Advertisement
The launch of my new poetry collection, 'Sipping Martinis under Mount Leinster', is happening in Carlow College, St. Patrick's on Tuesday the 28th of May at 7.30. You are very welcome to attend. The book is available to order on line at this link: https://magnusgrehnforlag.se/
Here is what the Irish poet Paula Meehan has to say about the new collection:
'Never has Carlow had such a clear eyed and loving champion as Derek Coyle. The Goodly Barrow, St Pat’s, Tully’s Bar, St Dympna’s, Graiguecullen, The Liberty Tree & the Town Park, Clogrennane…the old Wobblies’ motto comes to mind — Coyle knows what it means to dig where you stand.
Here are quirky, sublime, urbane poems that reference quirky, sublime, urbane poets —McGuckian, Schuyler, Dickinson, O’Hara amongst many others who rub shoulders with neighbours and lovers, living and dead, of the poet or of the poet’s alter ego. For the poet in these poems is a very performative chap, often in sharp costume and, as the title might hint, wink wink, sipping cool vermouth & dry gin while meditating on Janis Joplin and Walt Whitman.
When Coyle’s zeitgeist sweeps into town things go very quickly surreal, when they are not turning head over heels hyper-real.
And what a payback this strategy has for poems peculiar and tender in a very engaging, cool and cleverly demotic tongue, all infused with music most eclectic – from Dylan to Mulvey, Rubinstein to Hayes, Pavarotti to Lennon. I love that Joni Mitchell ‘arrives occasionally/ in the form of an old sheepdog.’
It is a marvellous poetry party: Cavafy is the guest of honour. And so many literary ghosts and avatars attend the fray. I had such a good time I never wanted it to end, walking home through the fresh rinsed Carlow streets at dawn.'
Paula Meehan, poet, As If By Magic: Selected Poems (2020)
Advertisement
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Carlow College, St. Patrick's, College St,Carlow, Ireland, Kilkenny