New collection of prison poems by Eoghan ‘Gino’ MacCormaic

‘The Pen Behind the Wire Prison Poems 1982-1991’ is a 76-poem collection accompanied by readings of 36 of the works by Rita Ann Higgins, Christy Moore, Gerry Adams, Paula McFetridge and Pat Sheahan among others.

One of the poems ‘Creggan Hill’ is written in memory of the author’s friend Ciáran Fleming who drowned in 1984 while trying to escape British troops during a gun battle in Fermanagh.

‘It’s only the living who can be lonely,

‘And only the living can know bleakness

‘And sometimes, I think,

‘The great loneliness

‘Is in coming to a place like this

‘And knowing you are gone

‘And I’ll never hear your voice,

‘See your face, touch your life again’.

Mr. MacCormaic served 15 years in jail and was on the blanket protest for five years at a time when 10 of his comrades died on hunger strike.

Eoghan began writing poems on toilet paper and cigarette papers and smuggled them out to his family who kept them safe from British Army raids and seizures. Some of the poems were published in Republican News.

The now give us an insight into his and his comrades' prison lives, the publisher states.

The book is dedicated ‘to smugglers – especially smugglers over words’ with a wry quotation from ‘As I was among the Captives’, Joseph Campbell's Prison Diary of 1922-1923: ‘Poetry always breaks out, like scabies, in jail’.

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