It Swings from Side to Side
Completed shortly before his death in November 2008, James Liddy’s mysteriously titled It Swings from Side to Side concludes the autobiographical explorations he began in his earlier memoirs, The Doctor’s House and The Full Shilling. In addition to recollections of Anne Yeats and Padraic Colum, reflections on George Moore and the Emperor Karl of Austria, there are several meditations on his awareness of his own death, and on the Feast of the Transfiguration: a vision of life informed by the energies of the spirit.
I learnt America’s secret
they don’t move in a sphere of light
they’re monogamous
they’re romantic about something
they know all the time.
Knute in bar light flowing our faces
like smoke in heaven,
“Are you serious about being indifferent
to sex to some extent these past four years?”
“Just stay erotic,
you don’t have to bedroom it”,
I who Christmas dance twelve days
with Baudelaire a Treeman whose arms
and branches hang with Dante’s desires?
American orgasm isn’t paradise
my kind of marriage is
sidelined
but I travel to camel breath and luxury
of interrupting an irredeemable,
can I record a Jansenist song?
− from ‘All My Days Were Honeymoonish’
Rome That Heavenly Country
I will not and I did. The roadfork from rebellion to
clarity. I did, I went out into the vine heat. Give
starvation wine. One grape a time. Preferably one
should talk only to one high priest and youngsters.
Others went into the yard: tax collectors for the
community budget, and prostitutes to set up some
idea of love. There is no such thing as just an earthly
love.
− ‘I will not and I did’
At his death in November 2008, James Liddy left behind three manuscripts, two of which, Fest City and It Swings from Side to Side, were complete and have now been published. The third manuscript, entitled Rome That Heavenly Country, consisted of 72 pages of poems. Following page 38 is a note which reads, “Revised up to here”. On the front of the manila folder holding the manuscript is a handwritten note: “Rome that Heavenly Country. Book of religious poems in the making. a lot of work needed. the revised poems are alright. — the rest? 09/2008” This book consists of the first 38 pages of that manuscript, the revised poems which James considered “alright”. The entire manuscript is in the James Liddy Archive at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. This is the final collection that James Liddy created.
Shedding Skin
Shedding Skin, the debut poetry collection by James Martyn, possesses an instinctive skill with language as it explores the small triumphs and the great heartaches of ordinary lives. Here are poems that celebrate, salute and commemorate, crafted with both narrative power and lyricism. Each poem is imbued with extraordinary perceptions, whether it is writing about a child examining a frog, the end of an affair or cooking a hat. The voice is assured, not without humour, authentic at all times.
James Martyn is from Galway and is a member of the Talking Stick Workshop. His work has been broadcast on RTÉ and BBC Radio and he won the Listowel Writers’ Week Originals short story competition. He was shortlisted for a Hennessy Award in 2006, for the Francis Mac Manus Award in 2007 and 2008 and the William Trevor International Short Story Competition in 2007.
An Urgency of Stars
Geraldine Mills
An Urgency of Stars
ISBN:
9780905223537 paperback
9780905223605 hardback
Geraldine Mills’ third collection explores landscapes and inhabitants from Ancient Greece through Cape Cod to pre-and post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Here we meet ghosts with ‘a hollow of bones on walkabout’, a foxwoman who cries ‘guilt tears’ for leaving her children alone, graves washed out to sea. However, she does not surrender to a world of such stark truths. While her ‘bones know change the way birds know sky’, she chooses to inhabit a space where ‘it all comes down to light’.
‘Geraldine Mills’ poems hint at a life that holds its breath, not entirely at ease as it takes stock. Her patient, poetic language reveals to the reader a sense of belief in what are surely the cleansing fertilities of poetry. Refusing to ’celebrate’ for the sake of it, insisting on authentic process, this is serious work, created by a questing, refreshingly Irish imagination’.
– Mary O’Donnell
‘These quietly ambitious poems are replete with journeys at once literal and emblematic, and with observances so attentively and bracingly witnessed, they startle on the page with their lived immediacy and human resonance. That subtle, encompassing movement from sky to earth, from imagined expanse to blunt particular, bears further witness to her poems’ reliance on the lived detail, their un-showy but sharp intellectual play, their emotional resourcefulness’.
– Daniel Tobin
Imram / Odyssey
Celia de Fréine
Imram / Odyssey
ISBN:
9780905223094 hardback
9781851322114 paperback
Tá an cnuasach seo bunaithe go hachomair ar an seánra liteartha ‘Imram’ ina ndéantar cur síos ar aistear go domhan eile. Le linn an aistir seo cuirtear dúshlán i ndiaidh dúshláin a chaithfear a shárú faoin taistealaí.
