Hi, I’m Paul Casey, a Cork-born poet and filmmaker. I have have spent much of my life living abroad in Zambia and South Africa, with a few years in the UK, Japan, Canada and Switzerland. I’ve also lived around Ireland during much of my lifetime and returned to settle in 2005. I now organise the weekly Ó Bhéal open-mic event at The Long Valley in Cork city.

There’s an interview by UCC Campus Radio here (just click play) …

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I have been performing my poetry throughout Ireland and the UK for the last five years and have also been an MC in both Dublin and South Africa, where I was commissioned by the Mandela Municipality to convene the greater Port Elizabeth poetry competition. I maintain an all-round affection for poetry in all its forms. I like a venue that can encompass all styles and genre.

Here’s one of the more popular of my performance poems … (to be heard)

Scannánaigh the Poet

Scannánaigh the poet
one day traded
his pencil
for a lens
and his paper
for a reel

wrote these
new poems
eye-ear poems
poet-less poems

Scannánaigh the poet
one day sent his very eyes
into exile
into plots
to breathe
you see

Scannánaigh the poet
now swam in a new sea
of satire

iambic celluloid
anapaestic f-stop
dactylic actors
an alliteration
of lighting and
a versification
of visions

Scannánaigh the poet
was in a very
different sea
of sound effects
of irony

a sea
of modern prosody
of new closed forms

ask Petrarchan Scannánaigh
for a modern sunrise sonnet
and you’ll receive

When aiming camera just make sure to think
That all the mise-en-scène is balanced well
That all the actors have their lines to tell
That shades and hues and shadows are in sync

When if you need your players not to blink
To shield their eyes from sun’s own jealous yell
To fan and nudge their egos to excel
Make sure to look as if you’re on the brink

Of breaking through to poetry unseen
Of bringing through the actor’s greatest day
Of culminating new creations dreamed

For when the thespian instinct will not play
Suspects the charioteer about to fold
The last word of each line is never told

ask too of Scannánaigh
an ancient anamorphic Quatorzain
and he’ll smile in plain and say another
sonnet, two tercets, two quatrains
opus historium, Clio hysterium

ask laboured Scannánaigh
while placing a prop
a limerick to requite
and he’ll recite

There was an old actor from yore
Who thought that to film was a bore
Till he moved all his grace
From his hands to his face
And entered the stage nevermore

Scannánaigh the poet
was in a completely
different sea
of emotion and
morality

Ask him for
a villanelle and
he’ll answer with five tercets
and a set-dressing quatrain

I found a poet in me
And sighed when me he saw
An artist finally free

The road to mastery
A softened cheerful paw
I found a poet in me

Unravelling mystery
With feathered forms a-claw
An artist finally free

I now could speak with tree
Have arguments with flaw
I found a poet in me

To flee or not to flee
A danger to the law
An artist finally free

It’s best I climb a tree
There with the crows I’ll caw
I found a poet in me
An artist finally free

cinquain
sextain
rondel
rondeau
roundel
rondeau redoublé

un triolet aussi

Asked for a haiku
Swift sun surgeon shining seas
Ninety page screenplay

a movement and a motion
Scannánaigh the poet
was worrying now
in a very
different sea
of symbols
and imagery

a sea
of newly dreamed cities
of new open forms

of scripted coblas
ad-lib odes
couplet cameos
a rhyming montage
of troubadouric
flashbacks
of scheduled epigrams
and filtered ballads

delerious Scannánaigh the poet
was panicking now
in this completely
different simile sea

terza rima shutter speeds
pantoum close-ups
virelai ancien
clapper boards
continuity ballades
virelai nouveau
light meters
and focus-pulling glose

onomatopoeic stampeding crowds
new phonetic zoomings
homoeoprophoron animal handlers
make-up consonance swindlers
and assonant stunt predictors
the rhythm and effect of
accelerating producers
sustaining
pie quebrado atmospheres

the phonetic rhetoric
of the assistant director
and talkie iteratio
of the walkie-talkie
lipograms and
inner dialogue synaloepha
of discernment
the caesura
of discretion

Scannánaigh the poet
staring at the
rhyming crew
and cast
at the
unrhyming entirety
simply
shook his head

rich rhyme
mirror rhyme
identity rhyme
virtual rhyme
endecasillabo
gallic decasyllable
alexandrines
iambic pentameter
all mercilessly
sent to the slaughter
of booms and gates
and gels and mics and
of avant-garde gung-ho
fame-spangled hot-heads

da da da
for the
nursery rhyme advocates
who lose
iambically, take ten
a trochaic action

anapaestically
it’s a wrap
in the can
dactylic filmistry
an amphibraic filtration
of spondaic faux pas
and pyrrhic edits

Scannánaigh’s stress patterns
and tightrope metres
designer syllables
all lost
drowned
realised Scannánaigh
the poet
by the conquering
camera
and the seventh
art

(Scannánaigh (pronounced Ska-Naa-Ni), means in Irish, to film)