Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis was born in Dublin in 1955, he studied literature at the University of Essex and Trinity College, Dublin. As well as being available for readings at Irish and International festivals Tony Curtis is an experienced facilitator of poetry and creative writing workshops with both adults and children and is a regular contributor at the Clifden Arts Festival.
About Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis was born in Dublin in 1955, he studied literature at the University of Essex and Trinity College, Dublin. As well as being available for readings at Irish and International festivals Tony Curtis is an experienced facilitator of poetry and creative writing workshops with both adults and children and is a regular contributor at the Clifden Arts Festival.
In 1993, his poem The Dowser and the Child won the Poetry Ireland/Friends Provident National Poetry Competition, while These Hills won the Book Stop Poetry Prize. He also edited As the Poet Said (1997), a selection of quotations from Dennis O'Driscoll's regular column in Poetry Ireland Review. In 2003 he was awarded the Varuna House Exchange Fellowship to Australia.
Tony Curtis Books
To Find out more about each book, simply click on the name below the book.
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Between The Tides
Liam has asked me to write a few lines about why I chose to write twenty-four poems about great women poets in response to these wonderful photographs. For a start, you should know that Liam and I have made two previous books together: Sand Works and Aran Currach. For Sand Works I wrote forty-five haiku; a Japanese form of three line nature poems incorporating just seventeen syllables 5-7-5. For Aran Currach I wrote a string of haiku and tanka: five line nature poems using just thirty-one syllables 5 -7-5-7-7. For this book, I carried Liam's photographs in my bag for over a year. At the time, I was immersed in making poems for a book called This Flight Tonight. It was a book about Alcock and Brown's transatlantic flight, in June 1919, from St. John's, Newfoundland to a bog in the west of Ireland; undoubtedly the greatest flight of all time. Often when the writing stalled or I was looking for the way forward, I would sit on the beach and look at Liam's photographs. So it was a slow process that involved a lot of looking.
Of course, there is always a way into poems, and the way into these poems came with a gift I received from my American friends, Anne and Philip McCracken: a copy of \W.S. Mcrwin's last book Garden Time. These late poems were free flowing glimpses of life, using no punctuation, just lines turning on a breath falling over the page like waves. While I was reading Mcrwin's book, I was chipping away at commas and colons in the 300 pages of proofs for my book This Flight Tonight. So you can sec why I was drawn more and more to the freedom, simplicity and flow of Mcrwin's last poems.
The original title for this set of photographs was Rock of Ages. We thought about this title for a long time but in the end decided that it carried too many connotations — humorous, religious. Putting all this together, I can now see that the poems in this book came from me looking at Liam's photographs for over a year; Mcrwin's poems washing over his garden like waves, and our original title for this book Rock of Ages-Somewhere in there, 1 began to see in the photographs the faces and lives of great women poets. All I needed to do was chisel away the stone. The wonderful thing was that as soon as I finished one poem another poet called to me. It was as simple as that.Tony Curtis
- Published By // Real Ireland Design
- Date // Julyr, 2021
The Syncline
The spectacular landscapes of the West Cork peninsulas with their raw and almost skeletal qualities are very much the product of the underlying bedrock geology of the region. This geology predominantly consists of layered sandstones, siltstones and mudstones of Upper Devonian age that were deposited in a large sedimentary basin, the Munster Basin, 380-360 million years ago. During the Upper Devonian what is now Munster sat on the southern margin of the ancient continent of Laurussia and the sediments that filled the Munster Basin was carried by a series of river systems from uplands, part of the Caledonian Mountain chain, to the north of present-day Munster southwards into the basin. At this time southern Ireland was close to the equator and the climate was very arid. As a consequence, a lot of the iron in the sediment was oxidized resulting in the reddish/purple tinge we see in the rocks today. The bulk of this sediment was deposited by periodic flooding events that laid down the sediment in distinct, laterally continuous sheets. This is what gives the rocks their very apparent layered geometry. Because of the dry, desert like conditions we see very little fossil material in these rocks. Some localities do preserve primitive fish material and to the north, on Valentia Island, we see the preservation of early tetrapod footprints. As the sediments that accumulated in the Munster Basin were buried, they were transformed over time, through the process of lithification, into the sedimentary rocks we see today.
