Boyne Berries 10 Magazine Launched in Trim

The castle, majestic, rises - Cover art by Greg Hastings

Despite missing one of her captains (Paddy Smith) Boyne Berries 10 was launched in Trim on Thursday last into a sea of welcoming crowd.  Peter Fallon performed the launch here and it was so very interesting to hear him speak about his life, the Gallery Press, poems, lines of poetry he had liked from past issues of the magazine.  It was a privilege to be there on the night, a night of glittering stars in the firmament.

Michael Farry acted as master of ceremonies and many of the contributors read their pieces; Susan Connolly, Brian Kirk, James Lawless, Peter Goulding, Honor Duff and of course those from our own group, Boyne Writers.  Peter Fallon read his poem The Fields of Meath to end the night.  And one poet, Carolyne Van Der Meer had travelled from Canada to attend the launch. 

This issue is a special issue, in colour and featuring images.  It is available to purchase for 12 euro in Trim in Antonia’s Bookshop and in Spar, and in Galway in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop and can be bought by PayPal here:

http://www.boynewriters.com/buy_or_submit.html

Peter Fallon to Launch Boyne Berries 10



Peter Fallon launched Boyne Berries 4 in the Autumn of 2008 and it is an exciting thought that he will be back in Trim on Thursday, 29th September to launch Boyne Berries 10.  I found the below on the Aosdana (of which he is a member) website :

Peter Fallon is a poet, editor and publisher. He was born in Germany and grew up near Kells, Co. Meath where he now lives. He is an Honours Graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, where he has been Writer in Residence. Since 1978, his collections of poetry include: The Speaking Stones; Winter Work; The News and Weather; Eye to Eye; The Deerfield Series: Strength of Heart. His selected poems, News of the World, was published by Wake Forest University Press in 1993. An expanded edition, News of the World: Selected and New Poems, was published in Ireland in 1998. This expanded edition was included in the Irish Times' Books of the Year in 1998 and was reprinted in 1999.

In 1993 he received the O'Shaughnessy Poetry Award from the Irish American Cultural Institute; he was Poet in Residence (1996-97) at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts and, in spring 2000, he was the inaugural Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University, PA. He was also conferred with an Honorary Doctorate by Villanova University. He has given more than 200 readings throughout the USA, Europe, Canada, Japan and Ireland. In 1990 he edited, with Derek Mahon, The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry, and contributed to The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing 500AD to the present.

Aged 18, he founded The Gallery Press, which has published 300 books of poems and plays by Ireland's foremost writers. It is recognised as a pre-eminent publishing house, and received a Better Ireland Award in 1991.

Finding a poem by Mr. Fallon proved a little more difficult but he does have a poem in a collection which I own, a lovely collection, Forgotten Light: Memory Poems:

Another Anniversary

You turn
hearing the joy
of football
in the yard.
You yearn
for that footfall
of the lost,
the scarred.

Again, again
and again
you feel the sten -
gun attack
of that "What if?"
and that "What then?"
Well, then
he'd be a boy

who's ten.

Peter Fallon