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Saved to Memory: Lost to View - A Memoir in Prose and Verse printable version

07 Mar 2016: posted by the editor - Events, Local, Arts, Ireland

Saved to Memory: Lost to View is a memoir written in prose and verse by Michael Durack and the book is to be launched on Friday 11 March in Quay Arts, Killaloe.

Michael's work has been described by author Donal Ryan, as “a wonderfully written book, full of humour, warmth, passion and obvious love for family, music, sport, language and literature” .

The book is published by The Limerick Writers' Centre under their Community Publishing initiative and will be launched by author David Rice. All are welcome to attend and the lauch is scheduled for 7.30pm.

Saved to Memory: Lost to View is a memoir of a midtwentieth century rural childhood and adolescence. It begins in a preelectric world of labour in milking sheds, meadows and tillage fields tempered by rudimentary games involving conkers, magnets, spinning tops and improvised footballs and hurling balls. The soundtrack of that 'fifties childhood is generated by a wireless tuned to Radio Eireann, the melodies of church choirs and the hypnotic rhythms of trains chugging into Birdhill Station.

The Swinging Sixties bring television, the pop charts, the grind of secondary school, the lottery of hitchhiking, summer work on building sites and a university landscape of dingy lodging houses and bed sits. And then home beckons again before a fateful meeting shapes the narrator's future in the twin settlements of Ballina Killaloe.

The memoir, which includes twentyseven poems, begins on a farm in County Tipperary where the townlands of Cooleen and Toucknockane converge. It ends on the M7 motorway which runs underneath those fields of childhood, leaving the author feeling like some weary Oisin trying to reconnect with a world that has ceased to exist.

Michael Durack grew up on a farm near Birdhill in County Tipperary. He was educated at Nenagh CBS and University College Dublin and worked as a teacher at Nenagh CBS for thirty-six years. He was a founder member of Killaloe Writers Group and his poetry has been published in a wide range of literary journals in Ireland and abroad, as well as airing on local and national radio He is the author of a chapbook, Nothing To Write Home About (Derg House) and a comic narrative in verse, A Hairy Tale Of Clare (East Clare Telecottage.) In recent years he has been collaborating with his brother, Austin on a programme of poetry and music, and together they have produced two albums, The Secret Chord (2013) and Going Gone (2015.) Michael now lives in Ballina, Co. Tipperary.

It is available to buy online at www.limerickwriterscentre.com and from all usual outlets.

Tags: Michael Durack, Limerick Writers' Centre

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