TO READ poet Gerard Smyth’s latest collection is to take a “wonderful journey” through a Dublin streetscape of the squeeze box, the Jew’s harp, the harmonica and more, musician and broadcaster Philip King said in Galway last night.
The cadence, rhythm and assonances and its “real heartful soul” represented a type of “portable music”, King said.
King, who presents RTÉ Radio's The South Wind Blows, was marking the launch of Smyth's new work, The Fullness of Time: New and Selected Poems, at the Cúirt literary festival in Galway's Meyrick Hotel.
Since the author gave him the collection to read a month ago, King said the book had been his “constant” companion.
“It speaks very eloquently to me – maybe it’s a generational thing or maybe it is because of the many musical references.”
Smyth, a member of Aosdána and managing editor of The Irish Times, has been published in literary journals in Ireland, Britain and the US and is author of several poetry collections.
At the event, Smyth paid tribute to Pat Boran of Dedalus Press, to his predecessors including John F Deane who “made space for me on the wings”, and to his wife Pauline and their two sons.
He thanked Cúírt director Maureen Kennelly, who he said would find a wonderful opportunity in “crisis management” if she ever decided to leave the artistic world.
One of the poems Smyth read from the collection, Riddles and Orisons, was a tribute to an English teacher who had inspired him, the late Jack Hoey. Smyth reads with Dennis O’Driscoll in Galway’s Town Hall Theatre at 6pm today.
Work by 66 poets who have made their homes in Ireland, entitled Landing Places: Immigrants in Ireland,will be launched at Cúirt tomorrow. The festival continues until Sunday.