Dedalus Press: Poetry from Ireland

26/12/2024

17/12/2024

ARE YOU ON THE DEDALUS PRESS MAILING LIST?

Beginning in the new year, we'll be offering a range of special offers (discounted titles, signed copies, etc.) exclusive to subscribers to our Mailing List, as a way to say thanks for their support. We'll also, of course, continue to pass on info on submissions windows and other press-related news.

Signing up is free and and your details are kept strictly private to be used only to keep you updated on Dedalus Press activities and publications. We hope to see you aboard.

The link to the form (name, email, country and area of interest only) is in the first comment below.

POETRY MATTERS: SPREAD THE WORD

03/12/2024

With thanks to LaoisToday, a reminder of tomorrow evening’s (Wed 04 December) HEDGE SCHOOL, a free music & poetry event at Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise, featuring Pat Boran and Kiêu Conroy (harp) at 7pm. All welcome.

Poetry Ireland / Éigse Éireann Laois Libraries Book Club

Laois poet and broadcaster Pat Boran will launch 'Hedge School' - his eighth collection of poems - in December at the Dunamaise Arts Centre.

01/12/2024

Dedalus Press poet Paddy Bushe’s monumental and engaging tribute to the Iveragh peninsula of Co Kerry, The Amergin Step, will be launched with an interview at Dublin’s Books Upstairs next Sunday, 08 December, and promises to be a fascinating event. All are welcome.

30/11/2024

Pat Boran and his work at Dedalus Press are the subject of this week’s Books Are My Business interview in The Irish Examiner.

With many thanks to Marjorie Brennan for her interest.

He has published more than a dozen books of poetry and prose and is a member of Aosdána

28/11/2024

Tonight on RTÉ Radio 1 at 7pm

14/11/2024

FINDING POETRY IN THE (BRAVE NEW) ONLINE WORLD

Just to keep our friends and supporters up to date, the recent changes to how Google Search works will have repercussions in all aspects of our lives and, therefore, for your local friendly small poetry publisher too.

At the risk of grossly simplifying a complicated subject, until recently a visit to the Google Search page (in order to find the new collection of poems by Joe or Mary Bloggs, for instance) would likely produce a list of links including, in a prominent position, the publisher of the book and, indeed, a link to the website of the poet in question.

With Google's new adoption of AI, that same page of results is now likely to be dominated by paid-for content, AI-generated (and often untrustworthy 'articles'), links to old posts on sites like Reddit (in cahoots with the Google empire) etc etc, so that the visibility of the press and poet is greatly compromised and, some predict, will soon be a vague historical memory. (Try it: Go to Google and search for the name of a recent book and/or poet. Look at how much of the results is dominated by ads, filler text, things intended to keep you on the page rather than have you go to where and what you are in fact looking for.)

This is not to say that the lot of the small poetry publisher is any more endangered than, say, your local plumbing company or independent trader. But it is important to point out that the internet in general (including social media, cough cough) is increasingly hostile to any sort of content that takes users 'away' to a dedicated site of any kind and therefore out of the clutches of the big few (the present landlord here being no exception).

Posting links anywhere will get your posts seen by fewer and fewer people. And visibility, for instance on what was once the Google Search results page, will soon be mostly limited to customers who can afford to be there: you can imagine, I'm sure, that this is unlikely to include your local poetry publisher or friendly plumber for very long.

So what can you do, if you want to keep in meaningful touch with Dedalus Press, to be specific.

Simple: visit our website and add your name to our mailing list. Just that. We don't share the info with anyone, but we do use it to write to you about 6-8 times a year, letting you know of new publications and events, putting out calls for work for our various new projects, in general spreading the word that, now, more than ever, poetry matters.

And our address? That would be dedalus press dot com. We'll leave you with the algorithm of common sense to decode that one.

Thanks, as ever, for your interest and support!

(Image by Umay Karataş)

06/11/2024

Nov 26 at Project Arts Centre. Booking is required as spaces are limited. Hope to see you there!

Poetry Matters: Spread the Word

💙 FREE EVENT! Join us for the launch of Hedge School, a new book of poems by Pat Boran Dedalus Press: Poetry from Ireland on Tues 26 Nov.

This launch will include a reading from the book by Pat, and will be accompanied with music by Arash Kazemi.

🎟️ This event is free to attend, but booking is required as spaces are limited.

https://tinyurl.com/yfx92hnj

See you there!

28/10/2024

Great review of ‘No Man’s Land’ by David Nash in The Friday Poem.

22/10/2024

Enda Wyley, among others, on an episode of Sunday Miscellany dedicated to Paul Durcan to mark the poet's 80th birthday.

A mix of 'music and musings'

17/10/2024

A lovely launch of three new books by our friendly ‘rivals’ at The Gallery Press: Poetry & Drama from Ireland. Aifric Mac Aodha (Englished by David Wheatley), John McAuliffe and Grace Wilentz add to the list of fine books from the press. Congrats to all.

14/09/2024

OPPORTUNITIES FOR WRITERS: HEANEY-MIŁOSZ RESIDENCY IN POLAND

A very interesting opportunity being offered by Ireland’s Embassy in Poland, namely the Heaney-Miłosz Residency – a writer-in-residence programme celebrating the friendship between Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney and Czesław Miłosz.

