By | Gan Gary Brown
This poem looks back at what working life was like for one of the thousands of casual labourers who worked at the Dublin docks in the mid-twentieth century. The foreman, or Stevedore, allocated work to men daily. Those labourers would often be left…

By | Gan Gary Brown
Gary's wife used sea swimming as a way to get relief during a stressful personal time, as her mother went through Alzheimer's disease. The waves in the poem reflect the changing condition of Gary's mother-in-law, and her 'escapes to nowhere', when…

By | Gan Gary Brown
Gary Brown's poem is an elegy for all the people who took the boat out of Dublin and crossed the Irish Sea for various reasons. Some of them left their homes, never to return; others did, but in altered circumstances. This poem speaks of hope and…

By | Gan Gary Brown
The wives and families of dockers had to face deprivations that often went unnoticed or unreported. Because of the dangerous nature of work in and around the docklands areas, work accidents where very common. Almost on a daily basis, men were…

By | Gan Gary Brown
Hearing the name Dublin, most people think of the city sitting on a landmass. Gary Brown talked with Ports, Past and Present about how Dublin already begins out at sea at the Kish Lighthouse as it is the first visible marker that people encounter on…

By | Gan Gary Brown
Tethered, tossed and twinkling,A beckoning beacon between bar and bull,Paving pathways in a bending bay of swirlingsurf and smiling shores.Invitation to our harbour of doubtFailte, céad mile, come surge like a stormin our settling stout. Tested in…

By | Gan Gary Brown
Get to bell before the low tideSlow down the pipe mind your stride.Compressed air makes the breathing hardWorking for hours in heat and dark.Levelling out the seabed get it rightQuay stones to be laid before the night. Six in our gang in our metal…