Books for Breakfast (Ireland)

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On today's show we discuss Fleur Adcock's Collected Poems, newly published by Bloodaxe Books, and we go to the launch of two more Bloodaxe books in Hodges Figgis, Kerry Hardie's We Go On and Aoife Lyall's The Day Before. We talk to both poets about their work and listen to them reading their poems. So put the kettle on and join us!

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 Wanderlust by Scott Buckley | https://soundcloud.com/scottbuckley
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com

Artwork by Freya Sirr

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We're back with a show dedicated to a book commemorating the life and achievement of a fondly remembered writer: Distant Summers: Remembering Philip Casey, Writer, Fabulist, Friend, edited by Eamonn Wall, Katie Donovan and Michael Considine, Arlen House, 2024. We feature contributions by Katie Donovan, Dermot Bolger and Michael O'Loughlin, and Michael Agustin reading his poem from the book.

We also cover the recently announced winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and readings of poems by the two Irish shortlisted poets, Jane Clarke and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin.

Jason Allen-Paisant,  this year's winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, full video here

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 Wanderlust by Scott Buckley | https://soundcloud.com/scottbuckley
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

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Not Books for Breakfast this time but a link to our poetry programme Stanza on RTE Radio 1. 

In conversation with fellow poets, Paula Meehan and Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Enda Wyley and Peter Sirr will discuss why poetry matters. We also visit Poetry Ireland to hear about their big plans for 2024, and hear from viral spoken word poet Mikey Cullen. Produced by Clockwork Productions, producer Fiona Kelly. Additional reporting by Taylor Mooney.

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We're not back in full podcast  mode quite yet but we will be back in the autumn, all going well, and in the meantime we visited poet James Harpur during his stint as Trinity College Writer Fellow and we thought it was time for a couple of summer poems. Have a listen and enjoy the summer!

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 "Timeless One" by Solas. 

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

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Enda has been recovering from a recent injury so podcast productivity has taken a hit, but we're back with our first episode for a while, which features a conversation about Basho with Andrew Fitzsimons, whose Basho: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Basho has recently been published by the University of California Press. And we've got the old toaster working again and revived the Toaster Challenge. Andrews's choice is Three Days by Thomas Bernhard.

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 "Timeless One" by Solas. 

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

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Some of the highlights of this year's Books for Breakfast, featuring contributions by Gabriel Byrne, Thomas McCarthy, Wendy Erskine, Colm Tóibín, Brian Leyden, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Leland Bardwell, Kevin Power, John McAuliffe, Kelly Michels, Mark Granier, Judith Mok and Mark Roper.

Enda and Peter also discuss some of the books on their desks at the moment: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by  David W. Anthony; Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year by Eleanor Parker; The Magpie and the Child by Catriona Clutterbuck; Stretto by David Wheatley; My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley; Crooked Love/Grá fiar by Louis de Paor; Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell and Earth’s Black Chute by Cian Ferriter.

Extract from Lá dá raibh/One Day courtesy of Rockfinch Ltd.

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 from Audio Library Plus.

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

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Welcome to a special  Books for Breakfast edition this morning to celebrate  Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's 80th birthday. We wish her all the best on this very special day. This  is
an edited audio version of the interview we did in 2020 in MoLi to celebrate the publication of her Collected Poems. Listen and enjoy!

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.

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

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Today we talk to Liam Carson, Director of annual Irish language festival Imram, about this year's programme. And we interview Mark Roper about his latest collection of poems, Beyond Stillness, of which Martina Evans wrote in the Irish Times:

Roper has an unerring sense of the gulfs between the miracle and damnation, life’s beginning and its end:

As I dragged the dead hare
from the road, a crack of bone.
Those marvellous feet, mishandled.
Its shadow waits on the moon
but the hare is nailed to earth.

(The Hare)

 Mark will be reading from Beyond Stillness at 3.00 pm on Sunday 27 November in Books Upstairs, D’Olier Street, Dublin, and in The Molly Keane House, Dysert, Ardmore  on Thursday 8 December, time to be confirmed. 

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On todays’s show we talk to Judith Mok, whose memoir The State of Dark has just been published by Lilliput. Judith Mok was born in the Netherlands, to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. She trained as a classical singer and travelled the world performing as a soloist, and has also  fiction and poetry. For the last twenty years she has been based in Ireland, where she works as a voice coach with classical singers and  international pop stars.

The State of Dark is a memoir and detective story. Like many children of Holocaust survivors, she was raised with the emotional trauma of having no other family members, while her parents tried to rebuild their lives in postwar Europe. Despite the constant and occasionally intrusive presence of the past – Anne Frank’s father Otto makes an emotional visit to her father to hand over some letters – she had little concrete information about the hundreds of members of her family who died. All the same, the Holocaust and its consequences continued to haunt her life.
Some praise received by The State of Dark:

‘The State of Dark is a privilege to read. With luminous prose, Judith Mok shines a light into the darkness of her family’s past. It is an extraordinary feat of storytelling to be able to write about inconceivable tragedies with such warmth and humanity.’ LOUISE NEALON
‘Possibly the most powerful book to be published in Ireland this year … unforgettable’ DERMOT BOLGER, SUNDAY BUSINESS POST

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.

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

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Does love poetry still pack a punch? Do new anthologies of love poetry have anything to say about the kind of world we live in? Join us on today’s show to hear some answers as we discuss Romance Options: Love Poems for Today, just out from Dedalus Press. We’ll be talking to editors Joseph Woods and Leanne Quinn, and we’ll be listening to poems read by contributors Mark Granier, Catherine Ann Cullen, Mark Roper, Kelly Michels, Martina Dalton, Philip Davison, Seán Lysaght, Grace Wilentz,  Joseph Woods and Enda Wyley.

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.

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

Support the show