Student Poetry based on the Cuala Press Archive
Introduction - Prof. Vona Groarke
My tenure as Ireland Chair of Poetry (2025-28) involved being at TCD during spring 2026. I lived on campus and was available to students interested in creative writing and contemporary poetry, as well as delivering a public lecture (on 'Poetry and Loneliness') and a number of poetry readings. I also devised a student writing project around the Cuala Press Archive in the Library, for which Dr Angela Griffith from the History of Art Department led a tour of hand-picked items - broadsheets, business letters, art and printing equipment, financial accounts, photographs and hand-printed books - from the collection. Students responded to the tour by writing poems which we then discussed collaboratively and edited in a series of workshops. The resulting poems, so varied in approach and tone, share a vitality that reflects the deep interest students discovered in the narrative of the Cuala Archive and the achievements of Lily and Elizabeth Yeats.
I was delighted to be part of this project, not only to remind students of their access to the many riches of TCD's Special Collections and Library Archives, but also to engage so fully and enjoyably with the fine work of Cuala Press. It felt a great privilege to be able to access such significant material, and I'm delighted the students shared my enthusiasm and responded with such fine work of their own. The Cuala Press Archive is a national treasure, a significant part of the story of cultural life in Ireland at such a formative stage of the twentieth-century. Now, with these poems, so evocative and energetic, the archive returns to currency in the twentieth century. Thank you to all concerned - this project has been for me, start to finish, a great personal treasure. But my biggest thanks must be to the students, talented poets one and all, who brought the idea of creatively exploring the Cuala Press Archive to such beautiful life.
The Press - James Mulvihill
As if in prayer, he kneels and throws his head
to the heavens. He has left his spade in the ground
like a spear in the side, and he holds his stomach tight.
They found this sketchy impression in a shoebox,
drawn bare, bone-tired and thin. The ossified lines
reminiscent of a few statues down at the docks
—Their corroded, yellow-flecked skin
and the long sprinter's limbs going nowhere,
holding fast. We like them, these landscapes
of mortality.
We were starving
so now let us
Make, Make, Make,
straining under the heavy push and the flat
press of a printed history.
But there are those amongst us still
who could step into that landscape
and feel hungry and at home.
Opening the Box - Sarah Shortall
Awake in my armoured coffin,
I see nothing and therefore
Cannot be seen.
Cannot be touched, even,
By The Ink-Stained Hands,
The soft fingers slipping over my surfaces.
I glimpsed them scrubbing at each other
To get rid of the residual yellows and greens
That clung to the lines between page and skin.
These hues are forgotten now.
The stale coffin submerges them in
Rigid shadow
But-
Crack of light and my eyes adjust
To the sunny hue of a cleaner hand,
Whose ink-free touch still brings the colour back
And remembers who I was.
The November Broadsheet 1908 - Flora Leask
Who coloured Cathbad
purple against a sky so bitterbright orange it stuns
& drags the eye upward from the lovers, surrounded
by ladies of smog who have a hunger on them
so inky black it bleeds onto the reverse page
in palimpsests? Take brush to pot anew,
then back, clad Marian blue, lazuli
for Our Lady who irons her mantle,
halo to table – a saint at work-
shop for all women who feel the lumbar
strain of monotonous labour
& yes, loved labour, it's just it cranks the joints,
the arm & spine like an automaton
in a white smock over the abc.
The seanchaí appears by her hand;
she's learning to spell with each colour
of flannbhuí, of glas, of bán
– & there is still so much work to be done.
Call the Expanse Sky - Natalie Emma Johnson
The print is dry, the black and white
is waiting for my care.
The chair where Susan sat every day
is empty – its oaken stare endures.
My fingers trail my palms to make sure
that no trace of old paint or dirt remains,
I wash my hands in a tepid bowl,
then wipe them with a cloth that 's taupe and holed.
Dip the brush.
The white sky is my new terrain.
I imagine riding the landscape in a storm
that would upend, liberate,
the wind would disperse me with violent strokes,
I 'd be blasted deep into black wet stones –
I think of colours bowing after the rain,
it 's day two, I 'm God, I must say the name.
I deliberate.
I choose not blue but yellow.
I lavishly fill the firmament.
Lock the door and I leave,
enter Baggot street and its dusky roar,
my mind is clear, white canvas bliss.
Then I notice
the sky above Saint Stephen 's Green,
as if in praise and affinity,
yellows down on me.
'Máire' Learns Colour - Gwenhwyfar Ferch Rhys
Jack hands me bare lines, empty space -
deboned all from his swirling paints,
his cowboy-clipped grin, shaded stare,
expects a triptych end of day:
a boy with monkey struts ashore,
Grim Beggar blankly gazes on.
The scene converges on his name;
I gauge and set the mood and tone.
That night, I dress to shade the world –
in green Kashmir and white Siam,
but for a dash, I am, I am
the Sun rising as I'm trickling home,
emulsing light into my life -
and when I shade my eyes, I find
a whole new palette smeared across the sky.
At the Acid Bath - Jack Briody
Ferric chloride etches
Scant antennae
on top of the GPO
as quick as chemicals work
The automated, broadcasting,
Febrile city is forming.
Her arms are bare to the shoulder,
She's sweating. She is sweating.
But the other workers are too
in their cowslip dresses
And they're cranking big wheels
That pump out little pamphlets,
Or bent into some printing press
Tinkering textual innards
Grunting politely and calling for tools.
A bead drops from her brow
And sets the acid bath rippling –
Nelson's pillar standing shakily.
The Donkey's All the Rage! - Ruby Murphy
How come I didn't know
your paper face,
or clunky type
On paper, limp and dull?
The pulp, the ink and
gritted teeth, as you pull
the handle back,
the iron squeaks to reveal:
a sketchy cart
your ladygirls,
all dressed in Chinese red,
drew up in ink.
My silly hair,
dyed pink falls down
in strands, onto the page,
while scholars say
'Elizabeth'
I calculate our ages—
Not far apart, it's nice to think.
You'll draw me in,
I'll fold up real neat,
Between the cart and donkey.