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About the Book

 

The barn stands a few yards from the dwelling-house in its red roof and door, its whitewashed walls and gable.  In my father’s time, which spanned almost a century, the barn was his domain: a roomy, neatly-kept storehouse for the countless resources useful to farming life long before the age of mechanization.

 

The double door was wide enough to take a cart.  On wet days my father worked there sawing sticks for firewood, mending the teeth of broken rakes, or oiling his beloved bike. You could always step into the barn out of a heavy shower, or keep watch for the bread-van on a cold evening through its one small window. Decades ago, on summer nights, the neighbours borrowed the safe-keeping of our barn for the kettles and pots they used for cooking their dinner on the nearby bog.

 

This book of poetry is a barnful of memories: a simple storehouse for the experiences of farm and family life during my childhood in the fifties and sixties.  It focuses on my father, Harry who died on Saint Stephen’s Day 2008, a few weeks after his 97th birthday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author

 

Bernadette McCarrick has published in Ireland and the USA. She has won several awards for individual poems in the last twelve years.  She was poetry editor for the Cistercian Studies Quarterly, and was short-listed for the Hennessy Literary Award for emerging poets, 2007. This book is her first collection. Originally from South Sligo, she now lives in Balbriggan with her husband Kevin.

Contact Author: myfathersbarn@gmail.com

 

 

Praise for Bernadette McCarrick

 

“Bernadette McCarrick’s poems…possess the textured feel of earned experience…gleaned from ordinary life…made fresh and rendered with authenticity and love in a style that is both elegiac and celebratory.”

 

Dermot Bolger

 

 

“Sweet as July blackcurrants, as well turned as the heel of a sock, McCarrick's poems are brought like lapped hay to seasoned    perfection.”

 

Brian Leyden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sample Excerpts

 

 

My Fathers Barn

 

 

 

By

Bernadette McCarrick

 

ISBN: 978-1-907107-16-0

 

Price:  € 12.00