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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

October October October October, as Summer is over, and chestnuts falling and Autumn’s calling. And mother nature takes the blame, as red leaves covers all green, while the black bird spreads its wings, and loudly we hear her sing and the…

Oh Dublin, oh Dublin, what have you done, with your posh Georgian houses, now tenement slums! And the cats and rats and kids in bare feet, and their poor mother and fathers with little to eat, but cold porridge from penny-dinners that you call a…

This poem addresses Anna Livia, a carved keystone figure. Keystone heads were carved by Edward Smyth in the late eighteenth century. Anna Livia keystone heads grace Dublin's Custom House and the warehouse at 30- 32 Sir John Rogerson’s Quay.Anna Livia…

Haunted hallways, and tenement stairsAnd little old women on knees saying prayersWhile kids play skipping and dance all round, all take place in the heart of townAnd women with scrubbing-boards wash and toil, in old back yards beneath blue sky’sWhile…