Continuing the Dublin Writers Festival celebration of Gallery's 40th anniversary we're happy to offer
a limited number of
signed copies of the following Gallery books at their normal list price plus P&P. Gerald Dawe - Points West HB Alan Gillis - Somebody Somewhere PB Dermot Healy - What the Hammer PB, The Reed Bed PB Peter Fallon - The Company of Horses PB & HB, News of the World PB and Eye to Eye PB Vona Groarke - Lament for Art O'Leary PB and Juniper Street PB Seán Lysaght - Venetian Epigrams HB If interested please email us your order stating which title(s) you would like.
The Gallery Press 40th Anniversary at The Abbey Theatre 6 June 2010
Pictured at the 2010 Cúirt International Festival of Literature
celebrating the 40th birthday of The Gallery Press, were
(L-R) Cormac Kinsella, Tom French, Peter Fallon, Peter Sirr, Thomas Kilroy, (Front) Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Marina Carr
Arts Tonight RTE
Photograph by Pádraig Ó Flannabhra
Pictured at a special recording of RTE's Arts Tonight marking the 40th birthday of The Gallery Press, were (L-R:) Michael Coady, Peter Fallon, Vincent Woods, Peter Sirr, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Gerald Dawe, Vona Groarke, Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian and Jim Nolan.
Gallery Books on display at
Hodges Figgis, Dawson Street, Dublin
March - April 2010
Forthcoming Titles
Here Comes the Night
Here Comes the Night, Alan Gillis’s third collection, broadens and deepens the range of Hawks and Doves, hailed by Peter McDonald as ‘a decisive volume in the developing story of poetry from Northern Ireland, full of independence, imaginative strength, and a confidence that is fully justified’.
‘Go on and Google yourself’, he writes in a book that is uncommonly alert, alive and attuned to the current moment. Many of the protagonists in his poems waver, suspended between states of mind on the streets of Belfast and Basra (and a dream there of leave when ‘we’ll get hammered on Remembrance Day’). That suspense permeates his wild extended narratives that expose a phantasmagorical vision which ranges ‘From an ASBO to Asda’,taking in city bankers and inept gangsters along the way.
Alan Gillis’s epicurean delight in language and adventurous formal dexterity create a world that embraces the graffiti of industrial dereliction and the grace of a father’s love. Here Comes the Night is sometimes comic, sometimes menacing and always dynamic. Intent on craic though sensitive to the cracks in society and in the self, it expresses a contemporary culture and confirms that Alan Gillis, as he constructs a spectacular body of work, is a potent force.
They know
where they are going.
The weather is right.
What more could you ask for?
Dermot Healy’s fourth collection presents itself as a book-length poem that charts the annual migrations of thousands of barnacle geese between their breeding grounds in Greenland and their winter quarters on an island beside his home. Section titles suggest stations on their route: ‘The Leavings’, ‘The Arrowhead’ and ‘The Wild Goose Chase’. From renewed joy ‘as they come — from gaggle to skein — in beautiful stitches / along a thread’ the book’s formal pattern displays a new skill as it reflects and records ‘the story of two homes’ and the shapes and sounds of their marvellous routines.
But A Fool’s Errand is also a study of fate. Framed by the funerals of friends, the poem yields grave lessons through characteristic epiphanies, scintillating poetry, and the music played by the ‘orchestra of memory’.
London. Hammersmith. The Sisters of Calvary Nursing Home. There’s Lily Thompson, a feisty Irish widow hiding her secret with hard-earned optimism; a grumpy new arrival, Jack, a celebrated actor who has suffered a crippling accident; and Dave, their effervescent aide, with his passion for Arsenal and his ‘Maltese Falcon’, Enzo.
Jim Nolan deftly weaves the strands of their stories in an enchanting new play that culminates in the minor ‘miracle of Brighton’. Subservient characters — Jack’s faithful, younger girlfriend; Dave’s mercurial, temperamental boyfriend; and Lily’s irrepressible gentleman friend — are drawn in such fine detail we are surprised that only three heroes actually appear on stage in Jim Nolan’s touching, winsome offering.
