Annemarie Ní Churreáin; Rich Gilligan (illus.)
Town, 2018
Dublin: The Salvage Press
One of twenty-six deluxe lettered copies, specially bound and with an additional suite of photographs. Signed by the poet, the photographer, and the printer.
1954
Folio. (38)pp. Gilligan's photographs were taken during the Christmas season of 2017 on 35mm film. The chill of the environment and the nostalgic method of photography evoke the moods of...
Folio. (38)pp. Gilligan's photographs were taken during the Christmas season of 2017 on 35mm film. The chill of the environment and the nostalgic method of photography evoke the moods of Dublin, often dark but familial. In his artist's statement, Gilligan states, fondly and a little sadly, that "only Dublin can sound like Dublin, smell like Dublin and feel like Dublin to a Dubliner." Even has the city, and the country, has entered a stage of globalization, it has never entirely left behind its history as a conquest of England. Ní Churreáin's poetry evokes this complex past, referencing Celtic mythology, Catholicism, the Irish Civil War and the Easter Rising, and various vestiges of violence that have continued to mark the country in its troubled emergence and deep sense of identity. Her verse takes the up tradition begun by Irish poets since the Revivalism at the turn of the 20th century, from W. B. Yeats to Eavan Boland to Michael Douglas to Seamus Heaney to Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill. The deluxe edition is bound in full alum tawed goat backed in black leather. Additional photographs housed in blue cloth-covered chemise. All materials held in dropback box. Faintest toning to margin of upper cover, else fine in box with minor rubs at one joint.