New poetry collections on shelves for Autumn

Autumn has arrived, and so too have several new collections of poetry including Mickey Finn’s Air by Gerald Dawe (Gallery Press) and The Truth and Other Stories by Sarah Clancy.

Galway features strongly in Mickey Finn’s Air, which was launched in Dublin last week by American writer Richard Ford. Gerald, a Professor of English at Dublin’s Trinity College, lived first in Galway City and later in Corandulla from the 1970s to the 1990s. He studied at the then UCG in the 1970s and later taught there before moving to Trinity.

The collection’s title poem is named after musician Mickey Finn who was a major fixture on the Galway scene until his death in the 1980s. And there are several references that will be familiar to local people, including Nuns Island, the Archway, Abbeygate Street and Menlo, all in a series entitled The Bells of St Nicholas.

The collection explores the way memory pays tricks with the passing of time and it dwells on the loss of loved ones and the pressures ‘of the way things are’

Richard Ford has praised Gerald Dawe’s poems for their clarity and vitality saying that his work is “serious, often grave, but inculcated with such sympathy and passion and affection that any obscurity is the enemy”.

The book, Gerald’s eight, is available in paperback for €10 and hardback from €17.50.

Sarah Clancy’s new collection, The Truth and Other Stories will be launched by fellow poet Rita Ann Higgins, in Galway Arts Centre this Saturday afternoon at 3pm.  All are welcome to attend the event at the premises on the City’s Dominick Street.

This collection, Sarah’s third, is published by Co Clare based Salmon Poetry, the company that was responsible for bringing out the first collections of poets such as Eva Bourke and Rita Ann Higgins in the 1980s.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.