“An ordinary, almost staid, couple are overwhelmed by crisis when their third child is born. The book starts off fairly ordinary and staid too, but this makes the crisis all the more realistic when it hits and easier to sympathize with. Once the new baby is born, the writing becomes sensitive and involving, the characterization sharper and deeper and it’s possible to really care about what has happened and what will happen. As the trust and communication between the parents break down, threatening the fabric of the family, Dan, the husband, bolts to his father’s house in Ireland. He becomes better acquainted with his father, with his family history and with the history of Ireland, a country he’s never before thought of as his own. Kate, his wife, is left to cope with two children and a new baby. Dan’s behaviour is enough to make the reader want to give him a good shake but Casey explores his motivation with such sensitivity that it’s impossible not to be on his side too. In the midst of this emotional agonizing, the action moves two hundred years to the Irish Rebellion of the late 18th century and Caribbean island of Montserrat, where even Irishmen could be landlords and slaveowners. In its own quiet way this novel is unsettling and even shocking as it challenges the reader to step into Dan’s shoes: are you as open-minded, as trusting, as loyal as you think you are?”
–Kirkus UK

“a beautiful, evocative tale of love tested.”
Sue Leonard, Irish Examiner

“this wise, tender novel.”
Paul Magrs, TLS

“The novel’s final image is startling, enigmatic, beautiful and challenging. Through it, Casey appears to urge a re-examination of that which we assume to be philosophically ordered, and to confront our own dreams just as Dan does: which implies that nothing is separate and that the world has a wild inter-dependance that rises even from the genetic, cellular mine of our own bodies.
A fresh and intriguing book that many writers would love to have written.”
Mary O’Donnell, Amazon.co.uk

The Fisher Child can be bought online at Amazon UK

The Fisher Child, the final volume in The Bann River Trilogy, is published by Picador of London
ISDN 0 330 48301 3 hardback

ISDN 0 330 48302 1 paperback

Picador Hardback blurb

Growing up in Irish families in London, Dan and Kate first met unenthusiastically as children in the 1970s. Now, years later, they are on holiday in Italy, married, in love, parents to a boy and girl. And when Kate discovers she is pregnant again, it seems they will be closer than ever.

But when Meg is born, their lives are changed utterly. Trust is replaced with suspicion and anger. Dan flees to Ireland and to his father, seeking to understand what has happened to his family and to himself. It is clear, however, that his bewilderment has much older roots. We are taken back to 1798 where Dan’s ancestor, Hugh Byrne, is fighting on Vinegar Hill in the Rebellion. Troubled by the violence done to his family, and the violence in himself, Hugh goes into exile in the tropics, where he gradually overcomes his prejudice and remorse and begins a family with a young woman, Ama.

The Fisher Child is the third novel in Philip Casey’s Bann River Trilogy and is his best fiction to date, demonstrating, with acute sensitivity, the threads of the past that exist in every family. The Fisher Child is a touching and at times, agonising, exploration of the constantly shifting nature of love. It is a book that will linger long in the memory.

“The tale that unfolds in this thick, satisfying volume is not particularly complex – any more than the circumstances of any of our lives are complex, which is to say, infinitely and infinitesimally so.”
Erica Wagner, The Times, London Full Review

“Casey has brought alive the dilemmas of a lost generation and made them vivid and memorable.”
The Good Book Guide

“…those fine intense moments – and there are many of them here – show Philip Casey to be a compelling writer.”
John Tague, The Times Literary Supplement Full Review

“An intelligent, memorable, moving novel.”
Arminta Wallace, The Irish Times

“This series of love-stories told from individual perspectives resonates with authentic feeling.”
Sharon Barnes, IMAGE

… More Reviews of The Water Star

The Water Star, volume two of The Bann River Trilogy, was published in hardback by Picador of London, April 27, 1999.
ISBN 0 330 37190 8
Picador paperback published February 4, 2000.
ISBN 0 330 37191 6

The Water Star is available from
amazon.co.uk

The Picador Hardback Description

“He cursed and sat up on the damp rubble. Although in the centre of what had been the building, it was exposed here, where the roof had collapsed through three floors. The rain had stopped and the sky was clearing, and a fresh star blinked at him as a cloud moved away.”

