Interview with Colm Scully

Neanderthal Boy and other tales – Colm Scully's poetry

Colm Scully, a poet and filmmaker, will be the next special guest at DeBarra's Spoken Word in Clonakilty (Ireland) on 17 December 2025.

After working as a chemical engineer in Cork for 30 years, Scully accepted redundancy at a relatively young age. Or, as he prefers to say, he "changed careers". Currently, he's a full-time poet, lecturer, and poetry filmmaker.

His video work has been shown at many festivals; three times he won first prize. No wonder. His work is wide-ranging, the content is fascinating and it is always visually attractive. The poetry films can be viewed on his Vimeo channel, https://vimeo.com/user29903251.

He published his first poetry collection, 'What News, Centurions?' (New Binary Press) in 2014. Earlier in 2025, 'Neanderthal Boy' was issued by Wordsonthestreet books. It contains 45 poems that touch on a great variety of subjects. As Colm Scully says in the Zoom interview: "I'm interested in history, philosophy, science as well as poetry." It is as if he is travelling in a time machine - visiting Ireland when something happened of historic interest, be it the Easter Rising or the big freezes (1916, 1947, 1982, 2018). He paints a poetic picture of Irish Rain, provides a condensed History of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Ireland 1990-2020:

All fine powder
white, that ran through your hands
like dust from a sawmill.

He presents an Alternative History of Ireland, tells his readers How Éire got its Name (the Milesians met and fought the Tuatha Dé Danann). Ireland, its features, and its people, even its outline, are present throughout the collection but the poet also goes back over 2,000 years to visit the ancient city of Alexandria in order to shine a light on a Greek mathematician who measured the World's circumference, then back again to the near-present during a tour by Irish schoolgirls. The last poem of the collection is set in Syria before 8 / 12 / 2024 when the Assad regime collapsed - war is one of the underlying themes of Neanderthal Boy.

Scully rarely writes, "as himself". He carefully chooses different personas aka perspectives as a springboard for his poetry. He may embody a sparrow-hawk observing a human or Oliver Cromwell, a Cro-Magnon woman, a member of the Penrose Family or, indeed, a Neanderthal Boy.

On the night, Colm Scully will of course bring some poetry books - they make good Christmas presents. Any other (self-) published authors are also invited to sell their own poetry collections or other books.
Followed by an Open Mic as always.

DeBarra's Folk Club, 55, Pearse Street, Clonakilty
17 December 2025, 8:30pm, free

Interviewer: Moze Jacobs
See also the article in the December edition of West Cork People
With thanks to the Cork County Arts Office and DeBarra's Folk Club