Paperback. Being Book Two of Say Nothing Till You Hear More. Also to be found in Collected Writings 2. An Update on Dante's... More > Commedia. The Baldriggera butler Rory Devine is taken on a tour of the underworld. Much has been privatised since Dante’s time, but the same basic notion holds: World 'Statesmen' find things not entirely to their liking. They get what they chose in this life, except that it's what they chose for other people - e.g.shock, awe, other unpleasantries. They wallow in their own stercorous verbiage; exploiters starve, frauds are deceived, etc. < Less

Paperback. Contains the Portstewart Childhood text. Alexander (the Lesser) grows up in Catholic Ireland North & South, fails... More > to enlist in the ranks of The Church Militant while learning bad habits in an English seminary, emerges into the UK secular meritocracy - the Welfare State of the fifties, which provides for him handsomely, teaches him Russian during service in the RN, Kamchatka in Cornwall, allows him to squander years as a dilettante cricketing philosopher among the dreaming spires, to hitch-hike thru Europe while wishing for the gifts of Mozart, & to drift into a career as a teacher malgré soi - he isn’t fit for anything else.
Also in Collected Writings 1. < Less

Paperback. Two plays written & staged 1977-8 in Inishbofin, Don Bosco Grainne & The Dole - a piece of anti-social-realism,... More > written for & performed by the islanders, expresses trenchant views on the relationship of Art & The People. Played during the Arts Week & subsequently. Sculptures accidentally come alive & walk away - one of the risks you have to take with really great art. An ivory tower writer advances his theory of self deception, the artist as “innocent criminal, if you follow me.” The Connemara Triangle is a sci-fi farce. Worried by alienation, pollution, atom bomb, an extra-terrestrial race materialise one of their number, equip him with pinstripe suit, briefcase, Oxford accent. One thing he must at all costs avoid: alcohol. He is set down one the westernmost island in Europe... < Less

Paperback. Poems, written since 1957. Early influences include Pound (“free verse must still be verse - each line having... More > its necessary rhythm”) Montale, St.John Perse, Anhava, the Psalter. Aims as it were to make music out of the resonances of verbal images, scraps & details. Stylistic concerns move from imagistic (“never use an abstract noun till you’re thirty”) to social-conversational to political-personal-polemic. Collects most of GIRL WITH VIOLIN, PRIORITIES, SENSUALITIES, some SCURRILITIES, adding THE FIAGACH & others hitherto unpublished. INTERPRETATIONS include complete Sappho, & versions from Dante & Aeschylus.
Also to be found distributed in Collected Writings 1. < Less

Paperback. Satirical verses. Double standards? Why bomb tyranny in Iraq & support it in Saudi? They’d all read... More > Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard 1984 & the 1992 PNAC: they knew it was about oil. Shock & Awe? "The world’s a safer place tonight?" Gen Franks: “this war’s been planned for years!” Democracy in Palestine - the elephant in the room? Remember Twin Towers - & forget Panama? Failed pop-star Blair turns Catholic? His First Confession: “I stole sweets Father.” “Yes my child.” “I was disobeejent.” “Yes my child.” “I told lies.” “Now now, my child, these are just peccadilloes the nuns suggest to little boys so they’ll have something to confess.” “But in my case it’s true!” And other targets. Composed 1970-2005.
Also to be found in Collected Writings 2 < Less

Paperback. Verse play, modern myth based on an actual case brought by the Irish Government to Strasbourg, 1979: to a charge... More > of torture (see McGuffin’s Internment) the British with their usual Perfidious Albionics, entered no plea; the judges said: no plea entered means no charge to answer... This text was rejected in 1985 by the Abbey Theatre: “rather more tact is called for...” Tact! The author (faute de mieux) did it solo, around 200 perfs. “Epic poetic satire - savagely indignant” (F.O’Toole) “Brilliantly absurd” (The Scotsman) “Everything I been thinking for 40 years in an hour’n’a haef - how does he do it?” (Jungian lady in Buffalo NY). His Reality Ultimate the 1st & Last is arraigned in the Court of Tír na nÓg - "needless maltreatment of the human species" - prosecuted by a Camus type. The hearing results in a huge explosion; Lord Reason survives, as do some self-effacing pre-Celtic deities now practising as traditional musicians...
Also in SAY NOTHING, Collected Works 2. < Less

Paperback ‘Experimental’ novel. completed 1971. Nobody owns language, nobody invented it - or everybody did. Does - all... More > the time. All possible styles are attempted - juxtaposed, invoking Eliot’s ‘surprise into a fresh sense of reality.’ Shannow is a mythic-magic landscape hung with lexical mobiles, hives & swarms of usages from the Irish & elsewhere. Hammy narrative is manfully eschewed, the free-standing scheme of Art is developing nicely when bloody old Life intervenes, makes a hames of the narrative, & turns out to be truer than the anyone could have suspected. As for the style; cf. William Carlos Williams - ‘why be afraid of imitating unless you’ve imitated the wrong thing?’ ‘Gusto’ says the organist in The Drums of Father Ned. About half this work has appeared in lit-mags Transatlantic Review, Ambit, Dublin Magazine, The Gorey Detail, etc.
Also to be found in Collected Writings 1. < Less

Paperback. Stage play as performed in The Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo, 1985. Lord Maulte invites prominent politicians from... More > north (Rev Wm Blaikie, Ms Billie Gallagher, Sam Ferguson MP) & south (Oliver Grattan McGreal TD, Séamus Stark TD) to his mansion on the border. All agree to come if there is to be foolproof security; however, since each side thinks the house is on the other side of the border, nobody arranges for same. The butler thinks fit to invite the UDA & the IRA, unbeknownst to each other. Ructions!
Prose version written into Say Nothing in Collected Writings 2. < Less

Paperback. Also in CW1. Two texts for Theatre. Critique of slogans, demos, merely theoretical Answers to Everything. In The... More > Emerald Oil Company a fictional seer is thrust onstage, sans script, by his absconding author. His task ("you'll work it out!") is to envision the activity that is criminally misusing the world's resources. What he sees: a Universal Death-Wish; one all-powerful Moloch-worshipper controls everything, thru his computerised assistants, Da Siva & Des Troy, engagingly virtual personalities. Over-riding principle of governance: child-sacrifice must be factored into every single financial operation... It Goes On: What is to be done? Tha People engage in a worldwide conspiracy - but is it too late? < Less

Public Concerns. Fiction, Verse, Memoirs, Journal, Correspondence, Polemics & a Poloniad. The satirical novel Say Nothing... More > Till You Hear More offers a scabrous view of wars & other injustices, thru updates on Irish legend & Dante's Commedia. Peacemonger & Dao Jones - political verses attack all the elephants in the room; for full frontal assault robust traditional scansion is de rigueur. The Immodest Proposal - 200 acerbic Byronic stanzas, previously published (2005) by Lapwing. Memoirs of an Expatriarch brings us back to 1960s Leeson Street, with excursions - e.g. to Iowa City. The remainder of the book reproduces polemical opinions & letters to editors, largely unpublished, often unpublishable. < Less