Supported by Ebow Digital.
This video installation by acclaimed Irish director and photographer Seamus Murphy explored the world of late Dublin poet Pat Ingoldsby. To generations of Dubliners, seeing Pat Ingoldsby selling his books of poetry on the street is one of the defining features of the city. This exhibition celebrated this most singular - and mischievous - literary voice through a specially commissioned film installation, and an historic new publication of the poet’s work.
Ingoldsby’s poems cover a very wide palette of genres. They rhyme, and they don’t. They are sad, and humorous. Tragic, and absurd. They are witty and nonsensical, erotic, rude, realist, surrealist, irreverent, melancholic, moving, down to earth and whimsical but, above all, they are unaffected and profoundly human. They describe life – its absurdities, its madness and its tragedies, but also its beauty, its sadness, its fun and its wonders.
Murphy’s video installation was a tender, sympathetic and unflinching look at the world of a poet resolutely writing from the outside, an utterly unique artist who connects with thousands of readers around the world.
The installation was accompanied by a publication under the MoLI Editions imprint — In Dublin they really tell you things – Pat Ingoldsby, Selected poems 1986–2021 — available exclusively at MoLI and in a limited edition hardback print run of 1000 copies. ‘In Dublin they really tell you things‘ is a beautiful limited edition hardback spanning Pat’s life as a poet and gathers together for the first time poems from across Pat’s published works, from Salty Water (1988) to Pawmarks on my Poems (2013), and some unpublished pieces, including poems written during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This collection celebrated Pat’s career to date and aimed to serve in introducing a new generation to his writing as he explores the importance of the inner child, individualism, his relationship with Dublin, her people and the streets where he sells his books.
