Rain Barrel

Frank Ormsby was born in 1947, in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, and was educated at Queen's University in Belfast. Until 2010 he was Head of English at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. His latest collections are The Darkness of Snow (Bloodaxe Books, 2017), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, which was shortlisted for a National Book Circle Critics Award in the US, and The Rain Barrel (Bloodaxe Books, due 24 October 2019). His retrospective Goat’s Milk: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), includes work from four previous collections, A Store of Candles (Oxford University Press, 1977), A Northern Spring (Secker & Warburg, 1986), The Ghost Train (Gallery Press, 1995) and Fireflies (Carcanet, 2009), together with new poems, and was shortlisted for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize. He has edited a number of anthologies and other books, including Northern Windows: An Anthology of Ulster Autobiography (1987), Thine in Storm and Calm: An Amanda McKittrick Ros Reader (1988), The Collected Poems of John Hewitt (1991), and The Hip Flask: Short Poems from Ireland (2001), all from Blackstaff Press, and The Blackbird's Nest (2006), an anthology of poems from Queen's University, Belfast. Frank Ormsby was editor of The Honest Ulsterman from 1969 to 1989, and has also edited Poetry Ireland Review. In 1992 he received the Cultural Traditions Award, given in memory of John Hewitt, and in 2002 the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry from the University of St Thomas at St Paul, Minnesota. Frank Ormsby was guest of honour at BBC Proms in the Park 2017 at Castle Coole in Northern Ireland; actor Adrian Dunbar read two poems from Goat’s Milk: New & Selected Poems accompanied by the Ulster Orchestra and harpist Richard Allen in a specially commissioned work by Graeme Stewart. In 2018 Frank Ormsby collaborated with singer/songwriter Anthony Toner on an album The Kiss of Light. The album features recordings of Frank reading eleven of his own poems, with each reading followed by a short instrumental composed by Anthony Toner in response to the poems. On 6 September 2019 Frank Ormsby was named the eighth Ireland Professor of Poetry. He will serve from 1 November 2019 until 31 October 2022.

Frank Ormsby belongs to that extraordinary generation of Northern Irish poets which includes Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon and Tom Paulin. He is a poet of the truest measure… From his earliest work Ormsby has favoured a natural shapeliness… A plain-speaking, down-to-earth utterance may be the norm, but it teeters on the verge of taking flight, and sometimes gives way to an exquisitely refined lyricism.

• 13 Untroubled14 The Black Kettle15 The Bee-keeper16 Fuchsia17 The Wild Dog Rose18 Foxgloves19 The Butterfly House20 Roman Laurel21 Cows:21 1 ‘Their eyes are innocence…’21 2 ‘The utter ignominy…’22 3 ‘We never got used…’23 At the Elvis Convention24 The Sound of Trains25 Seaside26 The Disappeared27 Today There Has Been Information28 Dawn Chorus, with Painting by Joan Miró30 Towards an Elegy32 Small Things33 Small World (4):33 ‘I set my cap…’33 ‘In your hair, scents of autumn…’33 ‘Belfast Lough…’33 ‘Summer surrenders…’33 ‘Old friends at the tavern…’33 ‘Fooled into flower…’34 ‘A hermit bird, the corncrake…’34 ‘The heron fluffs…’34 ‘Wind across bogland…’34 ‘Ochone! Ochone!…’35 From A Belfast Journal37 Saying Goodbye to the Family38 White-throated sparrows39 Love Poem40 Convalescence41 The Book-mark42 Second-hand42 1 The Second-hand Bookshop42 2 The Second-hand Book43 Nits44 Preliminaries45 Evening on the Farm: Early Winter46 Poem Beginning and Ending with a Drunken Poet47 The Poets48 The Launch49 With Seamus Heaney in Mind:49 1 The Poet’s Death49 2 At the Graveside49 3 Visiting the Grave50 Starlings:50 1 A Big Hand50 2 Every Curve50 3 Élite51 4 Starlings at play52 The Kingfisher53 Autumnal54 The Last Leaf in the Garden55 Fums and Porringers56 The Urban Fox57 Scarecrow58 The Suitcase59 At a Railway Station, Calcutta60 Winter Landscape with Searchers61 He Was the Eighth to Go Missing62 Billy Robinson’s Kawasaki63 Abandoned Gardens64 Some Farmyard Buckets65 The Hatchet66 Custodians67 There Will Be a Knock68 Wake in Progress69 Sleeping and Forgetting70 The Bomb71 The Security Man72 Chagall’s Goats 73 Aristotle Reaches Fermanagh74 Rosary75 Rains76 Pulse 77 The Rain Barrel:77 1 Prologue77 2 We Acquire the Rain Barrel78 3 Notes Towards a Portrait of the Rain Barrel78 4 A Busy Life79 5 The Rain Barrel in the Snow79 6 In the Family79 7 Two Old Warriors80 8 Still Life80 9 Lost Lives81 10 Romance81 11 Interlude, with Girls82 12 The Rain Barrel and the Full Moon82 13 Photograph, with Rain Barrel83 14 The Rain Barrel and the Sparrows83 15 Another Use for a Rain Barrel84 16 Lightning and the Rain Barrel84 17 Some Other Duties for a Rain Barrel85 18 The Butt86 When She Died, Thinking of Him87 No Closure88 Rain Flowers89 Grace Before Meals90 The Dogs91 Beyond the Walls:91 1 By the River91 2 Miss Brightly91 3 The Peacock91 4 Souvenir92 The Grey Squirrel92 Sharing Beds93 The Parents Wait93 Parents94 Lessons95 Visitors, 4 a.m.96 The Roundabout97 All He Remembered98 Our Woods Were Friendly99 The Two Trees100 Thaw101 Running Water102 After Fernando Pessoa 103 Notes