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Rescue Contraptions
This startling and frank collection journeys through the upheaval of the Northern Ireland Troubles and the unexpected loss of two younger brothers in San Francisco and Belfast, salvaging powerful moments of emotional intensity and celebration. The poems are delivered in a conversational style that allows ordinary words to find light in surprising places.
"For someone who makes such a virtue out of plain-speaking honesty, there’s also a discreet flamboyance at play in Joe Duggan’s work. Yes, honest and real, but superbly and artfully executed, too. Take a long drink’. "
- Matthew Caley
"For someone who makes such a virtue out of plain-speaking honesty, there’s also a discreet flamboyance at play in Joe Duggan’s work. Yes, honest and real, but superbly and artfully executed, too. Take a long drink’. "
- Matthew Caley
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
Published June 29, 2022
About the author
Joe Duggan
2 books6 followersJoe Duggan is a poet, writer and facilitator, originally from Northern Ireland. His first full collection “Fizzbombs” was published by Tall Lighthouse in 2008. He was highly commended in The Forward Prize 2009 and featured in the Forward Book of Poetry 2010.
He was a founder member of the “Bunch of Chancers” Poetry Group in Derry, touring throughout Ireland and New York State. His work has been published by Brand, Abridged, Fingerpost, Bear in Mind (Lagan Press), Cúirt Journal and the Shuffle Anthology. He has also written stories for children, rap lyrics for the Irish band Different Drums, two texts for Echo Echo Dance Company and recorded with ambient-loop geniuses “The Fireflies” and with “Woodleigh Research Facility” for legendary DJ Andrew Weatherall’s Moine Dubh label. Recently he has also collaborated with DJ Collective Warriors of The Dystotheque, featuring on their album "Anthropause".
In 2014 his poem “Library Lovers” was chosen by The National Poetry Library as part of their 60th Birthday Celebrations to be included in an exhibition of modern contemporary poets alongside Andrew Motion, Carol Rumens and others and is now hosted on the National Poetry Library website.
He enjoys performing widely on the London poetry scene, featuring at Latitude Festival, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, the Southbank Centre, Cuirt Poetry Festival and a host of other venues and festivals.
He has ran the sellout Spoken Word Express as part of the Crystal Palace Festival since 2013 and until recently hosted a very popular Open Mic at The Paxton Centre, also in Crystal Palace.
A qualified primary school teacher, he is also an experienced creative writing facilitator, working in both school and community settings.
His second full collection “Rescue Contraptions” was published by tall lighthouse in June 2022.
He was a founder member of the “Bunch of Chancers” Poetry Group in Derry, touring throughout Ireland and New York State. His work has been published by Brand, Abridged, Fingerpost, Bear in Mind (Lagan Press), Cúirt Journal and the Shuffle Anthology. He has also written stories for children, rap lyrics for the Irish band Different Drums, two texts for Echo Echo Dance Company and recorded with ambient-loop geniuses “The Fireflies” and with “Woodleigh Research Facility” for legendary DJ Andrew Weatherall’s Moine Dubh label. Recently he has also collaborated with DJ Collective Warriors of The Dystotheque, featuring on their album "Anthropause".
In 2014 his poem “Library Lovers” was chosen by The National Poetry Library as part of their 60th Birthday Celebrations to be included in an exhibition of modern contemporary poets alongside Andrew Motion, Carol Rumens and others and is now hosted on the National Poetry Library website.
He enjoys performing widely on the London poetry scene, featuring at Latitude Festival, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, the Southbank Centre, Cuirt Poetry Festival and a host of other venues and festivals.
He has ran the sellout Spoken Word Express as part of the Crystal Palace Festival since 2013 and until recently hosted a very popular Open Mic at The Paxton Centre, also in Crystal Palace.
A qualified primary school teacher, he is also an experienced creative writing facilitator, working in both school and community settings.
His second full collection “Rescue Contraptions” was published by tall lighthouse in June 2022.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 15, 2022
I happened across this book in my local shop and, despite not being a huge reader of poetry, I picked it up because I'd seen the author read some of his work at an open mic night a while back and been impressed, and also because the title really grabbed me. Rescue Contraptions. Could a poem be a rescue contraption? 'If ever I've needed something to rescue my mind from what's going on in the world, it's now', I thought. 'Worth a go'.
I'm so glad I picked it up, as I found it to contain some of the most accessible poetry I've ever come across. Disarming observations jump from every page and meet with wry, sometimes dark humour and a clear passion for storytelling. And make no mistake - these *are* stories. They may be in the form of poems, but these short, often spare pieces of work tell the stories of lives well-lived, lives wasted and, in some cases, of lives lost.
