So, to kick this off, I thought I’d share a roundup from this past year to give you an idea of what my work is about. It’s been a difficult year, with Covid having atomised daily existence, but, at least on the writing front, it hasn’t been without its high points.
Most obvious amongst these is the publication of both my novel "A Land Without Wolves' this October from Temple Dark Books, and my debut poetry collection Rapids from Finishing Line Press.
In the meantime, I’ve been trying my hand a various different mediums beyond creative writing, including essays, podcasting and criticism. I’ve also had the good fortune to embark on several exciting collaborative endeavours with other writers and creatives that I have high hopes for (but more on those as they develop). For now, here’s what 2021 as a year has yielded for me thus far:
'Hounds' in The Literatus, is about Caleb, an ironworker fighting a losing battle with the twin demons of a recent breakup and his own worsening alcoholism in mid-2009 NYC. Poems of mine featured in Trasna, Pratik Magazine, Pop the Culture Pill, and the Concho River Review. In April, I partook as guest speaker for Baudelaire: 200 Years, a virtual celebration of the bicentanry of the French laureate’s work alongside a range of poets, critics and translators at Dublin’s Alliance Francaise Centre. My piece, entitled ‘King of a Rainy Country’, written expressly for the event, can be read in full here. I also appeared as guest on a number of podcasts, including Project Performance, The Write Review, Desideratum, Eat the Storms, The Skibereen Speakeasy, The Full House Lit Mag, and Words Lightly Spoken. Toward the end of July I was a featured performer with twelve other poets as part of poet/surrealist Kevin Bateman’s monthly event ‘Events In Spiritual Places That People Have Forgotten To Visit’, which took place in Limerick. My radio drama 'Crossing the Red Line' was shortlisted for Best Radio Drama at the Celtic Media Awards. On the non-fiction end, my essay ‘Highwayman of the Irish Rebellion (1798): How did Hobbes envisage the State of Nature?’, discussing the overarching metaphysical and thematic concerns of ‘A Land Without Wolves’ appeared in Phlexible Philosophy.
As I write this, the summer of 2021 is nearing its end. There is much to be frightened and anxious about, but there may yet be hope even as the nights grow longer.
I’ll be posting and publishing more on upcoming projetcs I’ll be involved in, whether solo or in collaboration with other creatives (and there are plenty of those). This year has been many things, but unproductive wasn’t one of them.
I’ll leave you with this poem I wrote a few years ago:
John de Courcy Ireland
Ma quando disse: “Lascia lui, e varca,
che qui e buon con la vela e coi remi
quantunque puo ciascun, pinger sua barca;”
- Dante, Purgatorio, Canto 12, lines 4-6
Yours was the first low cadence of tides,
A rusted bawley now sent to the breakers. Who
Could follow you through soused everglades,
Your phantom still set on cataloguing the slew
Of uncharted alts, death-crooning mermaids?
And now the salty wonder-pill pushes away
The database of names you’d so fussily gathered,
Registries of men scuttled and unsung, the etymology
Of barnacled weather-rail and waving oleander,
The cut-glass Atlantic, washed fodder for history.
You organised Dun Laoghaire lifeboat station
Like a man aloft, standing watch for a glimpse
Of reef or risk, good and lost in the mirror-like ocean
Whose urges you knew to exalt. The oily lamps
Kindle half-measured miles, inked into a margin
Of your silver memory. This pebbly ledge
Whitens at dusk. The oarlock’s twirling glance
Acts on your hand’s biding, your penultimate voyage
Too far off for gales to gag your response
To our common and ignored heritage.
We islanders, oblivious to the cold blue element
That is needed and fuels our need, have dove
Past the porpoise’s inshore library, the green ferment
In an appendix of anemone, a luminous sea-cave
Immersed in plain-texts of sand, the acrostic hunt
For bass or mackerel flavouring our hook.
Your headstone, if you had one, would face the coast
As pilgrims face Mecca, no matter how deeply brooked,
How deeply moored in soil you’d be. An offshore gust,
Hard as the fact, bestows on us neither a look-
Out’s clarity nor strength enough to bear
The burden forecast or the grey churn
Of a maelstrom, our blindness made clear
To the global sea that binds nation to nation,
As you had always declared.
Your Vico Road bristles with uncut cypresses
And her dissolving sky, with scuppers of cloud,
Rams the rolling swish that calmed you, redresses
An anchor feted with the shame of rust and seaweed.
You are bound homeward, yet willing your mind always
To frigid depths where prosperity may be trawled.
That’s all I have for you right now. Thanks to everyone who subscribes and hopefully the rest of this year proves happier for us all.
– Daniel.
In the meantime, tell your friends!