Catherine Phil MacCarthy

Catherine Phil MacCarthy Poems

Catherine Phil MacCarthy Biography

Catherine Phil MacCarthy was born in County Limerick in 1954 and educated at University College Cork, Trinity College Dublin, and Central School of Speech and Drama, London. She has taught at Waterford Institute of Technology and at The Drama Centre, University College Dublin. Indeed, the influence of drama is evident in her ability to sketch character and build poems to a climactic, dramatic resolution. MacCarthy began writing full time in 1999, and has since received the Fish International Poetry Prize , the Dromineer Poetry Prize and the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award. Her most recent collection The Invisible Threshold (2012) was shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award.)

The Best Poem Of Catherine Phil MacCarthy

Irish Elk

Giant antlers shine at night
diamond, sapphire, branch

in a neighbour's garden,
light up the moonless dark

for children going to bed,
as if the Great Irish Elk,

extinct seven thousand years,
turned in his grave

beneath the lake at Lough Gur,
and bellowing rose

from the bog, trailing peat
from his hinds, to roam

the hills and woods of Ireland,
at this time of snow

falling all across the land,
on our road, ghost at

large, and twice as tall as Man
come back to haunt us.

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