Slimming for the Beach

Image source John McGahern.com

This is old news by now, but in case you haven’t heard, John McGa­h­ern died sud­denly on Thurs­day, March 30th. I was on the road when his death was announced, en route to read with the delight­ful Scaldy Detail con­trib­u­tors in The Potato Mar­ket in Cres­cent Quay in Wex­ford town, so it was a shock when Sean Clerkin announced he was read­ing a poem in McGahern’s mem­ory. A beau­ti­ful poem it was too (Clerkin is an under-rated poet, pos­si­bly because he has pub­lished only one book).
McGahern’s pass­ing some­how reminds me of lines by the equally mourned Michael Hartnett:

this head is a poet’s head,

this head holds a galaxy.

All that cul­ture and knowl­edge and grace, gone with him into the grave…
I never knew him, but read­ing trib­utes over the week­end, it was obvi­ous what a won­der­ful com­pan­ion he was, and I’m sure my heart is not the only one to go out to his widow, Madeleine.

See Sinéad Gleeson’s The Sigla Blog