In his debut collection of poetry ‘The Breed Of Me’, local journalist Gerry McLaughlin shares poems inspired by friends, family, members of his local community and specific places that had a great influence on his life.

The collection features more than 60 poems written by the Donegal/Fermanagh writer, which he has dedicated in memory of “all those who are no longer with us, especially my mother Rose whose death prompted me to start writing poetry”.

Within the collection, Gerry includes a beautiful poem written in memory of his late mother, Rose McLaughlin (née McGuire).

In the poem, he shares a snippet of blossoming love between his mother and father, writing:

“... But I see her in a trench coat in the Carlton Hotel, Belleek in the early 1950s,

watching Willie ‘The Kid’ swinging from the lamp-post at Rooney’s

and laughing gently at the showman she would marry ...”

On the facing page, metaphorically placing his parents at each other’s side, Gerry pays tribute to his late father with the poem ‘Willie The Kid McLaughlin and the Gaelic kings of Corlea’.

“This is for my 97-year-old father Willie McLaughlin who passed away at 9.07pm on April 8, 2018; he was our greatest hero,” writes Gerry in his introduction to the poem, adding: “He was the heart and soul of the Corlea GAA club in the 1940s, a townland he first came to in 1925.”

Gerry outlined his father’s love of and dedication to Corlea GAA club, writing in the poem:

“... Corlea was scattered to the wind in 1948,

turned into a townland of trees, with no ball

two years after they had played a senior county final in Donegal.

And Willie never forgot that cruel Fall

but he smiled as he remembered singing Shanagolden in

Moore’s meadow

and his great rebel heart soared

like a Corlea king of Donegal.”

Alongside his tales of family members, Gerry features poems written about local characters that made an impression on him.

The poem ‘Broad Brush Strokes’, he wrote for Edgar Donaldson, who he describes in its introduction as “an old-style shop man on the Border at Belleek”.

Recalling Edgar’s kind and generous nature, remembering how he “often slipped in a few jelly baby sweets to sweeten our way”, which left an indelible mark on his childhood memories, Gerry writes fondly: “... and we ate Edgar’s sweets and sang and swaggered like kings and Edgar smiled as he swept the street with broad brush strokes”.

In ‘Adieu to the Fermanagh News’, Gerry not only pays tribute to the late great local photo journalist Willie John Duffy from Belleek, calling him “a good friend who gave me a job after a very convivial interview in McMorrow’s bar in 1988”, but also the loss of the weekly newspaper, the ‘Fermanagh News’.

In the opening lines of the poem, he writes: “The Fermanagh News was crucified on Good Friday, nailed to a wooden stake by social media and low sales.

Willie John Duffy and the News from in and around Belleek have long gone to the great printing press in the Heavenly vales.”

A collection of poems which charmingly details the people and places that have shaped his life growing up and working along the Fermanagh/Donegal Border, in his own words Gerry hopes that ‘The Breed Of Me’ “will make sure that the lives of those who have passed on were important, had value and that their songs will always be sung under mellow moons”.