Sing Up! is a collection of comic and satirical songs that comment on recent changes and developments in Irish society. Sex, National Politics, Drink, Fast Food, Traditional Music, Religion, Recreation, Agriculture and the Weather—all are analysed in depth herein through the medium of the direct slag, the obtuse dig, the dry remark. Sing Up! is, in the editor’s own words “a gather-up of intolerance, irreverence, slagging and sedition”—and all the more welcome and necessary for that.

“We have an ancient tradition of balladry in Ireland, a tradition that lives in continuation. These writers help to keep the ball rolling. I have long enjoyed their humourous slant, their jaundiced take, their pure love of Bognia. I have also had the privilege of singing many of their songs. This book is a must for me.”
— CHRISTY MOORE

Sing Up! features songs by
Finbar Boyle, Hugh Collins, Patsy Cronin, George Curtin, Crawford Howard, Dónal Lehane, Tim Lyons, Jim McAllister, Mickey McConnell, Fred McCormick, Brian McGuinness, Adam McNaughton, John Maguire, Mícheal Marrinan, Sheila Miller, Andy Mitchell, Sean Mone, Joe Mulheron, Ciarán Ó Drisceoil, Con Ó Drisceoil, Brian O’Rourke, Déaglán Tallon, Fintan Vallely and Bill Watkins.

MORE >>>

Our Shared Japan: a major new anthology of contemporary Irish poetry

Edited by Irene De Angelis and Joseph Woods, Our Shared Japan is a major new anthology of contemporary Irish poetry, published to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Ireland and Japan.

With an Afterword by Seamus Heaney, and Our Shared Japan features work by more than 80 poets who have responded, in a variety of ways, to the many cultural and other connections between the two countries. Included are poems by Paddy Bushe, Francis Harvey, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Sinéad Morrissey, Paul Muldoon, Nuala Nî Dhomhnaill, Julie O'Callaghan and many others.

Some of the poets have visited or spent time in Japan and write from that experience; others respond to a Japan of the imagination, for example adopting or adapting Japanese poetic technique as a means to expand and enrich their own ways of looking at the world.

The result is a surprising and stimulating volume that illuminates two cultures at once.

MORE >>>

New and Selected Poems by Pat Boran

First published in 2005, and reissued now by Dedalus with some minor revisions, New and Selected Poems presents a large selection of work by one of the best-known of the younger Irish poets. Introduced by Dennis O’Driscoll, for whom Boran is “a poet of mystery and fulfilment, of the eternal and numinous no less than the earthly and the everyday”, New and Selected Poems features work from all of his earlier publications as well as a selection of newer work.

“Pat Boran’s poems make magic out of found things, and his metaphors light the dark like Roman candles. He is a master of his language; beyond that, he makes poetry matter to me again.”
—Gerard Donovan

“Pat Boran’s New and Selected Poems will be a revelation to many readers, showing the true scale of his achievement. He writes with exactitude and stark brevity, careful to strip away all the superfluous flourishes, as he equally celebrates and scrutinises the apparently familiar within the rigors of a universal and scientific context.”
—Dermot Bolger

“The lightness of his syntactic touch is masterly”
—Bernard O’Donoghue, The Irish Times

MORE >>>