Books for Breakfast (Ireland)

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In this episode, on Poetry Day, we cross the Atlantic and. breakfast in Miami, where we talk to Cuban American poet Richard Blanco about his Homeland of my Body: New and Selected Poems, a rich, accomplished, intensely intimate collection with two full sections of new poems bookending Blanco’s selections from his five previous volumes. We also feature this year’s Strokestown International Poetry Festival, including the five poets shortlisted for the Strokestown Poetry Competition. 

If you’re around for the festival Enda will be giving  a poetry workshop and Peter will be giving a talk on The Life of the Poet.

Praise for Richard Blanco:

“An engineer, poet, Cuban American… his poetry bridges cultures and languages – a mosaic of our past, our present, and our future – reflecting a nation that is hectic, colorful, and still becoming.”

– President Joe Biden, conferring the National Humanities Medal on Richard Blanco

Sandra Cisneros describes Blanco’s poems as “sad, tender, and filled with longing. Like an old photograph, a saint’s statue worn away by the devout, a bolero on the radio on a night full of rain. Me emocionan. There is no other way to say it. They emotion me.”

This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.

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On this episode we talk to poet novelist and critic Mary O’Donnell about Mary O’Malley’s The Shark Nursery, Patrick Holloway’s The Language of Remembering,  ! All’ ARME /? by Eilish Martin and Beginnings Over and Over: Four New Poets from Ireland, edited by Leeanne Quinn.

We also give a shout out to a special anthology for One Dublin One Book, Dublin, Written in our Hearts, published by the Stinging Fly Press and edited by Declan Meade. It’s an anthology that offers writings about Dublin in the first quarter of this century and contributors include Kevin Barry, Caitriona Lally, Felizspeaks, Stephen James Smith, Anne Enright, Estelle Birdy, Paula Meehan and our own Peter Sirr. There are lots of events happening throughout the city to coincide with this anthology and you can find out more by checking out onedublinonebook.ie

Mary O’Donnell’s book of short stories, Walking Ghosts, comes out this May from Mercier Press. ‘Each story shines in its own distinctive light,’ Neil Hegarty says. It will be launched in the Maynooth Bookshop on the 7th of May, and in Hodges Figgis, Dublin on the 20th of May.  

This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.

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Finding inspiration in the local and near at had, attentive to climate concern and global unrest, to home and homeless, belonging and welcome, concern and global and welcome – on today’s episode we talk to poet and publisher Pat Boran about his eight collection Hedge School. 

'A writer of great tenderness and lyricism' – Agenda, UK

'... local and international, full of wisdom and wry humour ...' – Irish Literary Supplement, USA

This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.

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‘A beautiful tapestry of late middle age reckoning’ – today we interview the writer Mary Morrissy about her new collection of short stories, Twenty-Twenty Vision, published by Lilliput Press. For her Toaster Challenge, Mary chooses The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazard. Get the coffee on!

This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.

Mary Morrissy is an award-winning Irish novelist (The Hennessy Award, Lannan Foundation Award) and short story writer, the author of four novels, Mother of Pearl, The Pretender, The Rising of Bella Casey and Penelope Unbound, as well as two collections of short stories, A Lazy Eye and Prosperity Drive. She has 20 years’ experience of teaching creative writing at university level in the US and Ireland. Until May 2020, she was the associate director of creative writing at University College Cork. 

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Was 1950s Dublin really a place of murder and intrigue? On today’s show we travel to the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation  in Dublin’s Fenian Street to talk to novelist John Banville about his latest novel, The Drowned, the fourth in a series featuring Detective Inspector St John Strafford and the pathologist Quirke familiar to many from the Benjamin Black novels. And we talk to Estonian poet Doris Kareva who visited the Centre recently about her own poetry, translation, and Estonia. Brew up a big pot of coffee and join us for a lively show!

This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.