This collection is loosely based on the Imram, an Irish literary form, which recounts a voyage to another world. During this voyage the traveller is faced with many challenges which must be overcome.
Is file, drámadóir agus scriptscríbhneoir í Celia de Fréine. Tá trí leabhar filíochta i gcló aici: Faoi Chabáistí is Ríonacha (Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2001), Fiacha Fola (Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2004) agus Scarecrows at Newtownards (Scotus Press, 2005). In 2009 d’fhoilsigh Arlen House dornán drámaí léi dar teideal Mná Dána. I measc na ngradam liteartha atá buaite aici dá cuid filíochta tá Duais Patrick Kavanagh (1994) agus Gradam Litríochta Chló Iar-Chonnachta (2004). Taispeánadh na gearrscannáin Lorg, Seal agus Cluiche, bunaithe ar dhánta léi, agus an scannán Marathon a scríobh sí i gcomhar le Biju Viswanath, i bhféilte in Éirinn agus i Meiriceá in 2007, 2008 agus 2009. In 2009 léirigh Living Opera, i gcomhar le Opera Ireland, taispeántas den cheoldráma The Earl of Kildare, cumtha ag Fergus Johnston, ar scríobh sí an libretto dó. Sa bhliaian chéanna chuir Amharclann na Mainistreach i láthair léiriú cleachta den dráma Casadh a coimisiúnaíodh uaithi. Tuilleadh eolais: www.celiadefreine.com
Celia de Fréine is a poet, playwright and screenwriter who writes in Irish and English. She has published three collections of poetry: Faoi Chabáistí is Ríonacha (Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2001), Fiacha Fola (Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2004) and Scarecrows at Newtownards (Scotus Press, 2005). Arlen House published a collection of her award-winning plays Mná Dána in 2009. Her poetry has won many awards including the Patrick Kavanagh Award (1994) and Gradam Litríochta Chló Iar-Chonnachta (2004). The short films Lorg, Seal and Cluiche, inspired by her poems, and the film Marathon, written in association with Biju Viswanath, have been shown in festivals in Ireland and the United States in 2007, 2008 and 2009. In 2009 Living Opera, in association with Opera Ireland, presented a showcase performance of the opera The Earl of Kildare, composed by Fergus Johnston, for which she wrote the libretto. In the same year the Abbey Theatre presented a rehearsed reading of the play Casadh which it had commissioned from her. Further information: www.celiadefreine.com
The Truth In Mustard
In this new collection Terry McDonagh chronicles a poetic journey that begins in Cill Aodáin, County Mayo and takes us to Hamburg and beyond into a complex world of fascinating human landscapes. He appears to be at ease in Budapest, Ballyhaunis, Bali or Melbourne, but, at the same time, he is always on the lookout, taking stock and drawing attention to what we lose and gain in an unstable, multicultural world. ‘I imagine I had a wild child’s head, ready wings and feet to land anywhere’.
His poetic voice has grown and matured. His language is genuine, evocative and full of visual images that take flight from a whole range of sources. Words flow with a light touch, or hit harder tones when the situation demands, but there is an abiding respect for the fragile nature of human existence on and between every line. Terry McDonagh can look back through the hype of the Celtic Tiger to a time when young people either left Ireland or considered leaving, and now ‘I am old enough to leave a second time’. Here is a poet in tune with dislocation and the challenges of living with the contradictions and irony that daily living, adopted culture and language can throw up. However he returns to his origins again and again for confirmation and emotional shelter.
Terry McDonagh is from County Mayo and lives in the West of Ireland. He has taught English at Hamburg University and was Drama Director at The International School, Hamburg. The Truth in Mustard is his sixth poetry collection and he has also published drama, fiction, letters and a collaborative project with the artist Sally McKenna, Cill Aodáin and Nowhere Else (Blaupause-Books, Hamburg).
Aesop I gConamara
I dtríochaidí an chéid seo caite thosaigh fear mór Gaeilge agus béaloidis darbh ainm Domhnall Ó Cearbhaill ag tarraingt ar Charna bliain i ndiaidh bliana. Le linn a chuid cuairteanna chuir sé eolas ar shaol dúchasach na ndaoine ansin agus aithne mhaith ar mhuintir na háite freisin. Bhí cáil ar Charna mar thobar na scéalaíochta agus na hamhránaíochta riamh agus thaifead Domhnall cuid mhaith de sheanchas agus de bhéaloideas an cheantair. Le Pádraic Mac Con Iomaire is mó a bhí sé ag plé agus d’fhoilsigh sé cuid mhór de stór seanchais Phádraic ar nuachtáin náisiúnta Bhéarla na hÉireann sna tríochaidí agus sna daichidí.
