Language has always been of interest to Colin Ryan as a way of shaping and expressing the world, and he began writing quite early. Continue reading
Posted in March 2025 …
Thoughts on the Irish Language Revival: then and now
Still, figures from the 1891 public records suggest that the Irish-speaking population had dropped to less than 4% – a major language transformation in less than a century. Continue reading
Time Gentlemen, Please: Is James Joyce dead?
Straight and dead he may be, but Joyce was from the race of the colonised, not the coloniser; of the oppressed class; not of ‘English’ literature, any more than Swift, Wilde, Shaw, Yeats, Heaney. Continue reading
Paying tribute to the Irish Famine Orphan Girls
Remembering the brave teens of the Earl Grey Scheme. Continue reading
The Feints and Veils of a Collapsing Mind
History arrives at Tom’s door in the form of two younger detectives, who are investigating the unsolved murder of Father Thaddeus Matthews. Continue reading
What we are reading and reviewing at the moment
Brian Corr: 800 Years of Sadness: … how the Irish overcame despair, disadvantage, helplessness, and sorrow. [Tasmania], 2024.Kindle Edition: Available on Amazon.com.auISBN: 9798334955943RRP: $9.95 For an Australian with an interest in Irish culture and music and a passing knowledge of Irish history, Irish-born, Tasmanian resident, Brian Corr’s self-published, Ireland: 800 Years of Sadness, is a compelling and punchy … Continue reading
Poetry/Prós Fhilíocht/Prose Poetry: Anne Casey, Julie Breathnach-Banwait, Daragh Byrne.
Mise Aisling By Anne Casey After Eavan Boland’s ‘Mise Éire’ I lost my tonguelong ago in exile,refound it in a ghost childcalling for her mother. Elizabeth O’Brien casting offto the deep: Bíonn súil le muirach ní bhíonn súil le tír(hope in the sea,no hope in the land)as she clutchesher grizzling Eliza,slipping away. I am the … Continue reading
Creative Fiction: short story ‘Family Trivia in Lavey, County Derry.’
by Michael Boyle It must be nostalgia, but when our extended Irish family gets together local trivia breaks out and there is a cacophony of sound. We all talk at the same time just like we did when we had much more hair and when we were cutting turf in the moss under a hot … Continue reading
What’s on March/April and beyond
St Patrick being celebrated in most states; Comhaltas Weekend at Queenscliff. Continue reading
Tinteán 