after dark, in searches

focusing on streets and houses

close above the churches

or balancing

on narrow wands of light.

And find so much depends upon

the way you choose

to look at them:

high in the night

their minor flares confused

among the stars, there

almost beautiful.

Or from way back

over the map

from where they might resemble

a business of flies

around the head wound of an animal.

The whole & rain-domed universe by Colette Bryce – shortlisted for the Costa poetry award

‘The Whole & Rain-domed Universe’ is Colette Bryce’s much-anticipated follow-up to ‘Self-Portrait in the Dark.’ The book presents the reader with an extraordinarily clear-eyed, vivid and sometimes disturbing account of growing up in Derry during the Troubles, with many ghosts both raised and laid to rest