THE HEN ARK
Poems by Mark Roper
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Mark Roper is an Englishman (born in 1951 in Derbyshire) who went to live near Waterford in Ireland in 1980. He has been writing poetry since the start of the Waterford Writers’ Workshop. In this fine first collection he often writes about people whose lives have been frustrated in some fundamental way, yet whose memory somehow persists down the years. He has the ability to light up both dark corners of history and dark corners of our own day in poems whose language is always sensuous, original and right. Many of the poems in this collection first appeared in Poetry Ireland and other leading Irish journals. Ten of these poems were represented in Peterloo Preview 2.

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The Hen Ark

The horse broke your heart,
one day knocked you
unconscious, made your life

unbearable. You’d had
enough of animal husbandry
but in the uncovenanted grace

of this Indian summer
sun gilds hexagons of wire
on a homemade hen ark.

You busy with scraps, armfuls
of feathery straw, divining
differences between

our six pullets. Through
cluck and chirr one comb
raddles and swells. Tonight

you bring the first egg,
its shell naive and flawless
as your smile. Later

we crack it on a cup:
two gold yolks
in a wedding gown of albumen.

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THE HEN ARK
Price £7.95 per copy post free (£5.30 post free to Associate Members)
Cover illustration: ‘Hen Ark’ by Michael Ben Hennessy
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