Despite its grave and mortal undercurrents Brighton shuns all traces of sentimentality. It is a triumph of life-affirming and delightful drama.
‘Carson is a poet of sustained authority and resourcefulness, arguably the best writing in English to have emerged in the past twenty-five years.’ — Michael Hinds, The Irish Times
A mere nine months since the publication of On the Night Watch (and that book appeared within a year of his acclaimed For All We Know and Collected Poems), Until Before After accumulates as an intriguing meditation on the passage of time and the persistence of love. Miraculously, this ever-shapeshifting author distils form to a new austerity while comprehending the ‘imponderable / toll time // takes’. Acts of recreation and creation, of forgetting and remembering, fathom ‘the mine-shaft // of until’ and relate how the present moment is constantly threatened — and, by definition, defeated.
‘Otherwise / is where we are,’ he writes, following a series of heart-rending hospital scenes, before ‘both took that step / over a threshold’ in an instance of recovery and return, a haunting presence and continuing present, that prevails in a shared intimacy of feeling and the single notes that become a music that is made and played together.
Derek Mahon’s rich new collection turns its wide-angled lens on a ‘dozy seaside town’ in County Cork, four fellow Ulster poets, a bicycle shop in Delhi and the volcanic origins of the Canary Islands, against the background of a ‘cascading world economy’. Alive to the current climate, it also revisits Chinese poetry of the T’ang era and explores that of modern India in the work of the fictitious Hindi poet Gopal Singh. This is the work of a contemporary great, one who dreams that the world be re-enchanted, so that we look to the still living whole
to heal the heart and cure the soul. Published: 26 March 2010 Order your copy here
Christ Deliver Us!
Christ, Deliver Us, inspired by Spring Awakening (published in 1891 and first performed in 1906) transposes Frank Wedekind’s notorious ‘children’s tragedy’ from fin-de-siècle Germany to the equally repressive atmosphere of Ireland immediately after World War II.
In and around a Catholic Diocesan College and an Industrial School for ‘difficult’ boys Thomas Kilroy explores and exposes the uncertainties and frustrations of sexual blossoming, the pressures exerted by parents and teachers – in particular ordained teachers – who forfeit authority for power with its legacy of systematic bullying. As its characters respond to ‘whispers of hope and desires’ and an unquenchable wish to be free, this scathing drama, while hinting at the redeeming possibilities of love, asserts the extortionate price put on childhood by both Church and State.
Like his friend Brian Friel, Thomas Kilroy has been a keystone of Irish theatre for more than half-a-century. He is also one of its most inventive, influential and valued artists. Published on 16 February 2010 to coincide with its World Première at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Order your copy here
Special Editions
A Man's World — Brian Friel
Three stories, restored to print after almost half a century, proffer insights to another Ireland. ‘Mr Sing My Heart’s Delight’ introduces exotic colour to a Donegal outpost, ‘My Father and the Sergeant’ penetrates the relationship between a father and son, while the title story contains a blueprint of the author’s acclaimed Dancing at Lughnasa. They are enhanced by the subtle art of one of Ireland’s finest painters.
This handsome edition features full colour reproductions of paintings by Basil Blackshaw specially created in response to this work. 400 copies are numbered and signed by the author. 350 copies only are for sale. Hardbound in linen with blind-embossed title and in a Pergamenata wraparound.
A Man’s World is the fifth title in this greatly admired series. The Riverbank Field by Seamus Heaney (and Martin Gale) and Conversation in the Mountains by John Banville (and Donald Teskey) are out of print. A limited number of copies of Somewhere theWave by Derek Mahon (and Bernadette Kiely) and Wayside Shrines by Paul Muldoon (and Keith Wilson) are still available.
A Man’s World is a unique opportunity to secure a signed first edition by one of the world’s great writers. This will be a collectors’ item.
