The Happy Booker: Fresh Derry Air

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The Happy Booker got Irish jiggy with it last night at the Lunasa concert. Touring extensively in the states right now, Lunasa has been called “the hottest Irish acoustic band on the planet.” Come out and see why...

If you want to hear Irish voices without leaving the house, try a few of these links…

Clearances V
The cool that came off the sheets just off the line
Made me think the damp must still be in them
But when I took my corners of the linen
And pulled against her, first straight down the hem
And then diagonally, then flapped and shook
The fabric like a sail in a cross-wind,
They made a dried-out undulating thwack.
So we'd stretch and fold and end up hand to hand
For a split second as if nothing had happened
For nothing had that had not always happened
Beforehand, day by day, just touch and go,
Coming close again by holding back
In moves where I was x and she was o
Inscribed in sheets she'd sewn from ripped-out flour sacks.
— Seamus Heaney

Hear Heaney read this poem here.
Hear Michael Cunningham read Seamus Heaney here.

Watch Irish writers, Frank Delaney and Eoin Colfer, (and 498 other authors) discuss their work here. (Thanks Old Hag for the link and the welcome! )

Last Fruit off an Old Tree
Ireland never was contented...
Say you so? you are demented.
Ireland was contented when
All could use the sword and pen.
And when Tara rose so high
That her turrets split the sky,

And about her courts were seen
Liv'ried Angels robed in green,
Wearing, by St. Patrick's bounty,
Emeralds big as half a county.
—W.S. Landor

Hear Robert Pinsky recite Landor’s St. Patrick’s Day poem here.

Easter, 1916 (excerpt)
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
— W.B. Yeats

Hear Grace Paley read full Yeats poem here.
Purchase recording of Yeats reading his own damn poem here.

More Irish poetry read aloud (with tin can and string audio quality) can be found here.

And if you do decide to leave the house, they’re having a 5-day party over here.