Award winning Derry playwright launches Derry poem collection at Forum

Award winning Derry playwright, Brian Foster, best known for his hit stage plays such as 'Maire A Woman of Derry' and 'From The Camp to Creggan,' used last year’s lockdowns to pen 15 poems which he has titled Brian Foster’s Free Derry Collection.

Now his unique collection of poems, all with local Derry themes, will receive its official public launch on Monday Dec 13 at 3pm in Millennium Forum. 

The event is free to the public and will be staged in the theatre’s piazza, meaning there will be plenty of space, comfortable seating, and the bar will be open for drinks.

The collection portrays the local writer’s take on life in his native city over the past sixty years. 

With such titles as 'Creggan,'  'My Derry Days,' 'The Battle of the Bogside,' and 'Bloody Sunday,' Brian pulls no punches in using his own eyewitness accounts to record in verse some of the most important and tragic events of the last 50 years.

Speaking of his collection, Brian said: "Until the lockdowns I had never before written a poem. 

"So, it was a whole new writing challenge for me as I set out to capture little snapshots of Derry’s social and political history of the past 60 years."

His social observations unfold in poems such as 'Derry Mothers' which tells of the steadfastness of matriarchs down the years in guiding their families through poverty and deprivation. 

Whilst 'Shirt Factory Girls' pays tribute to the legions of shirt factory workers who formed the backbone of Derry’s economy in a city starved of jobs for men. 

Brian added: "Assisting me with readings at the launch will be Gerry Doherty and Pat Lynch, two of Derry’s finest actors. 

"Also assisting will be my good friend, and one of Derry’s best known singers, Monica McGuigan. And Micky Doherty, entertainer and charity fund-raiser extraordinaire, will read a poem.

"Also, with the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday imminent, a highlight of the event will be the brilliant Monica McGuigan singing, for the first time in public, The Fallen 14, a song I specially wrote to commemorate the occasion."