Early September saw the launch of a new September title, Thomas McCarthy’s Questioning Ireland, at an event in Waterstone’s, Cork.
Questioning Ireland is a lucky bag of commentary gathered from sources as varied as The Irish Times, the Dublin Review of Books, PN Review, a Cork City Planning Department Document and Facebook. Interrogating the legacies of Northern writers and the Southern ‘Ascendancy’ it attends to literary works as well as the visual arts with particular focus on figures from the author’s native Waterford and adopted Cork. Questioning Ireland confirms that Thomas McCarthy has been a pioneering champion of Irish women’s writing.
Hyperbole is a byword in the generosity of the author’s criticism and discerning readers will find in these pages much to learn and to dispute. A gathering of fifty years’ work, this copious collection of essays and reviews by the steadfast poet, novelist and diarist shows Thomas McCarthy to be a figure from a bygone era — a true man of letters.
Thomas McCarthy was born in Cappoquin, County Waterford, in 1954. Educated at the local Convent of Mercy and at University College, Cork, he was a Fellow of the International Writing Program in Iowa in 1978/79. He worked at Cork City Libraries until 2014 when he withdrew to write full-time. His collections of poetry include The Sorrow Garden (1981), The Last Geraldine Officer (2009), Pandemonium (2016), Prophecy (2019) and Plenitude (2025). He has also published two novels, two books of non-fiction and his diaries, Poetry, Memory and the Party (2022). Awards include The Patrick Kavanagh Award, The Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize, The Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry and the Annual Literary Award of the Ireland Funds. He is a member of Aosdána and lives in Cork City. Questioning Ireland (Essays and Reviews) was published in September 2024.
