The Lyric Feature on Sunday 3rd May at 6 pm on RTÉ lyric fm is Me Dog is Buried in Thomond Park, presented by brothers and fellow poets Ron Carey and Greg Carey - listen above.
Below, Ron Carey introduces a programme 'less about poetry or rugby and more about belonging'.
When Thomond Park was redeveloped in the mid 2000s, most people remember that, thanks to the new stands, the roar of Munster rugby was stronger than ever. Fewer recall the families who lived beside the grounds long before the stadium took its present shape. These houses gave way to allow for the new build.
For me and my brother, Greg, that piece of Limerick was simply our childhood home. Our house stood where a new stand now rises, and somewhere beneath the concrete and steel lies the resting place of the family dog—an unmarked but remembered grave.
In Me Dog is Buried in Thomond Park, we return to the landscape of our youth, not to remember what was lost, but to trace what endures: memory, community, and the unexpected ways a place shapes a life. Both of us began publishing poetry in our sixties, and the programme carries that late-blossoming creative energy - lyrical, wry, and full of affection for the people who formed us.
Across the programme, we meet voices from our past and present: our boyhood schoolteacher, still sharp and generous in his recollections; an architectural historian with insights on 50's urbanisation of Limerick and of moving out of the inner city; the Operations and Events Manager of Thomond Park, reflecting on the stadium’s evolution; and our publisher with Limerick’s Revival Press, who gave us our first foothold in the world of poetry. And on the way we meet some of the Limerick people who inhabit the same world of creativity as us. These conversations paint a portrait of a city that holds on to its stories, even as it changes.
Ultimately, the programme is less about poetry or rugby and more about belonging. It follows two men in their seventies as we look back with humour and tenderness at the city that raised us. What emerges is a meditation on home, loss, and the enduring pull of the places we carry with us.
The Lyric Feature: Me Dog is Buried in Thomond Park, RTÉ lyric fm, Sunday 3rd May at 6 pm, the programme will be available after broadcast as a Lyric Feature podcast - listen to more from The Lyric Feature here
