Books for Breakfast (Ireland)

Send us Fan Mail
On today's show we travel down the road to Carlow University Pittsburgh's MFA in Creative Writing Program during its annual June residency at Trinity College, Dublin where we have been invited to interview novelist Caitriona Lally about her latest book, the memoir Home Economics. So grab that flat white, latte, tea and rasher sandwich and have a listen to Caitriona's fascinating account of balancing life as a cleaner in the housekeeping department of Trinity College with the life of a successful writer.

Bold and thought-provoking, self-deprecating and soaked in Caitríona Lally's singular voice, her first memoir quietly but forcefully puzzles over personal/home economics, creativity and the true impact of 'success' and 'failure' on a writer's life.

'Since I've had my first book published, I've earned more from cleaning than from writing. The home economics don't add up.'

Between 2015 and 2021, Caitríona Lally published her first two novels, Eggshells and Wunderland. To buy her time to write during those years, she returned to the housekeeping department at Trinity College Dublin, a job she once held as a student. This begins a negotiation between the practical and creative demands of her life, further complicated when she becomes pregnant and almost impossible when the pandemic hits.

Reviews for Home Economics

"This is absolutely one to read about the reality of 'making it' as an artist, and how to live, make money and create."
– AOIFE BARRY, THE JOURNAL

"Hilarious, audacious, and deeply felt. An idiosyncratic hymn to the drudgery of life!"
– SARA BAUME

"I thought I'd be interested in Home Economics because I too work a manual job that pays a pittance, yet still provides more income than writing books. And yes, Lally is wonderfully insightful about the difficulties and advantages of such a life. But in the end it was her wit, her ever-curious and amused outlook on the daily trials and joys of life, that had me hooked. This book has that delicate quality of seeming simple while containing all the complexity of trying not simply to make a living, but to live."
– LUCY SWEENEY BYRNE

"A remarkable piece of writing ... As a fellow writer, I read the book with a profound sense of respect for what Caitríona has achieved, particularly given the difficult circumstances under which much of this work has been produced. Her account of sustaining a writing life alongside paid labour and motherhood is both unsparing and generous, and it resonated deeply with me ... There is something quietly bracing in encountering such a lucid account of a writing life, one that refuses myth-making while still allowing space for ambition, desire and joy ... This is a generous, intelligent and finely wrought book."
– PATRICK HOLLOWAY
Logo designed by Freya Sirr.

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, 'Thou Shalt Not Carry' from The Hare's Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail
On today's episode we visit 11 Parnell Square in Dublin for the launch of Poetry Ireland/Éigse Éireann's restored headquarters. We hear about the new performance spaces, education resources and Seamus Heaney Library and talk to director Claire Power about her vision for the building and the organisation. We also talk to Poet in Residence Sean Borodale about his poetry and his plans for the residency. Sean's widely acclaimed books include Notes for an Atlas, Asylum, Bee Journal, Human Work: A Poet's Cookbook and Inmates.
This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. 
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, 'Thou Shalt Not Carry' from The Hare's Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. 
Logo designed by Freya Sirr.
Support the show

Send us Fan Mail
On today’s show we talk to Joseph Woods, director of the Strokestown Poetry Festival about what this year's programme will offer poetry lovers this May Bank Holiday weekend in Strokestown House. Ands we welcome back to the breakfast table poet and Irish Times reviewer Adam Wyeth to talk with us about recent poetry publications that have grabbed his attention. Adam is himself an award-winning and critically acclaimed poet, playwright and essayist with five books published with Salmon Poetry and we are delighted to have him with us this morning.

He will be talking about Rita Ann Higgins, Jiving with Wasps: New and Selected Poems; Gerard Smyth, The Turn for Ithaca; Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Hymn for the Restless Girls; Billy Ramsell, Render; Paddy Bushe, Uncertain Passage; Jamie O'Halloran, Ballast; Colm Scully, Neanderthal Boy. 
This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. 
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, 'Thou Shalt Not Carry' from The Hare's Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. 
Logo designed by Freya Sirr.

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail
This morning we talk to Mary Costello about her new novel A Beautiful Loan. 
My name is Anna, and for some time now, I have been trying to account for certain events in my life – my adult life, that is – which, from this vantage point of forty-five years, I often find baffling …

In 1985 Dublin, nineteen-year-old Anna Hughes is in thrall to Peter Gallagher, an older, worldly man. Anna is introverted and naïve, and Peter’s experience, wide circle of friends and thirst for adventure captivate her. Her obsessive longing for him leads to marriage and, eventually, a crushing betrayal.
As Anna’s life becomes less predictable, she uncovers deeper layers of herself. Her journey gives an intimate portrait of a woman embracing herself as she is, claiming the life she yearns for.
“Costello is one of Ireland’s greatest writers … Her prose is precise and focused and, like a stiletto blade, sinks deep … This is a big book in a small package, about one woman’s growth”
JOHN SELF
Financial Times
”A Beautiful Loan is a beautiful novel; Mary Costello guides her reader through a cloud of emotional turmoil in fine, controlled sentences. We must hope it delivers her the belated recognition she so richly deserves”
LUCY THYNNE
Times Literary Supplement
This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. 
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, 'Thou Shalt Not Carry' from The Hare's Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. 
Logo designed by Freya Sirr.

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail
In this episode we go to one of our favourite places in Dublin, Hodges Figgis bookshop in Dawson Street, to interview Cathy Galvin on the occasion of the launch of her collection of poems from Bloodaxe, Ethnology, A Love Song for Connemara. We also meet and hear poet John F. Deane, who spoke about Cathy’s book and read some of his own recently published Carcanet collection, Jonah and Me, a Poetry Society Recommendation.

from Bloodaxe:

Ethnology draws on the mystical cry for the dead of Cathy Galvin's Irish-speaking ancestors. Within an epic narrative she reclaims place, people and language, creating a bridge between our own times and a Connemara community on the margins of Europe.
Drawing on classic forms within literary and oral traditions, Ethnology becomes a love song for Connemara, witness to vivid encounters: between the living and the dead and between the poets, folklorists and ethnologists who have written about the West of Ireland for their own agendas.
In her first full-length book of poetry, fragility and strength are finely balanced, focused on the ruins of an island cottage built by her great-grandfather. Here, Cathy Galvin locates humour and joy as well as mourning. The poems give a vivid, original voice to the tradition of keening, of honouring the loss of those we love.

from Carcanet

John F. Deane's new book follows the publication of his career-spanning  New and Selected Poems, which was published on the occasion of his eightieth birthday in 2023 and shows no relaxation in his descriptive and lyric powers.
Ireland's foremost living religious poet, the new book includes a sequence, 'Of Human Flesh', which takes Easter's rituals as its occasion, and dwells on its continuing purchase and meaning as the poet remembers others and walks a landscape where, sometimes, as he puts it, the spiritual and material worlds come together:

'all here fits 
together, oxbow and pillow-stone, holon and fractal, 
stunning, admonishing, this morphogenic field.'

This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. 
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, 'Thou Shalt Not Carry' from The Hare's Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. 
Logo designed by Freya Sirr.
Support the show