Beat the Goatskin Till the Goat Cries: Notes from a Kerry Village »

Beat the Goatskin Till the Goat Cries! is an account of community life in rural Ireland, with all its rogues, characters and customs.

My Place
A Kerry of the Mind     7
Culpable Innocence?     11
'Ring Out the Old, Ring in the New'     16
My Own Place     18
A Kerry Joke     22
Home     25
Sunday Night in Mairead's Bar, Moyvane     28
Corner Boys     30
Within
Christmas     32
That Empty Feeling     36
Do Chum Ghloire De agus Onora na bEireann     38
No Man is an Island     41
Up Down!     44
Tread Softly on my Dreams     46
Up for the Match     49
Winning isn't Everything     52
Teaching
Schooldays     54
Inner Pain     57
Creating the Conscience of the Race: A Portrait of the Artist as a National School Teacher     59
The Poet in the Classroom     68
Poetry and School     76
Writers and Singers
The Listowel Literary Phenomenon     80
'Missing' the Master     83
The Gift of Ink: The Legacy of Bryan MacMahon     87
Where History Meets Poetry: Bryan MacMahon and 'The Valley of Knockanure'     95
Sive     120
Beating the Goatskin till the Goat Cries: the Importance of Folk Song and Music to JohnB. Keane, the Man and Playwright     128
John B. Keane: A Personal Perspective     135
The Passing of an Era     138
'Muse, I Claim your Attention': Celebrating Kerry in Song     141
Approaching Pentecost: Poetry in Contemporary Society     146
'Becoming Song': Brendan Kennelly - a Ballylongford of the Heart     151
From Pig-Killer to Rain-Man: Brendan Kennelly's The Man Made of Rain     163
'[An] Exile Out Foreign in 'Glantine': Michael Hartnett and the Sense of Place     167
A Stoic's World: Dennis O'Driscoll's: Exemplary Damages     178
Irish Poetry Now: Other Voices     184
Acknowledgements     190