Festival under the Clock 2011

Great line-up for this year’s “Festival Under The Clock” on April 2nd in Rathmines. Performances in Rathmines College kick off at 1.30pm with Cora Venus Lunny. Also in the afternoon are Liam O’Maonlaí, Latvian Choir "eLVē" and Cuckoo Savant.The evening entertainment includes John Spillane, comedian Jarlath Regan and the Toby Reiser Quartet.

On top of this there will be an opportunity to learn Breton Dancing and shed your worries with a session of laughter yoga.

Meanwhile a programme of events will take place in the Swan Centre and out on the street at Rathmines Square. These will include lots of family entertainments, busking, face-painting, dance etc. All sounds great and it's all free

Roscommon Childhood

Roscommon, and the memories of a happy childhood there, in a poem that starts off realistically but ends with a skyscape transposed to earth. The child's imagination makes the place a Paradise at the close.


Frosty Morning From My Parents Bedroom

The music box plays
my mother’s glass-topped
mahogany
dressing table;

the frost-petalled
window
with a peep hole
for my blue eye;

a hedge of brittle
looping briars,
Curley’s field a flood
of sugary brilliance;

the beeches,
their heads in the stratosphere;
a barbed-wire fence
staggering between them;

abbey ruins,
a spire and steeple:
Roscommon town
cocooned beside

an ocean of duck egg blue
that rolls into a bay
beneath snowy mountains
a million miles away.