Tom French New Poetry Collection

The Gallery Press in association with Meath County Council Library Service is hosting a reception to celebrate the publication of a new collection of poems by Tom French, Midnightstown,  in Dunboyne Library, Castle View, Dunboyne, County Meath at 7.00 p.m. on Thursday 5 June 2014. All welcome.

From the Gallery Press website:
Tom French’s third collection opens with the poet alone with his newborn son in a delivery room. Through what North described as ‘a heartbreaking quality of understatement’, he confronts and stares down extreme experience and praises the everyday.

An oncology diary is simultaneously dispassionate and moving. In language of calm power he registers a brother’s suicide and fraught relationships. He offers glimpses of a battle in World War I, while other poems observe saplings as they prosper and actors preparing a play. They record incidents in barbers’ shops and salvage materials from old newspapers.

Tom French is a custodian of family and local histories, a caring, careful celebrant of
‘our loved and unloved, living and dead . . .
the rest of the road home, the night ahead.’

Drogheda Poetry Readings and Workshop

Drogheda Arts Festival 2013 and Droichead Arts Centre in association with Gallery Press present

Gallery Goes……

an afternoon of poetry, discussion and book signings with three of Ireland’s finest poets, Tom French, Medbh McGuckian, Conor O'Callaghan on Saturday 4 May, 1.30pm in Droichead Arts Centre. Tickets €5 Teas/Coffees/Scones.

This will be the first outing for Conor O’Callaghan’s new collection, The Sun King. The readings will be followed by a creative writing workshop with Conor O’Callaghan entitled “Describing Sex”  Fee €15 (includes reading).

The workshop is a practical embarrassment-free workshop about the crucial skill of describing acts of love in writing. We will look at successful poems and famous scenes from fiction, identifying a few aspects common to these pieces and how those aspects make them work. We will also look at a few less successful examples. Limited number of places on the workshops.

Box office: 041 9833946. Free online booking.