At the end of the Carboniferous Period the Munster Basin was caught up in a global mountain building event, the Variscan Orogeny. The flat lying layered sedimentary rocks of the Munster Basin were compressed from the south by the collision of the Gondwana tectonic plate with the southern Laurussia. This head on collision imparted a strong tectonic fabric in the rocks which was responsible for significant crustal shortening. Ongoing compression eventually led to the sedimentary layers being buckled into a series of roughly E-W aligned geological folds. Folding occurred on all scales from large regional structures responsible for the peninsulas of south west Ireland to smaller meter scale structures that are very evident when looking at West Cork landscapes.Dt- Pat Mccn
- Published By // Real Ireland Design
- Date // July, 2021
This Flight Tonight
On the 15th of June 1919, a Sunday morning, the greatest flight of all time came to an end when Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown landed their Vickers Atlantic Vimy close to the Marconi Transmitting Station on Derrigimlagh Bog, a few miles beyond Clifden.
The poet Tony Curtis, in poems, stories and flights-of-fancy, tells the heroic tale. It is a tale reminiscent of the ancient Greeks, of two weary men emerging from years of war, guided by the only gifts the war had given them: flight, navigation and the Vickers Vimy. Demobbed in March 1919, a chance meeting at the Vickers factory in Weybridge, Surrey brought together their sublime partnership: Alcock, the veteran long-range bomber pilot; Brown, the electrical engineer with an extensive, but untested, knowledge of aerial navigation. Aviator and soldier, two brave souls ready to take on Lord Xorthcliffe's Daily Mail challenge: the first nonstop transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to Ireland. The prize: the glory, the honour, and ten thousand pounds.
Occasional Press publishes art-based projects as and when it has the means to do so.
Currently out of print- Published By // Occasional Press
- Date // June, 2019
Approximately in the Key of C
Tony Curtis's humour and charm, and ability to turn a poem with the seemingly simplest of images, and that understanding of how words will play over the listener's ear, are hallmarks which are pleasingly brought to the fore on the page... His greatest skill is to make readers go 'yes, of course'; he reminds us of what we've known all along though perhaps not recognised, and reading his poems is therefore an uplifting experience.
- Published By // ARC Publications
- Date // September 2015
Pony
A poet, a printmaker and … a pony meet in the wild Connemara landscape of Ireland’s atlantic coast to conjure an idiosyncratic collection of observations and imaginings.
David Lilburn, printmaker, painter, draughtsman of the first order, brings his powerful improvisational skills to play in a feisty visual response to poet Tony Curtis’s brilliantly original and unpredicatble imagination, as it deftly moves through the wandering poems in this beautiful and unusual book. By turns, these poems ambush your expectations with humour, sadness, mischief and wonder; belying their apparent simplicity, they weave a life-enhancing magic throughout colourful pages of vivid words and pictures.
Pony is published by Occasional Press in collaboration with Ballynahinch Castle, 2013, limited edition of 130 hardback copies.
Currently out of print- Published By // Occasional Press
- Date // 2013
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Sand Works
45 photographs with haiku by poet Tony Curtis and introduction by Richard Nairn. Published 2011 A collection of photographs from the beaches of Brittas Bay, Magherabeg and Magheramore County Wicklow.
At certain times, such as after high winds and tides,the sands on the beach are shaped into beautiful abstract formations,the lack of scale giving the feeling that they could be pictures of the Earth from space, or of other planets. They are in most cases a square metre or two of sand at my feet.
Currently out of print- Published By // Real Ireland Design
- Date // 2012
Folk
The poems in Tony Curtis’s new collection are woven out of his fascination with the everyday, the quirky, and the downright extraordinary.
These are poems wrapped up in love and death, friendship and memory, madness and music – from the blind man singing in a field, to his three Cistercian uncles singing plainchant. There are people at the heart of everything he writes. Curtis is a born storyteller, and these are poems crafted by a poet with a wonderful ability to express great depth of feeling with deceptive simplicity.
“Curtis lives on the borderline between our world and the world of the Spirits.”
The Irish Times
"His humour and charm, and ability to turn a poem with the seemingly simplest of images, and that understanding of how words will play over the listener's ear, are hallmarks which are pleasingly brought to the fore on the page in this hefty new collection. His greatest skill is to make readers go "yes, of course"; he reminds us of what we've known all along though perhaps not recognised, and reading his poems is therefore an uplifting experience."