London 1950. Houses seem to rise out from the desecrated landscape, their rooms laid bare in the cold city light. Out of this fractured world people restore their scattered lives: Hugh, desperately lonely and lost in an unfamiliar city, struggles with his memories and with his father, Brendan, whose dreams are founded on the Irish mountain that was their home. Brendan stands in his North London bedsit washing off the dust from the city’s building sites, stubbornly refusing to see his son’s youth and the hope that is offered by Sarah, the Irishwoman who teaches him to read.

Then, it seems, Hugh’s life is overturned. He meets Elizabeth, a woman who has lived through the Blitz and whose nature seems to dissolve the despair that threatens his spirit. And he meets Karl, a German in exile, a man who shares his life with Elizabeth but buries the horrors of his past. Will these terrified lives at last find comfort in the fragile city that surrounds them?

In a narrative that is both lyrical and passionate Philip Casey captures his characters perfectly, shining light on lives rocked by war and loss and on relationships overshadowed by unspoken feelings. The Water Star is an extraordinarily intimate and sensitive exploration of people trapped between their isolation and their hopes.

See more reviews at The Fabulists Reviews

The Fabulists IS IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR FREE DOWNLOAD! It is issued under a Creative Commons Licence licence, ie it is free to download and distribute but some rights are reserved. You can read it online, or download it in MS Word, Open Office 2, and/or PDF formats.

Go directly to its subsite to either read online and/or download. There are also images, reviews etc, including a WARNING as the novel is not suitable for minors.

Go to THE FABULISTS subsite

The posting of The Fabulists on the web under a Creative Commons licence has been made possible by the generous and enlightened support of its publisher Antony Farrell of The Lilliput Press, and also of my former agent, Lisa Eveleigh.
My thanks to them both.

The Fabulists can be purchased from
The Lilliput Press
Amazon.co.uk

The Fabulists is the first volume in The Bann River Trilogy, and was published in trade paperback format in October, 1994, by The Lilliput PressThe Lilliput Press, Dublin
ISBN 1 874675 30 9

Some review excerpts

“This will lie around for a few years and then be declared a Modern Classic.” Amazon.co.uk reader

“a passionate, erotic, mature novel.” Ronan Sheehan

“…stands shoulder to shoulder with the very best Irish fiction of the last few years.” Colin Lacey, The Irish Voice, New York

“This is a book I’ve read now three or four times, and it has that really magnificent quality that great novels have, where you find yourself thinking about them a few weeks after you finish reading them.” Joseph O’Connor, RTÉ Radio

“An Irish love story for the 1990s.” Anthony Glavin, The Sunday Tribune

“Philip Casey’s brilliant debut novel” Gerry Smyth, in Contemporary Irish Fiction Themes, Tropes, Theories Edited by Liam Harte and Michael Parker (London, MacMillan, 2000/New York, St Martin’s Press, 2000)

see more reviews on The Fabulists subsite

The Lilliput Original Paperback Description

The Fabulists is a love story set in Contemporary Dublin. After a brief encounter on the Ha’Penny Bridge over the Liffey, Tess and Mungo contrive to make their paths cross again. “Two spoofers,” Tess thinks to herself. ˜It might even be fun.”
The relationship that develops extends the horizon of their lives on the dole, struggling with children and marriage, filled with sexual longing, and hungry for purpose.
As life and fantasy interweave between Dublin, Wexford, Barcelona and Berlin, Tess and Mungo consummate their love through tales which are exotic and often guilt-ridden, confronting truths about themselves, and restoring the fabric of a torn past.
This novel about love and parenthood, desire and frailty, describes ordinary lives and emotions in an extraordinary way.

