Monday, January 29, 2007

Increase in Arts Council support for 2007

Excellent news this week, in that the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon has offered Dedalus a very significant increase on its 2006 grant, endorsing our many new developments and experiments during the year, and allowing us to continue to produce fine new work as well as to revive some of the most popular titles on our backlist.

With a new distribution deal for North America shortly to commence, and plans for a wider range or readings and events under way, we look forward to your continued interest in Dedalus Press books during the coming year, and hope you will occasionally drop by the Dedalus site for news and special offers.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

The Poetry Programme (RTÉ Radio 1) Saturdays @ 7.00 pm

The new Poetry Programme is now in full swing on RTÉ Radio 1 on Saturday evenings at 7.00 pm. (See link opposite). Replacing the long-running The Enchanted Way (some editons of which are still available in streaming and download formats on the RTÉ website), the new programme, as its name suggests, is somewhat wider in remit and possibility. As well as featuring regular one-to-one interviews with poets, Irish and international, discussing new work, the programme will also host debates on a wide range of topics from tips on how to get published, to poem plays, to the idea of the musician as poet. The first three programmes in the series have included items on using actors to popularise poetry (with Josephine Hart, an interview with the poet Tony Curtis (on the publication of his New and Selected Poems: The Well in the Rain), a panel discussion with Peter Sirr and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanaín on the shortlist for the 2006 TS Eliot Prize, and a panel discussion/review with Eva Bourke and Tom Conaty of Don Patterson's Orpheus, his version of Rainer Maria Rilke's faous sonnet sequence. Forthcoming programmes will look at the subjects of poetry as a form of protest, Valentines and love poetry in general, and the centenary of the birth of W.H. Auden.
Further information on the show, and an archive of previous episodes, can be found on the RTÉ website, here.

Launch of Clinging to the Myth by Pádraig J. Daly


Pádraig J Daly was born in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford in 1943 and is now working as an Augustinian priest in Dublin. He has published several collections of poetry, among them The Last Dreamers: New & Selected Poems (1999) and The Other Sea (2003), as well as his translations from the Italian of Edoardo Sanguineti, Libretto (1999) and Joy and Mourning (reissued 2007). In his new collection of poems, Clinging to the Myth, he refelects on grief and personal bereavement and uses the voices of 18th century Gaelic poetry to respond to the challenges of a post-Christian Ireland.
Clinging to the Myth is launched on Tuesday 13 February, 2007 at the Unitarian Church, St. Stephen's Green west, Dublin 2, commencing at 7.00 pm. Further details can be found on the author's page of the Dedalus Press website, here.

Launch of Bliain an Bhandé / Year of the Goddess by Gabriel Rosenstock



Thursday 01 February / Lá Fhéile Bhríde sees the launch of Gabriel Rosenstock's new collection of poems, and his first with the Dedalus Press. Bliain an Bhandé / Year of the Goddess, featuring poems in Irish with the author's own English-language translations, continues Rosenstock's exploration of the spiritual possibilities of poetry, forming a bridge between west and east in poems which draw on the Indian bhakti tradition of devotional poetry.
The launch of Bliain an Bhandé / Year of the Goddess takes place at the Unitarian Church, St. Stephen's Green west, Dublin 2, commencing at 6.30 pm. Further information on the book can be found on the author's page on the Dedalus website, here.