Plays & Poetry

A reflection on loss, memory, and what we owe to the past, inspired by a night spent in Athens' Acropolis Museum. "Elegant and nuanced reflections on a very well-worn subject." Mary Beard "Totally unique." Victoria Hislop

Catalan poet Joan Margarit (1938-2021) was one of Spain's major modern writers. In this final collection he faces the approach of death with courage, humility and even humour. 'Each of Margarit's poems is its own being, like a living creature with its own body-shape and voice, its own breath and heart-beat.'-Sharon Olds

Soundings was first published in 1969. It was intended as an 'interim' anthology of poetry for the Leaving Certificate until such time as a more permanent volume could be devised. Twenty six years later it was replaced. In the meantime it had passed through the hands of hundreds of thousands of students in Ireland.

Shows that Jonathan Swift was the author of "The Benefit of Farting and Arse Musica" (1722 and subsequent editions). This title contains a poem about Hester (Vanessa) Van Homrigh that the author maintains was written by Jonathan Swift and which establishes that his relationship with her was sexual.

Thin Lines is the third collection of poems from Shane Martin, a native of Carrickmacross in Co. Monaghan, now living in Co. Sligo. It contains new poems and a selection from his two previous collections. The poems provide a backdrop for meditation on the preciousness of life, the passing of time, love, home, and the people, alive and dead, who continue to inform his experience. The poetry is a celebration of the living flesh – that particular referent without which such meditations would be futile.

William Martin (1925-2010) was a poet of extraordinary vision and musicality. Thoroughly grounded in his native North-East England, its pit communities and industry, his song-like poems nevertheless traverse a vast geographical and historical landscape ranging from deep Celtic and Anglo-Saxon sources to the thought and myths of India.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID AARONOVITCH The Communist Manifesto was first published in London, by two young men in their late twenties, in 1848.