Go to THE FABULISTS subsite

Dialogue in Fading Light: New and Selected Poems
published in November 2005.
Publisher: New Island Books

with gracious permission of New Island Books Dialogue in Fading Light is now available as a freedownload under a Creative Commons Licence at Irish Literary Revival

In his first collection in almost fifteen years, Philip Casey blends re-worked older poems with new reflections on love, death and the times we live in, ranging in tone from the light-hearted to the contemplative.

Praise for Philip Casey

˜Casey gives physicality to abstract ideas with great assurance and he has an eye for things which do not clamour for attention” Susan McKay, Sunday Press

“…he has a poet’s delicate ear and a playwright’s eye for direction.” Erica Wagner, The Times

˜Casey writes in a language which is supple, accurate, sensitive and immensely strong.” Ros Cowman, GRAPH

with gracious permission of New Island Books Dialogue in Fading Light is now available as a freedownload under a Creative Commons Licence at Irish Literary Revival

Screenplay
adapted from the novel The Fisher Child

Rights available

Long After I’m Gone Synopsis

In a minor battle of the 1798 Rebellion in Wexford, HUGH Byrne kills the black drummer of the Ancient Briton regiment. Sickened by the carnage, he leaves it and his belovéd CATHLEEN behind, but is captured, ending up as an indentured labourer or white slave in the Irish-dominated island of Montserrat, in the Caribbean. He falls in love with a black slave, AMA, and when he is freed he brings her with him to farm impoverished land rented from the plantation. They have two children, a black girl, BRIDIE, and a white boy, MUNGO, the apple of his mother’s eye. After the tragedy that befalls Ama and Bridie, Hugh is left alone with his son, and twelve years later returns to Wexford with him to face his old love.

They looked up to see Miolmór, with his peaceful eyes, and Niamh, who was almost as big as the whale, floated up to kiss him. Then they sang to each other.

Miolmór was too brave to complain, but they understood that all was not well in the Western Ocean. The mortals were taking over everything from the top to the bottom, and the ocean was so full of noise there was hardly anywhere a whale could find peace.

He wasn’t grumbling. It was just the whale song of the present day which would be passed down the generations, as it always had been. The mortals would soon learn the value of silence. He had lived long enough to know that disasters happened when the mortals forgot their way, but after a while they learned it again, and all was well.

the story

Kate and Danny are twins, who live on the Western shore with their father, Cormac, a fisherman, and their mother Estrella. When they are small children, they pronounce ˜Twins” as ˜Tins,™ so they become known as The Tins and are so close that they speak to each other by telepathy, or what they call ˜telepy.”

Estrella dies when they are two, leaving them confused and lonely. As they discover from a schoolyard bully when they are seven, ˜she walked into the sea.” So they listen more and more to the old stories which Mrs Janey, the woman who looks after them when Cormac is fishing, and by the time they are eleven, they imagine their journeys to the heaven of olden times, Beg Ara, The Land Beneath the Sea. They go there with the aid of Miolmór, the Great Whale, and a family of dophins who surround them with protective light.

But is it their imagination, or are they really the children of Niamh, the twenty-five thousand year old Sióg who became human as Estrella for three years because she fell in love with their father, Cormac? After they have had their adventures in the Five Isles of Beg Ara (The Isle of Many Fears, The Isle of Dancing, The Isle Enchantment, The Isle of Forgetfullness, and The Isle of Victories), they are ready to hear the true story of their mother from Cormac, and why she walked into the sea.

The Tins and The Pale Lady

CHAPTER ONE :: THE TINS LEARN SOMETHING TERRIBLE

Kate and Danny Joyce are twins, who live on the Western Shore, and are known to everyone as The Tins. They share the gift of telepathy, which they will call telepy.

The Tins are just over two years old, and their story begins now because it is important that you know what happens at this time, so you will understand why they meet the Pale Lady and go on their adventures to Beg Ara, The Land Beneath the Sea, when they are eleven.

They live in a beautiful but lonely place on the Western shore, with their father Cormac, a fisherman and small farmer, and their mother, whose name is Estrella, which means star.

Kate has red hair like her father, and Danny has golden hair like his aunt, but their mother says she had golden hair once, too, so he gets it from her. Estrella has dark skin and long black hair now.

