SiarScéal Festival 2022
– including the Hanna Greally Literary Awards –
Saturday, 12 November is the date that has been announced for SiarScéal Festival 2022, which takes place at Roscommon County Library HQ, starting 10am. Details of the festival, including the full programme of events, have been posted to the festival website.
The Hanna Greally Literary Awards will be announced on the day, with a prize fund totalling €600 to be given out in cash prizes. Entries are still being accepted and the closing date is Friday, 14 October.
Entry is free but limited to one per person and may consist of poetry or prose but, should be on the theme of the competition, which is Sunlit Mornings, Ebbing Tides.
Full details, including terms and conditions and how to enter can be found on the SiarScéal website. Winners will be announced and, prizes presented at the festival in November.
SiarScéal Festival (with the associated Hanna Greally Literary Awards) has been taking place annually, in Roscommon, since 2007. The festival draws its inspiration from unique culture and heritage of the Roscommon environs, together with the regional counties of Leitrim and Sligo. Further information about SiarScéal, including how you can get involved and support their work, is available from their website.
Publications sponsored by SiarScéal, reflecting the array of talent that the festival has attracted over the years, are on sale and available to buy online from this website.
The Joys of a Second Rattle at Life by William Tiernan
The Joys of a Second Rattle at Life by William Tiernan
The Joys of a Second Rattle at Life by William Tiernan is the author's third volume of poetry and, arguably, his most ambitious to date. Whether addressing himself to issues such as pandemics or the war in Ukraine, to more universal themes of redemption and rebirth, battles of the body and the bullying of the mind, Tiernan's observations go straight to the human heart, breaking down the distance between what is right from what is wrong, conveying it all in his unique and inimitable lyrical style.
From the Pen of William Tiernan
Mine is a hard hammering against the wall of flame.
The demon we must come to terms with and tame.
Where carnage can turn to courage.
Where anger can be dissolved of all its rage.
Where hope can turn over a brand-new page.
Let me try and sneak away from this same old rat race
Before the tears stay too cold on my face.
I came alive out of my lifelessness, to come around again to care.
A new day brings a new, raw hunger and thirst.
I must give the world my poem and my word
Without having to fall on my sword.
We all started out in life with a loving few
And now, we must live with an unloving crew
The heart can be touched by crying
But, the soul knows not of dying.
It's smiles we give and tears we fall.
We belong to the universal call.
We become a lot of what we find
And, even more than nothing of what we leave behind.
As time moves on and moments go by,
You become more conscious when you hear the human poverty cry
I write these words of wisdom
Like a vision, like a sage
And see the many sides of anger and rage.
The children draw the curtains.
Poverty draws the blinds.
I'm sick and tired of war and dying.
Sick and tired of hunger and homelessness crying.
I'm into me and I'm the whole world's lover
And, I know there are many mysterious things to discover
The road less travelled is the road best left behind
And, the better one, perhaps, is the one we've yet to find.
Existence is forever so short
But life, at times, too long.
Old fashioned, I might be but, most of the poetry nowadays doesn’t turn me on. I like the stuff to rhyme, while this thing of survival gets on my bloody nerves.
The Joys of a Second Rattle at Life by William Tiernan
Poetry, lyric poetry, modern and contemporary, Irish authors
122 printed pages. Paperback
First published in Ireland, in 2022, under the imprint of The Manuscript Publisher
ISBN: 978-1-911442-41-7
About the Author
William Tiernan is a poet and author who resides in rural Galway, close to the Roscommon border. His writings reflect his personal experiences and convictions as well as strong ties to the community in which he lives, his identification with the place where he grew up.
Three volumes of his poetry have been published to date: Greetings from Guilka, Ballymoe (2016) and Bluesy Ballymoe (2018) and The Joys of a Second Rattle at Life (2022)
In 2014, he was National Winner in the poetry category at the Hanna Greally International Literary Awards, organised as part of the annual SiarScéal Festival in Co. Roscommon.
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