Reviews of The Drowned

'Cold, compelling and seamlessly plotted, The Drowned also offers a fine portrait of that familiar and never likeable figure in Banville's fictions: the supercilious villain who has lost his moral compass.' ― Financial Times

'A beautifully written and intriguing slowburn of a book, in which the various quandaries in the main characters' private lives are as absorbing as the central mystery'. ― Guardian

'Brilliant . . . You need not have read the earlier novels to follow this one, but it will be a better read if you do . . . while various loose ends are left tantalisingly in the air, making it clear that a sequel will follow. It can't come too soon for this devoted fan. '― Irish Examiner

'Richly atmospheric . . . It's a Dublin where you can smell the pubs, feel the drizzle, and taste the Bewley's coffee. [...]At the centre of it all is the strained relationship between Quirke and Strafford, a couple at odds who are right up there with Banville's greatest achievements.' ― Irish Independent

'Tight-lipped humour thrums through the latest in the Booker winner's Strafford and Quirke crime series . . . The Drowned stands alone, too, suspenseful on its own terms . . . while it's ultimately evil, not good, that gives The Drowned its crackling denouement, the novel takes care to part on a more cheerful note - even if the logic of the series demands that Quirke can hardly be content for too long.' ― Observer

The Drowned delivers an ultimately satisfying and immersive mystery in beautifully wrought prose. ― Irish Independent Books in Brief

Bravo! ― The Times

Doris Kareva is one of Estonia’s leading poets. She was born in Tallinn in 1958, daughter of the composer Hillar Kareva, and published her first poems at the age of 14. In 1977 she entered the University of Tartu as an already acknowledged young poet. Due to her dissident connections she was expelled but graduated as a distance student in Romance and Germanic philology. She has worked for the cultural weekly Sirp (Sickle) and as the Secretary-General of the Estonian National Commission for UNESCO from 1992 to 2008, and is currently an editor for the literary journal Looming (Creation).

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How much do we need to know about a writer's life? How does the life impinge on the work? What is the human price of art? In this episode we talk to biographer Adrian Frazier about John Montague: A Poet's Life.

‘The best Irish poet of his generation’ – Derek Mahon

Already a highly lauded biographer, Adrian Frazier was a close acquaintance of Montague for more than forty years. In this fully authorised narrative he reveals the sources of poetry in Montague's life and traces the progress of his style from book to book. Based on Montague's archive of private papers, and informed by the counsel of the poet's lifelong friends, partners, and fellow poets, this is a monumental work of Irish literary biography, sure to be a classic of the genre.

The two poems by John Montague were recorded by The Irish Writers' Centre for the CD Dublin 15: Poems of the City and appear by permission of the Gallery Press. 

This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.

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In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills. In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage.  Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He's been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm he bought, a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that's already faltering … 

In this episode we talk to Andrew Miller about his latest novel, which some have called his best yet, The Land in Winter. For his Toaster Challenge Andrew selects Light Years by James Salter.

This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.

Andrew Miller's first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award 2011, The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free and  The Slowworm's Song.  Andrew Miller's novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.

The Land in Winter  was a best book of the year for the Independent, Guardian, and Good Housekeeping.

'Tender, elegant, soulful and perfect. A novel that hits your cells and can be felt there, without your brain really knowing what's happened to it. Superb'  
SAMANTHA HARVEY, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital  
  
'Delicate and devastating'  
INDEPENDENT, The 20 best books of the year  
  
'Miller may have written his best book yet . . . brilliance that is not to be missed'  
GUARDIAN, The best fiction of 2024  
  
'Incredibly satisfying'  
FINANCIAL TIMES  
  
'A novel of dazzling humanity and captivating, crystalline prose'  
MAIL ON SUNDAY  
  
'Perfect'  
RACHEL COOKE, OBSERVER  
  
'I loved The Land in Winter . . . There were moments I thought of Penelope Fitzgerald - that moment I have always loved in The Beginning of Spring when the birch trees seem to grow hands - those liminal moments that are kind of beyond words, or explanation, but Miller finds them anyway. It's a thing of rare beauty'  
RACHEL JOYCE, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry  
  
'Disruptive and graceful beyond anything I've read'  
SARAH HALL, author of Burntcoat  
  
December 1962, the West Country.  
  
