Letter by Letter – A

F is for Fatima, regenerated anew,

Tight knit community,

Red line luas stop too.

– Richie Keane

Amble along Fishamble Street when an oratorio is in the air, for in April 1742 Handel’s Messiah premiered there.

– Mary B Shannon

F is for the flower sellers

On Grafton Street they bloom

They stood up to the Fat Cats

Who tried to be their ruin

– Maeve Heneghan

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Not for us ‘the scrotumtightening sea’

– the forty foot freeze

that squeezed the men,

until we got our way, and then…

and then the women came.

– Therese Kieran

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E is for 7 Eccles Street, home to Molly and Leopold Bloom, Where the stink of his grilled mutton kidneys permeated every room.

– Mary B Shannon

Come to the Edge Dave Evans,

Come to the Edge, strum your guitar,

Come to the Edge with your muted palm,

With your thrum dum digg-a dig dum

– Therese Kieran

E is for Ely House

Home to the Order of the Knights of St. Columbanus

Built by Stapleton the Stuccadore

Who secured bricks from Bridgewater to block the exterior.

– Marie Studer

E is for Emerald Square

There is a little cul de sac,

It is called Emerald Square.

It contains 41 Residential Houses.

A family place of care.

So steeped in Folklore and Dublin’s past history.

Where young and old, meek and bold,

writers poets and patriots, lived their lives you see.

– PJ Brady

E’s for EPIC the Emigration Museum down on Liffey’s Quays, Close to Tall Ship Jeanie Johnson that shipped thousands across the sea.

= Mary B Shannon

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E’s for the elegant edifice of the Eye & Ear,

where you encounter experts in how we see and hear

– Catherine Ann Cullen

Don’t miss dozens of delicious Ds described by the denizens of Dublin and beyond!

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The Dart and that coast-line hug,

dropping in on Greystones, Howth, Malahide,

chugs away at its circling & intermingling,

at its bit on the side.

= Therese Kieran

D is for Daybreak shop

The shop of my dreams

You go in, you chat

And buy sweets and fancies

Chocolates and papers.

You make a cappucino

And say ‘Goodbye and again until tomorrow’….

-Kathryn O’Boyle 

D is for Dodder, the Liffey’s country cousin,

who rises in mountains and ends in the buzzing

Docklands of Dublin where ferries once plied

and rain was a glisten in Ireland’s Eye

– Nessa O’Mahony

D is for Dublin city and it’s also for Dollymount strand Where Anna Liffey once dumped Gulliver upon its golden sand

– Mary B Shannon

D is for Dubliners. Bourke, McKenna Kelly and Ronnie Drew too,

they’d go to O’Donoghue’s to sink a few.

A crowd would gather, music was played,

a pub on Merrion Row where Dublin royalty was made.

– Paul @thebigmacpaddy

Dùn Laoghaire is always cheery,

a bandstand when days are dreary.

Blue on blue, sky and sea surprise,

sailboats tinkling from sunrise.

Teddy’s ice-cream for lunch,

horizon close enough to touch.

Catch up on the clutch of Cs our clever correspondents have created!

Threads of clear water

Hold the city together

Canal-bound, drift-safe.

– ‘C is for a City with Canals’, Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan

C is for canal, where swans love to linger.

But don’t go too close

Or they’ll bite off your finger.

– Mary Kennedy

CENTRAL HOTEL

Back in the day, our getaway night

The Central Hotel, its cheeky peeping ceiling

could not have been more revealing

Hah! What a sight – no getting away

from me, from you

the set of us on that full moon bed

no hospital corners to fold

circles that couldn’t be squared

– Therese Kieran

Christ Church bells ring over

an Ché Adhmaid and Isolde’s tower

Grandsire triples method ring

announcing service hour

– Mary B Shannon

Christ Church Cat

Entrapped in the organ

in quest of a rat

Encrypted forever

the Christ Church cat

– Anne T Sheridan

“Christ Church Cathedral bells will chime

at New Year’s Eve & Christmas time.

– Catherine Ann Cullen

#C is for The Clarence Hotel

(famously part owned by Bono & The Edge)

I look for Bono

raise a glass

with or without him

– K. S. Moore

Under Clery’s clock

never a meeting was forgot.

Under starlight and moonlight

many a romance sought.

Under hurry and bustle,

an easy-to-find bus-stop.

– Siobhán Mc Laughlin

Crying for Clery’s, ’twas once chock-a-block,

and countless folk courted beneath Clery’s clock.

– Catherine Ann Cullen

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C is for Coombe Hospital, Dublin 8,

Where they care for the birth of 10,000 new babies each year, great!

1964 was the year Dolphin’s Barn Coombe Foundation stone was laid.

The rest they say, every day, is history.

– PJ Brady 

Croke Park

Division bell silenced

God Save the Queen

Amhrán na bhFiann

shoulder to shoulder

at the altar of Croke Park.

– Marie Studer

A

Abbey Street

the clang Of a Luas pulling up,

The tang of metal.

– Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan

Lady Gregory and Yeats co-founded the Abbey in December 1904,

One hundred and sixteen years later, Covid-19 closed the old Theatre’s doors.

– Mary B Shannon

A’s for the Abbey with actors galore 

Attracting admirers since 1904.

– Catherine Ann Cullen

A’s for Anna Liffey

Whose aroma can be whiffy

– Catherine Ann Cullen

there’s no A in Dublin that I can see,

except in baile átha cliath’s three

– Therese Kieran