Wayside Shrinesby Paul Muldoon
with paintings and drawings by Keith Wilson
Two new extended poems by one of the most exciting writers at work, enhanced by the understated and evocative art of one of Ireland’s finest young painters. This handsome edition features pencil drawings and full colour reproductions of paintings by Keith Wilson specially created in response to this work.400 copies are numbered and signed by the author. 350 copies only are for sale. Printed on Rives Artist and hardbound in linen with blind embossed title and in a Pergamenata wraparound. Wayside Shrines is the fourth title in this greatly admired series. The Riverbank Field by Seamus Heaney (and Martin Gale) and Conversation in the Mountains by John Banville (and Donald Teskey) are out of print. A limited number of copies of Somewhere the Wave by Derek Mahon (and Bernadette Kiely) are still available.
Somewhere the Wave - new poems by Derek Mahon
with drawings and watercolours by Bernadette Kiely.
Ten new poems – one of Derek Mahon’s ‘interim’ collections – conjure the world of Coleridge’s life, Brian Moore’s Belfast and the plays of Ibsen and Chekhov. They range from Italy to Goa to the American South. With the formal art of a master, they are sure to delight the author’s admirers.This handsome edition features pencil drawings and full colour reproductions of watercolours by Bernadette Kiely specially created in response to this new work.500 copies are numbered and signed by the author. 450 copies only are for sale. Printed on Rives Artist and hardbound in linen with blind embossed title and in a Pergamenata wraparound. Somewhere the Wave is the second title in a new series. The first, The Riverbank Field by Seamus Heaney (and Martin Gale), was oversubscribed on publication. An instant collectors' item.
Faith Healer is now recognized as one of the masterpieces of Ireland’s greatest living playwright. In the course of four monologues the stories of a travelling healer, his wife, and his manager unfold. Brian Friel weaves their versions of the healer’s ‘performances’ and a terrible event into haunting, magnificent art.
‘Through their evasions, omissions, and confessions, Frank’s speeches chart the trajectory of his self-destruction . . . The story of his struggle to recapture his spiritual powers becomes, instead, the story of the loss of a soul . . .
Frank’s wife, Grace, and his manager, Teddy, are the other witnesses to the healings — and to the price they all pay for his occasional miracles. In Friel’s brilliant storytelling, the refracted memories of the characters paint a harrowing picture of recrimination and self-aggrandizement.’
— John Lahr, The New Yorker‘The tragedy for the characters in Faith Healer is that while connection among them is elusive, the memory of fleeting contact remains and scalds. That the same might be said of the play’s effect upon us is, more than anything, what makes Faith Healer a major work of art.’ — Ben Brantley, The New York TimesOrder your copy here
Collected Poems - Michael Hartnett
Michael Hartnett’s death, at the age of 58, robbed poetry readers of one of Ireland’s beloved authors. His Collected Poems represents a body of work which is etched indelibly in contemporary literature.His work is marked by a rare lyric grace, a humane perspective and delicacy of touch. This is a major Irish writer, the owner of a unique voice whose confidence and ingenuity are lifted by a quiet waywardnesss. As Seamus Heaney said, ‘He’s not like anybody else.’ This book richly demonstrates the truth of that observation.
— Patricia Craig, TLSA wonderful book of loves and sorrows by a writer who is wise to ‘the ways / of cities’ and ‘all the perversions of the soul . . . learnt on a small farm’. Lines tap into something ancient, darkly mythical and yet (they are) workaday. His is an extraordinary gift — there is much to learn from this Collected Poems.
— Michael A Kinsella, PN ReviewOrder your copy here
Awards/Prizes
French Honour for John Montague
The French government's annual Bastille Day honours list includes John Montague who will become a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, 'one of France's highest decorations'.Gallery will publish a new collection Speech Lessons next year. Work continues on French Leaves, selected French translations.
Félicitations
Hooray! Irish poet awarded international prize...
