Orla Martin recently completed an MA in Arts Policy and Practice at the National University of Ireland, Galway and works as an arts administrator at The Copper House Gallery in Dublin. She has had poetry published in The Cúirt Journal and The Story Thursday book and work broadcast by RTÉ and Dublin City FM. As a musician and song-writer, Orla won the NUIG Tower of Song lyric competition in 2011 and has performed regularly at the Cobblestone and International in Dublin, also at Dublin Pride Festival 2011 and the Kilmainham Arts Festival 2012. Orla runs the Muse Poetry and Music Open Mic, recently at the Loft Bookshop in Dublin.
Europa
Jovian? You call me Jovian? I am Europa.
Look at him, Jupiter, that oblate buffoon,
all gas and storm and bulging equator.
Still he tidal locks me, hula hoops and spins me.
Sentenced I am to orbit this path with those
jumped up asteroids, Ganymede, Callisto and Io.
Crater faced Io, belching magma and stinking of sulphur.
Get out of my path!
Oh the solar winds may blow but my ice complexion is smooth
and I have been discovered by Galileo, photographed by Voyager.
For I am not a moon, I am a star. I am Europa.
Wedding Poem
Leaning on handlebars at Kelly’s Cross
halfway to Maree with the wind at your back,
on a rattling bike wishing the hills would end.
It never rains here.
Singing the hours of the morning, welcome the day with laughter.
Here wine tastes like sunshine
and the rain dances over Dublin
but it never rains here.
Barbecue in July nightlight, glasses raised to
the cook in his apron who laughs with his heart
and the star of the show, her comet blaze smile.
Sunlight falls on this blessing, here and forever.
Stranding
Came to grief,
flensed of flesh,
mottled grey
armour torn.
Winter bleached,
blubber worn.
Just carcass,
just bones
suspended.
The Galway Review 
Outstanding! I can imagine someone like Kelsey Grammar (Frasier) reading ‘Europa’ in a pompous voice! This strikes me the type of poem that comes when you are brave enough to write down those mad words and ideas that pop into your head and then shape them into something memorable. ‘Stranding’ is a beautiful poem. I like the word ‘flensed’ (new to me); the short lines convey the ‘cut and dried’ brutality of nature.