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Conamara agus Tíortha Eile
€18.00
Conamara agus Tíortha Eile: 152 pp; hbk; ISBN: 9781913814755
Poems gleaned from the margins
Connemara and Other Countries is a selection of poems written between 2015 and 2024. They have been gleaned and garnered from several generations of obsolete laptops; recopied from the backs of envelopes; found deep in the bags and pockets of yesteryear; reclaimed from the margins and inside covers of books; saved from photographs of engravings on momuments for which they were commissioned; deciphered with the aid of a magnifying glass; rescued from tatty notebooks and brought together as a record of a momentous decade during which th poet bussed, trained, planed and cycled around a half a dozen countries earning a living from pen, flute and a linguistic sagacity accumulated during forty years of lexicophilosophy.
The cornerstone of a Celtic and European edifice
The Gaelic language is the cornerstone of this collection, as it is the cornerstone of all my writing and dreaming, but on this cornerstone a larger edifice has been erected, an edifice I like to consider at once Celtic and European, esoteric and altruistic.
Poems of utter sincerity
There are poems in my mother tongue, Welsh, the most sinewy and classical of the Celtic family; in Breton, the earthiest and pithiest of them; poems in German, the greatest poetic language of the 18th century, and that of the genius of Rilke; poems in French, a language a little like a deflated balloon, but colourful enough and enriched with its own strange mixture of arrogance and argot; poems in English, a lonely ogre of a poetic language in a world spewing the banalaties of an ailing civilisation. You may disagree! I admire your conviction, and invite you to navigate the oceanic pages of this utterly sincere anthology.
“Fiaire feá é Johnson a bhfuil de phribhléid againne seal a chaitheamh ina fhochair ar a fhánaíocht dó.” — Darragh Ó Caoimh, Breac
Diarmuid Johnson is a well-known figure in literary and musical circles in Ireland and abroad. In Conamara agus Tíortha Eile (Connemara and Other Countries), his eighth collection of poems, he takes us on lyrical odyssey through Ireland, Wales and much of western Europe, weaving together in a unique work the experiences of a monumental decade of discovery and revelation.
Born in Wales, schooled in Ireland, resident now for many years in continental Europe, Diarmuid Johnson is author of over two dozen books of poetry, prose and translations. His acclaimed Irish- langauge Tara Trilogy is a refashioning of the tales of the Tuatha Dé Danann and Gaelic mythology. Ceallach, his diary of the sixth century monk, founder of the Swiss city of Sankt Gallen, takes us on a perilous journey to the Merovingian kingdom of the Franks.