Irish poet awarded international prize... One of Ireland’s finest poets, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, has been awarded the 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize for her most recent collection, The Sun-fish. At a ceremony in Canada earlier this month, she received the international prize worth $65,000 (€49,000).Established in 2000 in recognition of major poetry written in English as well as works published in translation, three judges, all poets, considered more than 400 collections.As subversive as it is subtle, as cerebral as it is instinctive, Ní Chuilleanain’s voice is urgent, persuasive yet consummately sophisticated, possessed of the elusiveness of a painting. Her genius lies in an ability to identify the magic in the ordinary. She evokes light and the natural world . . . while many of her poems convey the cool interior of stone churches and shadowy rooms.. . . a collection of wonders.
Eileen Battersby, Literary Correspondent, The Irish Times, 6 June 2010
Griffin Poetry Prize - Winner
Congratulations to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin on winning the 2010 International Griffin Poetry Prize for The Sun-fish. The shortlisted poets read excerpts from their books the evening before the announcement on 3 June. Judges' Citation “This beguiling poet opens many doors onto multiple worlds. From the outset, with the startling imagery of ‘The Witch in the Wardrobe’ – a ‘fluent pantry’, where ‘the silk scarves came flying at her face like a car wash’ – we are in a shifting realm, both real and otherworldly. The effect of her impressionistic style is like watching a photograph as it develops. The Sun-fish contains approaches to family and political history, thwarted pilgrimages in which Ní Chuilleanáin poses many questions – not always directly – and often chooses to leave the questions themselves unresolved, allowing them to resonate meaningfully past the actual poem’s end. She is a truly imaginative poet, whose imagination is authoritative and transformative. She leads us into altered or emptied landscapes, such as that in ‘The Polio Epidemic,’ when children were kept indoors, but the poet escapes on a bicycle ‘I sliced through miles of air/free as a plague angel descending/On places buses went …’ Each poem is a world complete, and often they move between worlds, as in the beautiful ‘A Bridge between Two Counties.’ These are potent poems, with dense, captivating sound and a certain magic that proves not only to be believable but necessary, in fact, to our understanding of the world around us.”The other authors on the International shortlist were John Glenday - Grain (Picador); Louise Glück - A Village Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Susan Wicks - Cold Spring in Winter - translated from the French (Arc Publications).The Canadian Poetry Prize was won by Karen Solie - Pigeon (House of Anansi Press). The other shortlisted authors were Kate Hall - The Certainty Dream (Coach House Books) and P.K. Page - Coal and Roses (The Porcupine's Quill).
Congratulations to Sinéad Morrissey on winning the 2010 Irish Times Poetry Now Award. Also shortlisted were On the Night Watch by Ciaran Carson, Spindrift by Vona Groarke, The Sun-fish by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and The Thing Is by Peter Sirr.
T S Eliot Prize 2009
Click to see larger image
Congratulations to Philip Gross who has won the 2009 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry for The Water Table (Bloodaxe).
Shortlisted for the award were: Eiléan Ní ChuilleanáinThe Sun-fish (Gallery Books); Fred D'Aguiar Continental Shelf (Carcanet); Jane Draycott Over (Carcanet); Sinéad Morrissey Through the Square Window (Carcanet); Sharon Olds One Secret Thing (Cape); Alice Oswald Weeds & Wild Flowers (Faber); Christopher Reid A Scattering (Areté); George Szirtes The Burning of the Books and Other Poems (Bloodaxe) and Hugo Williams West End Final (Faber).The winner was announced at an award ceremony on Monday 18 January 2010.
This is the third year in a row in which a Gallery Book has been included on the shortlist.
Trinity Award for Peter Fallon
Pictured L-R: Chris de Burgh, Dr John Hegarty (Provost Trinity College),
Louise Richardson, Mark Pollock
and Peter Fallon
Peter Fallon has received one of Trinity College’s 2009 Alumni Awards. These awards recognize graduates who, in the eyes of the selection committee, have 'made a significant contribution to society and have brought great honour on their alma mater'. He was chosen as 'a richly deserving recipient for his outstanding achievement as a poet and in the world of publishing'. The other awardees this year are Chris de Burgh, Mark Pollock and Louise Richardson. William Trevor is the only other writer honoured in this way.
Brian Friel honoured
Congratulations are due to Brian Friel who received the Ulysses Medal, UCD's highest honour at a ceremony on Bloomsday.
