Getting All Technical

... or not. The problem is, I'm not - technical, that is. During this lockdown, I've been trying to learn how to set up a blog, a website(forget it!), create and upload videos to a YouTube channel and generally plan for a virtual launch for my poetry chapbook, The Untethered Space, without having much of a clue. All this while failing miserable to do Zoom quizzes with my scattered family! It's been the odd step forward and odder steps backwards and to make matters worse, my publisher's website (4Word Press) has been hacked by Russian bots! You couldn't make it up.

Anyway (drum roll, please) publication day is Monday June 1st and I will be virtually launching the book on that date at 19.30 British Summer Time. Please join me to raise a glass and listen to/watch a few poems and take part in a light-hearted quiz.

Here's what Gabriel Byrne and Philip Gross had to say about the collection:

These poems are elegantly constructed and delicately lyrical. A haunting and deeply moving collection. Gabriel Byrne, Hollywood actor

One of the time-honoured tasks of poetry is that of lament, and Carol Caffrey’s poems take it on with grace and wit as well as sensitivity... And like the best of elegy, this writing steps through sadness into celebration of language and life.” Philip Gross, T.S. Eliot prize-winner

I do hope I'll see you at the launch!

If you would like to buy a copy (£5.99 plus postage) you can order it from the publisher (4Word Press) at this link https://www.4word.org/titles/ or by using the Buy Now button below.

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Remembrance of Things Past

For a long time, for me, July was always associated with childhood holidays to Bettystown, a seaside village 30 miles north of Dublin, much changed in the 50-odd years since. Then, half our circle of family and friends – cousins, close neighbours, various dogs and cats – would decamp to the rented holiday houses we’d live in for that feral month, creating memories that bring a smile to this day. Long swims in the sea, dar-dar in the burrows (cops and robbers to you, perhaps), pillow fights and midnight feasts, games of spin-the bottle and tennis marathons played out on rickety grass courts; the days went on and on, the memories for even longer.

Those holiday memories were, I think, the greatest gift our parents gave us. They provided us - two boys, three girls – with many shared moments of laughter and recollection, and forged a bond between us that remains unshaken.

It can’t have been too much fun for my mother. I have no idea how she and Dad coped with the five of us and the afore…

A Hollywood Star Reads My Poems

A Hollywood Star Reads My Poems
The closest I’ve got to fame is vicariously, through my late brother Peter Caffrey, who was a well-known actor in Ireland and beyond. I’d follow him onto film and tv sets, to theatres big and small and, Peter being Peter, to many a wild party. In his early days, which coincided with the same for many who have gone on to wider acclaim, I got to peep behind his coat tails at people like Jim and Peter Sheridan, Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne. When I organised a memorial evening for Peter in aid of the Irish Hospice Foundation, Gabriel was one of the first to respond to my request for a paragraph to put in the souvenir programme.That was more than ten years ago and when, recently, I was in search of endorsements for the back of my forthcoming poetry chapbook (The Untethered Space, published by 4Word Press) it was a distant memory. My first request to a well-known poet was politely (and understandably, given that they are inundated with same) turned down. I wonde…

Sending your baby out into the world

http://www.4word.org/poetry-and-hope/
No, I don’t mean the extra place at the table that you keep laying when on auto-pilot (even though he’d been at university for two terms by then) or the open bedroom door signifying she is no longer in residence that you close quietly for a while. Just until you are used to her absence.

I got over that, as we all have to do when our children leave home. I’m talking about sending the last proof of your manuscript off to the editor/s and thence to the printers from where it will come back to you as a beautifully bound work of - well, work. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, during which you keep spotting more and more little errors or misjudgements, you finally have to accept that there is nothing more you or the editor can, or should, do. Time’s up. You have to let go now and trust that you have given it your best shot.
I’ve never been in this position before. The Untethered Space is my debut chapbook and it’s exciting and terrifying in equal measure.…

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