Maiden Names

by Martin Dyar

Maiden Names won the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry. It was a book of the year selection in both the Guardian and the Irish Times and was shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Martin Dyar was born in County Sligo, Ireland, and raised in County Mayo. His debut book, Maiden Names (Arlen House, 2013), was a book of the year selection in the Guardian and The Irish Times and was the winner of the 2009 Patrick Kavanagh Award. His other honors include the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2009, and the Strokestown International Poetry Award in 2001. He has received two Arts Council Literature Bursary Awards, the most recent in 2013.

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met Martin at a music session cum poetry reading and his words were as compelling as his guitar chords... A true Renaissance man! His poems in this book regale us with a uniquely Irish cast of characters, a keen sense of place. He's currently working on a novel, I'll be first in line...

Turlough O'Carolan at Barbazon House (about the "last Irish bard" and sightless 17th century harpist who married late in life)

When she met him in Swinford, touching his famous hand,
she could not have known the desire within his silence,
could not have guessed her own influence, her care-free voice
entering him, planting visions in his sleepless future.

Nor, as she wheeled the harp to her father's banquet table,
that their blind guest might conjure an imageless beauty,
could she have imagined O'Carolan committing to memory,
so minutely, the coast-whispers of her gown.

Far from the simplicity other youth was the musician's hunger,
far his porter-wet beard, his bed of frozen grass crackling
under a bodhran moon. Far too his final night, that old fondness
almost quenching the apparition: Her, the Brabazon waneen,

Approaching him across a field, like the field's intention;
picking the tether of his mind from the earth, standing over him,
rousing with her laughter the voles in their nettle baskets,
and prompting the near-dead harper to speak to the darkness.

[Mandi Bean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Brilliant. Transcendental. Pastoral. Witty. Heartbreaking.

[Sabrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Jojanneke Bosch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maiden Names. I enjoyed this bundle of poetry by Martin Dyar. It must have taken a lot of self reflection to be able to paint these pictures from people's lives in my and other people's heads. Well done, Martin. I'm not a poet, so it's impossible for me to judge poems according to poetic rules, but the 'vistas' Martin describes are personal, lively and beautiful. And incredibly witty. Sometimes, when I read poetry (love Dylan Thomas, always Dylan Thomas) or short stories (love Raymond Carver, always Raymond Carver), I can't help but thinking that the stories told in essence portray the writer. Maybe that's also the case in Martin's writings. I don't know that for sure. But again - well done, Martin.

[Joshua Bohnsack · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book of poetry.