Patrick Boyle formally launched his ‘Selected Poems (1983-2003)’ in November 2004 in The Alliance Francaise with music by John Clarke. The collection charts his life over the period when he lived and worked in Dublin, Clare, Limerick, Copenhagen, Bornholm and Paris.

He was born and raised in Dundalk.

Along canal wakening
To the fresh waters
Morning rippling
Flashing thoughts
It matters little
When you’re singing
Over lockgates waters tumbling

(excerpt from Canal Contentment by Patrick Boyle)
This poem is a tribute to Patrick Kavanagh, a major influence on Boyle, especially in some of his earlier poems.

Iniskeen is near Dundalk and Patrick relates how his mother’s father who worked as a guard on the train used to let Kavanagh into the guard’s carriage on the train for free. Kavanagh used to tell him at the time about this book he was writing and he was going to put everyone in Iniskeen in it– he was going to create a rumpus.

Of course that book became ‘The Green Fool’. “My mother’s father said: ‘Don’t put me in it or I’ll lose my job’. She was always sorry that he didn’t because he would have immortalised our father,” says Boyle.

“I kind of identified with his struggle being a writer and poet, a kind of quest for truth, that mystical side and Kavanagh was a bit of an outsider. He felt he wasn’t part of any movement although he had friends when he went to Dublin and as Kavanagh himself would say, there was always something in him, a kink in him, that made him bite the hand that fed him.”

Patrick Boyle first started writing at the age of 16 and his first poem was called ‘The Human Race’. It was written during a religion examination– “when a few of us decided we’d fail the exam as a protest, so I started writing a poem instead of answering the questions on the paper,” relates Patrick.
Sitting on a dirty brown chair in St Mary’s Hall
(Am I about to fall?)

I look around me seeing walls of fixed faces
Eyes glued to their meaningless questions:
Automatic answers appearing in some places.

Patrick lived in Paris for two years in the late 1980s to early 90s. “I was inspired by the city, by its history and beauty. In a way, I had an education there in art. I was thinking of becoming a painter.” Patrick sees himself in the mould of a romantic poet influenced by his emotions and surroundings. “Poetry is a distillation of experiences into a beauty that hopefully will last and will be read by people for generations or remains to be discovered,” says Patrick.

Lately, Patrick has been working with musicians John Clark and Peter Kay and is writing words and poems to music. ‘Pass-Her-By’ (1996) was their first collaboration and ‘Lovetalk’ came out recently with the selected poems. Patrick is currently working on a new album which he hopes to release in November and then tour with it.

Patrick Boyle’s ‘Selected Poems (1983-2003)’ is available from Frascati Books, Blackrock, Hampton Book Shop in Donnybrook, Hughes and Hughes, Alan Hanna’s and Book Bargains in the City Centre.

Above: Patrick with the statue of one of his poetic influences, James Clarence Mangan.