Members of what was called The Raven Arts Roadshow in 1981 about to go on a world tour that encompassed crashing in sleeping bags on borrowed floors in Wexford, Waterford, Dunmore East and Kilkenny while we performed poetry and music in pubs, theatres and schools. Leo Duffy was our manager, minder and getaway driver when necessary. In the photo there is, at the top, the Finglas-raised poet, Randolph Healy (who now runs the very fine Wild Honey Press) but playing classical guitar on this tour and then, (from left to right) Breffni Murphy (who played jazz guitar with great abandon), a rare photo of a non-breaded Dermot Bolger sporting a borrowed tie and the late and great poet, Philip Casey, who was meant to come on this odyssey, but needed to be replaced at the last minute by an equally fine poet, Maurice Scully. I found this photo by chance and it saddens me greatly that Philip, who was such a truly vibrant spirit and who bore his long illness with such dignity, is no longer with us, although he is still cherished by everyone who was blessed to be touched by his grace. His spirit was summed by in the first lecture given by another former Raven author, Sebastian Barry, in his first public lecture of the Laureate for Irish Fiction: “How can I describe to you the gentle intensity of that man, his lovely honesty, his country courtesy? How funny he was, how scrupulous in the matters of the heart and the soul? How he never gave offence in his conversation, and who bore offence indeed with a sort of kingly indifference. He wrote the Bann trilogy, three river-like novels, one might say, and many many lovely poems that I lovingly and fiercely recommend to you. He wrote against the odds, he wrote without thought of surrender.”