DON MARCELINO'S DAUGHTER
Poems by Tim Cunningham

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Tim Cunningham was born in Limerick in 1942. Educated at C.B.S., Limerick, and Birkbeck College, London, he worked with a brewery, local government, the National Coal Board and in teaching. He has lived in Limerick, Tipperary, Dublin, Trowbridge, London, Newark (Delaware) and, presently, Billericay. Don Marcelino's Daughter is his first collection of poetry.

‘Ever since I first met Tim Cunningham and his poems at an Arvon course in 1984, I have urged him to get a volume together for publication. I'm delighted that he has now done so, and hope readers will enjoy his work as much as I have.’
Fleur Adcock

‘Tim Cunningham's poems are as various and fascinating as the animals in Noah's Ark. He has a most musical ear, a keen eye and an open heart. His aim is true. He writes beautiful poems.’
Adrian Mitchell

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Don Marcelino's Daughter

Bears made the first scratch,
Sharpening calcium razors
On caves' blank walls. That
 

Was before Don Marcelino's
Daughter crawled through the crevice
And held her incredulous candle
 

To the dying bison's eye.
Her own eyes danced
At every picture in the gallery:
 

Bulls, cows, prancing calves;
Their red coats sticking
To her finger. And the roof
 

Thundered with wild boars
And the unshod gallop
Of horses. I pictured
 

Her in the underpass
Watching vagrants chalk
Their memory of stallions
 

On cement: the trains' wheels
Clanking above; the draught
Extinguishing her candle.

 

(The Spanish nobleman, Don Marcelino de Sautuola,
excavated the Altamira cave at the foot of the Cantabrian
Hills in 1869. The quality of the Late Ice Age paintings
found there caused a revolution in prehistoric research.)

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DON MARCELINO'S DAUGHTER
Price £7.95 per copy post free (£5.30 post free to Associate Members)
Cover illustration: photograph of a motionless female bison in the Cave Of Altamira
by Pedro A. Saura Ramos. © Pedro A. Saura Ramos. (From The Cave Of Altamira ©
1999 Harry N. Abrams, Inc. , New York).
Publication: SPRING 2001 (68 pages laminated paperback)