stratus shadows darkening the crops
when coming in to land,
coming in to land.
What’s your poison?
A question in a bar
draws me down through a tunnel of years
to a time preserved in a cube of fumes, the seventies-yellowing
walls of remembrance; everyone smokes and talks about the land,
the talk about the land, our spoiled inheritance.
From: Self-Portrait in the Dark
When I Land in Northern Ireland
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