The collection is never depressing, though often sad thanks to the striking authenticity of its world view, then frequently uplifting thanks to a deft turn of phrase or a simple truth that exposes the ridiculousness of the world we live in with warmth and humour (see the recounting of the exposure of ingrained bigotry through a classroom show-and-tell, for example). More than anything, Rescue Contraptions struck me as an ode to things that are important. An ode to a home and a country left behind but not forgotten, a time of Troubles not missed, to brothers and fathers and youth.
The book is quick to read, but its scenes, characters and topics linger in the mind. These poems are not contraptions - they are better formed and less complicated than that - but they are most definitely a rescue, and a very welcome one at that. Unputdownable.
I'm so glad I picked it up, as I found it to contain some of the most accessible poetry I've ever come across. Disarming observations jump from every page and meet with wry, sometimes dark humour and a clear passion for storytelling. And make no mistake - these *are* stories. They may be in the form of poems, but these short, often spare pieces of work tell the stories of lives well-lived, lives wasted and, in some cases, of lives lost.
The collection is never depressing, though often sad thanks to the striking authenticity of its world view, then frequently uplifting thanks to a deft turn of phrase or a simple truth that exposes the ridiculousness of the world we live in with warmth and humour (see the recounting of the exposure of ingrained bigotry through a classroom show-and-tell, for example). More than anything, Rescue Contraptions struck me as an ode to things that are important. An ode to a home and a country left behind but not forgotten, a time of Troubles not missed, to brothers and fathers and youth.
The book is quick to read, but its scenes, characters and topics linger in the mind. These poems are not contraptions - they are better formed and less complicated than that - but they are most definitely a rescue, and a very welcome one at that. Unputdownable.
September 20, 2022
Candid, poignant, laced with laconic humour and underpinned by a love of people, this is a compelling collection of poems that pack a punch. The brutality of life smashes against the sensibility of a moonlit mind, illuminating the epic contained within the everyday. A ritual of remembrance, Rescue Contraptions is a tender tribute and tenacious testimony to precious people, places and moments. Having attended the book launch, it is Joe's voice I hear reading between the lines - make sure you read this book and make sure you hear him read it.
September 8, 2022
This short collection transports you through a rich landscape of growing up in Northern Ireland, lifelong connections, family stories and latterly settling in London. Unsentimental, unvarnished and sharply observed. I’ve had the privilege of seeing some of this performed. The poems jump off the page with raw emotion, peppered with joyful sparks of humour. All life is here. I didn’t expect to, but I read it in one sitting. Breathtaking work.
You should get a copy.
You should get a copy.
September 14, 2022
'for someone who makes such a virtue out of plain-speaking honesty, there's also a discreet flamboyance at play in Joe Duggan's work. On the micro-scale he can write 'Full time whistle' as 'Full. Time. Whistle' giving each word its exact weight and importance and something beyond that. On the macro-scale he can find himself 'time-jumping ceasefires' in different countries, imagine a fresh Oscar Wilde bon-mot or keep Youssop Matada suspended and on repeat, high in our minds over East Sheen in a feat of heart- stopping reportage. Yes, honest and real, but superbly and artfully executed, too. Take a long drink'.
MATTHEW CALEY
September 14, 2022
I have enjoyed this collection of poetry. It is by turn powerful and intimate covering a number of themes. It manages to be universal yet personal and quite touching. It’s now lives in my daily travel bag and I’m loving dipping back in time and again, developing a deeper appreciation of Joe’s work.
September 19, 2022
I'll be honest, I was looking forward to this collection, having read Joe Duggan's first volume, Fizz Bombs. I was delighted to find out that it was really worth the wait. Right from the off, his poems hit you with their honesty, integrity, warmth, poignancy and humour. In turn they are heart breaking, funny and a wonderful affirmation of the goodness in people.
September 27, 2022
It's always a treat when Joe Duggan releases a new book. This is no exception. A fine collection, both poignant and funny stories. Joe has a talent that's right up my street.
Read
September 25, 2022Many of the poems in Joe Duggan's Rescue Contraptions are like anecdotes, vignettes told with a deceptive, distilled simplicity of form and language. Their accessibility is not due to lack of depth. The collection begins and ends with poems about family, this, along with that of Ireland, specifically the North, is a recurring topic. Loss and fear run through many of the poems but as the title indicates, there is rescue, often through a sense of irony, wry humour that is frequently self-deprecating.
Some family members come alive over the course of a number of poems showing them in different lights, Duggan’s father and his brother Francy, with his boxing successes, his struggles with mental illness and his penchant for hanging out in Subway. ‘Don’t be Vague’ is a story told by the poet’s father, of how his hurt and fury at the sectarian graffiti in a DHSS office helped him to stay on the sick and thus keep money coming into the family. In Julie Andrews, his father’s anger is a bomb brought into the family home from the streets. The lucky bar is the most prose-like and the most detailed of several poems excavating the omnipresence of menace during the Troubles.
