A Sampling of Gerard Beirne’s New Collection, Games of Chance |

One of the most prominent Irish transplants now dwelling in Atlantic Canada, Gerard Beirne was quick to root himself here, and foster its writing community. He’s currently teaching at UNB, where he has also been a writer in residence, and acts as an editor at one of Canada’s finest literary journals, The Fiddlehead. He also plays a big role in a fantastic organization — The Writers Federation of New Brunswick — who do as much or more for their members as any similar organization.

As an author, he’s ambidextrous, with plenty of poetry and fiction out there waiting for you to read. And he’s been leaving his mark as he moves around: his collection poetry Digging My Own Grave (published by Daedalus Press in Ireland) was runner-up in the Patrick Kavanagh Award, and his novel, The Eskimo in the Net, was published by Marion Boyars Publishers in London), and was shortlisted for The Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, and was selected by the editor of the Daily Express as his Book of the Year for 2004. Before moving here, he won two Sunday Tribune/Hennessy Awards, including New Irish Writer of the Year. Not bad. Also quite notable, his short story Sightings of Bono was made into a short film that featured Bono himself. In keeping with his conquering the world, the short was published in Italy, by Scritturapura Editore, as part of their international short story series. He also holds an MFA in Creative Writing, from Eastern Washington University in 1992.

Since landing here, he has most recently published the novel, Turtle, and this collection of poetry, Games of Chance, which is merely months old. It’s conceptually an interesting collection. Beirne has studied both mathematics and engineering, and in this collection, “seeks to reconcile art and science with spirituality.”

“Rotation Transformations”

Having fixed the stars in space
Nicolaus Copernicus sets the world
(by default) into motion

(the only possible deduction)

dispelling the notion
of an earth at rest
at the centre of the universe.

Incredulous at his own audacity
Copernicus repeatedly wipes his brow
and furiously paces his study.

What now?

All too aware of the consequences
the sealing of his fate
he looks down
observes the movement of his feet.

His world never to stand still again.

Thereafter:
the nature of rotation transformations
the ongoing search for the centre
the point about which all else revolves.

Copernicus in a spin
maps out his life
its daily and yearly revolutions
defines his rotation about the origin

keeping his distance
maintaining his isometry.

While elsewhere all around him
the earth is stationary
motionless amidst concentric rotating spheres
of outdated postulations
the fear of a heliocentric theory replacing self
and God, that other great astronomer,
of little help.

Copernicus the church administrator
counts the cost
his uncle (Bishop Lukasz Watsenrode) aghast.

His world precessing on its axis
while Copernicus observes his own occultation
the obscuration of his greatest work
De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium.

Finding his own place in space
Copernicus awaits his death

a rigid motion transformation.

And us? Even yet
our coordinates unknown
our centre unnamed
our images translated to another plane
a geocentric cosmology continuing to reign.

“Bone” (an extract)

The spine:

A sea-horse rippling through the waters of my back
a new man at your nerve centre
eggs fertilising in a brood pouch
attached to your belly

cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral, coccygeal

The cranium:

I don an armoured skullcap
to protect your ancient wisdom
your woodland cures for convulsions and hysteria

occipital, parietal, frontal, temporal, sphenoid, ethmoid

The face:

The flat surface of our regulated earth
an apparatus ready to grind us down