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Best of Irish Poetry 2010
Editor: Matthew Sweeney

Songs of Earth and Light
Barbara Korun poems translated by Theo Dorgan

Done Dating DJs
by Jennifer Minniti-Shippey
Winner, 2008 Fool for Poetry Competition

Richesses: Francophone Songwriter Poets
Edited and translated by Aidan Hayes

Munster Literature Centre

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PAT BORAN

Pat Boran was born in Portlaoise, Ireland in 1963 and currently lives in Dublin. Since receiving the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry in 1989, he has published four collections of poetry as well as New and Selected Poems (2005/2007). In addition to poetry he has published short stories for adults, Strange Bedfellows (1991) and a short fiction title for children including All the Way from China (1999), which was a finalist for the Bisto Book of the Year Award. He has also produced a number of non-fiction works including the popular writers' handbook The Portable Creative Writing Workshop (1999/2005) and A Short History of Dublin (2000). A former editor of Poetry Ireland Review, he has been presenter of The Poetry Programme on RTÉ Radio 1. He is editor of Wingspan: A Dedalus Sampler (2006) and Flowing, Still: Irish Poets on Irish Poetry (Dedalus 2009). In 2007 he was elected to membership of Aosdána and in 2008 received the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Poetry Award in the US.

Honeysuckle

He took the back roads and drove for hours

till the sky was the puddle of stars he had lost

in his boyhood and never bothered to miss

before now, the night of his 50^th birthday,

his parents and neighbours long dead, the old house

bulldozed out of existence, the pond

in-filled and covered with tarmac, a stop sign

where a scarecrow once stood, the road falling off

into the distance, and only the stars

still familiar, still reliable, and that scent in the dark

he called, then and still, honeysuckle.

©2012 Pat Boran

Author Links

Pat Boran home page

Video of Boran reading 'Tent'

Boran at Dedalus Press