STIR CRAZY Hub Editions (1994)

Miriam Halahmy's first collection impresses with its liveliness, immediacy and strong visual qualities. The poems are delicately crafted vignettes from her life. These are sensitive and unsentimental poems tinged with sadness.

Jewish Chronicle

Slate Quarry, Corris

Dressing Slate

Chisel, short strong hammer

chip a thin ridge

tap hard, split

cleansheet

purple, smooth.

No machine does this.

Lungs jammed with silicosis

chained to the rock face

eighty feet up

quarrymen drilled holes

by candlelight

poured gunpowder

ripped open seams.

At lunch in strict form

they read, held debates

composed poetry

kept alert.

Tourists come now in hard hats

stumble on Welsh sounds

through cavern after cavern

six hundred feet down.

At the lake

bluecold, slabbed in rock

a flashlight explodes.