In a house in the suburbs, Dark-haired Elizabeth contemplated, Some silver tints in her hair. Now nine and thirty years from the womb, An almost avid apprehension, Carried her wild and surging thoughts along. “I’ll do something special for the forty,” She enthused over her afternoon cuppa tea. But I knew her more sombre thoughts Of eternity.
END
Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
The little bespectacled man, With the heavy newspaper bundle, Under his arm, Carried Indo, Press and Herald, The news of the time, To terrace, road and street, Door to open door, In all the frost and snow and rain, All the long year round, To our small town. He magically brought Disasters, Curly Wee and Gussie Goose, Rip Kirby, Crosswords, Sports, Cartoons- And a myriad things besides, To talk about and do. To pass the easy-going times, as were in it then. To give us a break from radio. I hear of laptops from journalism colleagues now, The technology of distribution- All in the times, I own, But Paddy Hickey, flesh and blood, Newspaperman, Walked them hard streets for years, To meet his deadline.
END
Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
The Laureate for Irish Fiction, Colm Tóibín, hosts ‘The Art of Reading’ Podcast in Cashel Library.
Maura Barrett, Cashel Library, Reports: –
The ‘Art of Reading’ is a monthly book club hosted by Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet Colm Tóibín, the Laureate for Irish Fiction. It is available to library book clubs across the country and offered as an online event for readers and booklovers everywhere on the last Thursday of every month.
Since February, the Laureate has met a different library book club each month to discuss a novel by an Irish writer, highlighting outstanding Irish writing and celebrating the reader and book clubs.
In November 2022, Colm Tóibín comes to the bookclubs in Cashel Library, where he will record live his podcast that will be aired live on the last Thursday in the month, through the Arts Council website and social media
The selected titles include new work by contemporary Irish writers as well as novels from the past, that the Laureate wishes to bring to a new generation of readers.
Readers, book lovers and book clubs everywhere are invited to join in the Art of Reading with the Laureate, to read these outstanding books and to engage in reading in a deep and focused way.
The Poet Laureate will discuss Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘The Last September’ with noted Cork Novelist and Poet Thomas McCarthy, before opening the discussion out to the Book Clubs.
Note: There are a limited number of spaces available to interested readers for this event and early booking is advised. Please contact Maura Barrett in Cashel Library on Tel: 062 63825, to secure a place at this event.
Colm Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in 1955. He studied at University College Dublin and lived in Barcelona between 1975 and 1978. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of books and a contributing editor at the London Review of Books. Between 2006 and 2013 he was a member of the Irish Arts Council. He has twice been Visiting Stein Writer at Stanford University and has also been a visiting writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He taught at Princeton from 2009 to 2011 and was Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester in 2011. He is currently Mellon Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia and Chancellor of Liverpool University. He is President of Listowel Writers Week and a member of the Board of Druid Theatre. His second collection of stories ‘The Empty Family’, published in 2010, was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Prize. His book of essays on Henry James ‘All a Novelist Needs’, appeared also in 2010. Also, in 2012, his novel ‘The Testament of Mary’ was published and short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. In April 2013, ‘The Testament of Mary’ opened on Broadway, with Fiona Shaw, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. In 2013 it was released as an audiobook with Meryl Streep. Colm Toibin’s novel ‘Nora Webster’, published in 2014, won the Hawthornden Prize. His ‘On Elizabeth Bishop’, published in 2015, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His ninth novel ‘House of Names’ appeared in 2017. In May 2017, he co-curated ‘Henry James and American Painting’ at the Morgan Library.
By Scottish Novelist, Essayist, Poet and Travel Writer Robert Louis Stevenson. (1850 – 1894).
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow, Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow, For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.
He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play, And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see, I’d think shame to stick to nursie, as that shadow sticks to me.
One morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup, But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
by L. M. McCraith (Possibly written and published around 1912)
River Suir, south of the ‘Swinging Gates’ Thurles Town, Co. Tipperary. Pic: George Willoughby
The Song of the Suir If you hear the river scene in youth’s sweet spring, When primrose gold is all you seek, the primrose gold that fairies fling, In this Old Land, the Ever Young, hear when the fresh cheek flushes – The ripple of the river through the rushes.
You can hear it at high noon in sunny June, While swallows skim, and salmon leap, or underneath the lover’s moon, When you picture loved one’s blushes, and hear through songs of thrushes – The ripple of the river through the rushes.
You may hear it in the fall recalling all – Old scenes, old friends, old ways, old days, old hopes come back at its soft call, Just an echo! Yet the yearning for it sweets the heart in gushes – The ripple of the river through the rushes.
You shall hear it through the cold when you are old, Though storm and stress and winter frost and chill that comes from greed of gold. Shall hear, who heard it long ago, till death your heaving hushes – The ripple of the river through the rushes.
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