Amy Abdullah Barry (Ireland)

Amy Abdullah Barry (Ireland)

Amy Abdullah Barry writes poems and short stories. She is published globally including Cyphers, Southword, The Sunday Tribune, The Poet’s Republic, Paris Lit Up, Live Encounters. Her poems have been translated into many languages including Italian, Turkish, Spanish, Azerbaijani and Persian. Featured in the RTE Radio One Extra in Reverberations Series 2. Her poems have been Shortlisted, Longlisted, Highly Commended, as well as winning local & international awards. Nominated for the Pushcart 2021 Poetry Prize. Her poems explore current issues, love, family, nature, death, famous people and political issues. Her love of travel have shaped her work with a wide knowledge of cultures, pastimes and beliefs. She has been awarded Literature bursaries from The Arts Council Ireland and Words Ireland. Awardee of the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2022. Amy has performed her work in Ireland & internationally.


CHANG CHENG
A tribute to The Great Wall

Every stone is a story.
winding upward,
trembling the bottled water, I carry.

Leaning over the railing,
I’m clothed to the waist in bricks.
The trail meanders over hills,
twists down into darker forms.

And in the darkness of weary eyes
I unearth the past.

Bodies straining,
hands and backs,
rippling their muscle in the sunlight,
absorbing the bluster of a storm.
‘Chang Cheng’, they called it,
the long wall,
or ‘The Long Graveyard’,
for the millions who perished.

Later,
when I have rested my legs,
my tongue breezes a poem,
built from stone
and the bones hidden within.


POSTCARD

I haven’t heard from you
except,
a postcard of Powerscourt Gardens;
violet hydrangea, celestine orchid,
marble statues and urns.

Your scribbles read in a blur.

In the silence of a spring/summer hiatus,
some citrine, some pink,
squint through their leaves,
a shadow reels under magnetite sky,
clouds are the colour of bones.

Somewhere a garden weeps.


PRISONER 46664 ON ROBBEN ISLAND
for Mandela

I had a chance to return
to where I had spent
eighteen years in captivity,
a 7-by-9-foot room,
I could walk the length of my cell in three paces.

Where I had missed from those I loved;
births and funerals,
weddings and anniversaries —
I wanted to reach them,
but some had gone.

Voices overlapped,
but thoughts
ran like a clear stream
over rough sediment,

and I often ask,
What more can you do?
But pray and hope,
pray and hope.

Here, I recalled a warden’s first words,
‘This is where you will die.’