Boyne Berries 9 Launched

Another Boyne Berries launched with style and enjoyment. A good crowd, appreciative and interested. Some great reading of fine material. Noel Dempsey set the tone for the evening by saying how delighted he was to be with us and how he had feared when he launched our first issue that the magazine would not survive. He congratulated everyone involved in the magazine over the years and spoke of the quality and variety of the contents.

He said he was full of admiration for those who have the courage to express themselves and expose themselves in so many ways. He spoke of a number of individual pieces in the magazine which he had noticed in particular including Vietnam by Paddy Halligan, Peter Goulding's The Rat beneath the Shed and Paddy Smith's story The Back Seat. The Group presented him with a hefty volume, The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, to help him pass the time in his retirement.

We then had about fourteen readers including Susan Lindsay from Galway who has just published her first volume Whispering the Secret, Steven Balbirnie from Dublin and C.P. Stewart who made the journey from North Yorkshire to read his poem And Still the Daily Gift of Days. C.P has just had his first full collection of poems Considering the Lilies published in Galway. I thought all the readings were great and that our own members excelled themselves. Well done!

Then tea and coffee and lots of chat about prose and poetry and reading aloud and Bob Dylan and Irish history and Irish poets and editing your work and publishing your work. Then someone found the usual typo in the magazine. Oh Dear!

Boyne Berries 9 can be purchased on our website, in Antonia's Bookshop and Spar Trim, and will be available in Dublin at the bookmarket in the Twisted Pepper Building on Abbey Street each Saturday afternoon from 1pm – 6pm and in Galway in Charlie Byrne's Bookshop.

Orla Fay took more photographs that I did so check out her blog for more.