There are departures from these topics; Look up East Sheen is an elegy to a young Angolan who fell to his death after stowing away in the undercarriage of a plane. London Prices is about just that: ‘we can’t afford ourselves’. Oscar Wilde at Clapham Junction is a poised evocation of the great man’s mortification at the hands of public opinion.
Irish for Beginners is based on Duggan’s own efforts to learn the language and structured around the Irish numbers 1 to 10, a departure from the generally anecdotal approach of many of the poems, though still personal and intimate. It is a meditation on identity, loss and discovery, with power politics lurking close by. The dangers of making mistakes in Irish class, the danger of using Irish in the ‘wrong’ place, the traps of a language caught up in the island’s vexed politics, the embarrassment of being the English-speaking, Irish learning Irishman amongst ‘real’ Irish speakers. A sense of belonging uncomfortably broken in parts, a sense of the tantalising agony, of an elusive tongue that is ‘in my body but no longer on my tongue’. That list misses the beauty though; there is also a half-caught word in a Derry chip shop leads to an evocation of the pastoral origin of the city’s name, ‘Doire, grove of the oak’, Duggan’s delight in ‘dubh’, the dark origin of his own name, and other pleasures.
Permanently at Holyhead also tackles the theme of identity and displacement, geographically rather than linguistically: ‘when someone askes are you happy, I say yes insofar as that part of me that is here is happy’. He should be happy with this collection and so should you.
Some family members come alive over the course of a number of poems showing them in different lights, Duggan’s father and his brother Francy, with his boxing successes, his struggles with mental illness and his penchant for hanging out in Subway. ‘Don’t be Vague’ is a story told by the poet’s father, of how his hurt and fury at the sectarian graffiti in a DHSS office helped him to stay on the sick and thus keep money coming into the family. In Julie Andrews, his father’s anger is a bomb brought into the family home from the streets. The lucky bar is the most prose-like and the most detailed of several poems excavating the omnipresence of menace during the Troubles.
There are departures from these topics; Look up East Sheen is an elegy to a young Angolan who fell to his death after stowing away in the undercarriage of a plane. London Prices is about just that: ‘we can’t afford ourselves’. Oscar Wilde at Clapham Junction is a poised evocation of the great man’s mortification at the hands of public opinion.
Irish for Beginners is based on Duggan’s own efforts to learn the language and structured around the Irish numbers 1 to 10, a departure from the generally anecdotal approach of many of the poems, though still personal and intimate. It is a meditation on identity, loss and discovery, with power politics lurking close by. The dangers of making mistakes in Irish class, the danger of using Irish in the ‘wrong’ place, the traps of a language caught up in the island’s vexed politics, the embarrassment of being the English-speaking, Irish learning Irishman amongst ‘real’ Irish speakers. A sense of belonging uncomfortably broken in parts, a sense of the tantalising agony, of an elusive tongue that is ‘in my body but no longer on my tongue’. That list misses the beauty though; there is also a half-caught word in a Derry chip shop leads to an evocation of the pastoral origin of the city’s name, ‘Doire, grove of the oak’, Duggan’s delight in ‘dubh’, the dark origin of his own name, and other pleasures.
Permanently at Holyhead also tackles the theme of identity and displacement, geographically rather than linguistically: ‘when someone askes are you happy, I say yes insofar as that part of me that is here is happy’. He should be happy with this collection and so should you.
January 16, 2023
These are magnificent poems about love. Not airy-fairy, hearts-and-flowers romantic love. Strong love, the love between fathers and sons, brothers, friends, love made difficult by illness and anger, age and culture. Love told in a deceptively conversational style, floating light as a butterfly before it lays you out on the canvass with a knock-out punch to the heart.
I don’t mean to make this collection sound like hard work, because it isn’t. As anyone who has seen Joe perform his poetry will know, he has a wonderful wit and humour, his phrases nimble and funny.
And these poems are witty, mocking the pretensions of the young man he used to be, in the quietly hilarious The Original Line-Up, or the obsessions of our age with London Prices. But others are elegiac, the flow of memory and conversation and community in Castlewellan, recording his father’s last days in hospital before a heart-stopping image of ‘my young father, lean and upright, trotting into Castlewellan on his white horse…’
The Duggan men (and these are, mostly, poems of men) seem to have had a knack of attracting affection. Joe gathers here stories of the communities we build for ourselves through work, pubs, school, travel, neighbourhoods. The ties that become suddenly apparent in crises, with a web of phone calls, practical help, offers of lifts and food, sandwiches from the favourite fast-food chain brought to the wake.
There’s adventure. Vivid glimpses of travels in Palestine and Israel, ‘time-jumping ceasefires’ from the always-present Troubles of Belfast. There’s satire, with the absurdist Teacher Training. Exercises in imaginative empathy from Oscar Wilde at Clapham Junction, to the transcendent Look Up, East Sheen.
