Friday, August 30, 2013

If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song

IF EVER YOU GO: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song is a major verse anthology from Dedalus Press, due in Spring 2014.

Editors Pat Boran and Gerard Smyth present a unique invitation to explore, street by street, one of the world's most famous literary cities through the poems and songs it has inspired in both English and Irish, by contemporary as well as historical writers.

A virtual tour of the city and environs, If Ever You Go features writing familiar and new by writers whose work adds up to a unique and intimate portrait. Contributors include poets already synonymous with the city — Swift, Yeats, Joyce, Clarke, Kavanagh, Kinsella, Boland, Bolger and Meehan among them — as well as a host of others who have made some part of it their own, including Máirtín Ó Direáin, Leland Bardwell, Eavan Boland, Derek Mahon, Michael Hartnett, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Patrick Deeley, Macdara Woods, Enda Wyley, Jessica Traynor, Ailbhe Darcy and many many more.

Street singers and balladeers rub shoulders with haiku and performance poets in an anthology that has its heart set on the very streets we live and work and play on. Groundbreaking in its reach, celebratory in its outlook, If Ever You Go is a record of the connections and epiphanies, the missed chances and last buses that knit all of the streets outside our doors into a map of a city where poetry truly matters.

Stand by for further news closer to publication.

POETRY MATTERS: SPREAD THE WORD

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013), RIP


It is with great sadness that we learn this morning of the death of Seamus Heaney, a poet of immense power and achievement, and earned authority. A great advocate of poetry, Seamus was also a great friend to poets, publishers and of course readers everywhere  who felt they knew him, and knew his world, through the precision of his writing and the keenness of his vision.

If ever a poet could be said to have recognised the importance of keeping poetry at the heart of our conversation with ourselves it was Seamus. Certainly any time we had any reason to contact him, looking for help or advice, he was beyond generous and always encouraging.

His profound contribution to writing in Ireland, and on a world stage, has been unmatched in our time, and leaves us all with an enormous sense of loss, as if we were suddenly in a dark place and seeing things, which we had taken for granted, were now the greatest and most elusive miracle.

"And yes, my friend, we too walked through a valley.
Once. In darkness. With all the streetlamps off."
– xxxvi, 2 Settings, Squarings, Seeing Things (1991)

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Dedalus 'New and Selected' poetry titles now on Kindle

A number of Dedalus Press New and Selected poetry titles are now available for the first time on Amazon's Kindle platform. 

They include, Even So: New and Selected Poems by Mark Roper; To Ring in Silence: New and Selected Poems by Paddy Bushe and Groundswell: New and Selected Poems by Patrick Deeley. Also included in the latest ebook releases is Leland Bardwell's seminal short story collection, Different Kinds of Love, reissued last year to considerable acclaim.

More titles to follow. And don't forget that our groundbreaking ebook anthology Airborne: Poetry from Ireland is available on Apple's iBooks platform and features selected texts in audio format read by their authors as well as an extensive overview of the work of the Dedalus Press.

Spread the word!

The Portable Creative Writing Workshop now on Kindle

Pat Boran's popular writers' handbook 'The Portable Creative Writing Workshop', in print since 1999, is now updated and available for the first time on Amazon Kindle. 


"How do writers write? What do they do when they're stuck for ideas? Or how do they take those still vague ideas to the next level, maybe even all the way to publication? Whether you belong to a writing group running low on steam, or are struggling on your own and looking for some helpful direction, this book - now in its fifth reprinting and updated for this new edition - offers all the practical assistance you'll ever need. Covering everything from ideas for generating raw material to form and technique in poetry and prose, prize-winning poet and writer Pat Boran (who has conducted hundreds of writing workshops over the years) takes a hands-on approach to the creative writing process, concluding with a new section for those considering their own first steps towards publication. Accessible, enjoyable and stimulating, The Portable Creative Writing Workshop is an ideal starting point (and travel companion) for anyone setting out on the writer's journey."

As well as this new Kindle edition, an updated print edition is also available from 04 September 2013. See here.

Friday, August 16, 2013

W.H. Auden's 'Humpty Dumpty' by Tom Mathews

W.H. Auden’s ‘Humpty Dumpty’
Tom Mathews


Smash all the timers, let the sands run out,
Prevent the concert in the last redoubt.
Cancel the papers, put the Rolls up on blocks,
Replace the king’s men and his horses in their box.

Print the announcement in the Times with black edges,
Bid the herd cease its sighing in the sedges,
Strip down each blossom from the apple bough;
Cause the wall to be dismantled, he will not need it now.

He was my prose, my verse, my lines, my words.
He was my rose tree full of singing birds.
He was my tortoise in his jewelled shell.
I thought he’d sit on walls forever; but he fell.

Melt all the icecaps, suck the oceans dry.
Burn every copy of ‘The Egg and I’;
Uncover your head and cower in the freezing rain.
For nobody now can put him back together again.

***

‘Other poets are witty, disappointed, pithy, heart-broken, indignant, erudite, sarcastic and witty (again), but only Tom Mathews is all of these in his own winning Tom Mathews way. His readers – me for one – are lucky to have him.’
— Billy Collins

- See more at http://dedaluspress.com/p/no_return_game

Saturday, August 03, 2013

Two of five shortlisted titles for Irish Times Poetry Now Award from Dedalus Press

Two of the five shortlisted titles for the 2013 Irish Times Poetry Now Award are published by Dedalus, and we're delighted at the recognition received by these fine collections, the only Irish-published books to make the shortlist.

Catherine Phil MacCarthy’s The Invisible Threshold is her first title from Dedalus, while Mark Roper’s A Gather of Shadow follows on from Even So, his New and Selected Poems published by Dedalus in 2008. Excerpts from both of the books can be found on the Dedalus Press website here.

The other shortlisted titles are Harry Clifton's The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass, which is published by Bloodaxe Books,  James Harpur’s Angels and Harvesters and the late Dennis O’Driscoll’s Dear Life, both from Anvil Press.

The winner, which receive an award of €2,500, will be announced on September 7th at the Mountains to Sea DLR book festival (see www.mountainstosea.ie).