At the same event Dennis O'Driscoll received an Honorary Doctorate of Literature.
Reviews
Until Before After - The Irish Times
Lingering on the threshold
In recent years Ciaran Carson has written books of poetry that are determinedly books rather than collections. Each has its own sound and rhythm, and each has an intricate coherence. Until Before After . . . is a tender, sometimes melancholy book, and it is one of Carson’s most brilliant.The deliberate hesitancy of these poems takes them again and again to the 'threshold' of enlightenment, or the possibility of hearing something that language cannot say. Until Before After never crosses that threshold, but it reaches its own summit.It is a book constructed with an intelligent complexity that leads to the purest of poetic simplicity. Even by Carson’s high standards, it is a wonderful achievement.
Colin Graham, The Irish Times 22 May 2010
An Autumn Wind - The Guardian
Paul Batchelor celebrates the triumphant late flowering of Derek Mahon's work'One of the challenges Mahon sets himself is to find a place in his classical, sculpted poetry for the debris of contemporary life. . . He tries to appreciate the destructive forces of nature, but 'the ancient rage / for order, the old curse, is too ingrained'.
When he manages to hold these contending impulses within a single poem the results can be astonishing. . . The crystalline clarity and the sophisticated sound-patterning are typical of Mahon's best work. . . An Autumn Wind confirms the triumphant late flowering that began with Harbour Lights and continued in Life on Earth. This body of work forms one of the most significant developments in poetry this century.
As before, he looks to other civilisations to achieve a wider perspective. Groups of poems are devoted to China and India respectively.
But something else is asserted as well, over and above the elegance of thought, range of reference and lyric beauty of which Mahon is always capable.My favourite poems here . . . have as their starting point a memorable moment out of which comes a vision that is at one and the same time artistic, philosopical, and historical.At the beginning of the 21st century, Derek Mahon is as indispensable a political poet as he was half a century ago, when a 'strange child with a taste for verse' embraced Irish identity in the face of much contradiction.
Philip McDonagh, The Irish Times 10 May 2010
Christ Deliver Us! - The Irish Times
Kilroy’s concern is how sexual awakening is corrupted by the shadow of physical abuse, where ignorance is enforced with beatings and budding desires can warp into something dangerous. It may count as a period drama, but its echoes are heard today. Like Wedekind, Kilroy takes great care neither to moralise nor demonise. Several of his priests may be tyrants and hypocrites, but . . . offer shadows of tolerance and charity. It is the culture that is contaminated, where parental figures sway between fretfulness, lenience and inflexible authoritarianism. Kilroy’s last moments mark his sharpest deviations from Wedekind. Reconciling sex, spirituality and self-determination, and defining them away from institutional corruption, his compassion speaks directly to today, delivering us from cynicism and hopelessness with a notably secular prayer.
— Peter Crawley, The Irish Times February 2010
Recent Remarks
Colm Toibín
'Gallery Press, for poetry, is probably one of the two or three best poetry presses in the world'. — Colm Toibín
Morning Ireland, RTE,16 March 2010
The Ten Best Poetry Books - The Independent (London)
The Independent (London) - 21 April 2009
The Ten Best Poetry Books
Ciaran Carson: Collected Poems 'The masterly Belfast poet spins yarns from history's battlefield from Dresden to Crossmaglen, rich in everyday human detail.'
Laments The Laments of 16th-century Polish poet Jan Kochanowski has been reissued with a new preface by translator Seamus Heaney (Gallery Press). These impassioned, poised poems recount the grief of a father at his two-year-old daughter's death. That they retain their power to move a reader across four centuries speaks of the accomplishment of the well-made, sincere poem.
Readings/Events
British & Irish Contemporary Poetry Conference
The Seamus Heaney Centre
for Poetry
Queen's University
Belfast
Northern Ireland
Wed-Fri
15-17 Sept
The British and Irish Contemporary Poetry Conference includes:
An Afterglow – a gallery of Connemara poems, published by Occasional Press with Ballynahinch Castle, will be introduced during this Gallery celebration by Des Lally
