An unlikely meeting of minds

More than 40 years ago, Dermot Bolger struck up a rewarding friendship with a Mayo woman more than half a century his senior. Now he has committed the second half of her life story to print

Dermot Bolger: ‘To write a book like this is to feel judged by the living and the dead’ PIc: Fergal Phillips

In 1977, Dermot Bolger was a young poet in need of friendship and recognition. His mother had died of a cerebral haemorrhage when he was ten. His father, a merchant seaman, was often away on long voyages. Alone in his family’s house in Finglas, Bolger stayed awake until the small hours, banging out poems on a manual typewriter, using carbon paper when he couldn’t afford a fresh ribbon. He was 18 and unemployed. ...