Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 426
Irish Poetry and Plays
An Leabhar Mor: The Great Book of Gaelic edited by Malcolm MacLean and Theo Dorgan
Hardback; 50 Euro / 76 USD / 38 UK; 320 pages
A 21st-century "Book of Kells" that brings together the work of more than 150 poets, visual artists, and calligraphers. Scotland and Ireland share a mythology, a rich music tradition, languages and some history. Irish Gaels, known as Scoti, invaded Scotland in the 5th century and gave it their name. "An Leabhar Mor" is a major artwork which renews the connection between Gaelic Scotland and Ireland and celebrates the diverse strands of contemporary Celtic culture.
That Ireland shares a mythology, a rich music tradition, three languages and some significant history with Scotland is a fact of which most people are only vaguely aware. A great deal of what has been an enduring connection, however, has been glossed over or deliberately obscured.
It was the Irish Gales known as Scoti, who migrated into Scotland from the 6th century and gave it their name. The most famous artefact from Ireland's golden age, the Book of Kells, was almost certainly begun on the Scottish island of Iona. It was the Gales who united Scotland in the 9th century and made Gales the language of medieval court. The "Irish" Gaelic culture of the Scottish Highlands and Islands went on to survive that of Ireland itself by a century and a half. Scots were "planted" into Northern Ireland from the 17th century and hundereds of thousands of Irish people migrated to Scotland in the 19th and 20th centuries but it is less well known that the Hebridies were once mapped as "the Irish Isles" or that Micheal Davitt was a leading figure in the Scottish Highland Land Leauge.
Amidst the ebb and flow of history, the Book of Kells has become a fixed symbol of the complexity and sophistication of the shared culture that produced it. The Gaelic language remains the most potent living link between both countries. Through the Leabhar Mor the Gaelic community has created another great work of art that renews the connection between Gaelic Scotland and Ireland and celebrates the diverse strands of contemporary Celtic culture.
Six New Poetry Books From Gallery Press, Ireland’s Premier Poetry Publisher:
Selected Poems of Eilean Ni Chuilleanain
Hardback; 20 Euro / 28 USD / 14 UK; 120 pages [Add To Basket]
The patient, unhurried assembly of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s first collection resulted in an uncommonly accomplished debut. Poems from Acts and Monuments (1972) have already revealed their lasting power. In this timely retrospective they join generous selections from each of her subsequent books down to The Girl who Married the Reindeer (2001). In the words of Ruth Padel (Financial Times) ‘Her eerie blend of the legendary and modern sounds utterly natural. A new book from her is a major event.’
‘There is something second sighted, as it were, about Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s work, by which I don’t mean that she has any prophetic afflatus, more that her poems see things anew, in a rinsed and dreamstruck light. They are at once as plain as an anecdote told on the doorstep and as haunting as a soothsayer’s greetings.’ — Seamus Heaney
The Sphere of Birds by Ciaran Berry
Trade Paperback; 12 Euro / 16 USD / 8 UK; 82 pages
From ‘the blood that’s bloomed above the wound’s neat hole’ to ‘harsher truths that hit home hour after hour’ Ciaran Berry fixes his unflinching stare on an astounding range of subjects – ‘foundlings’ out of history’s long corridor, Donegal fences, Belfast in the War years, immigrant workers from Ireland, a rogue elephant in Coney Island (1903), a high-wire walker, and the beekeeper’s art. From the fact of blindness to the act of seeing there is a surgical precision to his descriptions and reports. By way of the circuits of his meditations, curiosity and learning lead to the realm of discovery and elucidate often arcane mysteries. Sure-footed and steady paced this first collection reveals an uncommon capacity to sustain tension over long lines and, even, extended poems. The Sphere of Birds is a remarkably impressive, eclectic and accomplished debut. (Also available in hardback, priced at 18.50 Euro).
Lament for Art O’Leary by Vona Groarke
Trade Paperback; 10 Euro / 13 USD / 7 UK; 40 pages [Add To Basket]
In his inaugural lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry, Peter Levi famously described it as `the greatest poem written in these islands in the whole eighteenth century'. Now, with a new version of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill's lament for her husband, a victim of Penal Laws and personal grudge, Vona Groarke joins a list of diverse writers who have translated all or part of it, from Frank O'Connor and Eilís Dillon to Thomas Kinsella and Paul Muldoon.
This version renews the passionate rage and desire of a pregnant widow for her flamboyant husband, shot down while riding his famed brown mare on 4 May 1773. Revisiting the Irish tradition of the funeral lament or 'keen', this poem's vigour and sincerity speak beautifully both of its time and place, and to our own. The enlightening introduction elaborates the context of `the meeting point of a cultured imagination and a cultural inheritance'.
Alison Brackenbury has written of being `seduced by the haunting, time-defying poems of Vona Groarke' - qualities Vona Groarke, one of the outstanding poets of her generation, brings now to bear on this iconic poem. (Also available in hardback, priced at 17.50 Euro).