PRAISE FOR ANDREW MILLER
 
'Andrew Miller's writing is a source of wonder and delight'  
HILARY MANTEL  
  
'One of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind'  
SUNDAY TIMES  
  
'A writer of very rare and outstanding gifts'  
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY  
  
'A highly intelli

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On today’s show, the last of 2024, we talk to Keith Payne about his recent  boat building and poem writing project. Currachs and naomhógs are among the only sea craft built upside down, and the expertise dates back generations. Keith learned all of this and a. lot more when he found himself working on a Dunfanaghy currach over 16 weeks. He was Cork City Library eco-poet in residence from 2022 to 2023 when he was drawn to the work of Meitheal Mara. He learned about carpenters' marks and pigtails and how to row with Naomhóga Chorcaí. His latest work, Building the Boat, records his experiences with Meitheal Mara in verse, and it has just been published by Badly Made Books. He also talks to us about Whales and Whales, his recent translations of a powerful Galician poet, Luisa Castro.

The second half of today’s show is a look back at some highlights from our podcast in 2024, with contributions from Michael Agustin, Dermot Bolger, Kerry Hardie, Aoife Lyall, Victoria Kennefick, Mary Costello, Paul Muldoon, Neil Astley, Gormfhlaith Ní Shíocháin Ní Bheoláin, Noel Monahan and Christine Dwyer Hickey.

This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.

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Join us for a lively discussion of some of the best books published this year. At the breakfast table to discuss their poetry and fiction choices are poet Adam Wyeth and novelist Henrietta McKervey. Plenty of stocking filler ideas here, and Peter and Enda also get to mention some of their own favourite books of the year. This is a double espresso and multiple pastry episode, so get that pot on the stove and get the earbuds in!

This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.

Adam's picks for 2024: Crash Centre by David McLoghlin , All the Good Things You Deserve by Elaine Feeney, High Jump: An Icarus Story by Gustav Parker Hibbett, We Go On by Kerry Hardie 

Honorable Mentions: Four Thousand Keys by Linda McKenna , American Anthem by Kelly Michels , Dismantle by Anne Tannam, Naming Love by Geraldine Mitchell.

Henrietta’s Fiction Choices: Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything, John Boyne, Fire , Christine Dwyer Hickey, Our London Lives , Katja Oskamp, Half Swimmer  , Michael Frayn, Among Others

Books mentioned by Peter: Lesley Chamberlain, Rilke, The Last Inward Man, Pushkin Press, Guillevic, Selected Poems, 1974, tr. by Teo Savory, Salvatore Quasimodo, Debit and Credit, tr. by Jack Bevan, 1972, Richard Zenith, Pessoa: An Experimental Life , Stanley Moss, Goddamed Selected Poems .

Books mentioned by Enda
Deborah Levy,  The Position of Spoons , Samantha Harvey, Orbital,, Grace Wilentz, Harmony (Unfinished), Aifric Mac Aodha, Old Friends,  James Harpur, The Gospel of Gargoyle

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This episode sees us back in Books Upstairs in Dublin’s D’Olier Street again. This time we’ve come for a conversation between Paddy Bushe and poet and academic Ben Keatinge on the occasion of the Dublin launch of The Amergin Step: An Exploration in the Imagination of Iveragh. The book is named after the famous poem that Leabhar Gabhála Éireann or The Book of Invasions tells us was recited by the poet and lawmaker of the Gaelic Milesian people, as he stepped ashore in Kerry after their voyage from Galicia and staked an imaginative claim to the island.  In a book reminiscent of Tim Robinson’s Aran and Connemara explorations Paddy Bushe investigates contemporary and historical literature, folklore, myth, archaeology and placenames are explored by the author at the same time as he explores the mountains, sea and islands of the tip of the Iveragh peninsula to uncover the stories that have animated them from earliest to present times. Coffee time!

This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Incidental music
Goddess of the Sea · Jimena Contreras.

Logo by Freya Sirr

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