Estrella travelled to the Western shore from a sunny country. The Western Shore is often wet and misty, but she fell in love with Cormac, and stayed to marry him. Cormac owns a fishing boat which Kate and Danny call Pudda, because the sound its engine makes is pudda pudda pudda.

Estrella has been on the Western shore for three years, and she has been happy, and so the Tins have been happy, but as our story opens she is sad, and this frightens the Tins. But at the moment they are asleep for their afternoon nap.

They wake to the sound of Mama crying. She is tidying up their toys, and as she stands up, the sun comes out and fills the room with light, and Mama cries even more. They rub their eyes, and sit up on the sofa. They don’t know what to think so they start crying and Mama sees them and rushes to them.

‘Oh, dear Tins,’ she says, hunkering down and brushing the hair out of their sleepy eyes with her hands. ‘Don’t pay any attention to me. I had a scary dream, that’s all.’
‘Scary, Mama?’ Kate asked.
‘Yes, my darlings.’
‘Scary?’ Danny asked.

‘Oh, I dreamt I was very old,’ Mama said, and she laughed, and she read to them from their favourite book, The Green Lion, and they were happy again and they toddled out to the sunny yard to play. They stopped to listen to the sound of the sea falling on the shore. They loved the sea.

A few nights later they couldn’t sleep. They knew something was wrong with Mama and Dada, so they slipped out of bed and went to the landing from where they could see the livingroom. Mama and Dada were talking quietly by the fire, but the Tins knew they were sad. Dada had a book in his lap but he closed it.
‘Are you sick?’ he asked Mama.
‘No,’ she said.

Dada stood up and put the book on the table and looked out the window.
‘So you’re going to leave us,’ he said.
‘How did you know?’ she asked, and she was crying quietly.
‘I just did,’ he said.

Kate and Danny looked at each other, and their hearts started to beat in a way that wasn’t nice.
‘Are you homesick?’ Dada asked Mama. ‘We could go on a holiday. I know times aren’t good and money is scarce, but we’ll manage somehow.’
‘It’s not that. I don’t miss home.’
‘Then you don’t love me anymore,’ he said, turning to her.
‘Oh Cormac!’ she said, rushing to him and putting her arms around him. ‘I love you so much.’
‘Then why are you leaving?’ he asked, and his voice was like when you cry with your mouth full.

She turned away from him.

‘Please sit down,’ she said, and it was then that she saw the Tins, who tried to hide but it was too late.
‘Go to bed!’ she shouted and they scampered away and pulled the bedclothes over their heads.
So they lay there in the darkness, trying to think of something nice, but they couldn’t because their hearts were going pudDA pudDA pudDA.

After a while, Mama came in to see them, but they telepied each other to pretend to be asleep and she went away. They wished Mrs Janey was here to tell them a story. Mama and Dada told them stories, but Mrs Janey, who was a widow from a house up the road who minded them sometimes – she was best. Her eyes would open wide and her face would scrunch up, and she could be a monster or a fairy or a horse or a crow all in the same story.

But Mrs Janey wasn’t here tonight, and so their hearts kept thumping, and so they telepied each other to think about Dada’s Pudda coming home on the sea, with lots of fish, and when they thought of Pudda going up and down on the waves, with Dada inside, they drifted off to sleep.
Mama was there when they woke up the next morning. They were scared but they said nothing in case she’d get angry.

When Mama and Dada brought them to Lake Ailinn to see the four swans who lived there, everything seemed like it had always seemed, and when Mama was still there the next day, and the day after that, they forgot about their fear that she would go, and went back to being happy again.


© Philip Casey, 2009

Cover illustration
Liam O’Connor

author photo
Paddy Doyle

with praise and thanks to my family

acknowledgements are due to The Gorey Detail, The Funge Broadsheets, The Pleiades, The Cracked Lookingglass, The Stony Thursday Book, Cyphers, The Wexford Art Centre Broadsheet, Icarus, TCD, Aishling (San Francisco), Quick & Cheap (New Orleans), Hibernia, and The Cork Review, RTÉ Radio. Six poems from the collection were published in Feathers and Bones, an anthology of 10 Irish poets, The Mudhorn Press, Santa Barbara, ed. Sevrin Housen.