At Least for A While by Pearse Hutchinson
Trade Paperback; 12 Euro / 16 USD / 8 UK; 70 pages
‘We should all live to be eighty,’ exclaims one of two brothers on a low stool at a high bar in the first poem in Pearse Hutchinson’s new collection. At Least for a While is a book marked as much by simple pleasures and love for ‘the beautiful insulted land, and people’ as by its outraged response to the greedy god, Mammon. In a book of admirations and characteristic sympathy there are poems which chronicle experiences in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Milan, Lisbon and Seville. Closer to home the poet enjoys the sight of dandelions in all their glory and the immaculate flight of a magpie. His journeys into memory, and his re-examination of it, range from reflections on a generous painter and other encounters with art to moments of grief and near-perfection. Now at eighty-one Pearse Hutchinson is composing poems remarkable for their flair, vigour and bold authority. (Also available in hardback, priced at 18.50 Euro).
Points West by Gerard Dawe
Trade Paperback; 12 Euro / 18 USD / 9 UK; 50 pages [Add To Basket]
Gerald Dawe’s seventh collection spans the globe, from Belfast to Boston and Berlin, from a Mediterranean island to his home in County Dublin, and from the irretrievable past, full of half-remembered things and distant echoes, to fugitive voices caught up in the turbulent beginnings of the twenty-first century. Points West is a book of emotionally forceful meditative poems — their plain style and direct expression by now an unmistakable signature. (Also available in hardback, priced at 20 Euro)
Venetial Epigrams: Translations from Goethe by Sean Lysaght
Trade Paperback; 12 Euro / 18 USD / 9 UK; 60 pages [Add To Basket]
George Eliot called Goethe (1749-1832) ‘Germany’s greatest man of letters...and the last true polymath to walk the earth’. His Venetian Epigrams, largely composed between 31 March and 21 May 1790, provide — as Seán Lysaght notes in his introduction to these new translations — ‘insights into the erotic and intellectual world of the commanding figure of Germany’s classical age’. Many of these witty observations — few of the hundred-and-fifty-eight exceed six lines — were suppressed for their ‘controversial’ content; some were destroyed. Pronouncements on the recent French Revolution, on politics, art, religion, sex and the street life of Venice, appear beside tender feelings for the poet’s lover and infant at home in Weimar. The present translation is the first appearance of the complete series as a separate publication in English. Seán Lysaght’s injection of rhyme to the originals and his reprise of their idiomatic manner fuse an apparently insouciant touch with appropriate drive and panache. (Also available in hardback, priced at 20 Euro)
The Essential Gabriel Fitzmaurice
Hardback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 160 pages; [Add To Basket]
According to "The Guardian" 'Fitzmaurice is a wonderful poet'. He has been called 'poetry's answer to John B. Keane' ("Books Ireland") and his poems have been described as 'comparable to Burns for their insights and lyricism' ("The Irish Times"). Fitzmaurice is well known throughout Ireland for his penetrating observations, his humour, simplicity and the pure beauty of his work. This collection includes poems from Fitzmaurice's adult collections and translations.
Methuen Anthology of Irish Plays edited and introduced by Patrick Lonergen
Trade Paperback; 20 Euro / 28 USD / 14 UK; 430 pages [Add To Basket]
Introduced by Patrick Lonergan, The Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays brings together five major works from the Irish dramatic canon of the last sixty years in one outstanding collection. Behan's The Hostage, depicting the capture and death of a British soldier by the IRA, was first produced by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in 1958 and was declared 'a masterpiece' by The Times. Murphy's Bailegangaire (1985) portrays a senile old woman's recitation of an epic tale to her two granddaughters who struggle to free themselves from her and exorcise the past. Reid's The Belle of the Belfast City, winnner of the George Devine Award in 1986, examines the tensions present in three generations of women in a Belfast-Protestant family during the week of an anti-Anglo-Irish rally. Sebastian Barry's The Steward of Christendom won the London Critics' Circle Award for Best Play 1995 and was heralded by the Guardian as 'an authentic masterpiece'. McDonagh's 1996 play The Cripple of Inishmaan is a strange comic tale in the great tradition of Irish storytelling. McDonagh was awarded the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright.
Blaiseadh Pinn: Nuascribhneoireacht Ghaeilge edited by Alan Keogh
Paperback; 7.50 Euro / 11 USD / 5.50 UK; [Add To Basket]
Seo an chéad chnuasach d'ábhar, idir phrós agus fhilíocht, le cuid de na baill de "Chumann Scríbhneoiri Óga agus Úra na Gaeilge" - guthanna sainiúla nua i litríocht na Gaeilge. Writing by : Scott de Buitléir, Caitríona Ní Chléircín, Deirdre Ní Chonghaile, Majella McDonnell, Simon Ó Faoláin, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, Muiris Ó Meara
The Ulster Reciter: Ballads, Poems and Recitations for Every Occasion edited by Joe McPartland
Paperback; 8 Euro / 12 USD / 6 UK; 90 pages [Add To Basket]
'One of the most significant traits in the Ulster character is the willingness - indeed insistence at times - to stand up and recite at the drop of a bowler hat' - Joe McPartland. Northern Ireland has a rich and colourful history of poetry, verse and recitation - you will be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't heard of "The Man from God Knows Where", "Master M'Grath" or "William Bloat". These familiar characters have become firm favourites in Ulster homes and - since it was first published in 1984 - so has "The Ulster Reciter", a lively anthology which brings together the best of Northern Ireland's oral tradition. Compiled by the late actor Joe McPartland - himself a great performer - and re-released due to popular demand, this is a charming and timeless record of the Northern Irish voice at its best - a real treat for Ulster reciters everywhere.
Please note: Prices were correct at time of original posting but are subject to subsequent change without notice.
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