Plays & Poetry Irish

Building the Ark is a single-poem volume by Pat Boran, with accompanying images. Part of the poet’s ongoing series of independent publications, it is published by Orange Crate Books on 12 January 2022 in a limited edition of 100 copies only, signed and numbered by the poet.

Local Wonders is a major event in the Irish poetry calendar, an anthology of new poems from all over the island of Ireland, and beyond, recording and celebrating a rediscovery of precious places, precious things, and a renewed focus on what we love in these uncertain and challenging times. What do we love? What sustains or inspires us, consoles or simply distracts us when our troubles might otherwise threaten to overwhelm? The past 18 months or so have made many of us question so much about our lives. Somehow, too, they have also shown us how to see again, have lead us both to tiny discoveries and monumental realisations, often almost right there on our doorsteps.

From treasures in museums to paintings in galleries and churches, from first impressions of the unfamiliar to fresh takes on the well-known and -loved, the triggers behind the poems in Pat Boran’s seventh collection in the main depart from the poet’s trademark starting point of autobiography.

From treasures in museums to paintings in galleries and churches, from first impressions of the unfamiliar to fresh takes on the well-known and -loved, the triggers behind the poems in Pat Boran’s seventh collection in the main depart from the poet’s trademark starting point of autobiography. Instead in Then Again his focus is very much outwards, with the poems comprising a mini Odyssey that takes in parts of Ireland, Paris, Sicily, Cyprus and elsewhere, finding along the way the echoes of earlier discoveries and deeper concerns. The book’s title acknowledges both the unexpected returns and the subsequent re-evaluations that memory occasions as it makes new connections between present and past, between our personal journeys and our shared fate.

Here are the stories of boys, mere children, waiting in the square to be hired by a rich farmer who comes and squeezes young muscles before making his choice. Here is talk of hard borders and heartache; the harsh life of the mill workers; the dark secrets of the river; a journey with the poet's father on the last train to Sion Mills.

Boyle's luminous poems are intimate portraits of confined and unsung lives, furnished with a sensuous exactness. Hermione, mourning her lost children, is cheered by the "blushing crimson tips" appearing in her winter garden. Birds are significant reminders of life, colour, and wry defiance in these self-assured poems of hard-won sustenance.

Dublin poet.