But it’s the personal poems of love and loss that stay with me. Joe’s heart-breaking losses of parents, two younger brothers, a friend, are commemorated in poems that somehow break through the pain to find the right words to celebrate and mourn the particular. Images of his troubled boxer brother Francy, his flat decorated and arranged to focus on ‘targets and goals, targets and goals,’ to give him the motivation to get up and fight another day. Michael, raging in his hospital bed against the cruelty of cancer, Joe holding his hand ‘for the first time since he was six and I was twelve and we had to cross the Castlewellan Road.’ The bleak last line of Robbie’s Phone, the point at which his friend disappeared. ‘It was early in the day for his battery to die.’
These are poems that say something important about the way that men can be, that men can love. These are Rescue Contraptions that the world needs to clamber aboard.
I don’t mean to make this collection sound like hard work, because it isn’t. As anyone who has seen Joe perform his poetry will know, he has a wonderful wit and humour, his phrases nimble and funny.
And these poems are witty, mocking the pretensions of the young man he used to be, in the quietly hilarious The Original Line-Up, or the obsessions of our age with London Prices. But others are elegiac, the flow of memory and conversation and community in Castlewellan, recording his father’s last days in hospital before a heart-stopping image of ‘my young father, lean and upright, trotting into Castlewellan on his white horse…’
The Duggan men (and these are, mostly, poems of men) seem to have had a knack of attracting affection. Joe gathers here stories of the communities we build for ourselves through work, pubs, school, travel, neighbourhoods. The ties that become suddenly apparent in crises, with a web of phone calls, practical help, offers of lifts and food, sandwiches from the favourite fast-food chain brought to the wake.
There’s adventure. Vivid glimpses of travels in Palestine and Israel, ‘time-jumping ceasefires’ from the always-present Troubles of Belfast. There’s satire, with the absurdist Teacher Training. Exercises in imaginative empathy from Oscar Wilde at Clapham Junction, to the transcendent Look Up, East Sheen.
But it’s the personal poems of love and loss that stay with me. Joe’s heart-breaking losses of parents, two younger brothers, a friend, are commemorated in poems that somehow break through the pain to find the right words to celebrate and mourn the particular. Images of his troubled boxer brother Francy, his flat decorated and arranged to focus on ‘targets and goals, targets and goals,’ to give him the motivation to get up and fight another day. Michael, raging in his hospital bed against the cruelty of cancer, Joe holding his hand ‘for the first time since he was six and I was twelve and we had to cross the Castlewellan Road.’ The bleak last line of Robbie’s Phone, the point at which his friend disappeared. ‘It was early in the day for his battery to die.’
These are poems that say something important about the way that men can be, that men can love. These are Rescue Contraptions that the world needs to clamber aboard.
September 25, 2022
I have been privileged to be sat in a room when Joe Duggan reads his poetry. His voice like his words is straightforward, and you think you know where you're going. Then you end up somewhere else, someplace you hadn't thought of, some place you didn't know existed, but when you get there it's familiar, and transformative and a little bit wild.
I was so excited when I heard Joe was publishing this book and it does not disappoint. Historical lyrical personal, he takes your hand and and walks you down the road he's traveled, introduces you to a particular sorrow and love and loss, the kind we've all known in some fashion, but perhaps don't speak of.. There's a comfort in his speaking of it, guaranteed to take you places only your heart will understand. More than just a collection, a gorgeous read from a stellar poet.
I was so excited when I heard Joe was publishing this book and it does not disappoint. Historical lyrical personal, he takes your hand and and walks you down the road he's traveled, introduces you to a particular sorrow and love and loss, the kind we've all known in some fashion, but perhaps don't speak of.. There's a comfort in his speaking of it, guaranteed to take you places only your heart will understand. More than just a collection, a gorgeous read from a stellar poet.
September 18, 2022
Rescue Contraptions is about life, personal time, loss, grieving, memories and the tenderness and humour that comes with the territory of being alive. Joe Duggan grabs and re-words the essence of experience in ways that bring us close to a sense of truth and of discovery, leaving us knowing something more about ourselves. In Duggan’s warm, Irish voice, language is often the declared protagonist, as in Irish for Beginners and expressions achieve a poetic rituality that only true symbols have, as in the final lines of Rescue Contraptions, and with all the names in On Haight-Ashbury, Summer ’67 and The Lucky Bar, leaving us caught in the tension between sadness and laughter and we do not want to put the book down because they are such good stories.
September 22, 2022
A beautiful, touching set of poems. Extremely well written, thought provoking and with no lack of humour too. Joe Duggan fully deserves the plaudits he is receiving for his new book. My advice? Order yours today before it sells out
October 3, 2022
I really enjoy Joe's style of writing. Joe draws the reader in as if we are present and his phrasing creates a tension that invites you to read on. There is a nostalgia a melancholy and a joy in every turn of the page.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews