‘Monday Blues’ by Amy Barry

I’m not a big poetry reader but I do like to sometimes indulge in a book of poems. Usually, the poetry books I select to read are to some relevance to my writing life. For me, poems have a cathartic effect and my favourite poems are the ones written by my own father (Guest in the 21^st Century and The Passing of Time).

Such was the case with Static Poetry IV, an anthology of poetry compiled by Chris Bartholomew (Static Movement, 2011) where I also published a few short poems. One of the poems in this volume, Monday Blues by Amy Barry, a short story writer and poetess from Ireland, had the same effect on me as the situation described in its five stanzas.

After dropping “the children at school,” getting back in the car, and preparing for another hectic day, Pablo Nutini’s song Candy takes the listener “back on the hills of Nepal” in a Madeleine effect where the local drink jaandh reminds the listener of “the unruffled ambience and, / the prodigious sight / of Mt. Everest.”

Just like the Madeleines in Marcel Proust’s seven-volume novel In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past (À la recherche du temps perdu), the poem reminded me of my 2011 trip to Nepal, the Nepali tea I so much enjoyed during my stay, and the majestic views of Mt. Everest.

Here’s the third stanza of Amy Barry’s Monday Blues:

“Pablo Nutini crooning Candy
on the music channel,
Candy took me back on the hills in Nepal,
And sucked Jaandh through a thin bamboo pipe,
a local drink brewed from millet,
as it sank into me,
I absorbed
the unruffled ambience and,
the prodigious sight
of Mt. Everest.”

I leave you now with a Mt. Everest slideshow: