Description
The best-selling 400 page anthology of Dublin poems and songs is the ideal guide to its famous streets broad and narrow.
“[A] map of the city’s imagination ” — Evening Herald
“A hugely valuable anthology, full of sustenance for the heart and soul.” — RTÉ TEN
If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song is a major (400-page) verse anthology from Dedalus Press in which 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 down the ages.
A virtual tour of the city and environs, If Ever You Go takes the reader on a journey through Dublin city streets, broad and narrow, featuring Dublin poems and songs both familiar and new, historical and contemporary, by writers whose work adds up to an intimate and revealing portrait of a place and its people. Contributors include poets already synonymous with the city — Swift, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Clarke and Kavanagh among them — as well as a host of others, including Kinsella, Heaney, Boland, Bolger and Meehan, who have made some part of it their own. (See complete list of contents below)
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.
“If Ever You Go is one of the best publishing ideas in decades and a particular delight for those whose souls, for better or worse, are rooted in the city and its past.”
— Dublin Review of Books
Special Collector’s Edition (limited to 50 copies only)
A Collector’s Edition of this If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song is also available. Casebound, on munken pure paper, thread sewn, with ribbons, Wibalin endpapers and binding, the edition is limited to 50 numbered copies only, signed by both editors. An ideal gift or collector’s copy, there are a small number still available.
The following is the complete list of poets and Dublin poems and songs included in the book:
1. LIFFEYSIDE
from The Mourning Muse of Thestylis — Lodowick Bryskett / 3
Liffeytown — Eavan Boland / 3
from Stella at Wood Park … — Jonathan Swift / 4
Belts — Rudyard Kipling / 5
Liffey Bridge — Oliver St John Gogarty / 7
Dublin — Louis MacNeice / 7
In the City — Rhoda Coghill / 9
Faoileán Drochmhúinte / Ill-mannered Seagull — Máirtín Ó Direáin / 10
Dickey and the Yeomen — Michael J Moran (Zozimus) / 11
Isolde’s Tower, Essex Quay — Moya Cannon / 12
Down by the Liffeyside — Peadar Kearney / 13
Wood Quay — Pádraig J Daly / 14
Liffeyside Bookbarrow — Michael Smith / 15
A Chalk Venus on Eden Quay — Daniel Tobin / 15
Liffey Bridge — Denis Devlin / 16
Ormond Quay — Tomas Venclova / 18
from The Return — John Francis O’Donnell / 19
Children — Pat Boran / 20
The Twang Man — Anonymous / 21
A Closing Scene — Gerard Smyth / 22
Dublin Jack of All Trades — Anonymous / 23
House on Usher’s Island — Gerard Smyth / 24
Aston Quay: January 2008 — Macdara Woods / 25
Haiku — Anatoly Kudryavitsky / 26
Ha’penny Bridge — Pat Boran / 26
Perversion at the Winding Stair Bookshop & Café — Alan Jude Moore / 27
Lannaigh Faoi Dhroichead Uí Chonaill /
Mullet Under O’Connell Bridge — Gabriel Rosenstock / 27
After Reading J. T. Gilbert’s ‘History of Dublin’ — Denis Florence MacCarthy / 29
New Liberty Hall — Austin Clarke / 29
On First Looking Onto the Samuel Beckett Bridge — Tony Curtis / 30
Liffey Swim — Jessica Traynor / 32
2. NORTHSIDE
Easter 1916 — William Butler Yeats / 35
Imperial Measure — Vona Groarke / 37
O’Connell Street — Francis Ledwidge / 39
Statue — Paddy Bushe / 40
Dream Song 321— John Berryman / 40
