EAMON CARR / DEIRDRE UNFORGIVEN: A JOURNAL OF SORROWS
A play carved deeply on finest granite, wasting not a word, in deep command of itself.
— Frank McGuinness

2013 / 64 pages
ISBN: 978-1-907682-25-4
Cover art: John Devlin
€12

EAMON CARR was born in Kells, County Meath and began publishing his poems in the late 1960s. Later, with Peter Fallon, he formed poetry-performance group Tara Telephone and co-edited the literary collections Capella and The Book of Invasions as well as early Gallery Books imprints, before concentrating his energies as writer, conceptualist and drummer for Horslips, the band he co-founded and remains a member of. A journalist and occasional broadcaster, he is a former recipient of the Sarah Purser Scholarship and Prize in the History of European Painting from Trinity College, Dublin. His first book, The Origami Crow, Journey into Japan World Cup Summer 2002 (Seven Towers) was published in 2008.
ABOUT 'DEIRDRE UNFORGIVEN'
Deirdre Unforgiven, a new dramatic work by the journalist, poet and musician Eamon Carr, is a re-telling of the legend of Deirdre of The Sorrows, a narrative that has inspired artists for centuries, and one of the most barbarous, complex and intriguing stories in Irish mythology.
While working as a reporter in the north of Ireland during the 1990s, Eamon was struck by how frequently the appalling events seemed to echo details of the Deirdre myth.
The awfulness of those correspondences compelled him to explore their hermetic nature.
Deirdre, cursed and kidnapped as a baby by Conor, a usurping king, eventually sees Naoise, her true love, butchered along with his brothers as conflict rages across the kingdom of Ulster.
In Deirdre Unforgiven, Eamon Carr shows how the story resonates most shockingly in our time.
LINKS TO ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS
Review in the Irish Times
Article in the Irish Times
Video from the launch
Video from reading at the Belfast Book Festival
Article in The Herald
Article in the University Observer
Review in the Irish Independent
5-Star review on RTE
Review in Hot Press
Article in Hot Press
Blog review by American scholar John L. Murphy
Review by American senior lecturer at University of Portsmouth Sharon Wheeler