Plays & Poetry

Kathleen Watkins has always loved poetry. From the days she had to learn it line by line at school to performing it at gatherings of family and friends, and as part of her stage show with her husband, the broadcaster Gay Byrne - it has been and still is a constant in her life. This personal, curated collection of favourite poems from Kathleen is a small but perfectly formed anthology, covering the best of Irish poets including Brendan Kennelly, Padraic Colum, Seamus Heaney, Rita Ann Higgins, Carol Ann Duffy, Eavan Boland, Patrick Kavanagh, Mary Dorcey, WB Yeats, Francis Ledwidge and Paula Meehan.

A librarian and an elderly person form a bond during lockdown. There are ghosts. There are problems with plumbers. There are dinosaurs on the Isle of Wight. There is a story written from the point of view of a letter. There are stars, meringues, memories in jars, a spaceman. Most of all, there are people, trying to cope with life and all its travails.

The best poetry is a form of spiritual autobiography – poems that stand as way-markers along a poet’s soul journey. Such poems tend to narrate a particular life-experience, but somehow in their telling they touch the soul of the reader.

From hairy jellybeans to sparking daydreams, Alex's poems, written for primary school age children, are both funny and thoughtful, and aim to spark familiarity and inclusion. And the stunning illustrations by Katy Riddell focus on the fun and dreamlike quality of the poems' engagement with the natural world.

In Child Ballad, David Wheatley's sixth collection, he explores a world transformed by the experience of parenthood.