Memories of Jewtown in Cork recalled in poetry collection

Simon Lewis’s collection of poetry was inspired by his family’s heritage in the Albert Road area of Cork, says Marjorie Brennan

IT’S an unofficial place-name with nostalgic rather than negative overtones, but people from outside Cork can still be startled to hear Leesiders of a certain vintage use the term ‘Jewtown’.

For locals, it denotes the quarter of the city comprising Albert Road and its environs, where a community of Jewish refugees settled on their voyages seeking refuge from persecution in Europe. For writer Simon Lewis, however, Jewtown was more a state of mind, representing an element of his ancestry that he had never really contemplated before.