Fód an Imris: Ard Oifig an Phoist 1986 / Trouble Spot: General Post Office 1986 — Máire Mhac an tSaoi / 41
Nelson’s Pillar — Richard Murphy / 44
Post Colonial — Willa Murphy / 44
Dublin Honeymoon — Frank Ormsby / 46
Plane — Vona Groarke / 46
Sráid an Amhrais / Disillusion Street — Michael Davitt / 47
Dublin — Thomas McCarthy / 48
Dublin Spire — Dave Lordan / 48
The Spire (10 Years On) — Pat Boran / 50
William Butler Yeats, in Old Age, Meets Maud Gonne
MacBride in O’Connell Street — Evangeline Paterson / 51
The Volta — John O’Donnell / 52
The Uniform — Gerry McDonnell / 53
Searmanas na Feola / Rites of the Flesh — Biddy Jenkinson / 53
City Dweller — Christy Brown / 55
Love Letter to My Henry St. Dealer — Keith Payne / 56
On Hearing of the Death of Gerald Davis — Fred Johnston / 57
Flute-fixing in McNeill’s of Capel Street — Nessa O’Mahony / 58
Parnell Street — Michael O’Loughlin / 59
In North Great George’s Street — Seumas O’Sullivan / 61
At the Gate Theatre — Derek Mahon / 61
Municipal Gallery Revisited — William Butler Yeats / 62
Francis Bacon at the Hugh Lane Gallery — David Butler / 65
Matt Talbot, 1856–1925 — Dermot Bolger / 66
In Memory of Those Murdered in the Dublin Massacre, May 1974 — Paul Durcan / 67
from The Week-end of Dermot and Grace — Eugene R. Watters / 68
Remembrance Day, Sean McDermott St. — Hugh O’Donnell / 69
Dicey Riley — Anonymous / 69
Buying Winkles — Paula Meehan / 70
Dublin Town — Damien Dempsey / 71
Oíche / Night — Cathal Ó Searcaigh / 72
Nelson Street — Seumas O’Sullivan / 74
Charleville Mall Sestina — Michael Hartnett / 75
The Piper’s Club — Ulick O’Connor / 76
Summerhill Moon — Jessica Traynor / 77
Dublin Girl, Mountjoy Jail, 1984 — Dermot Bolger / 78
Condemned — James J McAuley / 79
Temple Street Children’s Hospital — Dermot Bolger / 80
Eccles Street, Bloomsday 1982 — Harry Clifton / 81
Daily Bread — Philip Casey / 83
North Brunswick Street Lullaby — John McAuliffe / 83
The Early Houses — Harry Clifton / 84
The Dead and the Undead of St Michan’s — John F Deane / 85
Smithfield Saturday — Nessa O’Mahony / 85
Lines Written on the Burying-Ground of Arbour Hill … — Robert Emmet / 86
The Parkgate Book of the Dead — Aidan Murphy / 88
Ode to the Phoenix Park — Karl Parkinson / 89
Epigram on the New Magazine Fort in Phoenix Park — Jonathan Swift / 90
Magazine Hill — Harry Clifton / 90
from At the Polo-Ground — Samuel Ferguson / 91
The Zoological Gardens — Anonymous / 93
Beacons at Bealtaine — Seamus Heaney / 94
Wellington Testimonial — Richard Murphy / 94
Making Love Outside Áras an Uachtaráin — Paul Durcan / 95
Daisy Chain — Noel Duffy / 96
Tilly — James Joyce / 97
1941 (North Strand) — Alan Jude Moore / 98
Elegy for Donal McCann — Betty Thompson / 98
Croke Park — Theo Dorgan / 99
Herself and Himself — Brendan Kennelly / 100
East Road, East Wall — Macdara Woods / 100
Fairview Park: 6 a.m. — Michael Hartnett / 104
Cycling to Marino — Mairéad Byrne / 105
Stardust Sequence — Dermot Bolger / 107
The Battle of Clontarf: Address of Brian to his Army — William Kenealy / 109
Dublin Bay — Eithne Strong / 109
Kiss — Maurice Scully / 110
from Lament for the Bull Island — Kevin Faller / 111
Touchdown — Pat Boran / 112
Drumcondra Bridge — Dermot Bolger / 113
1968 — Maurice Scully / 113
Cross Guns Bridge — Valentin Iremonger / 114
Leinster Street — Dermot Bolger / 115
The Botanic Gardens — Jean O’Brien / 116
Holotropic Botanicus —Dermot Bolger / 116
