A First Meeting with Philip Casey
STILL COMING TO TERMS with the death of my friend Philip Casey, on Sunday last (04 February 2018) The Irish Times online has done a wonderful thing in publishing the tributes of a whole range of poets and writers whose lives and work were enriched by Philip. I include here my own contribution to that […]
Obituary for Leland Bardwell
Leland Bardwell (25 Feb 1922 – 28 June 2016) Leland Bardwell was a poet and writer who produced thirteen books of poetry, fiction and memoir, stage plays, and radio plays for both RTÉ and the BBC during the course of a remarkable life. One of the founding editors of the literary magazine Cyphers, she was […]
Seamus Heaney: An Appreciation
WHEN HE READ as part of the 2006 Dublin Writers Festival, Seamus Heaney shared the bill with the relatively unknown (to Irish readers, at least) Dutch poet Rutger Kopland, who passed away last year. At the time I was Programme Director of the DWF and pleased to have secured the participation of a poet I […]
As innocently as he had seen it first: an appreciation of Dennis O’Driscoll
AT THE HEART of the late Dennis O’Driscoll’s poetry is a quiet astonishment at the way we manage to live our lives, despite knowing what lies in store for us at the end, whether that end will come as a bang or as a whimper. From his debut collection of poems, Kist (a typical O’Driscoll […]