Tag: Maeve O’Sullivan

  • Wasp on the Prayer Flag

    Maeve O’Sullivan is a Dublin-based member of Bodhicharya Ireland. In Wasp on the Prayer Flag, O’Sullivan’s fifth collection with Alba Publishing, the years 2018-2021 are chroniced in the forms of haiku and senryu verse.  The three sections, Seasons, Sequences and Senryu, bring to the reader Maeve’s lucid observations of life in Ireland and abroad.  This latest edition…

  • Coronahaiku Sequence

        wiping handles & surfaces to protect myself from myself * * * a pair of magpies a pair of collared doves in separate trees * * * empty city street they walk hand in gloved hand two young men * * * daffodils pulled up by kids in the local park – I…

  • Elsewhere

      Japan Shinbazu Pond – even these withered lotuses can lift my heart   heated toilet seat – memories of growing up in a large family   deep-fried pork: I await instructions on how to eat it   we look through the dark to the place where Mount Fuji is supposed to be   arrival…

  • Maeve O’Sullivan.

    Morning Silence, haiku from Dónal Creedon’s Tullow Retreat, August 2018 discarded crisp bag: a faded Mr. Tayto still smiling *** talk about listening    I zone out for a bit *** walking meditation: you are moving slowly too little ladybird *** morning silence    the brewing coffee gurgles *** early drizzle creating a round stain in this…

  • SIKKIM HAIKU SEQUENCE PART 2

    (Written by Maeve O’Sullivan on the month long retreat with Donal Creedon and Ringu Tulku Rinpoche at the Bodhicharya Retreat Centre, January 2017) January sunshine… leaves still falling roses in bloom  *** humming a tune… I haven’t played a guitar since Kathmandu  *** ‘Meditate on the sun’: his words on page 99 awash with sunlight  ***…

  • Sikkim (haiku) Sequence

    (Written by Maeve O’Sullivan on the month long retreat with Donal Creedon and Ringu Tulku Rinpoche at the Bodhicharya Retreat Centre, January 2017) waxing wolf moon lighting the road to our retreat  *** less cloudy today first sight of Kanchenjunga  *** thunderclap! the new prayer flags get their first blessing  *** walking meditation… the cream-coloured butterfly…

  • KEN JONES

      [Alba Publishing, 2015, 236pp ISBN: 978-1-910185-15-5 5 ¾”x 8 ¼” paperback £10/US$15/€14] I met Ken Jones, and his wife Noragh, on a number of occasions over the last fifteen years or so, at Haiku Ireland and other haiku-related events in Dublin. He was an acquaintance whose talent and wisdom I admired greatly, and, like…

  • Leaving Vigo

    With sad and friendly eyes she answers yes when I ask if Santiago trains are on. Seventy-five fatalities, or more: un accidente horrible – she nods. A message wishes us a pleasant trip, the carriage has an eerie muffled mood, its notice says 130 km per hour, we read our newspapers and phones, subdued. I see Camino pilgrims…

  • Haiku Book Review and Author Interview

    Outside my window is a sweet pea plant.  Today, suddenly it seems, there are only seven flowers, the rest having turned into pods.  Maeve expresses this process of change in one of her Summer haiku: cloudy afternoon my sweet pea flowers becoming peas In these few lines there is a dynamism that paradoxically captures a…

  • Letting Go of Ávila

    I could have travelled there today, could have walked its medieval walls and lit a candle for the vulnerables in the Basilica de San Vincente. I am letting go of the eagle caves, the cathedral, and the Monasterio de Santo Tómas, but most of all, the Convento de Santa Teresa, housing her ring finger, and…

  • Perspective

    PERSPECTIVE Beneath this topography she sees: sandstones shaped by wind and wave, azurites blue and malachites green; fossils, remnants of another age, present her with an insight to a record no longer extant: the dinosaur, the trilobite some footprints, an exotic plant. These granites primordial – crystalline intrusions – now weathered to reveal our igneous…

  • POETRY BY MAEVE O’SULLIVAN

    White Star the majestic steamer slips into the sea- first voyage spinning his top… the child who survived to die three years later she goes back in for the hat from her mother- makes the lifeboat the pills in her pocket eventually identifying the lost Irishwoman anchor, propeller side-scuttle… these rusticles a hundred years in…