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POSTSCRIPTS Do you have a publication for which you wish to review The Swan River Press chapbooks? If so, please email with the name of the publication and your details for a gratis copy. The windswept Atlantic coast of Ireland in mid-February is the last place one would expect to find holidaymakers. But the morning of my birthday a few years ago I was surprised with a bus ticket to Dingle and three nights in a small cottage in Upper Camp, a rural community that barely qualifies as a village. For two solid days we wandered the barren landscape: desolate beaches, pastoral lanes and secret bohreens that weave along the bases of the peninsula's imposing hills. And littered throughout this strange region are remains of cottages, many vacant since the Great Famine in the 1840s. Some still have all four walls, while only the lone and ivy-obscured chimneys remain of others. These crumbling ruins are numerous, and, though picturesque, speak to me of a haunting misery. Who once lived there? And what dwells there now? The three-way crossroads, by the way, is a real place and the timid dog was there to keep an eye on the grazing sheep. The cruelty, you may be pleased to know, is of my own imagination. B.J.S. March 2007 Rathmines, Dublin

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