Exile Poets - A Muse Shack Publication | For and about poets who are not where they wish to be

Posted by: exilepoets | February 8, 2011

Hello – Fellow Stranger

Welcome to Exile Poets. I use the oxymoron in my welcome heading to try and reflect the tensions that beleaguer the person living in a place that is not their first choice…they have another loyalty, love, devotion, desire…this list could go on and so does the tension of thought and emotion…the sense of place haunts.

The posts that you will find here will be reflections on the life, times, people, culture, art, literature and customs of the place longed for.

What is an exile? These definitions were helpful to me:

a person who is voluntarily absent from home or country – expatriates.
expatriate: expelled from a country.
To be away from one’s home (i.e. city, state or country), while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened by prison or death upon return.

I fall into more than one of these categories and though I am free to return home, I choose not to. Why? I will allow the poems to speak for me.

So welcome all those who dream of another place whether you dream and long for it, or dream and tremble.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: choice, Exile, freedom. longing, home, politics

Posted by: exilepoets | March 15, 2011

Mary Elizabeth Tasker

Mary Elizabeth Tasker (Nee Wilson) was exiled at the age of 15 years. We would not dream of sending our children away to work in another country at so young an age…indeed, we would be imprisoned for it. She left Ireland for the bleak landscapes of Northern England and, apart for holidays and a brief sojourn there with her twin children (myself and Noel), she never returned.

She was an Irish Protestant, yet in the far away place on her own… that was England..she looked to all the Island of Ireland as her home. As a child an up until my youth when I returned to Ireland myself, I remember her singing the plaintiff song of Irish longing ‘The Bold Fenian Men’…she was not a subscriber to that politic, but she never forgot home!

Five years ago today she parted from us with just a short time to say farewell. Setting sail, she took her leave for that exile that never ends, away from the ‘Heartland’…the people that she loved.

This poem rememberss her with fondness and waits for the time when all exile is ended.

Sailing Away

Five years since you set sail on endless oceans,

We watched as you serenely left the quay;

Slipping the hawser that bound you to our shoreline,

You heaved onto the spirit’s boundless sea.

Our close horizons could not keep you anchored,

This harbour was too small for you to bide;

Your vessel strained to catch the fairest breezes

To launch you safe upon celestial tides.

We watched as you pushed slowly through the harbour

And took the swelling of the heaving sea;

And when your vessel dipped below the sight-line,

We felt forever and eternity.

Where are you now, we ask as we are mindful

Of all the days you walked upon our shore?

What great mysteries have you discovered

To keep you from our heartland and our door?

Whatever Cosmic Islands tempt your vessel

Still further from this bleak temporal shore;

Deep within our hearts the tide of memory

Brings welcome sightings of your ship once more.

Sometimes we too are found around the harbour,

Preparing crafts as life bids us to do;

In time we’ll slip our moorings and head seaward,

Expectant of the moment you’ll heave-to!

So as upon that endless tide you move

We trim our sails and think of you with love.

Another Place

As the cold low lying air of York ravages my lungs, my thoughts turned to Constantine who was proclaimed Emperor here and also to a friend who lives in the balmier south of England but pines for this chilly landscape. What is it that makes her long for somewhere else? Why do any of us dream of somewhere else? It sparked these words that I posted to Twitter as a reflection of that thought, that query.

There

Did Constantine in York’s low lying vale,

Pine for Byzantium’s elevating hills;

Dreaming Constantinople there,

Like you dream for his North?

When Reality and Dreams Collide

I am Anglo-Irish born in England to Irish parents, a Protestant mother and a Catholic father. In the 1950’s such a marital union was anathema and attitudes towards it reflected the political tensions that were growing on the Island of Ireland at the time. To avoid contamination from the strong Irish Catholic influence of the family in England, my twin and I were whisked off to Ireland. Apart from a brief period of 10 years in my middlle childhood until youth, I lived in Ireland until I left 4 years ago at the age of 54.

My experiences, feelings, emotions, loyalties (and lack of them) will be expressed here. However, it will, I hope, not be an exercise in navel-gazing since exiles come from all parts of the world and are exiled for many different reasons. Some are free and can choose to return; some do not have the freedom to choose to return. What they share in common is ‘longing’. Such longing and its effects are expressed in the bitter-sweet dreaming of Li Ching Chao:

Tz’u No. 10 (Exile) by Li Ching Chao

To the tune of “Bodhisattva Aliens”

Soft breezes, mild sunshine,
spring is still young.
The sudden change of the light
brightened my spirit.

But upon awakening from slumber,
I felt the chill air;
The plum flower withered in my hair.

Where can I call my native land?
Forget – I cannot, except in wine
when I drown my care.

Incense was lighted when I went to sleep;
Though the embers are now cold,
the warmth of wine still burns on.

Exile Poets – A Muse Shack Publication

Hello – Fellow Stranger

Mary Elizabeth Tasker

Another Place

When Reality and Dreams Collide

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