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THE LYRIC FEATURE

WK 50 Lyric Feature Home Againe John McAuliffe at Kilcolman Castle Image Name: WK 50 Lyric Feature Home Againe John McAuliffe at Kilcolman Castle Description: Home Againe - John McAuliffe at Kilcolman Castle

Home Againe

In 2015 the poet John McAuliffe published a sequence of poems called Home, Again, about a journey from England, where he has lived since 2002, to his home country of Ireland. The sequence harked back to a poem written over 400 years ago by the controversial poet Edmund Spenser about a mythical shepherd who journeyed from Ireland to England and back, called Colin Clout’s Come Home Againe.

In this programme he goes in search of Spenser’s legacy and explores the influence of the Elizabethan poet on his own poetry. He meets Jane Grogan, Associate Professor in Renaissance Literature at the School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin, to hear why, all these centuries later, Spenser is still a hate figure for many. Poet Bernard O’Donoghue asks whether Spenser could be regarded as an Irish poet and Leanne O’Sullivan describes how he has emerged in her own work. Finally, John strides across fields, braving bulls and electric fences, to find the ruins of Spenser’s Kilcolman Castle, and makes a call that, despite his involvement in nefarious actions in Ireland, Spenser the poet should not be wiped from the map. We hear the poetry of Edmund Spenser, read by actor Andrew Bennett, and poems from John McAuliffe’s Home, Again sequence, read by the poet, taken from his 2015 collection The Way In (Gallery Press).

Presenter: John McAuliffe

Reader: Andrew Bennett

Producer: Claire Cunningham

Sound supervision: Tinpot Productions

A Rockfinch Production for RTÉ lyric fm funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland from the Television Licence fee.

RTÉ lyric fm, Sunday 9th December, 6pm-7pm