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Irish Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Bodily takeover: New poetry from Gwyneth Lewis, Jennifer Horgan, Dedalus Introductions and Peter McDonald
From a Welsh poet well used to crossing borders comes a sixth collection of ardour and courage. Gwyneth Lewis's First Rain in Paradise (Bloodaxe, £12) confronts past trauma and debility through the language of invasion and bodily takeover. In the first sequence of eight poems, a spider lays eggs in the speaker's brain: as the sequence develops, the subject of maternal child abuse comes sharp and clear. These are poems of darkness and danger – probing, unsettling, appalling. Snare, for example, seems to ask how one is to live in a mind damaged by abuse: 'It's easy to leave, what stops you?', others ask, baffled. It's the snare in the brain, spring-loaded for suicide ... 'Don't you love a good fact, how it saves you / from feeling', asks Relic, but this collection is spared nothing, not the trauma of abuse, rendered in imagery as powerful as it is fearsome; not the descent into aftermath (… and I'm coming / undone/ at the / seams – Any Eight Legs Will Do); and, ultimately, not the process of recovery, that climb back up towards a capacity to endure ('don't ask me how, I'm still feeling, pulling' – Spidering) or to resist, as at the conclusion of Expulsion: 'An owl / descends – clutching stars and dismay / in her talons. Stubborn as ever, I choose to stay.' That survival impulse is facilitated by an insistence on hard-won joy. Three Ways into Water describes: READ MORE I've thrust my head through sky's skin, can see how my brain is dazzled by stars' wheels and zigzags, spelling delight, which is the opposite of pain. Difficult material rendered in unflinchingly challenging imagery, but these poems are also delightful, finding humour and pleasure where they can, as in Late Blackberries, where the final sugar-rush is relished, even if the crop's first sweetness has been sacrificed. Gwyneth Lewis: Difficult material rendered in unflinchingly challenging imagery In the tradition of Faber's Poetry Introduction or Carcanet's New Poetries series, Beginnings Over and Over (Dedalus, €12.50), edited by Leeanne Quinn, features a selection of emerging Irish poets whose work has been published in poetry journals or performed in other ways, but who have yet to publish a first collection. In this case, four poets – Mai Ishikawa, Róisín Leggett Bohan, Emer Lyons and Cal O'Reilly – are represented by a generous selection of about a dozen poems each, enough for a taster but not so many as to compromise any collections likely to follow. Such introductory anthologies are usually a good way to sample the poetry zeitgeist (if there is one), and this volume indicates that perennial themes of grief, bodies, dreams and cats still abide, while room is made for more contemporary concerns of gender transition, Kintsugi and films such as Top Gun and God's Own Country. A capacious volume with a range of sparky, beguiling poem titles (And I had bought new underwear from Penneys; The Migration of Theta Waves; I Photocopy Vaginas), the four highlighted poets demonstrate energy and engagement, although the 'stylistic innovation' promised by the brief introduction seems an overclaim. Standout moments include Leggett Bohan's The Cryptographer, which opens: 'We carried the summer / in our mouths'); Ishikawa's wonderful Faceless, and Lyons's Mouse/Mice. Perhaps the most assured poet is O'Reilly, whose poems declare a formal maturity and confidence in strikingly bold but graceful imagery. A couple of list poems here nicely handle momentum and detail, and metaphor (that trickiest of poetic strategies) is managed elegantly, as in the final phrases of Naming: … the first time you say my name / a feeling / fills my chest / like a room I can stand in /so bright / I don't need to look past it The first lines of the opening poem of Jennifer Horgan's Care (Doire Press, €16), declare its uncompromising approach. It's Just a Dream I Had begins: 'She's slumped in a bath. I'm drawn to the grey hair inside / her thighs, the dough-layered stomach, belonging to mothers'. The theme of Women's Bodies, often constrained and compromised by social context, though always observed with care and fidelity, is to the forefront. From the small boxes to which people (especially women and the marginalised) are confined, these poems declare their resistance, rebuke and avowal. 'Don't see the faces of those / who suffered hope' may refer specifically to a lorry of dead, trafficked migrants in the poem For the 39, but this is work that does see, and sees hard. Poems of urgent intention, driven by moral imperative, sometimes brush a little too closely against Keats's warning about readers hating poems with 'palpable designs' on them. If, in this collection, poems for the Tuam Babies and the Magdalene Laundries might seem somewhat familiar (if no less sincere) in their response to contemporary Ireland, other poems probing more personal experience are vivid and arresting. There seems little need for the somewhat workshop-ish poems that lean into the authority of established figures – those poems written 'after' Heaney, Plath, Atwood and Joyce. The book's strongest poems amply declare their own credentials: a curious eye, a kind heart and an eye-catching turn of phrase, as in the lovely Sound of Cars Beyond Our Garden, or Your House Fell to Pieces, a poem written in middle age about a childhood home, which finishes: Knowing all the effort you made, makes life majestic and terrifying. Like the Cliffs of Moher are outside my front door, waiting for it to open. Peter McDonald, whose latest collection is One Little Room With both the title and the Gwen John cover painting seeming to promise a kind of gauzy, dusky domesticity, the language of Peter McDonald's One Litte Room (Carcanet, £11.99) comes as a surprise. This collection's various backward glances are elegiac but also deceptively down-to-earth. In the end of Travels, for example, the heartbreaking pathos of dementia is rendered with gentle restraint, as a son visits his mother: … Did I ever have a house? Her questions were scared and delirious: Was I good? And did I have a husband? I looked at her with his face, and I said Yes. A theme of containment runs throughout, with matchboxes, storage boxes, coffins and even Harry Houdini featuring. Seventeen four-line poems punctuate the collection, the best of which are small boxes of concision and elusiveness, as what's described opens and closes on the past, as in The Pillow: I turn and talk to you before I sleep, talk to you in my head, for you're not here; but you listen, and you smile, until you slip from the pillow into all that came before. A poem is also a kind of intricately carved box, and the poems here seem to relish the play of confinement and release. McDonald is a loyal formalist: in Incident, the poem's exploded sonnet form, with disrupted rhyme scheme and disguised 14 lines, is scarcely noticeable but is there nonetheless, subtly supporting and amplifying subject matter. If this, McDonald's eighth collection, shows a vulnerability in mining the past and registering losses, his familiar, public-facing side is also in evidence. Centenary 1921-2021 draws one man's life against a backdrop of political and social change in Northern Ireland, ('you and the new country are of an age'), climbing out of strident partisan allegiance to observe: ' ... everything comes and goes / where people live; and that is history'.
