Frank Greally & Friends
An Evening Of - Music- Songs - Poetry and Stories
FREE ADMISSION
Thursday June 1st, 6pm - 7.30pm
The Dalgan Bar & Restaurant, Main Street Ballyhanunis
With Special Guest - Anne Irwin (Hughes)
Poetry Book Launch and Reading
A Minor Concerto In Rahoon
by Anne Irwin- widely acclaimed and well reviewed.
A number of poems from this delightful collection set in Ballyhaunis
Anne Irwin
Frank Greally
About Frank Greally
Former international athlete and former Irish junior record holder for 10,000 meters. He held this record for over fifty years.
Frank is a writer and singer who grew up in Devlis, Ballyhaunis. Frank's parents Tom and Kathleen Greally, came from Drimbane.
Frank has a passionate interest in Traditional, Country & Folk Music. Some of the songs he composed were recorded by singers- Seán Tyrrell and Richard Muligan. Marian's Song is included on the CD Rising Tide & The Best of Sean Tyrrell - check it here on You Tube.
His published works include the books, Running Commentary and Running Full Circle. Frank has covered six Olympic Games for national media- print, radio and TV. Frank is The Athletic’s Ireland Ambassador for The Daily Mile.
About Anne Irwin
Anne Irwin was born in Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, and lives in Galway. During her teenage years in boarding school she wrote short stories and poems, but after studying English Literature and Philosophy in U.C.G. her writing career came to an abrupt end, to be resumed about fifteen years ago when she started attending poetry workshops with the Kevin Higgins in Galway.
Her poetry is inspired by everyday life, nature, community, her four sisters and her ever extending family of three sons and seven grandchildren.
As well her childhood in Mayo. Anne’s father, Padraic Hughes, loved nature, he had greyhounds and goats. On summer mornings Anne and her sisters often walked the fields with him picking mushrooms, blackberries and hazel nuts. Anne’s mother, Dyl Hughes (nee Eaton} was a musician, she taught music, produced operettas in the Parochial Hall, and played the organ in the church. She had musical gatherings in their house and read stories at
night by the fire.
Anne’s poems have been published in many literary journals including Poetry Ireland Review, A New Ulster, ROPEs, Skylight 47, Poetry Bus, Irish Left Review, High Window, Boyne Berries, Automatic Pilot, Crossways, Annagh Magazine etc
Her poems have been shortlisted for Over the Edge and Words on The Street poetry competitions and got a notable mention in the Cúirt New Writing Competition.
She has been guest reader at many events including Remembrance Run in the Phoenix Park in 2021 and 22, Over the Edge Literary Events Galway. O’Bheal Cork, North West Words, Letterkenny etc Her first collection A Minor Concerto in Rahoon was publised in 2022 by Lapwing Press, Belfast.
Fellow poet Kevin Higgins said: “Anne Irwin is a rare sort of poet. I can think of no other Irish poet who could write a successful poem about the political importance of getting a faulty manhole cover replaced. Anne’s poems are witty and humane in a way that calls to mind Paul Durcan at his best. Her poems are not made of grand abstractions but of the mostly unsung things and people who populate places like Ballyhaunis, where Anne grew up, and
Rahoon where she has long lived. The ideas in Anne’s poems — many of them tastily subversive — come not from books but from the people she meets in the everyday"
About Bernie Crawford
Bernie's poetry has been published in Irish and international journals and anthologies including Banshee, The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, The North magazine, and The Stony Thursday Book. She was the winner of New Irish Writing in the Irish Times in January 2020, the 2019 North West Words competition and 2017 Poetry Ireland/Trocaire competition.
She was placed second in the 2018 Blue Nib Summer Chapbook Contest and a selection of her poetry was published in the Blue Nib's third chapbook. In 2019 she was awarded a bursary by Galway County Council to work towards a debut collection. That collection, Living Water, was then published in 2021. Bernie is an editor of Skylight 47 Poetry Magazine.