Coleraine

I

12th June 1973

Daddy is home from work
but something very bad
has happened. A bomb
in Coleraine. It was close.
People are dead. The blast
blew his whole car around
the corner. His back wind
-screen burst intact out of
its fitting, ended up in the car.

A policeman said: You should be dead.

II

23rd January 2022

We are watching a Sunday night drama
that begins with a bomb. My father says
That’s not entertainment

and starts talking about Coleraine, the story I know
about the car blown round the corner, the policeman
saying You should be dead but he goes further,

tells how he stepped out of his car that day.
It was just like that he says nodding at the television,
the dust, the devastation. People were just lying there,

one old woman, they were collecting her up,
putting her in an ambulance. I saw her glasses
amongst the debris. I picked them up,

gave them to the policewoman.
It was just like that, the dust,
the devastation.

…

Gill Barr’s poems have appeared in Bad Lilies, The Honest Ulsterman and The New European. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University, Belfast and appeared at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in July 2022.

Why We Leave

We children are told that we are moving
to the Waterside not far from our cousin.
We are pleased when we see the new house,
feel the scale of it, clatter up and down
the many stairs, lie on the new carpet,
smell the fresh paint, enjoy the airy rooms
without furniture, eat our lunch
like a picnic on the floor, but something’s
not right. Mammy is unhappy. She is crying.
She does not want to leave. She has lived
in the same streets all her life, no matter
that she is moving to a better house,
a bigger house – and safer.

On moving day we use a green van
that isn’t meant for removals. Mammy
is upset. In the van, she says out loud:
We are flittin’. She seems ashamed,
as if she has let the side down after all
these years. She doesn’t explain why
we can’t stay. We children cannot know
that our daddy has been threatened
in repeated late-night phone-calls,
has been told to get out
or face the consequences – he has been dragged
into an alley off Maureen Avenue and told at gunpoint
to get out or be shot.

…

Gill Barr’s poems have appeared in Bad Lilies, The Honest Ulsterman and The New European. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University, Belfast and is appearing at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in July 2022.

Privilege

Well, it was the unionists,
they had wealth, they had power
they wanted to keep it to themselves
and people like us, well, you were basically
told who to vote for, but I was lucky
because I was brought up in a mixed area
Catholics and Protestants together
and the house I bought with your mother
was in a mixed street
and I never had problems with anyone.
We were all working people
and we all had the same problem,
barely enough money…

…

Gill Barr’s poems have appeared in Bad Lilies, The Honest Ulsterman and The New European. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University, Belfast and is appearing at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in July 2022.