New poem: The Good Going Up to Heaven and the Wicked Going Down to Hell

(Nano Reid, oil on board)

In the citizenry of the dead
the soul still holds the shape of the body
still weighs a human care as a body
bent low.

The good ascend with no sign
of remorse, still bearing the marks
of skin, of bone.

Hell is local. Heaven is the landscape
of home. Christ stands among the ruins
where there is no water flowing

‘I was thinking about how we say things in poetry, how we depart from our sources’

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ILFDublin 2020: one for the books

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Summer on the Wild Mad Frantic Way

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Lydia Robinson: the ‘wretched woman’ who corrupted Branwell Brontë

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in a valley of stone.

Leeanne Quinn's collection Before You was published by Dedalus Press in 2012. Today's poem is from her new collection, Some Lives (Dedalus)