Dedalus Press - Theo Dorgan

Photo © Paula Meehan

THEO DORGAN is a poet, prose writer, editor, scriptwriter, translator and sailor. His other books include the long poem Sappho’s Daughter, his prose account of a transatlantic voyage under sail Sailing for Home, praised by Doris Lessing as “a book for everyone”, and, in 2007, A Book of Uncommon Prayer, which he compiled and edited. He is the editor of Irish Poetry Since Kavanagh, and co-editor of Leabhar Mór na hÉireann / The Great Book of Ireland, An Leabhar Mór / The Great Book of Gaelic, the anthology Watching the River Flow and the acclaimed collection of historical essays Revising the Rising. His translations of the Slovenian poet Barbara Korun (in collaboration with the poet and Ana Jelnikar), were published as Songs of Earth and Light. He translates from the Irish and from the French and his own work has appeared in Italian and Spanish editions. He is a member of Aosdána.

“I liken Theo Dorgan to a latter-day Aimhírgín, conjuring up the realities of existence out of the mists of the unconscious”
—Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

“The blend of street-warrior and muse poet is extraordinarily appealing… His is an Irish urban voice which can reach far into Russia as well as into the enchanted garden of Sufi love”
—John Montague

DORGAN, THEO
Greek
Feb 2009, 5.5" x 8.5", 80 pp

Theo Dorgan’s Greek is a vivid, sensual, technically brilliant new collection which transports the reader through time and space, history and myth, love and death. The Greek Gods and Goddesses walk again, as real as we are, in the islands of 21st century Greece in a poetry which is singingly alive to the pleasures of being here now. This is the language of ‘undying’. Writing from “the childhood of the world” in Greece, Dorgan finds his identity as an islander, as a lover and as a poet made new again, with increased authority and a deep understanding of the power and alchemy of myth; sharing with us his relish of “the great slant freedom of our craft”. He demonstrates also a real gift for the short lyric poem in the middle section, ‘Islands’, each poem here being utterly of its brief moment as “the stars come out on the life that I call mine”.—Carol Ann Duffy

ISBN 978 1 906614 17 1
€11.99 Paperback

Books mailed out in week of publication (02 Feb 2010)

DORGAN, THEO
What This Earth Cost Us
2008, 5.5" x 8.5", 170 pp

Theo Dorgan's first two collections of poems, The Ordinary House of Love and Rosa Mundi have long been out of print. This book gathers in the poems from those earlier books in a single volume and brings them to a wider audience.

No contemporary British writer could risk, as Dorgan does in 'A Charm on the Night of Your Birthday', "I light the sky above our bed for you/ with seven stars of gold, ploughing/ the deep for you—" though many might give their writing hand for the debunking wit with which he continues: "and that's not so hard/ when you are the sea". Such fluency between registers, as between worlds, is one of the things we most want from poetry, and this book delivers it throughout.
—Fiona Sampson, The Irish Times

ISBN 978 1 904556 93 0
Price: €14.00 Paperback

ISBN 978 1 904556 94 7
Price: €20.00 Hardback