An album featuring the combined talents of Bono, Bob Geldof, Paul Brady, Van Morrison, Sinéad O’Connor and sundry other Irish musicians would be a welcome treat at any time. But when you add the likes of Eamon Dunphy, Fintan O’Toole, Vincent Browne, Gay Byrne and Miriam O’Callaghan to the above listed, it begins to sound a lot more interesting. Voices And Poetry Of Ireland is a three-CD anthology of classic and contemporary Irish poems read by over 100 of the best-known voices in Irish public life.

Also featured on this unique recording are luminaries such as Colin Farrell, Pierce Brosnan, Bertie Ahern, Maeve Binchy, Pat Kenny, John Kelly, John Hume and a host of other well-known names from the worlds of art, showbiz and politics. The objective of the exercise is to raise much-needed funds for Focus Ireland, one of Ireland’s largest voluntary agencies dedicated to combating homelessness.
This ambitious undertaking is the brainchild of Lunar Records supremo Brian Molloy who conceived the idea three years ago, as he explains. “Norma Smurfit had asked me if I had any ideas for raising money for Focus. She knew we’d had huge success with off-the-wall stuff like Faith Of Our Fathers and she thought we could do something similar. Around the time of the millennium the Irish Times had conducted a poll of readers’ favourite Irish poems. The response was huge with thousands of people nominating poems – everybody in Ireland seemed to have a strong affinity with poetry. I always thought poetry was far better when it was spoken, and we’re in the record business, so I thought why not marry the two and get some well known people to read poems and record them.”
The project was carried out in conjunction with Poetry Ireland who made suggestions as to which poems to include. Most of the readers were given a list of three or four poems from which to choose from but according to Molloy, some did their own thing: “Bono came in and spent loads of time and changed his mind a few times before finally deciding on Brendan Kennelly’s ‘God’s Laughter’. Dave Fanning read a poem called ‘July In Bettystown’ written by his brother Gerard. Sharon Corr read a poem called ‘First Annual Report’, written by her father about the first anniversary of the death of her mother.”
Getting hold of people to record their piece was the biggest problem the organisers faced.
“It was slow process getting around to everyone but people were very enthusiastic once they knew what it was all about,” Molloy says. “Richard Harris was very encouraging. He lived at the Savoy Hotel in London and would often walk down to the embankment and chat to homeless people. Unfortunately he died before we could record him. Then we saw him on the Parkinson show reciting his ‘Ode To Christy Brown’. We wrote to the BBC and asked if we could we use it and they sent us the tape.
“Pierce Brosnan was very hard to get hold of and we were chasing him all over New York through agents and PR people. Then one day out of the blue he walked in the door of our own studio to record something for the movie Evelyn which he was working on. We asked him to do his piece there and then and he agreed. We tracked down Ted Kennedy through RTE’s Washington correspondent Carole Coleman. Others were easier – we recorded Bertie in his office and it worked out.”
The CD was officially launched last month and comes with an accompanying hardback book containing the text of the poems, as well as photos and biographical details of all the well-known readers. “It’s flying out the door,” says Molloy. “There’s huge interest in it. Some people are buying four and five copies to give as Christmas presents.”

Voices And Poetry Of Ireland is available now in all good bookshops