Bailey’s poetic troubles may be podcast

IAN Bailey is releasing his own podcast featuring his latest collection of poetry.

The Schull-based Englishman was convicted last May in France of the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, after a three-day trial. The Frenchwoman was murdered at her Toormore holiday home in December 1996.

Bailey’s poetry book ‘A John Wayne State of Mind’ chronicles his experiences over the last few years, including his reaction to being convicted for the murder of du Plantier.

Mr Bailey (63) has recently self-published his second collection of poetry and has now recorded all the poems with a sound engineer to possibly publish them as a podcast.

‘I’ve done a recording of all 42 poems in the book and a little bit of the storytelling behind each poem but not as much as you get in the book – we need to do some tweaking of it and we’re not sure whether we will issue it as a podcast or as an audio version,’ he said.

Many of Mr Bailey’s poems derive from his experience of being identified by gardaí as a suspect for the murder. 

‘I hope the poetry sort of answers the questions that people might ask about how difficult it has been for me over the last few years – the poems are turning my personal subjectivity into creativity, if you can call it that – it’s cathartic and it helps me,’ he said.

The poems have names like ‘Cell by Date’, ‘The Troubled Mind’ and ‘Digging for Victory’.