Skip Navigation
Falvey Library
Advanced
You are exploring: Home > Blogs

James Giblin: Class of 2014 Creative Writing Awards contestant

James Giblin poem photoTo honor the University’s Class of 2014 Creative Writing Awards, the Library is publishing contestants’ poems or prose excerpts on Falvey’s blog. The Library also has created posters for the contestants’ poems or prose excerpts, which will be displayed throughout the library’s first floor.

This year the contest includes both poetry and prose (in previous years it was “the Senior-Class-Poet Contest”). The Department of English will announce the Class of 2014 Creative Writing Awards winners later this month.

The Walk Home
by
James Giblin

I
A pair of twenty-somethings, shuffling past train stations,
their wheels still running smoothly with the oil of conversation;
fears of the future fresh in their minds.

II
Corcaigh; cork-eared from the deafening pub music just gone by…
halfway across the world where we’ve only just arrived. Walking home to hostel,
past minstrels present on street corners, playing tunes familiar to foreigners.

III
Aran. Shipwrecked from one island to the next, taking pride in
only the moonlight and poorly paved road as our guide.
A car-load of locals speeds past us, shouting profanities
we haven’t heard the last of.

IV
Cousin and cousin, a single generation spread across nations.
Nettles keep me in place: a one-lane street hidden amid
a choir of cows, crickets, and unidentifiable insects.
Walk off the sting those sprigs and bigots bring.

V
Once again walking roads close to my home away from home.
Navigating snowdrifts that force hopscotch along sidewalks.
Words slip from lips like feet on ice, clumsily cleaning up
revelations given away at too low a price.

James Giblin, a Class of 2014 Creative Writing Awards contestant, says “‘The Walk Home’ presents the stark contrast of the loud, bustling atmosphere of a pub’s interior with the resulting, ear-ringing quietness of walking home. This deafening quiet and the free time of a walk lends me a certain mental clarity with which I can evaluate past, present, and future circumstances in my life. That’s the kind of pensiveness out of which my best writing comes.”

James Giblin is an English major from Plymouth, Massachusetts. In addition to creative writing, he enjoys foreign languages, singing and studying philosophy.


Like

0 Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

 


Last Modified: April 26, 2014

Ask Us: Live Chat
Back to Top