So, landscape and place and sense of identity or the word in Irish is ‘dúchas’ or heritage are huge influences on what motivates me to write. Continue reading
Filed under Of Literary Interest …
Is ‘So Long’ an Irish ‘Goodbye’?
Lexicographers and linguists have indeed puzzled over the American English term ‘So Long’ and some have advanced a possible origin in Irish slán. Continue reading
What we are reading at the moment: Hilary Mantel, Donal Ryan, Emma Donaghue, Colette Ní Ghallchóir
A little snippet, a snapshot, insights that convey so much. A sentence that describes one man’s grief ‘Chris, his poor heart smashed…’ is an example of how much emotion is expressed in so few words. Continue reading
What we are reading at the moment
Her interior monologues also allow for literary and philosophical references that catch the reader’s heart as the originals do…We learn that Ireland is the result of the collision of two giant rocks (chipped off from ancient continents, Gondwana, Queensland, and Laurentia, Canada) now fused together …This book held a mirror to me with its stark reminder of how lucky I’ve been to have stepped back from the precipice that I’d also found myself standing on. Continue reading
On the Good Ship Ulysses
We parked the car, grabbed our backpacks, and made our way up the passenger stairwell. In my backpack was James Joyce’s Ulysses, bookmarked at the final chapter, ‘Penelope’, which I planned to finish reading whilst on board the Ulysses, travelling to Dublin to visit iconic landmarks mentioned in the book. How meta. Continue reading
Irish Film Festival Reviews: Tarrac & Dance First, That They May Face the Rising Sun, and more.
Tarrac, a heart-warming Irish language comedy drama set on the Kerry coast in Dingle… Joyce feels like someone we can know, though probably not like very much….The scaffolding and the bedrock of this visually sumptuous film is what it does with landscapes and cloudscapes and the imposition of the human impress on them. Continue reading
Mercurial Meditations on Life and Death and the Everyday
The transience of human life is something that Arthur returns to throughout this collection of essays. Continue reading
We are reading at the moment…
Most of the stories date from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and many deal with miserable school experiences. You won’t be surprised to read of Bob Geldof tormenting the priests at Blackrock College by asking inconvenient religious questions, or Edna O’Brien recounting how she sinned by the hour Continue reading
Vale Nell McCafferty — ‘free at last’ (1944-2024)
They were recorded buying condoms in a Belfast chemist shop. These fearless women gave hope and courage to ordinary women who were only coming into awareness about how their reproductive rights had become the property of male dominated establishments, not just in Ireland. Continue reading
Ó Chréanna Eile From Other Earths
Bilingual poems afford us the opportunity to appreciate both languages. What is most appreciated is the effort taken by these poets to make the English translations poems in their own right. This means that even if you do not read Irish, you can appreciate the themes, thoughts and imagery in this collection. Continue reading
Tinteán 