Pete Mullineaux Again

Pete Mullineaux, who read at the Boyle Arts Festival last Sunday and was its poetry competition judge, is the guest poet at next week's O Bheal reading Upstairs at The Long Valley, Winthrop Street, Cork on Monday 3 August at 9.00pm. The night begins with a Poetry Challenge followed by the guest poet at 10.00pm, after which there is the usual open mic session.

I've just read Pete's first collection called A Father's Day published by Salmon Poetry. The majority of the poems, though not all, deal in some way with the father-son relationship. These include two matching poems on a son looking for a Fathers' Day card in Eason's, Galway and observing the other fathers at the same task. They and many others in the collection deal with the often awkward nature of the father-son relationship. The first Father's Day poem ends thus:

I settle for a Valentine instead -
"I love you Dad!"
There, it's said.

Pete read some of these in Boyle and his reading style complements the poetry. His reading of Tonight's the Night about taking his dad to see Neil Young was very impressive.

I took Dad to see Neil Young; he wore his suit (Dad that is -
Neil Young wore a tie-dye shirt.)

He also has a poem Coming Back Down "after Frost" which he delivered in his Robert Frost voice and was a hilarious take off of the sometimes inflated seriousness of Frost's reading. You can hear Frost reading two poems here.

Pete Mullineaux's poems are generally written in a free form and have the air of having being dashed off in a hurry almost off hand. Generally this means either that they have been dashed off in a hurry or that a long time has been spent trying to achieve the effect. In the case of these poems it would appear to be the latter.

Well worth going along to hear if you live in Cork.