By Eugene O'Connell,

By Pat Boran

The Deep Heart’s Core

EDITED by Eugene O’Connell and Pat Boran

FOREWORD by Bernard O’Donoghue

In The Deep Heart’s Core some 100 Irish poets accept the invitation to revisit a favourite, key or touchstone poem of their own, and offer a short commentary on same — as they might at a live event.  The result is both an ideal introduction to contemporary Irish poetry for the general reader and a handbook for the aspiring practitioner or student.

“The book contains an eclectically democratic mix of familiar and unfamiliar voices. If you want to discover a raft of new Irish poets and a sense of what inspires them, this anthology is a unique read, crammed with revelations.”
—Dermot Bolger, SUNDAY BUSINESS POST

 

 

 

 

Description

In The Deep Heart’s Core some 100 Irish poets accept the invitation to revisit a favourite, key or touchstone poem of their own, and offer a short commentary on same — as they might at a live event.

The result is an illuminating, thought-provoking and wholly engaging volume, a unique anthology as selected, and introduced, by the poets themselves, and a rare glimpse into the thinking, feeling and craft behind the finished poems.

The Deep Heart’s Core is both an ideal introduction to contemporary Irish poetry for the general reader and a handbook for the aspiring practitioner or student.

The Deep Heart’s Core — whose subtitle is Irish Poets Revisit A Touchstone Poem — is a work of unbounded riches, and the reader cannot help but be engaged by the wonderful play of poem against prose. There is the sense of a poem bedded down in some other era, the poet as the survivor of the incident who walked away, to find rueful, or blissful, or conflicted memories in the poem’s afterlife, as he,or she, exhumes again for the purposes of the anthology … [A]n essential collection for lovers of contemporary Irish poetry.
— RTÉ TEN


 

THE DEEP HEART’S CORE: LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Graham Allen: ‘Military Hill’ – Tara Bergin: ‘This Is Yarrow’ – 
Eavan Boland: ‘That The Science Of Cartography Is Limited’ – Dermot Bolger: ‘While We Sleep’ – Pat Boran: ‘Waving’ – Eva Bourke: ‘Evening Near Letterfrack’ – Heather Brett: ‘Bankrupt’ – Paddy Bushe: ‘After Love’ – Rosemary Canavan: ‘Crab Apples’ – Moya Cannon: ‘Chauvet’ – Ciaran Carson: ‘Turn Again’ – Paul Casey: ‘Exile’ – Philip Casey: ‘Hamburg Woman’s Song’ – Sarah Clancy: ‘Homecoming Queen’ – Michael Coady: ‘Assembling The Parts’ – Enda Coyle-Greene: ‘Metathesis’ – Tony Curtis: ‘Bench’ – Pádraig J. Daly: ‘Complaint’ – Kathy D’Arcy: ‘Probable Misuse Of Shamanism’ – Michael Davitt: ‘Déirc’ / ‘Alms’ – Gerald Dawe: ‘The Water Table’ – John F. Deane: ‘The Poem of the Goldfinch’ – Mary Dorcey: ‘Trying on for Size’ – Theo Dorgan: ‘On a Day Far From Now’ – Cal Doyle: ‘Sirens’ – Martina Evans: ‘The Day My Cat Spoke to Me’ – 
John FitzGerald: ‘The Collectors’ – Gabriel Fitzmaurice: ‘Dad’ – Anne-Marie Fyfe: ‘The Red Aeroplane’ – Matthew Geden: ‘Photosynthesis’ – Rody Gorman: ‘Imirce’ / ‘Bodytransfermigration’ – Mark Granier: ‘Grip Stick’ – Vona Groarke: from ‘Or to Come’ – Kerry Hardie: ‘Life Gone Away is Called Death’ – Maurice Harmon: from ‘The Doll with Two Backs’ – James Harpur: ‘The White Silhouette’ – Michael Hartnett: ‘That Actor Kiss’ – Eleanor Hooker: ‘Nightmare’ – Breda Joy: ‘November Morning’ – Brendan Kennelly: from ‘Antigone’ – Patrick Kehoe: ‘The Nearness of Blue’ – Helen Kidd: ‘Sunspill’ – Noel King: ‘Black and Tan’ – Thomas Kinsella: ‘Marcus Aurelius’ – Jessie Lendennie: ‘Quay Street, Galway’ – John Liddy: ‘Scarecrow’ – Alice Lyons: ‘Arab Map of the World With the South at the Top’ – Aifric MacAodha: ‘Gabháil Syrinx’ / ‘The Taking of Syrinx’ – Jennifer Matthews: ‘Work Out’ – John McAuliffe: ‘Today’s Imperative’ – Joan McBreen: ‘My Father’ – Thomas McCarthy: ‘The Garden of Sempervirens’ – Philip McDonagh: ‘Water is Best’ – Afric McGlinchey: ‘Do not lie to a lover’ – Iggy McGovern: ‘Knight Errant’ – Medbh McGuckian: ‘Aunts’ – John Mee: ‘Travel Light’ – Paula Meehan: ‘The Moons’ – John Moriarty: ‘Faust’ – Aidan Murphy: ‘Touching Parallels’ – Gerry Murphy: ‘Poem in One Breath’ – Madelaine Nerson Mac Namara: ‘Atlas’ – Caitríona Ní Chléirchín: ‘Feiliceán bán’ / ‘White butterfly’ – Nuala Ní Chonchúir: ‘Tatú’ / ‘Tattoo’ – Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin: ‘The Copious Dark’ – Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh: ‘Deireadh na Feide’ / ‘Last Blast’ – Áine Ní Ghlinn: ‘Tú Féin is Mé Féin’ / ‘Yourself and Myself’ – Doireann Ní Ghríofa: ‘From Richmond Hill’ – Mary Noonan: ‘The Moths’ – Julie O’Callaghan: from ‘Edible Anecdotes’ – Eugene O’Connell: ‘Doubting Thomas’ – John O’Donnell: ‘The Shipping Forecast’ – Mary O’Donnell: ‘The World is Mine’ – Bernard O’Donoghue: ‘The Iron Age Boat at Caumatruish’ – 
Liz O’Donoghue: ‘Suspended Animation’ – 
Mary O’Donoghue: ‘My Daughter in Winter Costume’ – Sheila O’Hagan: ‘September the Fourth’ – Nessa O’Mahony: ‘Lament for a Shy Man’ – Mary O’Malley: ‘The Gulls at Fastnet’ – Leanne O’Sullivan: ‘The Station Mass’ – Karl Parkinson: ‘A Love Letter to Reinaldo Arenas’ – Paul Perry: ‘In the Spring of My Forty-First Year’ – Billy Ramsell: ‘Complicated Pleasures’ – Gerard Reidy: ‘Slievemore Deserted Village’ – Maurice Riordan: ‘Badb’ – Mark Roper: ‘Firelight’ – Gabriel Rosenstock: ‘Ophelia an Phiarsaigh’ / ‘Pearse’s Ophelia’ – Colm Scully: ‘What News, Centurions?’ – John W. Sexton: ‘Sixfaces and the Woman of Nothing’ – Eileen Sheehan: ‘My Father Long Dead’ – Peter Sirr: ‘After a Day in the History of the City’ – Gerard Smyth: ‘Taken’ – Matthew Sweeney: ‘I Don’t Want to Get Old’ – Richard Tillinghast: ‘And And And’ –  Jessica Traynor: ‘Scene from a Poor Town’ – John Wakeman: ‘The Head of Orpheus’ – Eamonn Wall: ‘Four Stern Faces/South Dakota’ – William Wall: ‘Alter Ego Quasimodo’ – Grace Wells: ‘Pioneer’ – Sandra Ann Winters: ‘Death of Alaska’ – Joseph Woods: ‘Sailing to Hokkaido’ – Macdara Woods: ‘Fire and Snow and Carnevale’ – Vincent Woods: ‘Homeric Laughter’ – Enda Wyley: ‘Magpie’

