Colin Ryan, Julie Breathnach-Banwait, Dymphna Lonergan Daonna Le Colin Ryan Táim beagnach daonna, a deir sí, pé rud is daonnacht ann. Deireadh na daoine féin nárbh fhéidir a rá cad is daonnacht ann: anam (b‘fhéidir), tuiscint, filíocht. Níl ionamsa (a deir sí) ach guth. Í ag taisteal i long réaltach, long neimhe, long lonrach, lán … Continue reading
Liath Feictear liath ar liathA chiallaíonn Gaza:Liath na luathaLiath an smionagarLiath na haibhleoigeLiath craicinn gan fuilLiath na gcléití réabthaLiath na cnámh lomLiath an fhásaigh, ina bhfuil coscAr áthasAr atruaAr bheathaAr dhóchasAr thrócaireAgus, fiú, ar dhaonnacht. Grey There is a particular shade of greyThat signifies Gaza:Grey of ashGrey of rubbleGrey of embersGrey of bloodless skinGrey of … Continue reading
‘Have you seen the exhibition yet?’ Continue reading
Like Heaney, I too was catapulted back to the powerful impact of reading Wilde’s De Profundis, also penned in Reading Gaol, on me aged 20. Continue reading
Her restlessness, watching evening steam
rise from a thread of river to sift the pine
and fir on sweatered hillsides Continue reading
He will not study Famine roads on any map in school.
I discovered those myself much later, Trevelyan’s twisted
dictate, the futile labour of those arteries tapering
into the ether, Continue reading
Telling her that he’d ply her with honeyed words, whilst she tucked in the edges, devour her, she said, consume her, smoothing out the centre with her flat palm, tugging the creases to the corners. Continue reading
Little of that inheritance was recorded in the new country, but books like this give a vivid impression of what came and what was lost. The Australian links in the material presented here are interesting. In one story a landlord declares that if any of his workers steal even a lamb they will be transported. Continue reading
She used a blue biro pen and had numbered the pages on small, plain, lined notepaper…I was pleased to see, sometimes, the smudged ring of a teacup or saucer imprinted on the page. I ould see her in the kichen getting a cup of tea as she wrote to me on a Sunday night. Continue reading
I grew up in County Monaghan, in Ulster and I have been profoundly influenced also by Patrick Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney and the love of landscape and placename. Continue reading
Tinteán 