First Poem — Brian Lynch / 117
Glasnevin Cemetery — Michael O’Loughlin / 118
Elvis in Glasnevin — Brian Lynch / 120
Glasnevin North — Alan Moore / 120
Other People’s Grief — Dermot Bolger / 121
The Song of Dermot and the Earl — Anonymous / 122
Motorway Daffodils — Máiríde Woods / 122
Finglas, 1979 — Dermot Bolger / 123
Stony, Grey, Soiled — Colm Keegan / 124
The Smock Race at Finglas — James Ward / 125
My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis — Paula Meehan / 125
Fingal Driving Range — Dermot Bolger / 127
‘A Man is Only as Good’ — Pat Boran / 127
Grange Abbey, Donaghmede — Catherine Ann Cullen / 128
Station Road, Sutton — Pat Boran / 129
Moladh Bhinn Éadair / In Praise of Howth Head — Anonymous / 129
Ar Thrá Bhinn Éadair / On the Strand of Howth — Pádraig Pearse / 131
Beautiful Lofty Things — William Butler Yeats / 135
Seo Anois Linn / Here We Go Now — Liam Ó Muirthile / 135
Haute Couture — Katherine Duffy / 137
The Baily Lighthouse — Dermot Bolger / 138
Feltrim Hill — Patrick MacDonogh / 138
Vigil — Theo Dorgan / 139
High Tide at Malahide — Oliver St John Gogarty / 140
Hedgehog — Enda Coyle-Greene / 140
Place Names — Pat Boran / 142
You’ve been this way before — Enda Coyle-Greene / 143
3. SOUTHSIDE
Bewley’s coarse brown bread (unsliced) — Brendan Kennelly / 147
Bewley’s Oriental Café, Westmoreland Street — Paul Durcan / 148
Gerard Depardieu in Eustace Street — Betty Thompson / 149
Dublin, You’re a Bitch — John McNamee / 150
Hawkins Street — Enda Coyle-Greene / 151
Trinity New Library — Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin / 152
Visiting The Book of Kells in the Trinity College Library — Rosemary Canavan / 153
The Long Room Gallery — Julie O’Callaghan / 153
Molly Malone (Cockles and Mussels — James Yorkston / 154
Molly Malone — Paula Meehan / 155
To the Pen Shop — Thomas Kinsella / 156
Morning on Grafton Street — Micheal O’Siadhail / 158
Summer in Dublin — Liam Reilly / 159
Mother and Daughter in Bewley’s Café — Anne Haverty / 160
Grafton Street / Grafton Street — Pádraig Ó Snodaigh / 161
Dublin — Phil Lynott / 162
The List (A Letter to Phil Lynott) — Jordi Pujol Nadal / 163
A Neary’s Afternoon — James Liddy / 164
Going to the Gaiety — Sheila O’Hagan / 165
‘shiver in your tenement’ — Derek Mahon / 166
St Teresa’s—Clarendon Street — Ted McNulty / 167
Gulliver in Dublin — Gerald Mangan / 168
Dublin in July — Ben Howard / 170
A Photograph of Fade Street, Dublin, 1878 — Mark Granier / 170
The Beau Walk of St Stephen’s Green — Thomas Newburgh / 171
The Death in Dublin by Fire of Six Loreto Nuns — John McNamee / 172
At the Shelbourne — Derek Mahon / 173
Hopkins in Newman House — Sheila O’Hagan / 174
The Dolls Museum in Dublin — Eavan Boland / 175
Three Paintings of York Street — Paula Meehan / 177
Machines — Pat Boran / 179
The National Museum of Ireland — Sorley MacLean / 180
In a Dublin Museum — Sheila Wingfield / 182
Frost Moving — Gerard Fanning / 183
French Exam, Alliance Française — Gréagóir Ó Dúill / 183
The Natural History Museum — Padraig Rooney / 184
A Child’s Map of Dublin — Paula Meehan / 185
If Ever You Go to Dublin Town — Patrick Kavanagh / 187
Sketch of a Dubliner — John Sheahan / 189
Baggot Street Deserta — Thomas Kinsella / 190
Merrion Square: A Descriptive Poem — Maurice Craig / 193
The Washing of Feet — Pat Boran / 195
The National Gallery Restaurant — Paul Durcan / 196
Merrion House Sestina — Pat Boran / 196
Westland Row — Thomas Kinsella / 198
