Books for Breakfast

• 78: Richard Blanco; Poetry at Strokestown

  Send us a textIn this episode, on Poetry Day, we cross the Atlantic and. breakfast in Miami, where we talk to Cuban American poet Richard Blanco about his Homeland of my Body: New and Selected Poems, a rich, accomplished, intensely intimate collection with two full sections of new poems bookending Blanco’s selections from his five previous volumes. We also feature this year’s Strokestown International Poetry Festival, including the five poets shortlisted for the Strokestown Poetry Competition. If you’re around for the festival Enda will be giving  a poetry workshop and Peter will be giving a talk on The Life of the Poet.Praise for Richard Blanco:“An engineer, poet, Cuban American… his poetry bridges cultures and languages – a mosaic of our past, our present, and our future – reflecting a nation that is hectic, colorful, and still becoming.”– President Joe Biden, conferring the National Humanities Medal on Richard BlancoSandra Cisneros describes Blanco’s poems as “sad, tender, and filled with longing. Like an old photograph, a saint’s statue worn away by the devout, a bolero on the radio on a night full of rain. Me emocionan. There is no other way to say it. They emotion me.”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

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• 77: Mary O’Donnell on new fiction and poetry

  Send us a textOn this episode we talk to poet novelist and critic Mary O’Donnell about Mary O’Malley’s The Shark Nursery, Patrick Holloway’s The Language of Remembering,  ! All’ ARME /? by Eilish Martin and Beginnings Over and Over: Four New Poets from Ireland, edited by Leeanne Quinn.We also give a shout out to a special anthology for One Dublin One Book, Dublin, Written in our Hearts, published by the Stinging Fly Press and edited by Declan Meade. It’s an anthology that offers writings about Dublin in the first quarter of this century and contributors include Kevin Barry, Caitriona Lally, Felizspeaks, Stephen James Smith, Anne Enright, Estelle Birdy, Paula Meehan and our own Peter Sirr. There are lots of events happening throughout the city to coincide with this anthology and you can find out more by checking out onedublinonebook.ieMary O’Donnell’s book of short stories, Walking Ghosts, comes out this May from Mercier Press. ‘Each story shines in its own distinctive light,’ Neil Hegarty says. It will be launched in the Maynooth Bookshop on the 7th of May, and in Hodges Figgis, Dublin on the 20th of May.  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

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• 76: Pat Boran on Hedge School

  Send us a textFinding inspiration in the local and near at had, attentive to climate concern and global unrest, to home and homeless, belonging and welcome, concern and global and welcome – on today’s episode we talk to poet and publisher Pat Boran about his eight collection Hedge School. 'A writer of great tenderness and lyricism' – Agenda, UK'... local and international, full of wisdom and wry humour ...' – Irish Literary Supplement, USAThis 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

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• 75: Mary Morrissy's Twenty-Twenty Vision

  Send us a text‘A beautiful tapestry of late middle age reckoning’ – today we interview the writer Mary Morrissy about her new collection of short stories, Twenty-Twenty Vision, published by Lilliput Press. For her Toaster Challenge, Mary chooses The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazard. Get the coffee on!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.Mary Morrissy is an award-winning Irish novelist (The Hennessy Award, Lannan Foundation Award) and short story writer, the author of four novels, Mother of Pearl, The Pretender, The Rising of Bella Casey and Penelope Unbound, as well as two collections of short stories, A Lazy Eye and Prosperity Drive. She has 20 years’ experience of teaching creative writing at university level in the US and Ireland. Until May 2020, she was the associate director of creative writing at University College Cork. Support the show

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• 74: John Banville and Doris Kareva

  Send us a textWas 1950s Dublin really a place of murder and intrigue? On today’s show we travel to the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation  in Dublin’s Fenian Street to talk to novelist John Banville about his latest novel, The Drowned, the fourth in a series featuring Detective Inspector St John Strafford and the pathologist Quirke familiar to many from the Benjamin Black novels. And we talk to Estonian poet Doris Kareva who visited the Centre recently about her own poetry, translation, and Estonia. Brew up a big pot of coffee and join us for a lively show!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.Reviews of The Drowned'Cold, compelling and seamlessly plotted, The Drowned also offers a fine portrait of that familiar and never likeable figure in Banville's fictions: the supercilious villain who has lost his moral compass.' ― Financial Times'A beautifully written and intriguing slowburn of a book, in which the various quandaries in the main characters' private lives are as absorbing as the central mystery'. ― Guardian'Brilliant . . . You need not have read the earlier novels to follow this one, but it will be a better read if you do . . . while various loose ends are left tantalisingly in the air, making it clear that a sequel will follow. It can't come too soon for this devoted fan. '― Irish Examiner'Richly atmospheric . . . It's a Dublin where you can smell the pubs, feel the drizzle, and taste the Bewley's coffee. [...]At the centre of it all is the strained relationship between Quirke and Strafford, a couple at odds who are right up there with Banville's greatest achievements.' ― Irish Independent'Tight-lipped humour thrums through the latest in the Booker winner's Strafford and Quirke crime series . . . The Drowned stands alone, too, suspenseful on its own terms . . . while it's ultimately evil, not good, that gives The Drowned its crackling denouement, the novel takes care to part on a more cheerful note - even if the logic of the series demands that Quirke can hardly be content for too long.' ― ObserverThe Drowned delivers an ultimately satisfying and immersive mystery in beautifully wrought prose. ― Irish Independent Books in BriefBravo! ― The TimesDoris Kareva is one of Estonia’s leading poets. She was born in Tallinn in 1958, daughter of the composer Hillar Kareva, and published her first poems at the age of 14. In 1977 she entered the University of Tartu as an already acknowledged young poet. Due to her dissident connections she was expelled but graduated as a distance student in Romance and Germanic philology. She has worked for the cultural weekly Sirp (Sickle) and as the Secretary-General of the Estonian National Commission for UNESCO from 1992 to 2008, and is currently an editor for the literary journal Looming (Creation).Support the show

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