Plays & Poetry

In her Irish Times review of Medbh McGuckian’s most recent collection, Marine Cloud Brightening, Martina Evans described her as ‘more relevant than ever, eerily prescient, [she] continues her unique mining of verbal language’.

In her Irish Times review of Medbh McGuckian’s most recent collection, Marine Cloud Brightening, Martina Evans described her as ‘more relevant than ever, eerily prescient, [she] continues her unique mining of verbal language’.

On 1 July 1916, the 36th (Ulster) Division took part in one of the bloodiest battles in human history, the Battle of the Somme. In the extraordinary circumstances of World War I, eight ordinary men are changed, changed utterly. This war play is a powerful portrayal of mortality, love and loss.

‘My father’s father took his chance/on the first flight over Lisfannon.’ So begins a poem in Frank McGuinness’s eighth collection, The River Crana, a book equally at home in Donegal as Japan and ancient Illyria.

‘My father’s father took his chance/on the first flight over Lisfannon.’ So begins a poem in Frank McGuinness’s eighth collection, The River Crana, a book equally at home in Donegal as Japan and ancient Illyria.