Diarmuid Brittain - A Collection of Thoughts

Smiles, Tears and Pondering
When I read, “He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by W.B. Yeats, I was moved. The poem had done its job. Without a moment’s thought for the literary devices that the poet had employed, I was smitten.

This was the moment at which I started to search for other poems that might touch my emotion, that are accessible, that deliver.

I have found a number of these. For example, “Funeral Blues (Stop all the clocks)” by W. H. Auden and “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

On my search for works that move me, I have also found a number that make me laugh, such as “The Ballad of William Bloat” by Raymond Calvert and “That Shit Shute” by A. P. Herbert.

It is my hope that the reader will find my poetry accessible and that some verse from this collection may provoke an emotive response; a laugh, an internal sob or a thought.

Available from Amazon in paperback.

Danny Dowdells - Angel Jo and the Brackish People

A wonderful hilarious book, with many insights into the way Ulster people, Protestant and Catholic, think about each other. The fictional townland of Ballybracken, somewhere in mid-Ulster, is peopled by a gaggle of unforgettable countryfolk. Characters like the philandering Robbie, social climbing Rosie, the hapless Jim McKnight and his mother, with her subtle but toxic use of ‘petticoat power’, the wealthy grand dame, Mrs. McKendry’s and so many more that will live long in the reader’s imagination.

Follow the antics of Danny himself, so likeable, clever and wily, his useless self-admiring guardian angel Jo, Danny’s striving mother, Rosie, and her partner, Robbie, their hand-to-mouth existence intertwined and contrasted so skilfully in the story with that of the immensely wealthy McKendry and the noble Roxborough families. A great true-to-life story told with much laugh-out-loud humour.

Available from Amazon in paperback or as a Kindle ebook.

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