City in song and verse - new anthology shows off the best of Cork writing

From Rory Gallagher to Frank O’Connor, there’s an eclectic mix in a new anthology of Cork writings, says Colette Sheridan

WHEN Alannah Hopkin was asked by Con Collins of the Collins Press to edit an anthology of Cork city poems and songs, she first turned to the late poet and Irish Examiner journalist, Sean Dunne’s Cork Anthology, published in 1993, to see what he had done.

“I’ve always loved that book,” says Hopkin. “I was very surprised to find there were only 15 poems and songs in it. It’s largely prose. So that was a sort of relief.”