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   Jacket 31 — October 2006        link Jacket 31 Contents page        link Jacket Homepage

Sean Carey

Looking at Peter Porter after many years

he makes a lot of sense
remembering him reading
in The Academy Cinema
Pearse Street circa mid-’80s
probably and the people who
prepared the event Pat Deeley
Frank Callery Rory Brennan all
labels vanish all tags evaporate
against light of experience eerie
some ways Cold War The North
latest sports updates what’s called
music once upon a time i thought
everyone had good intentions motives
were in it purely for art now of course i
consume therefore i am mainstream non-
conformist still between jigs and reels
The Last Of England Afterburn Fast Forward
grey haired piebald pony trek the venue gone
and the organisers dispersed 4 corners of the
earth Arthur Rainbow Charleville Cork Queensland
perched on top hunger inability to read even a tabloid
organise a piss-up in a brewery that evening Heaney
prevented Porter from meeting the audience in The
Trinity Inn by inviting him to some 5 star hotel in Dublin’s
softer underbelly involuntary memory cognition failures
dislocation censorship apartheid practised by the gang
of 4 cutting-off all routes to academia thank you Auden
in Raworth’s interview with Bernstein quick jab at Porter
and i now wonder where that came from and why when
knowing who is not a journeyman you could call this i’ve
learned my lesson well Goodnight Safe Home Sleep Well