Poetry
This page includes our choice of Poems for the month for adults and children. It also includes details and winners of the various poetry competitions the Library organises each year.
Readers are invited to suggest poems and submit their own poems for possible inclusion on the library homepage to tfrench@meathcoco.ie
Comórtas Filíochta Éist 2008
Meath County Council Library Service 6th Annual Éist Poetry Competition
Prize winners will be awarded places on a one-day poetry writing seminar with a practising poet, sponsored by Meath County Council Library Service.
Rules
Contestants must be over 18 years of age and are invited to submit a maximum of three poems in Irish or English, maximum length 40 lines, typed or clearly written.
Poems entered must not have been previously published, have been entered or have won any other competition.
The judges' decision is final and no discussion will be entered into. Entries cannot be returned.
Previous winners of the competition and Meath County Council staff are not eligible to enter.
No separate application form is needed. Entrants are asked to submit contact details on a separate sheet.
No entry fee is payable. Closing date is July 31st 2008.
Please post entries to Comórtas Filíochta Éist 2008, Meath County Library Service, Railway Street, Navan, Co. Meath.
The Inevitable by Ted Kiiser, U.S Poet Laureate, 2004 - 2006
Bad news all too often arrives with a ringing telephone, all too early in the morning. But sometimes it comes with less emphasis, by regular mail. Here Allan Peterson of Florida gets at the feelings of receiving bad news by letter, not by directly stating how he feels but by suddenly noticing the world that surrounds the moment when that news arrives.
The Inevitable
To have that letter arrive
was like the mist that took a meadow
and revealed hundreds
of small webs once invisible
The inevitable often
stands by plainly but unnoticed
till it hands you a letter
that says death and you notice
the weed field had been
readying its many damp handkerchiefs
all along
