A Poetry Scholar’s Tribute, and an Alert, by Chris Watson On a recent visit to Ireland, coming through County Derry, I visited Home Place, which is described as ‘a major new arts and literary centre in Bellaghy, dedicated to the legacy of Seamus Heaney’. Heaney’s poetry is often built on memories of childhood family and … Continue reading
Filed under literature …
Mud and Blood by Meg McNena
The play powerfully captures in battle and at home the courage of Australian men and women. Continue reading
James Joyce’s Ulysses – Taking The Next Step
at the end of the day you WILL feel inspired to explore this wonderful book further… that’s a promise!
Continue reading
Behind the Scenes at Bloomsday in Melbourne
While the setting and the craic is unmistakably Dublin, the literary tour embraces some Irish writers (Swift, Sterne, Goldsmith, Sheridan) but mostly lashes out at English classics – the revenge of a supremely gifted Irish writer on English letters. Continue reading
Prisoners of Memory
Beside such extreme acts of violence, ordinary life was of course lived ordinarily, decently, by scores of citizens. The vast majority of people wanted no truck with the killing. Continue reading
Particularies of Time and Space
It is not just landscape and history and personal objects and events that shape us, but also the more casual and systematic reading we do …. Continue reading
The W B Yeats Society of Victoria
Public Debate: ‘Is it time for a Republic of Australia?’ Continue reading
A Legacy of Myths
Book Review by James McCaughey Colm Toibin House of Names, Picador. May 2017 RRP: $29.99 h/b 261 pp ISBN: 978 1760 551421 The ancient Greeks have left us a legacy of myths. Some of them are still current – the stories of Oedipus or Antigone, for instance. Others, though less known, the story of Pygmalion say, have … Continue reading
Birds At Bundanon
Birds amplify
the silence; their calls,
borne on the wind’s leafy roar,
lodge in the mind, the marrow. Continue reading
Joyce with his Nose in the Air
Handed such a whiffy text, director Wayne Pearn took a deep breath and turned it into a play piece of encaptivating ingenuity Continue reading