Holles Street — Mairéad Byrne / 198
from Home — Winifred M. Letts / 200
The Impact — Leeanne Quinn / 201
A Reason for Walking — Pat Boran / 202
From Mount Street Bridge — Mark Granier / 203
Waiting in the Eye and Ear Hospital on Christmas Eve — Stephen Kennedy / 203
Trees that Lead to You — Enda Wyley / 204
from The Undergraduate — Maurice Harmon / 205
Ely Place — Thomas Kinsella / 206
Herbert Street Revisited — John Montague / 208
Dublin, Dublin — John F Deane / 210
You never saw a bed-end in a Protestant fence — Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin / 210
The Huguenot Graveyard at the Heart of the City — Eavan Boland / 211
Camden St. — Tom Mathews / 213
Mrs. Katherine Dunne, Street Trader, Camden Street, Dublin, Died March 1983 — Leland Bardwell / 213
Construction — Trevor Joyce / 214
Meeting at the Chester Beatty — Catherine Ann Cullen / 215
Essex Street — Peter Sirr / 217
The Ring — Ted McNulty / 218
In The Brazen Head — Gerard Smyth / 219
The Messiah — John Ennis / 219
All That is Left — Gerard Smyth / 221
from Sonnets to James Clarence Mangan — David Wheatley / 222
Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces — Seamus Heaney / 223
Clearing a Space — Brendan Kennelly / 226
Dublin City (aka The Spanish Lady) — Anonymous / 227
A Son! A Son! — Harry Clifton / 229
Madly Singing in the City — Peter Sirr / 230
Eyrie, Christ Church Place — Clairr O’Connor / 231
The View from St Augustine Street — Gerard Smyth / 232
The Fall — Fergus Allen / 233
The Hot Bread of St Catherine’s — Gerard Smyth / 235
Scene with Lights: Thomas Street — Pádraig J. Daly / 235
Vicar Street Flats — Pádraig J. Daly / 236
Dick King — Thomas Kinsella / 236
Golden Lane — Gerard Smyth / 238
Long Lane — Michael Smith / 239
Notebook Shop — Enda Wyley / 239
Houses off Francis Street — Pádraig J. Daly / 240
The Old Jockey — FR Higgins / 241
The Song of Zozimus — Michael J Moran (Zozimus) / 241
Night Walk — Paula Meehan / 242
Walls: John’s Lane 1978 — Pádraig J Daly / 243
Street Games — Austin Clarke / 244
Peter Street — Peter Sirr / 244
Burial of an Irish President — Austin Clarke / 245
Sráid na gCaorach — Peter Sirr / 246
Clanbrassil Street — Joseph Woods / 247
Heytesbury Lane — John Boland / 248
A Carol for Clare — Gerard Fanning / 249
Pride of Pimlico — Arthur Griffith / 249
A Parable of Pimlico — Brendan Kennelly / 250
The Jewish Museum in Portobello — Seán Dunne / 251
On the Crest of the Bridge at Portobello — Pearse Hutchinson / 252
Enueg I — Samuel Beckett / 253
Madman. Twilight. Portobello Bridge — Tom Mathews / 255
Black Ball Gown — Eileen Casey / 255
Little Back Streets of Dublin — Liam Ryan / 257
A Writer’s Farewell — Francis Stuart / 258
Islandbridge — Gerard Smyth / 259
from Mnemosyne Lay in Dust — Austin Clarke / 260
The Hunt — Peter Sirr / 260
Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, Easter 1991 — Theo Dorgan / 262
Rehearsal for a Presidential Salute at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) … — Hugh O’Donnell / 263
Bully’s Acre — Enda Wyley / 264
Inchicore, Early Autumn, 1986 — Philip Casey / 265
from Inchicore Haiku —Michael Hartnett / 266
The House on Jamestown Road — Neil Donnelly / 267
38 Phoenix Street — Thomas Kinsella / 268
Paper Mill Heartland — Paul Murray / 270
Procession — Kevin Byrne / 270
Opening the Door — Robert Greacen / 272
Dart Journey — Paddy Glavin / 273
An Evening in Booterstown — Gerard Fanning / 274
