Roger Hudson’s new collection Plaything of the Great God Kafka (Lapwing Publications, Belfast)

Poems that tell stories is a major feature of Roger Hudson’s new collection Plaything of the Great God Kafka (Lapwing Publications, Belfast) which will be receive its Dublin launch at Monday Echo, basement of International Bar, Wicklow Street, Dublin 1 at 7.00pm on 10 June. 

Roger has chosen Monday Echo to express his thanks to Dublin’s fringe venues and performance poets like Karl Parkinson, who launches the book, Stephen James Smith, Raven and others who showed him exciting ways to communicate his own poems. 

Since then he has gotten into performing with improvised music and in a group with multiple voices as well as performing solo, which should be reflected in the evening’s presentation. Lending support will be Anne Tannam, Steve Downes and other poets.

Roger promises that the poems will give a colourful view of the development over a lifetime of his often quirky worldview, assembling narratives of life incidents and social and political observations that range through Vietnam War atrocities, the Cuban missile crisis, puberty, propaganda, prejudice, prostate biopsy, the banking crisis and much more.

Roger has lived in Dublin and Drogheda for some twenty years now. As leader of Drogheda Creative Writers, he has organised and hosted its awards, open mics, anthologies and slams, as well as working on his previous collections Lifescapes (in Side-Angles with Steve Downes) and Greybell Wood and Beyond, also with Lapwing, and his historical crime novel Death Comes by Amphora.  

He grew up in Surrey, England, and lived and worked in London and Dublin in various forms of writing, editing and film-making.

All welcome. Supported by Create Louth. Signed copies available on the night at €10. Seating limited, so don’t be late.