Podcasts.ie

 We bring you car’s, black widows, aunties, grannies and angels in our latest Podcast Showcase featuring the best of Irish writers of Music, poetry and prose.  Pauline Fayne reads from her latest collection ‘Mowing in The Dark’ as she reads ‘ The Granny’ and ‘Angel’  While Pat Flynn was The Garda Superintendent at the time of the Tom Nevin murder recounts his arrival on the scene from his book ‘Catherine and Friends’ (Liberties Press)  while our music is provided by Tony Reidy with a song called ‘Renault 4′ (pictured) and from his album ‘ The Note that Lingers On’ Colum Sands gives us an exclusive rendition of  ‘ Going Down To The Well With Maggie’.  We have have news that Vincent Caprani is to launch his much anticpated ‘ Rowdy Rhymes and Rec-im-itations’ (Gil & Macmillan) at The Teachers Club in Dublin on Thursday next 15th of September.  We have also added several writers since our last showcase including Pat Flynn, David Metcalf, Hazel Mc Intyre and Mark Roper as well as The August edition of  The Calendar Road.   Our series of 10 podcasts based on the locations of 10 great Irish books is now completed with a great showing on iTunes, Chrissy Orborne whose books are based on the life of Michael Collins is at No.1 for Irish writers with all the others featured in the top 15 and Chrissy is at No. 7 of the top 200 Irish podcasts again all of our series is in there as well as several editions of The Showcase and The Calendar Road.  What with that and news that we are now patrons of The Ireland Monument in Canada, we are as as proud as punch.  We have lots more in the pipeline but more of that as it happens

Our podcasts about the Irish war dead have led to us receiving a great honour from The Irish Monument in Vancouver.  They have asked us to become patrons of the monument which is proposed for the city and is at an advanced stage.  This accolade came about after the director of the project Brendan Flynn came accross our podcasts on The Bray War Memorial and The Mayo Peace Park while surfing the web.  These two podcasts have been hugely popular and have brought so many visitors to Podcasts.ie but never before have we been so humbled by the work we do.  There are so many people, private individuals as well as military organisations who do so much work to ensure we never forget those who gave their lives for us in both world wars but particularly in the first world war.  If you have information on relatives you know to have been involved, there are people desperatly seeking this information and we would be delighted to be of any assistance we can on this issue,  It is our intention to include more podcasts whenever we can on this subject and we too would appreciate your help.

If you are a lover of Irish nature, we hope you will enjoy our latest podcast.  It is the end of August and regular visitors will be anticipating our monthly nature walk with Sinead Mc Clure.  Even before we came up with the idea of Podcasts.ie Sinead came up with this concept for a radio programme and when came to the time to test the site in October 2009, The Calendar Road was brought to life to enable us to carry out our trials into how far we could push dowloads and maintain sound quality.  Since then the show has gained an army of fans who eagerly await the next show and those who discover it for the first time have told us of their delight in delving into its archive now stretching to 20 programmes and all depicting the changing seasons on a typical rural Irish road, hence the name The Calendar Road.

Irish podcasts don’t get much more contrasting than our latest 2 offerings this week.  Firstly the nostalgic writing of times gone by are captured in the work of Hazel McIntyre a native of County Donegal who we are pleased to welcome to Podcasts.ie and as always we begin by introduce you to the writer with an interview before bringing you some of her readings in the future.  Which is exactly what we did with Pat Flynn whose book ‘Catherine and Friends’ is a first hand account of the investigation into the case of Ireland’s Black Widow.  Not alone is the subject matter contrasting but you would have to travel from The Northwestern tip to The Southeastern tip of Ireland to meet both autors which goes to show you how far we are prepared to travel to bring great Irish writers to you, although to be fair, both Hazel and Pat came some of the way to share their work with us.   Again our thanks go to Markree Castle in Sligo and The Brandon House Hotel in New Ross for providing us with somewhere to record.

 We have plenty more podcasts to bring you and as we approach the end of August preparations are underway for new episodes of our popular shows The Calendar Road and The Showcase 

This week anoter great Irish writer Noel Duffy released his Two Novellas for The Kindle and we are delighted to be able to bring you a podcast of Noel reading from one of the stories ‘Our Friends Electric’.  The title of this short excerpt might remind some people of The Tubeway Army song of a similar name and yes you would be right, there is a connection but what happens when a fan of new romance music falls for a fan of Johnny Cash, can there be any hope for their relationship ?  Well, you don’t expect us to divulge such information but the podcasts just might solve the riddle.

Those of you who visit our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter, Seventy Million Irish, Live Ireland, Linked In or My Space will know that we have been to Galway this week recording some more podcasts for you and regular visitors might be aware that there are one or two new pages which still have not had readings or performances added, worry not, we are beavering away in the background here editing and gathering the visuals for more podcasts which are in the can so we are confident that we have enough podcasts to upload 2 or 3 a week for the next five weeks at least and are arranging recording sessions with other writers all the time.  Again we might remind you that we would really appreciate a vote in The European Podcasts Awards if you think we deserve it and come on over and “Like Us” on Facebook if you haven’t already done so.

We are delighted to bring you a podcast from another great Irish writer.  Having added a page for Waterford based poet and dramatist Edward Denniston last month, we bring you some poetry read exclusively for Podcasts.ie by Edward from his collections ‘The Point of Singing’ including “Platypus” and “Looking for Eddie” and his e book ‘Eskimo Advice’ the poem which gave the collection its title. and as always we have plenty more podcasts to bring you with at least 2 free Irish podcasts coming your way everyweek.

Don’t forget that by subscribing to our free RSS feed which you can do by clicking on the orange button to the right, from then on you will get these updates and notifications of any new podcasts we post.  Updates on our writers pages (which are not part of the feed) are available by following us on either Facebook or Twitter.  You can also enjoy updates on our featured shows such as The Calendar Road, The Showcase, The RTE Documentary on One and The Writer’s Passage via  iTunes or The RSS Feed.

If you are new to or not familiar with RSS feeds see http://www.whatisrss.com/