 

 

Additional information

Choose Edition

,

Product Detail

  • ISBN: : 9781910251188 PB / 9781910251195 HB
  • Size: : 140 x 216 mm
  • Pages: : 320
  • Published: : February 2017

About The Author

Author

Eugene O'Connell was born near Kiskeam in north-west Cork in 1951. A primary school teacher by profession, he taught for all of his working life in St. Patrick’s Boys School, Gardiner’s Hill in Cork City where he now lives. He has published two books of poetry, One Clear Call (Bradshaw Books, 2003) and Diviner (Three Spires Press, 2009). His translations from the Latvian of Guntar Godins, entitled Flying Blind, and from the Hungarian of Lazlo Lator, The Belling (a collaboration with three other poets), were published by Southword Editions as part of the Cork European City of Culture Translation Series. He was invited to read with the Munster Literature Centre delegation to the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010 and by Culture Ireland to celebrate ‘Imagine Ireland’, a Year of Irish Arts and Culture, in the United States in 2011. A founding editor of the Cork Literary Review, Eugene O'Connell contributes reviews and articles to a number of publications.

Author

PAT BORAN is an Irish poet, editor and film maker. He was born in 1963 in Portlaoise, in the Irish midlands, and has long since lived in Dublin. One of the best known Irish poets of his generation, he was Writer-in-Residence with Dublin City Libraries, Dublin City University and the Western Education and Library Board in Fermanagh. He is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry and prose, most recently Then Again (Dedalus Press, 2019) and Waveforms: Bull Island Haiku (Orange Crate Books, 2016) with photographs by the author. The Statues of Emo Court (2021), Building the Ark (2022) and On a wave of Light (2022) are single-poem volumes, with photographs by the author. A Man Is Only As Good: A Pocket Selected Poems was published in 2017 by Orange Crate Books. Editions of his poetry have been published in Italian, Hungarian, Macedonian and Portuguese, with further works in progress. Pat Boran's non-fiction includes the popular writers' handbook The Portable Creative Writing Workshop (various editions) and A Short History of Dublin (Mercier Press). His humorous memoir The Invisible Prison: Scenes from an Irish Childhood, was published by Dedalus Press in 2009 and published in Italian as Un'Infanzia Irlandese in 2019 by Edizioni Kolibris. A former editor of Poetry Ireland Review and a former presenter of The Poetry Programme and The Enchanted Way on RTÉ Radio 1, Pat Boran has edited numerous anthologies of Irish poetry, among them Wingspan: A Dedalus Sampler (2006), Flowing, Still: Irish Poets on Irish Poetry (2009), The Bee-Loud Glade (2009), Shine On: Irish writers supporting those affected by mental ill health (2011), the 2014 Dublin One City, One Book choice If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song (with co-editor Gerard Smyth) and, with co-editor Eugene O'Connell, The Deep Heart's Core: Irish Poets Revisit a Touchstone Poem (2017). During lockdown in Spring 2020 he edited the popular anthology, The Word Ark: A Pocket Book of Animal Poems, illustrated by Sicilian artist Gaetano Tranchino. Since 2020 he has made more than a dozen short poetry films which have shown at film and literary festivals all over the world. Pat Boran’s distinctions include The Patrick Kavanagh Award and the US-based Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Poetry Award. He is a member of Aosdána, the Irish affiliation of creative artists. (See also www.patboran.com)