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KEVIN QUINN

BIOGRAPHY

Born in  Enniskillen, Kevin Quinn was educated there and at University College Dublin.  His poems have appeared in some of the leading journals in Britain and Ireland.  His talks on poets and poetry have found audiences at festivals and arts events such as the Belfast Book Festival, the Linenhall Library and Fermanagh Live Festival

THE ERNE LAUNDRY

HARDYESQUE

LIPSTICK

MERCERS’ WINDOW

THE TRAMP-PAINTER

IN BLANEY BAY

CUTLERY

AT THE NYLON

THE PRESENTATION BROTHERS ARE LEAVING ENNISKILLEN

EXAMS

TAXIS

MCNULTY’S

SPAIN

STOP PRESS

ADJUSTMENT

SIGNWRITER

HAW HAW

1962

TILE

UNIFORM

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements are due to Fortnight, Poetry Ireland Review, The Yellow Nib, where some of these poems first appeared.

My keenest sense of indebtedness is to my family.  Many of these stories were their’s before they were mine. I am also greatly indebted to Talie Mau, Noelle McAlinden, Diane Henshaw, Damian Smyth.

Author Photograph Severine Marmey.

what they said ……

Kevin Quinn’s poems are trips to the abroad of the past in one sense only, though they are that vividly, with pungent accuracy and concise account of detail. But really they are glances at the present tense of memory and place and loyalty and, by extension, love. Everything is made to live in the bright now of attention – from mischievously envying “the sheer cheek” of nylon; where the ironies of WWII ‘double-time’ means an hour gained on one side of the border but one lost on the other; where a bright floor tile guides the shy young poet back to his seat in the church and to the ranks of townsfolk. These are tales of immediate recognition for all and sundry, finely-crafted possessions from cutlery to gold leaf to the slimline Parker, told with wry intelligence but with such a command of the wherewithal of poetry that everything carries a second load of meaning into the heart. Like the town of their origins, this is a collection to revisit with deepening delight.

Damian Smyth, poet