The Warwick Review
- Published By // ARC Publications
- Date // February 2011
The Well and the Rain
"The Well in the Rain", Tony Curtis's second book from Arc, brings together work from his six previous books. Bicycles, famine, ghosts, grannies, Tibetan Buddhists, Beckettian sighs and Lucian Freud's nudes are all revealed with a rare, and loving, simplicity. His award-winning poetry has always been characterized by its compassion and humour: full of gods but empty of forgiveness. In a closing selection of new poems, gathered here as "Tossing the Feathers", Curtis's wit and heartache surface in a long poem "The Well in the Rain", that faces the loss of his father. This is life-giving, life-affirming poetry, full of loss, love and longing
When Sometimes all I can Imagine are Hands
There is a winter within me,
a place so cold, so covered in snow,
I rarely go there. But sometimes,
when all I can imagine are hands,
when trees in the forest
look like they’re made of wood,
then I know it’s time
to take my photograph of Akhmatova
and sling it in a bag with socks and scarves.
My neighbours must think it strange
to see me strapping on my snowshoes,
to hear me roar at the huskies
as I untangle the harness.
But when all you can imagine are hands
it’s best to give a little wave
and move out into the whiteness.
“Underpinning the lyrical narrative is a writing style as graceful as the author’s thought.”
Poetry Ireland Review
- Published By // ARC Publications
- Date // February 2011
What Darkness Covers
This is a beautiful and haunting book, full of things remembered and half-remembered, strange resonances emanating from the Irish landscape and way of life, and the poet's insight into a poet's existence.
"Compassion and remarkable imagery combine...but always paramount, insight into the human heart."
Weyfarers 95
"Tony Curtis makes beautiful poems – compassionate, funny, elegiac. He's a song master, a riddler, a humdinger. He honours Samuel Beckett and his Granny with equal gusto. His Black Hills of Balrothery are as far-reaching as the Himalayas and he sees great distances from the peaks of both. But he is also a poker under rocks and a hoker in hedgerows; he finds a universe in a grain of sand. He is unique in contemporary Irish poetry, foraging and forging the uncreated, breaking all our hearts."
Paula Meehan- Published By // ARC Publications
- Date // June 2003
DESIGN //
Days Like These - Three Irish Poets
This is a beautiful limited edition of 300, letterpress and handset book , this book contains the poems of Tony Curtis, Paula Meehan and Theo Dorgan.
Printed by Sally Green and binding by Sam Green (Washington poet laureate) at Brooding Heron Press on Waldon Island in 2007.
Days Like These is a very special limited edition contact Tony Curtis for availabliity.- Published By // Brooding Heron Press
- Date // 2007
This Far North
This work gathers together poems that have been widely published in Ireland and else-where and includes the prize-winning poem and widely-noted sequence of poems, "From a Famine Journal".
Paperback: 74 pages
Publisher: Dedalus Pr (January 1, 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1873790627
ISBN-13: 978-1873790625
The Well in the Rain contains poems from This Far North and is available from the ARC website.- Published By // Dedalus Press
- Date // January 1, 1994
The Shifting of Stones
This books publish date is January 1986. There are 65 pages and it was published by Beaver Row Press. The 10 digit ISBN is 0946308411 and the 13 digit ISBN is 9780946308415.
This is very rare book and has been out of print for many years.
The Well in the Rain contains poems from The Shifting of Stones and is available from the ARC website.- Published By // Beaver Row Press
- Date // January 1986
DESIGN //
3 Songs from Home
Tony Curtis writes, even on complex matters, with disarming ease. In this new collection he has pared his work down to the bone, achieving, in many of these poems, the strength and mystery of myth and fable. The poet journeys into the high Himalayas where he faces his own mortality. What he brings back is a book haunted by ghosts and demons, by illusions, dreams, memories, and desires, in other words a richly experienced and carefully shared wisdom, offered in an immediate yet subtle series of poems.
As one reviewer on Amzon.com stated.
“All i can say about this book is WOW. It's absolutely amazing how the author collected so many poems and put them in a book and made them so incredibly wonderful to read through. This is for anyone who cares anything about poetry. Get this book and even if you dislike poetry, I'm sure you'll love it after reading this book.”
Paperback: 70 pages
Publisher: Dedalus Pr (March 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1901233146
ISBN-13: 978-1901233148
The Well in the Rain contains poems from 3 Songs from Home and is available from the ARC website.- Published By // Dedalus Press
- Date // March, 1999
An Elephant Called Rex
Tony Curtis is a poet and writes books of poetry. Pat Mooney is an illustrator and award winning book designer. Together they have made this book for you. They hope it will be read, said, ranted and chanted in classrooms, bedrooms, cafés, libraries, parks and shared on journeys. If you would like to talk to Tony, Pat, Rex or Dumbo about the poems and illustrations you can use the 'Contact Rex' page and we would love to hear from you.
Currently out of print- Published By // Black Hills Press
- Date // 2010
