NWW Issue 9 Spring and Summer 2018

NORTH WEST WORDS
SPRING / SUMMER 2018 ISSUE 9
Editorial
Welcome to the Spring/Summer issue of the North West Words magazine. We are delighted to
bring you another edition filled with 34 poems and 5 short stories from Ireland and beyond. At the
end of 2017, North West Words ran two adult poetry competitions - one in English and one in Irish.
This issue proudly presents the shortlisted and winning poems from both of those competitions.
Ten English language poems were shortlisted by poet Kate Newmann, with the overall winner
announced at our January award night: Noel Connor’s poem “Damaged Tins”. Five Irish language
poems were shortlisted by poet and fiction writer Proinsias Mac ’Bhaird, with the overall winner
announced at our February award night: Art Ó Súilleabháin’s “Gur fút is breá liom”. Congratulations
to all the shortlisted poets, and we hope our readers enjoy, as much as we did, the many voices of
our competition poetry.
Also featured are editors’ selections from our open submissions of both poetry and fiction, a new
review section by Deirdre Hines, and a writing group showcase with the Station House Writers.
Images included in this issue are from Donegal natives, Lorraine Carey (a poet and an artist), and
Eamonn Bonner (a poet and photographer).
When Emily Dickinson required a symbol for herself, she chose the wren, clover or spider. She was
deeply familiar with the biology of such species. Much of her worldview was formed in her backyard
garden. We are told that human beings are homophilous, that they tend to associate and bond with
similar others. Homophily is posited over and over again in politics and religion and in much of our
media as a type of justification for the impossibility of two diametrically opposed sides to ever come
to a real and respectful understanding of each other. And then we have poets. And the best of our
prose writers. Human beings who seem only too willing to enter into the reality of another, to
embrace it, to become it, to write about it, and to offer it to the world at large as proof that we are
amorphous beings, that we can and do walk in as many different forms as are extant on the world
surface, and maybe even beyond that. The writers in this edition of North West Words Magazine all
eschew homophily as a modus operandi. Ali Znaidi's says 'No-one questions the seduction of
corners' in “That Magic Within”. Attracta Fahy enters the throat of the thrush in “Philemos” and
Sharon Thompson's central character communes with the creatures in the shadows in her short
story “The Healer”.
Writers forage for those truths that hide behind the ostensible meaning of words. Language belongs
to the people and with poems like “A Secret” by Michael, Kate Ennals' “What Word Would You
Choose To Be?”, and Leo Vanderpot's “Note Left On A Librarian's Desk”. Language belongs to the
people and the writers in this section do just that.
Much writing takes place after deep reflection. Paul Moore's short story “The Librarian” counters
and subverts much of the homophily surrounding sectarian divide in the North. Just as importantly
his main characters counter the populist protagonist and think just to think.
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