"The Residency offers the chance for an emerging or mid-career writer, resident on the island of Ireland, to spend up to six weeks next year in the city of Krakow, Poland. Following a competitive selection process, the selected writer will stay in the former apartment of Polish poet and writer Czesław Miłosz.

The Residency is a partnership between the Estate of Seamus Heaney, the Embassy of Ireland in Poland and Krakow Festival Office (KBF).

We hope to build on the success of the first Residency, last year, by the poet Alice Lyons. And so, I am asking for your assistance in promoting this opportunity to writers in Ireland. You can do so by sharing the announcement with any contacts, or on your social networks. (Links to X/Twitter and Instagram here.)

The Call for Applications, and the Application form, is now open and available here. Applications are accepted until 21 October, with the selected writer to be announced in by the end of January 2025."

About the Residency The Seamus Heaney – Czesław Miłosz Residency aims to support emerging writers, resident in Ireland, to further develop their work. It is intended that the Residency will also provide the basis for deepening further the many literary links between Ireland and Poland. As the fi...

12/09/2024

Info on the TROUBADOUR INTERNATIONAL POETRY PRIZE

Judged by Jane Yeh & Glyn Maxwell
first prize £2,000
second prize £1,000
third prize £500
plus 20 commendeds
plus — winners read with judges at 2024 online international prize-night celebration on mon 9 dec
poems on any subject (see below)
submit via email by mon 23 sep 2024
results announced mon 9 dec 2024
Check out winners, winning poems & judges’ reports, 2023 & prior, on our previous-winners’-poems page.

JUDGES
Jane Yeh was born in New Jersey, educated at Harvard & University of Iowa, now lives in London, & has degrees from Manchester Metropolitan, & London’s Royal Holloway Universities. She lectures in Creative Writing at the Open University, writes on books, theatre, & fashion for, among others, Poetry Review & Village Voice, & has published (with Sally O’Reilly) Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings (Routledge, 2022). Her first collection, Marabou, was shortlisted for Whitbread, Forward, & Aldeburgh prizes, she was named as a Poetry Book Society Next Generation Poet for The Ninjas & her latest, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation & one of the Guardian’s best books of 2019, is The Discipline (Carcanet).

Glyn Maxwell, poet, playwright, novelist, librettist & critic, born in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, has studied at Oxford & Boston, & taught in Amherst, New York & London. His poetry collections include The Nerve, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, & The Breakage, Hide Now, Pluto, & his latest, How the Hell Are You (Picador, 2020), all of which were shortlisted for either Forward or TS Eliot prizes. His plays have been staged in London & New York, & his opera libretti at Glyndebourne, Royal Opera House, & on tour. He has edited Derek Walcott’s collected poems, & published (with Oberon) On Poetry, a guidebook for the general reader, & Drinks with Dead Poets, a uniquely inventive novel encounter with poetry’s greats.
judges read all poems submitted

RULES
Poems: Poems may be submitted from any country, may be on any theme, & must be in English, must each be no longer than 45 lines, must show title & poem only, must not show poet’s name, must be the original work of the entrant (no translations) & must not have been previously published; no text alterations accepted after submission; no limit on number of poems or number of subsequent submissions.
Submission: Email only, no postal entries: email your poems as attachments (.doc, .docx, .pdf, .rtf only) to [email protected] ; include in email: Poet’s Name & Address, Phone Number, List of Titles, Number of Poems, Total Fees, & PayPal Receipt Number.
Fees: £6/€7/$8 per poem (Sterling/Euro/US-Dollars only); pay online (see below, PayPal account not required).
Timeline: Submit by midnight (your local time) on Mon 23 Sep 2024; prize-winners will be contacted in week commencing Mon 2 Dec 2024.

Acknowledgement/Results: Submissions acknowledged within 14 days of receipt; results posted on website after Mon 9 Dec 2024; judges’ decision is final; no correspondence entered into.
Email Address: By including email address you agree to receiving emails regarding annual Troubadour International Poetry Prize.

10/09/2024

To mark the poet's passing, Fred Johnston's poem 'On Hearing of the Death of Gerald Davis' from If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song (Dedalus Press, 2014)

27/08/2024

"A deft and triumphant debut" from Lani O'Hanlon (LANDSCAPE OF THE BODY)

"O'Hanlon's work is always outward looking… [She] also explores people's capacity for change, such as in 'A Copper Basin in Florence', where O'Hanlon examines the dark shadows of a childhood filled with fear of 'mortal sin', and the relief of the escape from tradition and expectation:

to dance barefoot in a circle of women
who prayed with wrists, hips, feet and drums,
bellies painted gold, Magdalene red.

Though this poem brings us through many scenes from her childhood, the shifts in time are handled effortlessly, and the starting point of the copper basin – which, as a child, O'Hanlon believed was the colour of her soul – is never lost. This is a deft and triumphant debut, whose language fizzes with energy, and whose imagery is full of joy."

— Rosamund Taylor, Poetry Ireland Review