Plays & Poetry Irish

Like traditional, honeyed Irish soda bread or dark chocolate truffles suffused with plenty of good Irish whiskey, this charismatic book of poetry you hold in your hands, by Kieran Beville, an esteemed Irish poet, and the reading of the poems inside, is a satisfyingly nourishing, sensual experience to savour, over and over again. Its attention to craft, passion for language, and with a profound understanding of the depths of the roots of memory, is an astounding work of poetry.

Memory is the leitmotif of the collection, sparked by the smell of orange peel with that Kavanagh-like ending of ‘sixty Christmases of age’, by the sight of ‘frozen clothes/still hanging on the garden line’, in the ‘thud on the kitchen window’ or Joe Malone’s bohemian pub of the 70s.

Poetyr - originally published in 2020. Soul Songs…places the poet and the reader very much in the moment at this particular point in history. But Beville understands that the present, and therefore any potential future, is shaped by what went on before, and for this reason memory plays a major part in how the poet addresses the current state of affairs, both private and public.