Celia de Fréine

WEB was the brainchild of Arlen House founder Catherine Rose, who appointed poet Eavan Boland as Creative Director. As an editor at Arlen House from 1978, Boland did much extraordinary work to develop, mentor and promote Irish women writers. The founders of WEB writers’ group initially met at these empowering, transformative workshops hosted by Boland, and they have been meeting continuously for almost forty years, making WEB one of the longest-running writing groups in Ireland. Over the decades, WEB writers and alumni have established highly-successful literary careers, publishing books, having plays and film scripts produced, and winning prestigious literary prizes. This anthology of new poetry, prose and drama, edited by Nessa O’Mahony, is dedicated to the memory of Eavan Boland.

Poems inspired by true events from which the finished product is woven, are the subject of Focal den Fhírinne : A Grain of Truth, the eleventh collection of poetry from Celia de Fréine. The struggle to survive and make sense of life are its main themes

A new poetry collection, with facing page English and Irish language poems, by one of Ireland's leading bilingual writers, these poems address the poet's life experiences, emotions and thoughts during the first lock-down of the 2020 pandemic.

Although Rainer Maria Rilke is better known for his work in German, he also wrote more than four hundred poems in French. During a residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, Celia de Fréine became familiar with this work and with the man himself. This collection is a response to Rilke’s influence and to his French oeuvre, in particular the book Migration des Forces.

Celia de Freine is a poet, playwright and screenwriter who writes in Irish and English. This is a collection of her Irish plays.

Brian Merriman wrote The Midnight Court in or around 1780. This play imagines the time in his life immediately before he laid pen to paper. In it we meet characters from his local neighbourhood, and it is given to understand that it is the neighbourhood, its people and their deeds, that inspire the poet to undertake this unique work.

Bilingual (English/Irish) poetry by multi-award-winning playwright and poet

This collection includes three plays by Celia de Fréine: Anraith Neantóige, Cóirín na dTonn, and Tearmann.