On the Town: A poem "is almost like a stew" in its creation, explained poet Gerard Fanning. "It's what you get at the end that is what you want," he said. "I tend to revise, revise, revise . . . You get an idea and a couple of lines and you work them to death. It's 99 per cent perspiration," he said.
His third collection of poems, Water & Power, was published this week by Dedalus Press and launched in the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire.
Among friends and family was Colm Tóibín, who went to UCD with Fanning. He remembered how the two of them "were absolute addicts of beans and toast" and how they used to talk about nothing but poetry, he said. "We had no interest in rock 'n' roll."
Poet Gerard Dawe, who launched Fanning's book, said: "The visual alertness, the sophisticated reading and the emotional depth that Water & Power displays . . . is very rare indeed." The territory of Fanning's poetry is "fresh and uncharted", he added.
Others who came to celebrate the book's publication were fellow poets Dennis O'Driscoll, Gerard Smyth and Celia de Fréine whose poetry collection Fiacha Fola was awarded the Gradam Litríochta Chló Iar-Chonnachta this year. She was there with her husband, the short-story writer Jack Harte. The publisher, poet John F. Deane, said his company Dedalus has published a total of 10 poetry titles this year.
Deane's wife, Ursula Foran, said her favourite poem in the book was the title poem, which is set in her native Co Leitrim:
My father's watch
was the only thing I wore
when I dived into the Merrimack
in the summer of 1974.
Fanning read from the same poem before the night's proceedings came to a close.
Water & Power by Gerard Fanning is published by Dedalus Press.