Bono among celebrities featured reading famous Irish poet’s work on new album

U2‘s Bono is among a variety of Irish celebrities featured reading the poetry of acclaimed late Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh on a new album titled Almost Everything… that will be released September 23.

The album is a two-part collection, combining recordings of 15 different Irish figures reciting Kavanagh’s poems backed by a musical soundtrack with a remastered version of the 1964 record Almost Everything that captured Kavanagh reading his own poetry.

Bono kicks off the album with a recitation of perhaps Kavanagh’s most famous poem, “On Raglan Road.” Other contributors to the album include Ireland’s president, Michael D. Higgins; singers Sharon Corr, Christy Moore, Hozier and Imelda May; and actors Liam Neeson, Aisling Bea, Evanna Lynch, Aidan Gillen and Jessie Buckley.

Almost Everything… will be available as a two-CD or a two-LP set, and can be preordered now at CladdaghRecords.com and Amazon.

The physical versions of Almost Everything… will come packaged with a booklet featuring all the poetry heard on the album.

Kavanagh, who began his professional writing career during the early 1930s, was known for his unsentimental depiction of everyday life in Ireland. He died in 1967 at age 63.

Here’s the track list of Almost Everything…:

CD1 (read by guests):

“On Raglan Road” — read by Bono
“Stony Grey Soil” — read by Michael D. Higgins
“Memory of My Father” — read by Liam Neeson
“Canal Bank Walk” — read by Imelda May
“Peace” — read by Hozier
“Inniskeen Road: July Evening” — read by Lisa McGee
“In Memory of My Mother” — read by Kathleen Watkins
“The Hospital” — read by Lisa Hannigan
“Pegasus” — read by Rachael Blackmore
“October” — read by Christy Moore
“Shancoduff” — read by Aisling Bea
“Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin” — read by Evanna Lynch
“Extract from The Great Hunger” — read by Aidan Gillen
“A Christmas Childhood” — read by Sharon Corr
“Epic” — read by Jessie Buckley

CD2 (read by Patrick Kavanagh):

“Autobiographical Prose”
“The Same Again”
“Jungle”
“Narcissus and the Women”
“Epic”
“God in Woman”
“Kerr’s Ass”
“Peace”
“The Hospital”
“On the Death of Jim Larkin”
“Extract from The Great Hunger“
“Living in the Country: Part One”
“Dear Folks”
“Miss Universe”
“About Reason, Maybe”
“To Hell with Commonsense”
“October”
“Come Dance with Kitty Stobling”
“Prelude”
“Having Confessed”