External Affairs

'In some senses Bolger is to contemporary Dublin what Dickens was to Victorian London: archivist, reporter, sometimes infuriated lover. Certainly no understanding of Ireland’s capital is complete without an acquaintance with his magnificent writing' Joseph O’Connor, Books Quarterly, USA.

A companion book to Bolger’s recent Night and Day collection of poems about South Dublin, External Affairs places this sequence in the context of other lives that Bolger’s poetry has tried to capture in recent years. It contains 'Ballymun Incantation', the poem recited by actors and local people as the centrepiece of a public wake to mark the demolition of the first Ballymun tower block and 'Travel Light' a poem about the workmen who built the Dublin Port Tunnel. Although better known as a novelist and playwright, External Affairs shows that Bolger is a poet writing at the height of his powers.