A special programme on Cork’s great poet, Patrick Galvin, who died earlier this month. Galvin, the author of the famous poem The Madwoman of Cork, published many collections of poetry: Heart of Grace (1959), Christ in London (1960), The Wood Burners (1973), Man on The Porch (1980), Folk Tales for the General (1989), The Death of Art O'Leary (1992), New and Selected Poems (1996). He also wrote the fictionalised memoirs Song for a Poor Boy, Song for a Raggy Boy and Song for a Fly Boy, plays including We Do it For Love and Nightfall to Belfast, and many ballads.
Vincent Woods is joined by Professor Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin of the English Department, TCD, poet Thomas McCarthy, Dr Eva Urban who lectures in Drama in UCD, and Roy Heayberd, who worked with Patrick Galvin in his years at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast.
Christy Moore, who recorded Galvin’s song James Connolly for his album Prosperous, joins the discussion, and we also hear a young Patrick Galvin himself singing The Parting Glass in a recording from the 1950s, accompanied by Al Jeffery.
In Cork, Vincent talks to Patrick’s wife Mary Johnson, who remembers meeting Patrick in Belfast in the 1970s, her encounter with his plays and then his poetry, her understanding of his early life and painful experiences in an industrial school as brought to life in Song for a Raggy Boy; and their life together.
We also hear from Michael D Higgins on Galvin's poetry. He reads Incident at Oviedo during part one, and, as a postscript to the programme -- appropriately -- Galvin's Message to the Editor.
