Georgia Hilton

Georgia Hilton has written poetry since childhood, and is particularly drawn to the inner lives of other characters, attempting a sort of poetic ventriloquism. Georgia recently gained an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester where she lives with her husband and three children. 

She was joint winner of the Brian Dempsey Memorial Competition in 2018 with her poem "Dark Haired Hilda replies to Patrick Kavanagh"

Garryowen
(From "I Went Up the Lane Quite Cheerful")
 
1
 
Wherever you are in Limerick,
if you are lost, child, look
for the spire of St. John’s
and you will find your way home
to the green where two
or three piebalds are grazing
and the electricity pylons
break up the skyline, and the small
grey pebble-dash terraces straggle
all the way from the greyhound track
and the Black Battery
to St. Patrick’s Well.
 
But don’t wander any farther,
or you’ll reach the abattoir. Ah,
you say, you already found it?

​2
 
I went up the lane quite cheerful
to the buzzing of a hundred flies,
noticing a dark stagnant puddle
fed by a brownish trickle, and then
peering over the edge of a skip,
saw it was full of parts of cows.

 

​
A hoof here, a tail there, in another
place an eyebone, which, my cousin
swears, are quite delicious. And then
a man dressed in yellow rushers,
a blue hairnet and a white coat
covered in plate-sized bloodstains
emerged from a low building.
 
I ran all the way back to the green
where two or three piebalds
were grazing, the glue sniffers
gathered like a congregation,
and from the shrine on the hill
the Blessed Virgin, bathed
in a greenish light, hovered
over it all like an apparition. ​

Perfect bound pamphlet
17 poems
33 pages
​Cover photograph by Joanna Betty Conlon
RRP £8.00 

'I went up the lane quite cheerful' by Georgia Hilton
ISBN: 978-1-907435-70-6
Published 1st September 2018

'This debut pamphlet by Georgia Hilton is a gem. The minutiae and control are exquisite. Such sure-footedness. Entire histories are contained in these beautiful, haunting spaces. Such laconic gifts and such lyrical high notes too!

Hilton’s Irish background creates a literary-cultural resonance and we come across poems such as ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Debt’ (a nod to Yeats) and the wonderful ‘Dark-Haired Hilda Replies to Patrick Kavanagh’. There are named people, street names (a sense of place in fact), such a rich atmosphere. It’s temping to remember, for a moment, Joyce’s vignettes, where the balance between exposition and showing make The Dubliners such an important book. ...'

 Julian Stannard
​