Boyne Berries 1916 Sold Out

Boyne Berries 1916 has now sold out. Thanks to everyone who purchased a copy. Details of how to submit to Boyne Berries 20 will be available soon.

Comments by Poet Tom French on Boyne Berries 1916

 

Tom French Pictured in The Irish Times 2014

 



As readers and writers we are all always in pursuit of, what Seamus Heaney famously called,“that moment of joy, of lift, of unexpected reward.” Weaving through the pages of this centenary Boyne Berries are anger, humour, reflection, spikiness, wistfulness, regret and raw emotion. We encounter the radical idea of dying at Easter and not rising; the notion – particularly poignant in the light of the recent publication of a new translation of Book VI of The Aeneid – of quarrels among the shades; we encounter the idea of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington as a hippie protesting against Vietnam; we meet the compassion of a person who attempts, with her hands, to put a man just parted from himself back together again in order to be whole enough to enter Eternity. And there are other beautiful things. In this centenary issue I was struck by many things. It has taken me until now, reading these pages, to discover, that the perfect collective noun for birds is ‘a sky’, and it will never now be anything else except ‘a sky of birds.’ This is, I believe, why we read, to encounter the tiniest phrase and to be struck by its rightness. Here too I read of ‘train light ghosting the bottom of a field’, of the ‘tenderness at the root of things,’ and of the deep difference between anointing and elation. As citizens we are being exhorted this year to remember, to reflect and to re-imagine. As a librarian I am delighted to welcome this centenary Boyne Berries and to commend its contributors. Not only does it remember, reflect and re-imagine, it is full of soul and song and unexpected reward.

 

Tom French, March 2016

Boyne Berries 1916 Launched

Tom French

 

It was a special night in Trim on Thursday as poet Tom French launched Boyne Berries 1916. Twenty four contributors read and attended on the night, while poet Deirdre Hines was present in the form of an MP3 recording of her poem The Letter Read as Pond. Mick McGann-Jones recited his poem Bullets and he also treated the audience to a piece called Mna na hEireann on his fiddle.

 

Thank you to everyone who came from near and far to make the night a success. For his decade of service as secretary of the Boyne Writers' Group Michael Farry was presented with a copy of an illustration by C. E Brock for Gulliver's Travels called 'Three Great Scholars'.

 

 

 

Pictures from the night can be found by clicking here courtesy of Frank Murphy's TheTaraPoetryBlog

 

Copies of the magazine can be purchased by clicking the paypal link to the right of this page. A limited number of copies of the magazine are still available.

 

The submission period for Boyne Berries 20 will open in June and details will be posted here then.