Bøker utgitt av Dedalus Press

The journey of Eva Bourke's eighth collection of poems is one of bereavement, heartbreak and, ultimately, renewal. In poems that record - with courage and tenderness - the loss of loved ones, of close family and friends, there is throughout a refusal to soften the keen gaze and precise detail for which her work is so often praised, as if the poet's role is ever to be witness, guardian and curator. Instead of heartbreak enforcing a retreat from the world, rather it seems to strengthen her commitment to those in danger ("the boats adrift in the night / and the storms that sweep them overboard" - 'Twenty-eight Swimmers') and her belief in the power of art and music as both consolation and celebration, an engagement that has been the heart of her work over many years. As she says in 'The Singer's Fable', in memory of Mary McPartlan: "Sing, even if your hearts are heavy, even if your houses are on fire, rise up and sing."PRAISE FOR EVA BOURKE"[T]he maturity and wide sympathy of this poet's vision is everywhere in evidence. The formal and tonal variety achieved by Bourke in this volume [Seeing Yellow] is also very pleasing.... Warmly recommended." -Caitriona O'Reilly, The Irish Times"These poems suggest that the soul is an enduring gentleness in us, in others, in perhaps everything, and that it needs us to release it, to let it breathe, to nourish it with what we create rather than destroy." -Fred Marchant on 'piano'

In this vivid, unsparing, new collection, Irish poet Theo Dorgan reaches deep into his Cork childhood to examine, among other things, the wellsprings of what would become a life in poetry. At times with the forensic detachment of adult distance, at other times given over to reliving a child's conscious attention to his own life, these poems explore a past where everything is new in the living moment and yet, somehow, "everything will go on forever". If the family is where we learn to understand feelings and affections, school is the hard place where we meet the powers of the world, where we encounter and learn to deal with both the liberating and the oppressive powers of language. School, as the growing boy experiences it, is the place where we learn either to surrender or to stand free in the world, and freedom comes with embracing, understanding, the weight and responsibility of choosing your words, of speaking for yourself.The poet's beloved native city is a ghostly, sustaining, presence throughout - city familiar and mysterious, cradle of possibilities the young boy dreams of, gazing longingly through the classroom window. In that place, in those days, Dorgan made certain promises to himself. Once Was a Boy asks if those promises were kept.

A bilingual volume of some 40 contemporary poets from Ireland and Galicia speaking to the subject of our damaged and threatened world.