Our Poem of the Week is ‘Namanlagh’ by Tom Paulin, the title poem from his T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted new collection.

In his first collection for more than a decade, Tom Paulin revisits themes of place, occupation, conflict and legacy, primarily in the context of his native Northern Ireland. Stories and memories, even histories, are shown to be both frail and persistent, troubling and vital. There is a powerful austerity in play as he sets aside the rhetorical force and linguistic dazzle for which he is renowned, to speak simply of later life and the losses it brings: ‘if only some idea / could find its way / through enemy territory / then I’d at last begin / to look up at the sky.’ As outward-looking as ever, he also includes here intimate and resonant versions from Brecht and Ronsard, and from the contemporary Palestinian poet, Walid Khazendar.

Namanlagh

Somewhere in the pine trees beyond the lough
two stones are being knocked together
– once twice three times – very dry – maybe
it’s a chain gang working in the quarry?
There is no quarry though
and there never was a chain gang
only the little chunks of red granite on the long
looping bog road tell of famine relief,
congested districts – that human weather
that sticks like salt stains or burrs in your hair
– no I realise all these are not
in fact the case – it’s a stonechat
I can hear – its clatt-
ery cry that’s like the real hard stuff
– poteen distilled on stony hills
where the black craychur, the chough,
should be sounding its red beak, its curved bill,
against the screes –
not hiding out on the soft bog by the lough.

Copyright © Tom Paulin, 2025. Used by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd. All rights reserved.

Read all our poems of the week.