USA Today
19-02-2025
- General
- USA Today
German Shepard named Pedigree Foundation's Rescue Dog of the Year: His sweet adoption story
German Shepard named Pedigree Foundation's Rescue Dog of the Year: His sweet adoption story Show Caption Hide Caption German shepherd shelter dog, Relic, gets his happy ending Relic, a German shepherd, named Rescue Dog of the Year thanks to East Bay SPCA and his foster family's dedication to helping him thrive. The Pedigree Foundation announced a 6-year-old German Shepherd as their 2025 Rescue Dog of the Year. The foundation is a non-profit set up by the makers of Pedigree food for dogs, Mars Petcare. The pup named Relic arrived at the East Bay SPCA in Oakland, California with recognizable signs of shelter stress, including reactivity to humans and animals, according to the shelter. "Our staff, all too aware of how large breed dogs are challenged in a shelter, knew he needed behavioral support and patience to navigate his transition," the shelter said in a news release. "Additionally, as a 'working' breed, they recognized Relic's potential to build new skills and respond to positive reinforcement." Relic was moved to a private setup where he was cared for and trained while the shelter also worked to find foster parents for him, "knowing he would thrive in a supportive home environment." Foster to adoption Eventually, a couple who had recently lost their cat of 15 years, reached out to East Bay SPCA with the intention to foster a few pets. "The house felt empty without him (the cat) but we weren't quite ready to open our home to another pet," the couple wrote in an essay published on the shelter's website. "We thought fostering at the East Bay SPCA might be a nice way to have pets in the home without committing to it full time and be able to provide a needed break from the shelter for a deserving pet." The couple, who have not been named, started by fostering pets for a few hours before taking in pets overnight. When they received an email from the shelter asking if they were open to fostering Relic, his story touched them, and they decided to take him in. "The foster family provided Relic with regular behavior support including private training, phone check-ins, and counseling," the Pedigree Foundation said. Relic blossomed under the care of the shelter staff and his foster family, who eventually decided their home would be incomplete without him and adopted him. "Relic is a loyal, good-natured dog who is well behaved around the house and a sweet cuddler when we let him up onto the bed with us," his parents said in their essay. "He takes up a lot more space in the house than our cat did, and it took some adjusting to, but we love having him around now and can't imagine our home without him." Relic's parents shared he has now become friends with their neighbor's dog and the two take regular walks together. Some of Relic's favorite activities include playing with his toys, especially balls, chasing lizards and hanging out with his dad during his weekly guitar jam sessions with his friends. "Relic lays on the floor between them drifting off to sleep, as his feet move to the sound of the music," his parents said. Fostering: a key intervention for shelter dogs Pedigree said Relic's happily ever after highlights the importance of "fostering as a key intervention for shelter dogs," explaining that such program "prevent shelters from being overwhelmed with capacity issues, helping to reduce length of stay and helping more dogs find loving homes." Fostering is also important in preparing pups for adoption by giving them an in-home experience and "improving their social, emotional and mental wellbeing outside of the shelter environment." The foundation, which offers annual grants to shelters to help them "build and sustain the systems and processes needed to help more dogs get adopted," said East SPCA received a $15,000 grant in August 2023 which supported its Behavior and Training Program expansion. Relic was a direct beneficiary of this grant, receiving specialized care that ultimately helped him get adopted, the foundation said. "Relic's story is one of strong shelter pet advocacy made possible through the annual Pedigree Foundation grant cycle," the foundation said. To celebrate Relic being chosen as the 2025 Rescue Dog of the Year, the Pedigree Foundation has also created a limited-edition lookalike plush dog. The plushie is available to purchase on the Dogs Rule store for $25 and a portion of proceeds will help dogs find loving homes through shelter and rescue grants. Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at sshafiq@ and follow her on X and Instagram @saman_shafiq7.
CBC
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Famed boat from TV show The Beachcombers on display in Vancouver
CBC's Caroline Chan speaks with Deano Fatovic at the Vancouver International Boat Show. He's restoring Relic's HiBaller II from the long-running TV show The Beachcombers.