Booterstown — Frank McGuinness / 274
He tells me I have a strange relationship — Ailbhe Darcy / 276
The Humours of Donnybrook Fair — Anonymous / 277
Dublin 4 — Seamus Heaney / 279
Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin — Patrick Kavanagh / 279
In Vavasour Square — Brian Lynch / 279
Marlborough Road — Enda Wyley / 280
Morehampton Road — Frank McGuinness / 282
Begin — Brendan Kennelly / 283
On Raglan Road — Patrick Kavanagh / 284
Raglan Lane — Brendan Kennelly / 285
Ringsend — Mark Granier / 286
Ringsend — Oliver St John Gogarty / 287
Haiku — Anatoly Kudryavitsky / 288
The Ringsend Ferry — James J McAuley / 288
Gas Light & Coke — Fergus Allen / 289
At the Irishtown Dump — John Ennis / 290
Scything Nettles in Churchyards — Francis Devine / 292
The Shellybanks — Rory Brennan / 293
The Waxies Dargle— Anonymous / 295
Sketch from the Great Bull Wall — Sebastian Barry / 296
from The End of the Modern World— Anthony Cronin / 297
Sandymount Now — Valentin Iremonger / 298
When the Dust Settles — Catherine Phil MacCarthy / 298
The Strand — Seamus Heaney / 299
Dumhach Thrá / Sandymount — Marcus Mac Conghail / 299
Doctors, Daughters — Mary O’Donnell / 300
The Stillorgan Road — Frank McGuinness / 301
Refusals — Pearse Hutchinson / 302
Shades of Ranelagh: 1984 — Macdara Woods / 303
47 Sandford Road — Peggy O’Brien / 304
Cinéma Vérité — Patrick Deeley / 306
The Leinster Road — John Boland / 307
A Short Walk — Peter Sirr / 308
Flatland — Dennis O’Driscoll / 309
‘One Night I’ — Tom Mathews / 310
An Ghrian i Ráth Maonais / The Sun in Rathmines — Michael Davitt / 310
Wet Morning, Clareville Road — Eamon Grennan / 311
The Dartry Dye Works — Fergus Allen / 314
Walking in Yellow Leaves — Hugh McFadden / 316
To the Oaks of Glencree — John Millington Synge / 317
Casimir Road — Alan Moore / 318
When I Think of You — Hugh McFadden / 320
Landmarks — Basil Payne / 320
Local Nightlight — Hugh McFadden / 321
Waking — Hugh Maxton / 321
Milltown Road — Derry Jeffares / 322
from Clonskeagh Haiku — Iggy McGovern / 323
Mo Thaibhse / My Ghost — Máirtín Ó Direáin / 324
Language Lessons in a Churchtown Chipper — Nessa O’Mahony / 325
Dublin Tramcars — Thomas McDonagh / 326
Transformations — George William Russell (‘AE’) / 327
Rathgar Pastoral — Patrick Deeley / 327
Midnight in Templeogue — Austin Clarke / 328
The Quaker Graveyard in Blackrock — Gerard Smyth / 329
Willow Park Winter — James McCabe / 329
One Who Was Not Invited to the Opening of the Joyce Tower Complains Bitterly — John Jordan / 331
Tai Chi at Sandycove — Gerald Dawe / 332
Haiku — Anatoly Kurdyavitsky / 332
Dip — Katie Donovan / 332
Deansgrange Cemetery — Jean O’Brien / 333
Dublin Roads — Padraic Colum / 334
The New Luas Bridge in Dundrum — Iggy McGovern / 337
The View from Dundrum — Iggy McGovern / 337
Radharc Ó Chában tSíle / The View from Cabinteely — Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill / 338
Bluebell — Patrick Deeley / 339
Thanksgiving — Katharine Tynan / 341
Clondalkin Concrete — Leland Bardwell / 341
Jesus of Clondalkin — Dermot Bolger / 342
In Memory of Veronica Guerin — Billy Ramsell / 343
Common Ground — Declan Collinge / 344
The Globe on Captain’s Road — Terri Murray / 345
Father and Son 1966 — Declan Collinge / 346
Funeral Games — Patrick Glavin / 347
Them’s Your Mammy’s Pills — Leland Bardwell / 348
Warriors — Eileen Casey / 350
The Bingo Bus — Leland Bardwell / 351
In the Spring of My Forty-First Year — Paul Perry / 353
