Border book gives new take on partition

‘Border: 1921-2021 - A Centennial Calibration’, which takes the form of an epic poem focussing on ten border regions, is published by Colmcille Press.

Retired newspaper editor MacDonald’s previous works - including ‘Hard Border: Walking Through a Century of Irish Partition’ (2018) and ‘Blood and Thunder: Inside a Protestant Marching Band‘(2010) - have been widely critically acclaimed.

The Kerry Group Award-winning writer and screenwriter Eoin McNamee has provided the foreword for the book in which he compares the border to ‘Victor Orban’s razor wire’ and ‘Donald Trump’s wall’.

McNamee writes: “It is not simply that borders divide but that they exist outside the rules, beyond moral authority and, therefore, open to the most malign of uses. The currency of the frontier is spent bullet casings, bin-bagged corpses, riddled gospel halls.

“Darach MacDonald captures the personal, political and historical overtones but he’s also alive to the hallucinatory force of it, the malign future taking place in front of our eyes, and under our feet.”

The book’s striking cover art is a reproduction of ‘Segregation’, rendered by one of Ireland’s foremost artists, Rita Duffy, which is currently exhibited at the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork.

‘Border’ is part-homage to Dante’s ‘Inferno’ - which has nine sections. MacDonald has broken his work into ten Ceanntars, each given a chapter. And designer Joe McAllister’s ten corresponding border maps help set the context perfectly for the unfolding drama.

Dozens of explanatory footnotes also add weight to the historical importance of the book.

MacDonald was given an Arts Council NI award to help complete ‘Border’, which is also sponsored by the John Bryson Foundation.

‘Border: 1921-2021 - A Centennial Calibration’ will be launched on January 28 as part of the Bloody Sunday 50th anniversary commemorations. It will be available from local bookshops this week and colmcillepress.com