Remember that writer's phrase, that word, that perfectly sums up a city to you?
Can you imagine what would happen if dozens of these words and phrases became part of a poem that gave you instant essence of the city in question?
This is just what our new citypicktures series has been created (or do we mean curated?) to do.
Heather Reyes, the editor of our city-pick urban travel anthologies, has created a mini-version of each of our books. Scouring our titles for some of the most telling and evocative phrases and images. Then shaping them into poems that try to 'bottle the essence' of each city in a few hundred telling words.
city-pick DUBLIN
Dublin: character you could cut with a knife,
impregnated with a past that never evaporates.
A dignity of memories and manners -
grand perspectives and large light squares.
Tall houses. A few steps to each front door,
a graceful, semi-circular fanlight,
the windows handsome and elegant.
Splendid relic of the eighteenth century.
Openness and friendliness, but
a sort of perversity as well.
The poor - rich in speech and temperament.
Dublin: the sea in the bay and
the river stumbling towards it, drunk.
Dublin - big on statues.
Molly Malone - "tart with a cart"
(breasts a brace of butternut squash)
Trinity College - the Book of Kells (greatest treasure in all Ireland),
the Old Library (most beautiful room in the world).
First performance of The Messiah.
The Easter Rising, 1916 - the Struggle for Freedom.
Kilmainham Jail. Dublin Castle - not much more noticeable than
a shop in a back street. The Ha'penny Bridge.
The Abbey Theatre on its shabby corner.
The classical columns of the General Post Office.
The Georgian Squares - Merrion, Fitzwilliam, Parnell.
Christchurch Cathedral. St Patrick's Cathedral (where Swift is buried).
Grafton Street - shoppers and drifters, street musicians.
Irish cheesemongers. Italian delis. Bosnian food. Russian grocery stores.
Middle eastern shops on the Grand Canal at Portobello.
Dublin - big on statues.
The Anna Livia Millenium Fountain - "floozie in the jacuzzi"
(a thousand years since the Vikings settled)
Great writers per head of population? Dublin the clear winner.
A bed of poetry and wit.
Joyce, Wilde, Yeats, Swift, Beckett, brawling Behan ...
Joyce is not a writer any more: he is
a celebrity, a spectacular star who tore up the rule book.
Ulysses - his incantation to, for, and of Dublin.
'Bloomsday' (16th June) has wrested Ulysses from
the exclusive possession of scholarship.
A literary jaunt like a pilgrimage, the bric-a-brac in tourist shops
resembles the knick-knacks at Lourdes or Rome.
Dublin - big on statues.
Bertie's Pole - "stiffy on the Liffey"
(O'Connell Street, a dirty great silver white pole)
Sunday afternoon stroll along the river -
one pub called "Inn on the Liffey", the next, "Out on the Liffey" ...
Temple Bar - Dublin's very own Left Bank.
The rain a savage dance all over the patient pavements.
Sun bringing out the red of the brick terraces,
catching the fanlights over the Georgian doors around
Merrion Square that smells of damp earth, flora, a hint of tobacco,
the jaunty little statue of Oscar Wilde leaning provocatively
against a rock in the corner opposite his former home.
St Stephen's Green: people sprawl all over the park,
jazz from the bandstand, a little boy doing somersaults
on the pristine grass no-one is supposed to walk on.
St Patrick's Day Dublin - Dublin with the flags out.
The largest St Patrick's Day parade in the world.
Visitors from most countries, the atmosphere jovial and friendly.
A little bit of over the top Oirishness.
Everyone Irish for a day.
Words from city-pick DUBLIN extracts by the following writers (in alphabetical order):
Brendan Behan, Maeve Binchy, Elizabeth Bowen, Meghan Butler, Frank Delaney, Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, Emma Donoghue, Caitlin Gerrity, Neil Hegarty, Colin Irwin, Brian Lalor, Robert Lynd, Evan McHugh, Enda Mullen, Iris Murdoch, David Norris, Sean O'Casey, Joseph O'Connor, Mary O'Donnell, Sean O'Reilly, V. S. Pritchett, Keith Ridgway, Orna Ross, Edward Rutherfurd, Peter Sheridan, Honor Tracy
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