An audio recording of 'Shush' by Colm Keegan.

Recorded live in the Gutter Bookshop, Dublin, as part of RTE Arena's launch of New Planet Cabaret - edited by Dave Lordan.

Buy the full book Here.
http://www.newisland.ie/books/fiction-2011-2013/new-planet-cabaret/978-1-84840-296-6

Shush

Lovebomb put to sounds, as a tribute to the music that coloured those teenage years.

Big thanks to Chris Hopper DJ https://soundcloud.com/chris-hopper/chris-wakefield-moonlight

Lovebomb with Music by Chris Hopper

Murphy's Phone

Elemenopy

Shebeen Shaman

Decking

Two new poems (Purchase and Shout Out) and two old poems (The Crackle and Hazelnuts).  All slightly Dream related.

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https://www.facebook.com/thebrownbreadmixtape

BBMT Dreams Feb 2015

A poem I wrote and read for RTE's Arena. Aired Christmas Eve 2009.

A Christmas Wish

“Burn It Smash It Kill It Trash It”
After graffiti on a Clondalkin wall
Dope smoking
coke and yoking
early school leaver.
Not your goody two shoes.
Not your golden retriever.
Not on no fasttrack.
No future.
Take it or leave it.
Fucks like you always do sure.
Looks around here and sees
nothing worth doing
but drinking and stealing
and breaking and using.
Sees blokes turning women
into doormats for abusing.
Women looking up
to being a man’s source
of amusement.
Blokes who live for the weekend.
Girls who denounce their mothers.
Featureless caricatures.
Carbon copies of each other.
He wants to be like them.
That’s what he’d rather be.
His best friend hung himself.
Threw himself out on the street.
Lay hanging from his windowsill
with his neck broke by his bedsheets.
Found by his own mother.
Page still up on Bebo.
Straightforward bloke.
You’d forget him
if you’d seen him.
32
He just took a look around
saying ‘What’s the fucking point?’
Needing something to fill the gap,
besides
another
fucking
joint.
Nothing was the answer
nothing was the roar that
burned his ears
broke his heart
so he locked his bedroom door
saying –
“That’s it Planet Earth
goodnight and fuck you all.
Where’s the song that I can hear
where’s the meaning
where’s the call?
I’m listening
can you hear me?”
But there was nothing there at all.
At night during the witching hour
he thinks of taking his friend’s place
until rage boils up into the urge
to grab his best friend’s face
and scream
“Take your slump you beautiful fuck.
Go get angry.
Shake things up.
Stick your despair up their fucking jacksie.
Go out and break something!
Go out and smash anything!”
33
Dope smoking
coke and yoking
early school leaver.
Not your goody two shoes.
Not your golden retriever.

Kevin Hoban's Album

Burn it smash it kill it trash it-Colm Keegan

Springshine

January Train

This Voice

Dear Dealer

Smog

Colm Keegan and Mark O'Brien chat about Colm's debut play "For Saoirse", about a young man struggling with the reality that he is about to become a father; it is running at the Dublin Fringe Festival next month

Full details:   www.fringefest.com

RTE interview about For Saoirse

The Crackle


There's a party full of 'Fat-Frogs'

and coke all over the table.

There's a man out by the Liffey

getting out while he's able.

There's a fight starting somewhere

a fellah getting stabbed.

There's a car doing hand-brakers

two girls jumping a cab.

There's twitchy bouncer hacks

keeping an eye on the door.

That poor lad in the jacks stuck

cleaning puke off the floor.

The country's getting locked.

There's nobody to care.

There's a slut going down

and there's danger in the air.

There's men drowned in money

girls who'll never bend.

There's a beggar whispering 'honey'

but that's nothing down his end.

There's the gentle sound of heartbeats.

There's alleys full of death.

There's a man after your brother.

There's a lightness to your breath.

All these people hanging around

everybody acting cool

and the night-times fucking freezing

but don't let that fool you.

There's a crackle to this city

There's a steam of dreams that rises

and it gets behind your eyeballs

and it kind of compromises

the concrete

the shell

all the bits that sing 'to hell with it.'

There's another bit

a hoping bit

that screams out

Make a difference.

The city's

electricity.

It shines on us.

We're sparkling!

And love it man

'cause further out

there's nothing

only darkness.

The Crackle

Colm Keegan's poetry is a soulful yet visceral evocation of what it is to live in a Dublin rarely seen in its un-exaggerated form in the literary world. A life and a mode of living and seeing that refuses to be marginalised are set against a backdrop of palpable geography. Rarely has a poet's voice, unfamiliar but true in it's every utterance, been captured so well as it is in Keegan's first collection. From the first poem to the last the energy of the verse of his life and living never flags. Family, friends, children and the urban sprawl he renders sparely yet lyrically, all are grist to the mill of Colm Keegan's poetics. 

“Sometimes you meet poets with soul, sometimes with experience, sometimes with talent. But you seldom meet a poet with all three. Colm Keegan is one such poet.” Dave Lordan

“The poetry of Colm Keegan brims with frenetic energy and a hard-earned street-wise lyricism, bereft of false notes or unearned experience. These new poems for a new era grow into a powerful and often dark portrayal of contemporary Dublin: an exploration of the streetscape of urban estates teeming with the complexity of life. It delves into the richest and the darkest corners of the human condition, without Keegan ever compromising the deep humanity at the core of his unblinking vision of life passing by.” Dermot Bolger

http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=258&a=219

Chalks

Memorial

Glowing Embers

Fridays

Hazelnuts

You're not in the working class, you're not in the middle class, you're in the Reading Class.

The Reading Class.

From Don't Go There. Available here http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=258&a=219

Lovebomb (Ghetto Romantic)

French Toast

Colm Keegan is a writer and performance poet from Clondalkin, Dublin. Since 2005, he has been shortlisted  four times for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award, for both poetry and fiction. He was shortlisted for the International Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition in 2008 and won the All Ireland Poetry Slam in 2010.

In 2011, he was nominated for the Dublin Fringe's 'Little Gem' Award for the play he co-wrote with Stephen James Smith and Kalle Ryan - Three Men Talking About Things They Kinda Know About - which had a sold out run at Dublin Fringe Festival’s recent TurnAround Season, and is currently touring Ireland.

He co-runs the monthly arts event ‘Nighthawks at the Cobalt’ and is co-founder and facilitator ofor the Inklinks Project, a creative writing initiative centred around a young writers’ club in Clondalkin. He also teaches creative writing in secondary schools across Ireland.

He reviews for and contributes material to RTÉ Radio One’s Arena and is currently working on his first novel and a collection of short stories.

 'Sometimes you meet poets with soul, sometimes with experience, sometimes with talent. But you seldom meet a poet with all three. Colm Keegan is one such poet' - Dave Lordan

Colm Keegan

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