Some of you will probably have noticed that the posts on here have morphed somewhat from their earlier form, of being stray essays, of a kind on aspects of my own bookshelves.
However, the impetus for that—my love of books—is about to culminate next week when I will be a Maddock Fellow at Marsh’s Library in Dublin for two weeks straight. Marsh’s Library was founded in 1707 by Archbishop Narcissus Marsh (1638–1713) as the first public library in Ireland.
In addition to Marsh’s Library itself at St. Patrick’s Close, they also have care of the Benjamin Iveagh collection housed in the library at Farmleigh House in the Phoenix Park. For the next few weeks, I will be in both of these places conducting research on my ongoing novel project The Printer’s Address about a 17th Century printer of propaganda for the Catholic Confederacy during the 1640s.
I am enormously pleased, and extremely grateful to both the Arts Council of Ireland and the Maddock Fellowship at Marsh’s for enabling me to fund this trip.
I seem to be arriving in Dublin too just in time for a large number of poetry readings in the city.
On the day I arrive, there will be a launch in Books Upstairs of D’Olier Street, of Randolph Healy’s new collection The Electron-Ghost Casino (Miami University Press). There will also be readings by Trevor Joyce and Ellen Dillon. The readings start at 2pm. Don’t miss out!
That event is being organised by Sean Pierson, whose debut chapbook, a series of odes to the Miami Dolphins 1972 team, THE PERFECT SEASON, will be launched on July 18 at 7pm in Unit 44 in Stoneybatter. Sean is one half of the team behind .pdfmagazine which you can check out at this link.
Before that there will be another poetry book launch taking place a week beforehand, also at Books Upstairs: the launch of latest Banshee Press publication High Jump As Icarus Story by Gustav Parker-Hibbett. The launch takes place on July 11 at 6pm. More details here.
Hopefully you can make it to some of these events, and hopefully I can make it to them too!