by Dermot Bolger

ISBN: 9781848408432

Published: 2022-04-07

Dermot Bolger's last new collection of poetry was The Venice Suite, a heart-breaking voyage through loss that touched the nation with its raw honesty. With this new book, Other People's Lives, Bolger's gaze ranges outwards to take in the often untold stories of those who have peopled Dublin's streets over the last century. Every night during a year spent in lockdown, the poet Dermot Bolger set out on long walks through deserted streets, armed only with a pen and paper. The poems in this collection stem from the thoughts that ambushed him during these nocturnal strolls, being speculative meditations on his own life and the lives of other people - famous, forgotten or imaginary. Here we encounter Nuala O'Faolain on a bicycle on Brooklyn Bridge; Grace Gifford Plunkett still defiant in her lonely final years; the poet's own parents during their wartime honeymoon; Arthur Fields who took photographs on O'Connell Bridge for half a century; Herbert Simms, the brilliant overworked housing...