Class took place on Monday night around the kitchen table, and it was always a relaxing cultural evening. Afterwards the chat continued often to near midnight. Indeed, there were times I felt transported to a farm house in the Donegal Gaeltacht of the 1960s and that I was not in Canada at all. Continue reading
Filed under literature …
Exploring ‘Neurodiversity’ in ‘How to Build a Boat’
Jamie’s intimate inner thoughts are pell-mell, associative, obsession-driven, literal, and culturally well-stocked. Continue reading
What we are reading, listening to, at the moment
He first met her by chance as she was emerging from a taxi, ‘…a vision in black velvet and volumised hair’, recognising O’Hagan as ‘that Scottish boy’ and his response in kind, ‘And you’re that country girl.’ Continue reading
What’s on April/May and beyond
Irish in Australia: Irish-themed Movies, Tours, and Festivals Continue reading
Spotlight in Irish Film Production: NO18 Films: Made in Dublin
he video ‘was created to capture Brian’s deep knowledge of the craft, specifically the specialised stretching and table cutting techniques that modern machines simply cannot replicate…and serves as a visual record of a vanishing skill and an important piece of the cultural fabric of Dublin’. Continue reading
Filíocht dátheangach/Bilingual poetry: Colin Ryan, Julie Breathnach-Banwait, Dymphna Lonergan, David Harris.
She brought ashore a language / and a pocketful of scraps: / a seagull nested in her mind / and she found shelter in a doorless house / that would let her neither in nor out / though she escaped in a dream / and saw before her a tribe / who reminded her of the dead Continue reading
What’s on March/April and beyond
Irish in Australia: Irish-themed Movies, Tours, and Festivals Continue reading
What we are reading, attending at the moment
Melbourne Hosts successful two-day symposium on Irish Language. Next is a review of Australian novelist and diarist Helen Garner’s How to End a Story, much appreciated by those of us who are Garner fans. ‘Priests in the Family’ provides Enright’s intriguing family connection to James Joyce, followed by an ‘Introduction to Ulysses’ where she talks about her personal experience of starting to read that famous book at the age of fourteen, ‘mainlining language, getting high on words’ Continue reading
What’s on February/March and beyond
Irish in Australia: Irish-themed Movies, Tours, and Festivals Continue reading
Only our rivers: a tribute to Mick MacConnell
‘Only Our Rivers run Free’, ‘It was a classic example of the right song, in the right place at the right time, recorded by the right artist, Christy Moore, because Christy’s career was taking off in a big way it afforded an authority and a whole importance to the song… Continue reading