Cheap Domhnall gur mhaith an rud é dá mbeadh leaganacha dúchasacha Gaeilge ann d’fhabhalscéalta Aesóip agus iad á n-aithris ag seanchaí Gaeilge den scoth. Mheall sé Pádraic le tabhairt faoin obair agus seo anois toradh na hoibre sin a foilsíodh den chéad uair breis is seasca bliain ó shin ar an Evening Herald.
An Tam Marfach Ina Mairmid
Cathal Ó Searcaigh
Ian Joyce, Ealaín
An Tam Marfach Ina Mairmid
ISBN:
9781851320158 hardback
9781851320165 paperback
‘Is é Cathal Ó Searcaigh an liriceoir is caoine agus is binne dá bhfuil againn. Labhrann sé linn i dteanga an choirp, i dteanga na samhlaíochta, i dteanga na healaíne atá greanta aige as caint a mhuintire agus as litríocht an domhain’
− Alan Titley, Scríbhneoirí faoi Chaibidil (Cois Life, 2010)
‘He is less a nature poet than a poet of human nature. His own poetic project has been to find, in the shape of his poetry, a way of restoring vigor to the Irish language’
− Wes Davis, An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry (Harvard University Press, 2010)
‘Tá an Searcach ar dhuine de mhórfhilí an domhain. Ba thrua gan tairbhe a bhaint as a chuid buanna go léir’
− Gabriel Rosenstock, Comhar (Deireadh Fomhair, 2010)
‘His emotional range gathers us in with its unadulterated exhuberance, especially in his love poems’
− Liam Ó Muirthile, A New View of the Irish Language, edited by Seán Ó Cearnaigh and Caoilfhionn Nic Pháidín (Cois Life, 2008)
Twelve Beds for the Dreamer
Máighréad Medbh
Twelve Beds for the Dreamer
ISBN: 9781851320189
In my dream I’m dragged struggling to the people.
I’m thrown among them,
accounting for myself as the gallows is hammered.
I wake to silence, endemic hypocrisy,
and a huge wheel I’d like some room upon.
− ‘Bound’ (Sagittarius)
The ‘twelve beds’ in the title of this collection refer to the twelve astrological signs. The dreamer is the poet, who began by noting the stages of the moon’s monthly cycle and checking whether her dreams might bear any relation to them. Would she dream of conflict when the moon was in Aries, or of love when it was in Libra? She didn’t reach a scientific conclusion, but she did write the dreams as poems and found that they could be allocated thematic places within the astrological divisions. She added other poems of the night and half-light to achieve a narrative of the inner life with the zodiac as a structure, astrology having proved a very interesting map-maker in her experience.
The journey in the sequence is from Cancer (home, children, tradition) to Gemini (communication, information, restlessness), a road which has also been walked by the poet’s generation. The last poems in the sequence are steeped in the clamorous demands of the Celtic Tiger mentality. Máighréad Medbh has been described as a ‘vital slam poet’ and ‘a unique presence in the Irish poetry scene’, whose ‘handling of metre is competent and assured’. These poems imbue the oneiric experience with melody and inquiry, and veer close to the honesty of the subconscious itself.
Perplexed Skin
Patrick Cotter
Perplexed Skin
ISBN:
9781903631546 hardback
9781903631843 paperback
shortlisted for the Shine Poetry Award
Patrick Cotter’s inventive imagination treats tragedy laced with humour and love untinged by sentimentality. A dog which has learnt to sing songs by Henry Purcell, a ghost which haunts the pissoir of a modern city centre pub, a man who waits until Judgement Day to take his own life, characters as various as these occupy brief narratives that weave in and out of sequences where Eros and elegy predominate. Here are poems which belong to an emerging Irish tradition more informed by Berlin or Warsaw than Hull or Belfast.
Cotter has published widely in periodicals, chapbooks and anthologies since the 1980s. Perplexed Skin is his long-awaited début collection.
Patrick Cotter was born in Cork in 1963 where he continues to live and work as director of the Munster Literature Centre. He has published poems in numerous periodicals, anthologies and chapbooks including A Misogynist’s Blue Nightmare (Dublin, Raven Arts Press, 1990) and The True Story of Aoife and Lir’s Children (Cork, Three Spires Press, 2002). His translations of various German poets have been published in journals and his translations of the Estonian Surrealist poet Andres Ehin were collected in Moosebeetle Swallow (Cork, Southword Editions, 2005). Cotter’s own poems have been translated and published in Italy, Spain and Sweden. Återuppståndelser (Resurrections) a selection of Cotter’s poems translated into various Scandinavian languages was published in Gothenburg in 2007. His work has been shortlisted for both the Hennessy Award and the Patrick Kavanagh Award.