Donal O'Siodhachain

A regular reader at the White House.

The late Donal o'Siodhacháin was a regular white house guest and Open Mic contributor at the White House Pub poetry sessions up to the time of his untimely death in late October 2012*.

Born, and reared, in the heart of Sliabh Luachra, it is no surprise that poetry and history have been driving forces in his life. Ever true to the fountain of his roots, ‘In Celtic lore, it was believed the strongest memory in the mind was the last left at the moment of death and so became the first reality experienced after the cross-over into the spirit world to begin a new life’. (Quote)

‘Remembering My Own Father’...

The brightness in your eyes

And in your voice,

 Confident, Strong

Made me doubt for a moment

The white coats.../

‘ Beyond The Hidden Shore’

I wish for you Fermanagh Hills

And rivers running clean

June hedges of whitethorn

With meadows high between.../

*Just days prior to his death, Donal was billed as Guest Poet. Unable to attend, Donal sent his apologies. His partner, and love of his life, Pat, read for him on that occasion.

On October 10, 2012 the following email was received from Barney Sheehan:

'Dear All,

I regret to advise you of the death last night of our fellow poet Donal O'Siocháin.He was unquestionable one of the most extraordinary characters of the White House Poetry Revival and his unique contribution will always be associated with this cultural event in Limerick City.'

Barry Finegan

Barry Finegan has been a regular reader at the White House.

John Liddy

John Liddy was born in Cork, Ireland in 1954. He grew up in Limerick and Graduated fom the University of Wales. He currently works as a teacher/librarian in Madrid, Spain. A regular reader at the White House Poetry Revival sessions, he is the founding editor, along with Jim Burke, of The Stony Thursday Book (1975 -), one of Ireland's longest running literary reviews. In 2000, this publication saw it re-established under a policy of rotating yearly editorships. The Autumn of 2012 saw its thirty-seventh issue under the editorship of poet and artist, Jo Slade. ((/£&)

John Liddy's publications to date include: Boundaries (1974), The Angling Cot (1991), Song of the Empty Cage (1997), Wine and Hope (1999), Cast-A-Net (2003), The Well: New and Selected Poems (2007), Gleanings (2010). Also forthcoming is a Spanish translation, by Francisco Rivera, of The Angling Cot (La Barca de la Arena) and also Ivory Down, a translation of 'Tosigo Ardento' by José Maria Álvarez. A collection of stories for children, The Very Very Very Clever Little Fox, is also pending.("!)

JULY 2014

John featured, along with Brian Blaney in the first of the Mid Summer Lunch Time Poetry readings in the Captain's Room at the Hunt Museum on July 10th.

The lunchtime readings continued, with a different pairing of poets on consecutive Thursdays, until 31st July 2014.

POEM

(1)

A TEA TOWEL

After each visit we looked back

from the road across the field

to delight in you waving us home

with a tea towel I wished

we could have waved for you.

/... (stanza one of five)("!)

POEM

(2)

THE ECHO OF THE HOWL

In the Occupied Territories

there are Jewish only roads,

People wait at checkpoints

to have their arms stamped.

/... (stanza one of nine)("!)

POEM

(3)

JOTAELE

Because of an ache

in his bones he set out

with his baggage of love-loss

to probe the boundaries

beyond the tribe.

/... (stanza one of six)("!)

What they said:-

The birthplace may be Cork but the soul of this poet is a Limerick soul, Limerick bred, coddled and exiled. ... in his exile, his performances and his editorial work, maintains an honoured and distinctive Limerick tradition of cosmopolitan homeliness and distant yearning. He is the inheritor of that tendency to be elsewhere; to be in Rome like Desmond O'Grady or in New York like Frank McCourt. Each note he sings in these poems, each interjection he offers, is saturated with a native centredness, with a possessive sense of exile.

  - Thomas McCarthy (from the Introduction to Gleanings)

The Irish poetry scene needs poets like John Liddy who can demonstrate by the practice of their craft that an Irish poet can make a valuable contribution not only to his own Irishliterary culture but to the European poetry scene in general. 

- Michael Smith

I salute these three people, Wolfgang Gorschacher, John Liddy and Jim Kemmy who recognised the genius in the poetry of Desmond O'Grady and got him to talk about himself and his views about everything in literature, history, philosophy and poetry, expression and creation, relevant to his life - and all our lives. I drew from these conversations and chose elements which I felt would encourage a greater interest in the poet himself and his poems.

  - Bernard 'Barney' Sheehan (in the Acknowledgement to Desmond O'Grady's My Limerick Town which he edited and published)

Desmond O'Grady  Brian Blaney  Bernard 'Barney' Sheehan

Ciaran O'Driscoll

A regular reader at the White House

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) was an Irish born poet born in the townland of Mossbawn, Co. Derry, Ireland. In 1995, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past". He also won the coveted T.S. Eliot Prize in 2006 for his collection, 'District and Circle'.

See Desmond O'Grady for comments by Heaney on that poet's approach to his work.

See Brian Blaney's poem, 'Waiting for Beowulf', in celebration of Seamus Heany's 70th birthday.

To mark the passing of Seamus Heaney, at the White House Poetry Revival session of September 11, 2013, Brian Blaney read 'Heaney', a tribute poem from a second collection in progress.