Seamus Mc Dermott , living in Donegal, Ireland, is a member of ‘The Diamond Writers’ and ‘This Writing Thing’ He has had poems published in Corncrake Magazine 2023, Honest Ulsterman 2023, The Madrigal Literary Magazine February 2022, Little Gems Magazine Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter editions (2019 –2023), 11th edition of Crossways Literary Magazine June 2021, The Bangor Literary Journal issues 15 and 18, and Hidden Donegal, anthology of Donegal poets 2022.
He has also been shortlisted in the Allingham Arts Poetry Competition 2020/2021/2022/2023 and in The Bangor Literary Journal 2021 Forty Words Competition.
His poems have been Highly Commended in the Frances Browne Literary Festival 2021/2022 and he won the Local Writer Frances Browne Literary Competition in 2023.
Seamus was runner up in the Bangor Literary Journal Forty Words Competition in 2022.
His video-poem ‘Borderland’ was selected for screening at five international film festivals in 2021/2022/2023 and was a winner for the Best Spoken Word/Poetry Miracle Makers International Film Festival 2023.
Summer Promise to a Grandchild
The promise to share first
breaths of dawn
mould
imprints
capture the seal that pooled
oily darkness over Mulroy Bay
out on the horizon
sprats of light
lure arrowed flights
darkness pushed to wing-tips
of the diving
gannet
morning carried to the shore
light
dripping
from feathers of dancing terns
darkness slipping below on the back
of a common seal ripples
chattering
magic
spells upon a promised shore
charcoal light
burning driftwood-ed
shadows across the beach
whispering through
dune grass
painting the old caravan
a new jade of green misting into faded windows
the softened light
tap tap tapping
on his eyelids
filling eyes with a captured
colour from the sea
he shook the night from me
filling
the caravan with
a dusted dawn
we captured the morning sun
between our hands hid our voices
in the sand dunes
and there it was
black pearl in an oyster shell
very last dot of darkness
in a pool of shimmering light
tilts its head towards the rising sun
and slips under the curlew’s cry
the promise of first light
trapped behind summer eyelids
impspired 