News and Poems
  • September 2007
  • John F. Deane gives a reading at the festival in Mantua
     and another in Bologna, Italy

  • September 2007: in an article in The Irish Times of 22 September, Eileen Battersby mentions
    Deane's fiction book, "The Heather Fields" as being a major book: and here are two extracts from a
    review of that book, in The Furrow, by Madeleine Lombard of The Queen's University, Belfast:  "This
    is the most delightful collection of stories that I have read for a very long time. From the beautifully
    spare opening sentence of its first and central story to the elegant poignancy of its closing lines,
    there is much evidence that John Deane may be a very worthy successor to that master storyteller
    of the last few decades - John McGahern."   "All in all this is a delightful, sometimes enigmatic but
    always compelling collection of stories from an author who has not only mastered the best of the
    tradition but also reworked it in very fresh, contemporary and sharply observed ways."



  • June 2007

  • In the Gate Theatre, John Deane launches the two new Peppercanister books
    by Thomas Kinsella.



  • John F. Deane reads with the European Academy of Poetry in Sibiu, Romania

  • Gedit has published, in Bologna, a translation of "Manhandling the Deity": called "Tra le mani il
    divino", it is dual-language and translated by Chiara de Luca.


  • May 2007

  • 26th John F. Deane presents a talk at the Conference in University College Cork on Faith, Art and
    Science; his talk is entitled "The Three Strange Angels"

  • For some strange material go to

  • 24 May Thomas Kinsella given the Freedom of Dublin City at a ceremony in City Hall, Dublin

  • 22 May John F. Deane gives a reading in the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, France

  • May 20: a plaque is unveiled on 37 Phoenix Street, The Ranch, Dublin, to the honour of Thomas
    Kinsella who is being made a Freeman of the City of Dublin. Tom attended, with Eleanor his wife, and
    with his family. The plaque is unveiled by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Vincent Jackson.

  • April 2007: John F. Deane is created a Chevalier de l'ordre des arts et des lettres in Dublin by the
    French Ambassador M. Grasset.
A New Poem: May 2007

By The Shore
(Rusheen: Achill Island)

You may step off the old stone pier
onto the world at the ocean’s edge, over boulders,
lichened rocks, erratics; the sea idling, long

arms of kelp sashaying in the swell;
you may be part of something, between-wheres
between-times, the distant islands shrouded,

the inland meadows dulled. In soft
off-the-Atlantic and persistent mists, you will stand
absorbed, anticipating spirit-shapes

and their whisperings as they pass, incautiously, by;
up on the mountain road the toiling
engine of a truck is an intrusion

yet a strong lien holds you to the invisible
and almost-visible, while you are relishing
the all-embracing ovoid bone-structuring

of the earth. Too soon this solitary existence
will have become so exquisite you will call
out urgently for companionship.
June 2007

To Market, to Market


The day was drawky, with a drawling mist
coming chill across the marshlands;
the church of Ireland stood, damp and dumpy,
crows squabbling on its crenulated stump; cattle,

that had summered in a clover field, have been herded
through plosh and muck into a lorry, have dropped
their dung of terror on slat and road. Big
heavy-skulled heads, bellowing, stretch up

over the concrete wall for one clear glimpse
of the brown fields; and what of unredeemed
suffering? what of faithfulness? Spring
they were calling out of frustrated love

for their calves, how they stood in fields,
innocent and willing, uneasy in weighted flesh
like great-aunts whose trembling long-boned hands
fumble for something in old unstitching bags.

from forthcoming "A Little Book of Hours"
with French Ambassador Grasset
In Sibiu, Romania, June 2007
With Thomas Kinsella and Eavan Boland, Gate
Theatre, Sunday 17 June, 2007
With Ursula, left, and Chiara de Luca, in Bologna