Books for Breakfast

Apr 02 2025 77 ep. 43 mins 11
Books for Breakfast Podcast artwork

A podcast focussing on fiction and poetry hosted by poets and writers Peter Sirr and Enda Wyley. Also features the Toaster Challenge where guest writers are given the time it takes to make toast to talk about a book that has resonated with them. 

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76: Pat Boran on Hedge School

Apr 02 2025 38 mins  
Send us a text Finding inspiration in the local and near at had, attentive to climate concern and global unrest, to home and homeless, belonging and welcome, concern and global and welcome – on today’s episode we talk to poet and publisher Pat Boran about his eight collection Hedge School. 'A writer of great tenderness and lyricism' – Agenda, UK '... local and international,

75: Mary Morrissy's Twenty-Twenty Vision

Mar 20 2025 43 mins  
Send us a text ‘A beautiful tapestry of late middle age reckoning’ – today we interview the writer Mary Morrissy about her new collection of short stories, Twenty-Twenty Vision, published by Lilliput Press. For her Toaster Challenge, Mary chooses The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazard. Get the coffee on! This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Ch

74: John Banville and Doris Kareva

Mar 05 2025 50 mins  
Send us a text Was 1950s Dublin really a place of murder and intrigue? On today’s show we travel to the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation in Dublin’s Fenian Street to talk to novelist John Banville about his latest novel, The Drowned, the fourth in a series featuring Detective Inspector St John Strafford and the pathologist Quirke familiar to many from the Be

73: John Montague: A Poet's Life

Feb 19 2025 56 mins  
Send us a text How much do we need to know about a writer's life? How does the life impinge on the work? What is the human price of art? In this episode we talk to biographer Adrian Frazier about John Montague: A Poet's Life. ‘The best Irish poet of his generation’ – Derek Mahon Already a highly lauded biographer, Adrian Frazier was a close acquaintance of Montague for more t

72: Andrew Miller, The Land in Winter

Feb 05 2025 57 mins  
Send us a text In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills. In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage. Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is als

71: Keith Payne builds a boat and translates Luisa Castro; 2024 highlights

Dec 30 2024 66 mins  
Send us a text On today’s show, the last of 2024, we talk to Keith Payne about his recent boat building and poem writing project. Currachs and naomhógs are among the only sea craft built upside down, and the expertise dates back generations. Keith learned all of this and a. lot more when he found himself working on a Dunfanaghy currach over 16 weeks. He was Cork City Library eco

70: Books of the Year with Adam Wyeth and Henrietta McKervey

Dec 18 2024 50 mins  
Send us a text Join us for a lively discussion of some of the best books published this year. At the breakfast table to discuss their poetry and fiction choices are poet Adam Wyeth and novelist Henrietta McKervey. Plenty of stocking filler ideas here, and Peter and Enda also get to mention some of their own favourite books of the year. This is a double espresso and multiple pastry

69: The Amergin Step, An Exploration in the Imagination of Iveragh

Dec 11 2024 37 mins  
Send us a text This episode sees us back in Books Upstairs in Dublin’s D’Olier Street again. This time we’ve come for a conversation between Paddy Bushe and poet and academic Ben Keatinge on the occasion of the Dublin launch of The Amergin Step: An Exploration in the Imagination of Iveragh. The book is named after the famous poem that Leabhar Gabhála Éireann or The Book of

68: Oksana Makysmchuk, Still City: Diary of an Invasion

Nov 21 2024 26 mins  
Send us a text As we write it is 1002 days since the fullscale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, but over ten years since Putin first seized Crimea and sponsored insurrection in the Donbas. And even longer that he has sought to meddle in Ukrainian affairs. So we thought we would mark those suffering filled days and years by talking to Oksana Maksymchuk whose Still City: Diary of an In

67: IMRAM festival, Kelly Michels' American Anthem

Oct 31 2024 54 mins  
Send us a text First up on today's show, I chat with Liam Carson, who is back again with another episode of the Irish language Festival, IMRAM. And we hear from Kelly Michels, whose Forward Prize shortlisted debut collection, American Anthem, published by Gallery Press this year, focuses on the tragedies both personal and national, of the opioid epidemic and its devastating effects