Saturday, March 16, 2024

Michael Farry ~ Book Launch!

Michael Farry ~ An Apology for Our Survival/Book Launch.


Michael Farry


Michael Farry and Rachel Coventry


Rachel Coventry, Michael Farry and Noreen Walshe



Michael Farry, Barbara Flood and Paddy Smith


Paddy Smith and his daughters.

Just a few photos from last night's launch of Michael Farry's fourth collection of poems.














 

Thursday, March 14, 2024

An Tobar ~ Poetry for Pleasure/ March 2024!

 An Tobar ~ Ardbraccan/Navan

Greetings  Poetry Friends,

Our next Poetry for Pleasure takes place on Tuesday 26th March at 7.30pm in An Tobar,Ardbraccan

The guiding theme is the late Eavan Boland.

But please remember any poem you wish to share is welcome. Some participants may wish to share a poem they have written. Great, please feel most welcome.  

Enclosed  is a brief  intoduction to Eavan Boland that Frances Rocks has kindly prepared for us.

Eavan Boland (1944-2020) was born in Dublin but raised in London.  She experienced anti-racism which gave her a keen sense of her identity. She was one of the most prominent voices in Irish poetry. Her experiences as a wife and mother of two children influenced her to recognize the beauty and significance of everyday living. She wrote plainly and eloquently about being a woman, mother and exile. Boland commented incisively on contemporary subjects and wrote intensely personal poems about history, womanhood and relationships. She taught at several colleges in America and was a professor of English at Stanford University, California.

'Poets are those who ransack their perishing mind and find pattern and form.' Boland

 'Poetry begins where language starts; in the shadows and accidents of one person's life.' Boland

'Memory, change, loss, the irrecoverable past – such are the shared conditions of humankind, with which Boland scrupulously engages.' Anne Stevenson, Poet (1933-2020)

  .Looking forward to our March meeting.

Slán go fóill

Jim
087 967 6728

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Book Launch ~ Michael Farry!

 Book Launch ~ Michael Farry!


Former editor of Boyne Berries and the winner of many prizes for his poetry Michael Farry will launch his latest collection of poems in the Jonathan Swift Cultural Centre in Trim this coming Friday the 15th at 7 pm with Rachel Coventry of Galway doing the honours. The admission is free.


Saturday, March 9, 2024

The Meath Writers' Circle ~ Trim Library!

 The Meath Writers' Circle ~ Trim Library!

Last Thursday night's meeting of the group attracted  perhaps twenty four in all to our get-together and it will be interesting to see how it develops over the coming months. Chaired by Ciaran with a free writing exercise on the fine line between love and hate there were a number of contributions which combined both. One of the prompts for our next meeting is 'Patience', which I focused in on as I don't have much and the other one escapes me at the moment. The next meeting of our group is on Thursday the 4th of April at 6 pm to 8.15 pm. On a final note I'd like to thank everyone at Trim Library for their assistance and support in accommodating us.  

Monday, March 4, 2024

The Meath Writers' Circle ~ March 2024!

 The Meath Writers' Circle ~ March 2024!

Just a reminder that the next meeting of the group will be in Trim Library on this Thursday night coming starting at 6.30 pm and new members are especially welcome. Hope to see you there. 

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath!

Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath!


The prompt for last night's poetry session in An Tobar was Sylvia Plath and this is the one I went for. Said to be inspired by a Mike (Myron) Lots who stood her up on a date, it carries a different emotive charge than some of her later work. Published in the Smith Review where she attended college in Massachusetts in 1951 and later published in the Mademoiselle, a New York magazine in 1953, it was not included in any of her subsequent collections but was published as an afterword in The Bell Jar. I read somewhere that it was one of her favourite poems. Written in a villanelle form it is a beautiful poem.
Now I'm subject to correction on all of the above because previously the only poem I'd be familiar with was 'Daddy'. This was loaded by 'Illneas' and with thanks so a visit to youtube for the notes and comments and other info is a must.

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

An Tobar ~ Poetry for Pleasure/ February Meeting!

 An Tobar ~ Poetry for Pleasure/ February Meeting.

Folks,

February is racing to its conclusion but before it does we have our Poetry for Pleasure on Tuesday 27th at 7.30pm in An Tobar, Ardbraccan.

The suggested guiding theme is Sylvia Plath.

Patricia has kindly given us a  snippet to whet our appetite to explore the poetry of this significant poet.

 Sylvia Plath was an American poet born in 1932 in Massachusetts who is now and has been for decades regarded as a major poet whose work challenges us artistically and psychologically. Her fame and recognition came after her tragic death in 1963 when her husband Ted Hughes discovered the Ariel poems. 

Philip Larkin said of her poems "They exist in a high pitched ecstasy, like nothing else in Literature".

She said herself, "when my sleeping pill wears off I am up at about five, in my study, writing like mad, the blood jet is poetry, there is no stopping it" 

Her brilliance won her a Fullbright Scholarship which took her to Cambridge and it was in England that she married Ted Hughes. Seamus Heaney, Robert Lowell, John Osborne and Philip Larkin and many more literary figures paid homage to Plath and recognize the moral and psychological depths in her work.

 Can I again underline that any poem you wish to share with the group is most welcome.

 Carol and others will update us on their research on a possible visit to the Francis Ledwidge Cottage Museum 

 Looking forward to our poetry session next Tuesday evening 

 Jim.

Tel: 087 967 6728.