Reviews and Links
ARCHIVES
Bardwell’s archive of papers is at Trinity College Dublin and the content metadata can be viewed here
For public access to many hard to find books search the National Library here. They also hold periodicals that featured Bardwell from the 1960s onwards such as Arena and The Lace Curtain.
The Stony Thursday Book, another periodical, has an excellent facebook page with scans of most of its pages from decades past.
BOOK AVAILABILITY
It is not hard to buy most of Bardwell’s books on line. The newest books published this year (2022) are with Lepus here and Doire here. Her poetry and short story publisher Dedalus Press sells directly a number of her books here. For her memoir, Liberties Press sells here and for novels Blackstaff Press sells here. A good place to look for the out-of-print books is www.usedbooksearch.co.uk. It is a metacrawler site that combines sites such as alibris, biblio and abebooks. Her books turn up in Ireland, the UK, the US and Germany (in translation) and are very easy to find except for the early poetry collections. Für deutsche Übersetzungen versuchen Sie es hier
IRISH BOOKSHOPS
Most Irish booklovers have heard of Kenny’s and Charlie Byrne’s in Galway. These are especially good for an in-person visit, but will help via online or phone.
Review Quotes
POETRY
Dostoevsky's Grave
“Such sharpness, blended variously with feelings of anger, warmth, wit and painful but unselfpitying or affectionate but unsentimental memory, are characteristic of her best work here.”
Tom Halpin, Poetry Ireland Review, No 34, 1992
The White Beach
“Occasionally . . . the reader finds herself without moorings because of Bardwell's quite unorthodox juxtapositions. These elicit deep emotional feelings and as a formal device seem to bypass intellect and plunge us directly into the poetic consciousness.
This work is revolutionary. Its power derives in large measure from the combination of the real and the surreal; the outer shell and the inner workings of the human psyche. We might begin to theorise that Bardwell stands at the threshold of a new language and form in the company of Beckett . . .”
Jean Dunne, Irish University Review Vol 29, No 1, 1999
The Noise of Masonry Settling
“Overall, this is as good a collection as one would expect from a poet as good as Leland Bardwell. There is a maturity at work here, an authority that younger poets – no matter how good they are – cannot match. There is much wisdom in these pages and that – combined with the deft skill of a true poet – makes for great poetry. Seldom does a new book of poetry fly so high and so freely.”
Sean Walsh in Rambles
The Fly and the Bedbug
“Her world is large, embracing the child, the prisoner, the hospital patient with a steadiness of focus that doesn't exclude caricature. Her poems offer, along with often stinging pictures of society and the human beings at odds with it, shifting, sometimes brilliant imagery and rhythmic energy.”
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin , Poetry Ireland Review No 12
PROSE
The House
“Bardwell is an amazing storyteller; in merely 150 pages she creates characters that seem so stunningly real and familiar, with problems and situations that reflect our own.”
The Literary Sisters, wordpress site
Girl on a Bicycle
“Bardwell’s prose is beautifully poetic and her narrative of the gardens in the summer gives a potent visual. A beautiful and disconsolate read, a book to be relished.”
Karen Moran, RTE
A Restless Life
“The bare prose employed throughout Leland Bardwell's autobiography A Restless Life is as candid as it is beautiful. A Restless Life is an intensely feminine book, a record of the lived experience of a young girl, adolescent, woman, and mother. “
Jennifer Keating-Miller New Hibernian Review
Different Kinds of Love
“The strategic confluence of images and allusions here and elsewhere in her work allows Bardwell to be seen as part of what might be called an Irish Beat literary renaissance in the nineteen-sixties, along with poets such as Pearse Hutchinson and Patrick Galvin and, a little later, Macdara Woods, Michael Hartnett, James Liddy and Paul Durcan.”
Philip Coleman in The Stinging Fly
Mutter Eines Fremden
“Wie psychologisch einfühlsam und unparteiisch Bardwell die Überforderung der drei, ihre Sprachlosigkeit und ihr Gefangensein in Selbstvorwürfen, Schuldzuweisungen und Selbstmitleid schildert, hat mich bis zur letzten Seite gefesselt.”
Barabara Busch www.mit-büchern-um-die-welt.de