I was delighted to attend Eleanor Hooker’s launch of her second collection, A Tug of Blue. Eleanor read a number of poems from the book. It was also very nice to meet some familiar faces in the packed room.
Blog
Radiohead, the Leaving Cert, and Remembering my Mother
My blog is usually dedicated to poetry in the written and, maybe, spoken form but now that Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I’ll divert just once to the poetry of Radiohead. A few weeks ago, it was announced that they were to play a concert on 20th June 2017. It brought me […]
Jews in Irish Literature
I was interested to see that the new issue of Books Ireland, which features the beautiful cover of Eleanor Hooker’s new poetry collection, also features an article about Jews in Irish Literature. This article is inspired by Ruth Gilligan’s wonderful novel, Nine Folds a Paper Swan, which I’d highly recommend. I’ll be buying the journal as […]
Stinging Fly
I am delighted to have my poem “I was your Golem” published in the Stinging Fly. I won’t lie; this is a journal that I’ve been obsessed over getting into since I first read it a number of years ago. The poem is based on the Jewish Folk Tale of the Prague Golem and I wrote the […]
Lots of Launches
November the 8th is going to be a busy night for book launches. A total of 5 Irish poets will be launching their new collections that evening. Adam Wyeth, Jean O’Brien and Patrick Chapman will be launching their respective books in Books Upstairs at 6:30pm. Here are the lovely covers: Meanwhile in the Teachers’ Club on […]
Videos from UCD
I was recently alerted to the fact that there are a number of videos on YouTube from the UCD Poetry Archive Collection and I have 8 videos on their YouTube page. All 8 poems are from Jewtown and you can find them on the Video page of this web site. Below is one example of […]
Review of Jewtown from Israel
Today I received another review of Jewtown, my first from a Jewish reviewer and my first from someone outside of Ireland. Natalie Wood of PerfectlyWritePoetry published her review on the eve of Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year, and I was very pleased with her words. She also published “Tashlich”, one of the poems in the […]
RIP: Shirley McClure
I was very sad to hear of the passing of the poet Shirley McClure today. Since meeting Shirley at the launch of her second collect, Stone Dress (Arlen House), she has been very kind to me in my own writing. In Carlow, we had the pleasure of her company with Jane Clarke and Breda Wall Ryan, which Derek […]
Culture Night, Galway
I had a brilliant time in Galway as part of the Over the Edge Culture Night event in Kenny’s Bookshop and Gallery. Any excuse to come to Galway is always welcome but with Emrys staying at home with grandma, it was lovely to go away for a night with Rozz on our own. We got […]
Galway Advertiser Review of Jewtown
I was delighted to hear that Jewtown got another review, this time in the Galway Advertiser by Kevin Higgins. Here is the text of the review below: JEWTOWN, SIMON Lewis’s debut poetry collection, published by Connemara’s Doire Press, tells the story of Cork’s Jewish community, from their arrival fleeing pogroms in 19th century Czarist Russia, […]