Today’s show marks 25 years since the foundation of the Strokestown International Poetry Festival in Co. Roscommon. This year’s festival takes place over the May Bank weekend, May 3 - 5. We spoke to the Director, Joseph Woods about the festival and his new book, Veld Fires. We also feature poems by Eva Bourke whose Tattoos was published this year, and Patrick Deeley, who reads from his new collection, Keepsake.
We also interview the Welsh poet Tony Curtis , whose new collection is Leaving the Hills.

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. Incidental music Wanderlust by Scott Buckley | https://soundcloud.com/scottbuckley
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com

Artwork by Freya Sirr

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Today’s show marks Poetry Day Ireland with readings by the five poets shortlisted for the Strokestown International Poetry Competion, the winner of which will be announced at the Festival over the May Bank Holiday Weekend. And we go the Trinity College Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation to talk to poet Paul Muldoon about his role as Ireland Professor of Poetry and his new collection of poems Joy in Service on Rue Tagore.

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. Incidental music Wanderlust by Scott Buckley | https://soundcloud.com/scottbuckley
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above.

Support the Show.

We’re joined on this morning’s show by Mary Costello, whose new collection of short stories, Barcelona, has just been published by Canongate.

"Barcelona is full of devastating lines … Costello is working in the tradition of her literary heroes [Kafka, Musil, Coetzee]: delivering insights which are painful but also energising because of the beauty with which they're captured … The most impressive collection I've read in some time"
JOHN SELF
The Times

"Clear-eyed and provocative, bruised and bruising: these are the stories of a writer at the very top of her game"
EIMEAR MCBRIDE

"It is rare that a writer of fiction can evoke such depth of feeling and visceral/moral revulsion as Mary Costello … in stories dealing with cruelty to animals, especially the slaughter of farm animals; rare that marital intimacy is so powerfully rendered"
JOYCE CAROL OATES

"Costello's writing is insistent, precise and unsparing. Everyday acts and ordinary lives are infused with a sense of the skull beneath the skin and of a catastrophe held tautly at bay"
Observer

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. Incidental music Wanderlust by Scott Buckley | https://soundcloud.com/scottbuckley
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above.

Support the Show.