Special thanks to Mick, James, Paul, Liam, Paddy and Eileen.

cover photo: Tony O’Shea

for James Liddy

Cover Endorsements

Things that please me in poetry are precision, compassion and images that surpass the common run of language; also that the poet must have an ear for language as a musician has an ear for music. The work of Philip Casey, especially The Year of the Knife, possesses all of these in abundance.
Michael Hartnett

The splendour of Philip Casey’s work is that it is rigorous and hard; and somehow also at the same time bright and kind. It’s this unique mixture that sets him apart. Jubilant, edgy, ordered, wild – a New and Selected Poems as good as gold.
Sebastian Barry

Certain poems were previously published in Cyphers, Hamburg International School Yearbook, Evening Herald, Ireland of the Welcomes, New Irish Writing (The Sunday Tribune), Voicefree, Nord Deutschlander Rundfunk, The Observer, Poetry Kanto (Yokohama), Stet, Stand, Quarry (Ontario), and Poetry Australia.
Thanks are also due to The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Élaí­on for a Bursary in Literature; to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annamakerrig, where some of these poems were written; to Paddy and Eileen Doyle, for the use of a computer; and to those who gave their time and wisdom in reading the poems in manuscript.
Designed by Dermot Bolger & Susanne Linde. Cover design by Rapid Productions. Cover photo by Tony O’Shea. Printed and bound in Ireland by Colour Books, Ltd, Baldoyle.

A one-acter, it was first performed in the Internationale Schule in Hamburg, and was thereafter transferred to the west end, otherwise known as the Shamrock Bar in Feldstr.

It was directed by the redoubtable Terry McDonagh and his then cohort in drama, Joachim ‘Joggi’ Matschoss. Staging it in the Internationale Schule meant in effect that it had an international audience.

Cardinal, which in a towering performance was acted by Barry Stevenson in the eponymous role, and Guelma Lea as the Policewoman, is the story of a Cardinal, an effective prisoner in his own palace during a revolution, and guarded by an uneducated policewoman. Over a period of time, she learns a great deal from him, and being intelligent, is soon a match for his pious certainties, especially when her prolonged presence intensifies the needs of the flesh.

Note: Guelma Lea is now also an established jazz singer and her website is here

Parody of the Father

aka Sedment Rising
This actually recieved a rehearsed reading on the Peacock stage of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in front of an invited audience. It was directed by John O’Brien (apologies to the actors for mislaying the cast list).
The reading in the Peacock was quite successful, but as it is a very visual play, more than half of it was lost in the reading. Requiring seven actors, (two of whom can double up), and one of whom must be a large, imposing yet ebullient man, it is a tragi-comic cartoon in two acts, on colonialism brought to its logical conclusion.
I recently found a cast list, signed by all participants, headed

Reading of Sediment Rising, Peacock Theatre, April 22, 1989

Larcus Vincent O’Neill

Sudari Niall O’Brien

Penelope Fidelma Cullen

Lujius Frank McCusker

Otera Cornelia Hayes

The Sybil Máire O’Neill

Narrator Jonathan Sharpe

Director John O’Brien

ASM Miriam Coleman

Author Philip Casey

Thank you, people. It was a nice experience, with fine actors.

Comfort & Reward

This has never been staged, and in truth is a dead loss.

It was juvenilia, of course, but I’m proud of it as such, and because it was part of the whole rich history of the ground-breaking Funge/Gorey Arts Festival, which cries out to be published – as a website, perhaps? The reverse, not shown, is illustrated by a fine, if sad portrait of yours truly, by that master of portraiture Paul Funge.

See The Dunleavy Collection of Irish history and literature at the University of Miami Richter Library for listings of these and other chapbooks published by the Gorey Art Centre.

The Art Centre’s other publications included the annual literary and art journal, The Gorey
Detail. It was, among many other things, great fun.