boreen books
oranges in finland
Forty-three dreams. Forty-three mornings. Write after breakfast, before the dream disappears. Revise in the evening with the day's weather, the day's plot woven in. This is what I do to refresh, like Yuri Geller with a spoon or Federer with a backhand.
48pp, perfect bound, 105x148mm, pbk, numbered edition of 300. A boreen book, May 2016
€5
The Coloured Books
Begun in 2007, the coloured books are the voice of a woman having her say: keeping bees, baking bread, examining local habitats in poetry, diary and narrative. Here is the state of play on the day, inside and out, one packed universe after another, breathless, rooted, cerebral and funny. Each book will fit in shirt pocket. To read on the bus or while stirring the risotto.
106 x 154 x 26mm. Boxed set of 7 volumes: flashes and floaters, local, strangeness, how to write round things, the pataphysics of making bread, bunch of monads, tell the bees. Boreen books, 2007 – 2012
€35
inside barbara kitten
What is Barbara Kitten? Who is she? Candid and cryptic, wilful and funny, with an intense inner life, a well-cultivated garden and an alter ego who keeps a diary. Together, in 150 breathless paragraphs, each just under 6 lines long, they traverse a year of drama and dailiness.
The first volume of the second series of the coloured books.
48pp, perfect bound, 108 x 148mm, pbk (will fit in shirt pocket). Numbered edition of 301. A boreen book. January 2014
€5
flashes and floaters
In the seventh volume of the coloured books, twenty-nine flashes and floaters run across the mind’s eye, flash fiction or less, leaving an unexpected taste and an uneasy murmur somewhere east of satisfaction. A patois for the inner life, and the outer. Sit down, she says, and register the slight palpitation, the light tremolo of where you are now.
48pp, perfect bound, 102 x 148mm, pbk (will fit in shirt pocket) Numbered edition of 301. A boreen book, October 2012
€5
strangeness
Strangeness is a property of some of the more exotic elementary tales, whose lifetime before decay is millions of times greater than expected. A sequence of headlong, breathless, heightened and rooted poems.
48pp, perfect bound, 102 x 148mm, pbk, (will fit in shirt pocket). Numbered edition of 201. October 2011
€5
local
Down the hill, where solitude ends and the market place begins; round the hill, the conundrum of the gooseberry people; up the hill, the judge's horse listens to Fidelio; inside the hill, MacCruiskeen reads the cracks in the ceiling. These are the practico-inert conditions.
48pp, perfect bound, 102 x 148mm, pbk (will fit in shirt pocket). Numbered edition of 301. October 2011
€5
how to write round things
Swift absorption, moments of unease, the state of play on the day, inside and out, knowing life by the days she writes, losing it by the days that get away.
48pp, 102 x 148mm, pbk (will fit in shirt pocket) Numbered edition of 201. A boreen book, October 2010
€5
the pataphysics of making bread
What the baker sees when she kneads, what she hears on the radio, her lurking stories and idle thoughts. At the centre, the morphing loaf. Different yet the same, week by week. With sourdough recipe.
48pp, perfect bound, 102 x 148mm, pbk, (will fit in shirt pocket) Numbered edition of 201. A boreen book, October 2009
€5
bunch of monads
One packed universe after another, tiny separate adventures, a high-end hum, intermittent, like morse code. Companion volume to Tell the bees. Another breathless diary zone, in poem form. A monad is the simplest knowable unit of life. Like atoms, only bigger and older.
48pp, perfect bound, 102 x 148mm, pbk (will fit in the other shirt pocket). Numbered edition of 201. A boreen book, October 2007
€5
tell the bees
'It would take one bee, working all hours, eight years to make a pound of honey.' The diary of a writer, teacher, gardener, beekeeper on the eve of a new life. For the diarist with book and pen, unlike the online blogger, it's a curious move to make the private public. Tell the bees is a tiny novel in which inner life meets everyday life - and ten thousand bees.
48pp, perfect bound, 102 x 148mm, pbk (will fit in shirt pocket). Numbered edition of 201. A boreen book, October 2007
€5
incurable
The third in the journey series. A tense and gnomic journey into the past as it resonates during a difficult long moment in the present; with personal photographs and influential images from the dangerous years of growing up.
20pp, 185 x 130mm, 19 b+w photographs, numbered edition of 57. A boreen book, October 2014
€7
journey around my room
I do not speak Finnish but I might have. I might have fetched up somewhere other than this. I might have found objects other than these. Fewer books, for example. More antlers. Recently I learned about the profusion of Finnish noun cases, so now when I look around my room, it is sometimes in Finnish.
16pp 185 x 130mm, 33 colour pictures, assembled by hand, numbered edition of 57. December 2011
€7
a short walk along the kefir road
Kefir is a fractal, a yoghurt plant, a zoo in a bowl – and growing – given a few simple conditions. A rambling yet practical poem for cooks, walkers and physicists.
22pp, top sewn, 185x130mm, pbk, 8 black & white images. Numbered edition of 57. A boreen book, October 2009
€5
21 haiku JK
these haiku have me
in their mouthful of clouds
their stern embrace
21pp 185 x130mm, handsewn, numbered edition of 21. July 2014
€7
sourdough
A poem about making bread, the pleasures of kneading, the slowness and richness, the quirkiness of the everyday. Almost a recipe, more a meditative plunge into an ancient process.
20 pp, 148 x 148mm, pbk. Handsewn in editions of seven. Like the bread, made when needed. Translucent endpapers. A boreen book, 2005.
€5