Catherine Phil MacCarthy
Catherine Phil MacCarthy is a native of Crecora, Co Limerick and has lived in Sandymount, Dublin, since 1987. She has published six collections of poetry and a novel, most recently Emblemas (USP, Brazil, 2024), a selection in Portuguese and English from six collections. She was awarded a residency at Varuna, the National Writers House (NSW) Australia, in 2022 and read at the Blue Mountains Writers Festival. Last September, she took part in readings in Washington DC, Villanova, and Princeton, supported by Culture Ireland. She participated in the XIX Symposium of Irish Studies in South America 2024, hosted by the University of São Paulo, Brazil (Link to Emblemas page).
Publications
 Emblemas/Emblems |
 Daughters of the House |
 The Invisible Threshold |
 Suntrap (2007) |
 the blue globe (1998) |
 How High The Moon |
 One Room An Everywhere (2003) |
 This Hour of the Tide |
For more details on these publications, click the cover thumbnails.
Humpback
Our daughter’s world, her library books of dolphin, seal and whale,
led us one summer upstairs to sleep on futons
in an A-frame open-plan bedroom overlooking grassy shores
of the St Lawrence above Saguenay. In our ears,
McCartney singing Let It Be, and Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’,
our son played from a pink vinyl LP, harmonica echoing
through the house. The water spread grey and sheer,
like an inland sea to another country. We took to the waves
in long yellow canoes, precipitous as stilettoes on ice
that bore us high on mirrored clouds, like gliding on the palm of a god
coasting North and East, towards the faraway mouth of the estuary.
When our guide, yards ahead hollered, ‘Hey!’ and pointed mid-river,
paddles idled. We listened to the tide wash a barnacled island,
soon become rolling flank, a water wheel shedding streams,
fluke towering before it swept into the swallowing ocean
leaving us yaw rudderless, like Jonah staring down the barrel of the deep.
Poem of the Week, The Irish Times, March 9th, 2024.
A Baleia-Jubarte
O mundo da nossa filha, os seus livros enciclopédicos sobre golfinhos, focas e baleias
nos levou a dormir lé em cima em futons num verão
num quarto em forma de A com vista para a margem em grama do São Lourenço
acima do Saguenay. Em nossos ouvidos,
Paul MacCartney cantando Let It Be, e Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’,
que o nosso filho tocava de um LP rosa de vinil, a harmônica ecoando
pela casa. A água se espalhava cinza e pura,
como um mar interior até outro país. Nós partimos pelas ondas
em canoas amarelas compridas, escarpadas como estiletes no gelo
que nos levaram alto em nuvens espelhadas, como se deslizássemos na palma de um deus
navegando pelo Norte e pelo Leste, rumo à distante boca do estuário.
Quando o nosso guia, jardas adiante gritou,“- Ei!” e apontou ao meio do rio,
os remos pararam. Ouvimos a maré romper uma ilha coberta de cracas
e logo se tornar uma onda a rolar, uma roda d’água derramando riachos,
a cauda erguida antes que fosse engolida pelo oceano devorador
deixando-nos desorientados, como Jonas encarando o fundo do abismo.
(Translated by Gisele Wolkoff (link to Emblemas on the Books Page)