Kirjahaku

A Man Is Only As Good is a pocket-sized introduction to the poetry of award-winning Irish poet and writer Pat Boran, drawing on five previous full-length collections and including the late Dennis O'Driscoll's prose introduction to the poems. Described as "a writer of great tenderness and lyricism" (Agenda, UK), Boran makes heartfelt, deceptively simple poems that are at once "local and international, personal and scientific, full of wisdom and wry humor" (Irish Literary Supplement, USA).

From treasures in museums to paintings in galleries and churches, from first impressions of the unfamiliar to fresh takes on the well-known and -loved, the triggers behind the poems in Pat Boran's seventh collection in the main depart from the poet's trademark starting point of autobiography. Instead in Then Again his focus is very much outwards, with the poems comprising a mini Odyssey that takes in parts of Ireland, Paris, Sicily, Cyprus and elsewhere, finding along the way the echoes of earlier discoveries and deeper concerns. The book's title acknowledges both the unexpected returns and the subsequent re-evaluations that memory occasions as it makes new connections between present and past, between our personal journeys and our shared fate."A writer of great tenderness and lyricism ..." - Agenda (UK)"Local and international, personal and scientific, full of wisdom and wry humour ..." - Irish Literary Supplement (USA)

From the early 1970s the Irish midland town of Portlaoise became famous as the home of the country's maximum security political prison. A childhood on the Main Street of that "once congested, now double by-passed town" afforded award-winning poet Pat Boran a unique insight into its workings, and into small-town life in general. Here are extraordinary glimpses of bog men and bogey men, of the town's first colour television and the national debate over its first public toilet ... Here too are stories of coming of age, of high jinks and low deeds, of events and characters both wonderful and strange.And here too is the shadow of the northern 'troubles', seen through the lens of a southern Irish town with claims to being the place where the British Empire began - and where the first shots of the 1916 Rising were fired.Part memoir, part social history, part meditation on community itself, The Invisible Prison is a funny, moving and by time heart-breaking exploration of Irish life and the energies and passions that animate it.

Hedge School is Irish poet Pat Boran's 8th collection of poems, finding inspiration and consolation in the local and near-at-hand, in the examples of our neighbours (human and creaturely), in the roots and shoots of what turns out to be a vibrant global network. Against a backdrop of climate concern and increasing international unrest, Hedge School responds to the subjects of home and home-lessness, belonging and welcome, knowledge and discovery, putting its faith in connection and communication, and trusting in small but robust forms to stand against the chill winds of our troubled and troubling times."A writer of great tenderness and lyricism" - Agenda, UK"... local and international, personal and scientific, full of wisdom and wry humor ..." - Irish Literary Supplement, USA