Launch of 2 new Peppercanisters by Thomas Kinsella

The Dedalus Press, in assocation with Peppercanister books, is delighted to announce the publication of two eagerly-awaited new volumes in the Peppercanister series by Thomas Kinsella, Man of War and Belief and Unbelief. The two Peppercanisters will be launched at a special closing event of the 2007 Dublin Writers Festival, at which an impressive line-up of poets, writers and critics (including Richard Ryan, Colm Toibín, Michael Schmidt, Eavan Boland and Dennis O'Driscoll) will read from their favourite works by Kinsella, and at which poet John F. Deane, formerly publisher of the Dedalus Press, will launch the new publications.

This event, which is organised by Poetry Ireland, is the culmination of a series of recent events which also saw Kinsella conferred with the Freedom of Dublin City in a ceremony performed by Lord Mayor Vincent Jackson, and at which painter Louis le Brocquy was also similarly conferrred.

Further details of the event may be found here.

To order copies of Man of War and Belief and Unbelief (limited editions of 500 copies each), please visit the Dedalus Press website here. (Please note: publications will not be mailed out until after June 17th).

In a Poetry Programme special, Pat Boran talks to Thomas Kinsella about his life and work on two programmes, broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 on Saturday June 16 and Saturday June 23, at 7.00 pm. These, and other programmes in the series, may be found by visiting the Poetry Programme page on the RTÉ website here.

Galway launch of Among These Winters by Mary O'Donoghue

The Dedalus Press, in association with Charlie Byrne's bookshop, Galway, is pleased to announce the Galway launch of Mary O'Donoghue's new collection of poems, Among These Winters, on Friday 8th June @ 6.00 pm.

***

Mary O’Donoghue was born in 1975 and grew up in Co. Clare. Her first poetry collection Tulle was published in 2001, and her poems have appeared widely in Irish and international periodicals and anthologies, including The New Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2004). She has also collaborated with Louis de Paor on translations of his poetry. Her short stories have been published in The Dublin Review, The Recorder, AGNI and elsewhere. Her awards include Hennessy/Sunday Tribune New Irish Writer and a writer’s bursary from Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is an assistant professor of English at Babson College, Massachusetts, and she lives in Boston.

“Among These Winters opens with an epigraph from Rilke on the heartbreak of parting, and stays mindful of this theme... There are also poems that send you scurrying to the OED—only to be astonished by her gift for the perfect and surprising word. O’Donoghue takes a polymath’s delight in language that calls to mind Mahon, Muldoon and, especially, Auden, as she imaginatively claims the idioms of medicine, geology, myth, and science as her own—as in the chilling ‘Dauernarkose’ that uses mathematical terms to pity the “cure” of a schizophrenic woman. Yet a striking good humor suffuses the collection, and nowhere more so than in poems like ‘The Stylist’ and ‘Leading the Apes in Hell’, where she displays that distinctly Irish gift of setting out a comic proposition and letting it run its antic course.”
—James Silas Rogers, Editor, New Hibernia Review

L to R: Tadgh Foley, English Department, NUI Galway; poet Louis de Paor; Mary O'Donoghue; Vinnie Brown of Charlie Byrne's Bookshop.

Donegal launch of Collected Poems by Francis Harvey

There was a wonderful turnout on a wet and windy evening for the May 18th launch of Francis Harvey's Collected Poems in Donegal Town. Donegal Arts Officer Traolach O Fionnáin spoke warmly of Harvey's work and was equally warm in his welcoming of Dedalus to Donegal. The capacity crowd, and an excellent, relaxed reading by Harvey made for a wonderful night, despite the weather.

The Dedalus Press gratefully acknowledges the support of Donegal County Council Cultural Services in the organisation of what was a fitting celebration of the work of Francis Harvey and of the power and importance of poetry in general.

Dedalus Poets at Strokestown Int. Poetry Festival

A number of Dedalus poets read at the 2007 Strokestown International Poetry Festival, 04-06 May 2007, among them Pat Boran, Eva Bourke, Paddy Bushe and Gerry Murphy. (See here for details). Books by participating authors, and a wide selection of recent Dedalus titles, will be on sale at events.

Other forthcoming readings include Paul Perry and Gerard Smyth, presented by Poetry Upfront, at Trax Cafe & Wine Bar (Station Street, Balbriggan) on Thursday 10 May. Start time is 8pm and admission is free.

Launch of Complicated Pleasures by Billy Ramsell

The Dedalus Press is pleased to announce the launch of Cork poet Billy Ramsell's debut collection, Complicated Pleasures, at a reading in Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street, Cork on Wednesday May 8th, 2007, commencing at 8.00 p.m. Reading with Billy Ramsell will be Gerry Murphy whose End of Part One: New and Selected Poems, was published by Dedalus in October 2006 and is currently among the most popular of recent Dedalus Press titles.

Billy Ramsell was born in Cork in 1977 and educated at North Monastery and UCC, His poems have appeared widely in magazines and journals and he was shortlisted in 2005 for a Hennessy award. The poems in Complicated Pleasures exist on the border between the personal and the political, combining delicately lyrical meditations on love, art and memory with darker works that confront head-on the pressures and uncertainties of an urban globalised. Complicated Pleasures is a first collection of considerable daring and undeniable accomplishment.