WELCOME

Brendan O'Beirne is originally from Scariff, County Clare, Ireland. Brendan is an accomplished poet and writer. He has 15 individual poetry books, one book of Collected Poems, and a short novel to his name. Brendan now lives in Ennis, County Clare and launched his latest collection of poems, entitled Lost in November Rains in April 2009.

PERSONAL JOURNEY TO DATE

Born May 23rd 1949 in Scariff, Co. Clare. Attended National School in Scariff from 1953 to 1963. Good at English essays. I had a very adventurous childhood and cycled a lot and played handball and other sports. My first experience with books was a huge illustrated History of the Roman Empire, which I borrowed repeatedly from the Library in Limerick. I must have been six or seven at that point.

At eleven I made a conscious decision to become a writer. I began to use my fathers old typewriter to type out stories. I remember the first one I wrote. All I remember of that story is the first image of the rain sweeping in over the mountains like sheets of grey linen. At thirteen years of age I was packed off the Mount St Josephs Cistercian College in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, as a boarder. I was good at Athletics and handball. My first published piece that appeared in the College Magazine was actually a short history of the Handball Alley. At Christmas I performed as one of the fairies in “A Midsummer Nights Dream”. It was for all the parents. As things turned out I was to spend only one year in the Cistercian College. In 1959 my father Sean O’Beirne was one of the local business people who were instrumental in getting the huge chipboard factory to locate in Scariff. Hundreds of small farmers found a way to supplement their meager incomes by working in the factory. At that time, the early Sixties there was no free Secondary School Education and most country people lived far away from the big towns where the only secondary schools were located. In order to give the teenager children of the factory workers a chance at secondary school education, my father started St. Caimin’s Secondary School in Scariff.

From 1963 and 1967 I attended St Caimin;s Secondary School in Scariff. In 1964, I formed a rock group called “Felix Bone and the Skeletons”. We played all the hits of the day and performed all over Co.Clare for three years until disbanding in 1967. I did my leaving cert in 1967 and got honors in French, History and Geography. I went to London for the Summer of Love in 1967 and worked at Furniture Removals. In 1968 I returned home and worked for my father in the family business, pub and grocery.

In 1969, I went to Jersey and the Channel Islands to work as a barman in a hotel when my older brother Barry worked as head chef. I made quit a lot of money, mostly on tips. I returned on my own in 1970. In Autumn of 1970 I returned home and purchased an old lifeboat hull and had a wooden cabin built on it. When the boat was ready I took to the lake and soon started a long journey that took me up to the Shannon to Shannon Harbour, across the centre of Ireland by canal, and down The Barrow River to Athy and Carlo, where I tied up the houseboat for the Winter. My brother Barry was running Kytelers Inn in Kilkenny by then so I went and did barwork for him for the winter of 1970. It was in Kilkenny that I met artist Kate Hennessy, from Limerick but teaching in Kilkenny. Kate introduced me to her German photographer friend Ursula Kraus, who happened to be living with her husband Mattias and daughter Rebecca and another friend in the little Co. Carlow village of St. Mullins on the River Barrow. I quickly became friends with them and very soon Mattias accompanied me from Carlow to St. Mullins on my houseboat. I tied up my houseboat in St. Mullins and to Munch that Christmas of 1971 to stay with Matthias. While in Munich I told Matthias that I was determined to sell my boat, leave Trinity and travel overland to India. Very quickly, in a matter of days, Matthius decided to leave Munich and travel with me. It was agreed that we would as housepainters and save enough money for the projected six-month journey. By April we were ready to begin our trip. (I will give a condensed account of our journey on the following page).

I returned in September 1972 and spent the following year living in Shanaghan’s Farm, Curraghase, Adare. I grew my own food in the garden and made my own bread and brewed my own wine. It was there I wrote my first collection of poetry “A Severed Wing”. From 1973 to 1974 I went back to Trinity College to study English, Psychology and Philosophy. I got my first year exams. I met an American girl in 1974 and had a very negative and destructive relationship with her. Eventually I became seriously ill with what was diagnosed as Paranoid Schizophrenia. By 1977 I have moved to Thomastown and after her final departure, was hospitalized. After a few weeks in hospital, I moved back to Co. Clare to live with my mother. I lived at home until 1984. I then went to Dublin, still unwell, and met poet, artist Michael Connaughton who had just founded “VOICEFREE” a group of musicians, artists and poets, a sort of creative co-operative. In Dublin, I was again hospitalized and after treatment with E.C.T I regained my life almost immediately. I started a book to be called “Walk on the Sun”. My earlier unpublished collection together with the new one were both published by Michael Connaughton on the Voicfree Press. In 1987 Michael introduced me to his printer David Deering (with whom I have been working since 1987). My press is called “The Last Gasp Press”.

In 1987 Michael introduced me to poet and artist Clare Kirk and our relationship lasted over twenty one years. I lived in Dublin from 1987 until 2001. Several times a week I read my poetry in different venues and devoted all my time to writing, publishing on average, a book a year. In 2001, I moved back to my home county Co.Clare, to live near my sister in Ennis. I am living here now over eight years. I published my Collected Poems 1967-2001 in the Old Ground Hotel here in Ennis in 2004. Last Christmas I met poet Brian Mooney who invited me to join The Thee Legged Stool poets and I have performed with the group a few times this year 2009 in Glor.

On April 25th, in Glor at two thirty in the afternoon I am launching a new collection with illustrations by Claire Kirk called “LOST IN NOVEMBER RAINS”. I am working on an autobiographical novel to be called “The Haunted Architecture of Loneliness”. I hope to have that completed in two to three years. Next summer, the summer of 2010, I plan to publish my sixteenth poetry collection “Reality – The Graveyard of Dreams” which I am working on at the moment.

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