Heaney’s poetry is full of surprises. It would appear that he knew everything about the flail, but he seemed to refuse to give it a poetic voice. Continue reading
Filed under place names …
190-year anniversary of an acclaimed and esteemed Irish pioneer settler in Adelaide
Kingston was young, keen, and, above all, fit enough in the summer heat to negotiate the dense forest in what was later named Hindley Street. On 6 November 1836, his thirsty dog came across what turned out to be the river Torrens; it was subsequently named after the Derry-born Chairman of the South Australian Colonisation Commission, Colonel Robert Torrens. Continue reading
The Wild Atlantic
It started calm enough, but God it turned, and suddenly we were being tossed here and there and everywhere. Ger said he never saw anything like it, but we bent the oars and headed in. Continue reading
Aonach an Daingin The Dingle Fair
Then the jobber proceeded to examine the heifers and shaking his head he offered £16 and Dad emphatically said no. Continue reading
Learning Irish at Oideas Gael – Gleann Cholmcille
I took a language course then and learnt a lot of Gaeilge. There were classes with eight levels available from beginners, to intermediate to fluent. There was 35 hours of contach (Teaching) available. Continue reading
What we are reading, watching, at the moment
‘The Journey to Galway’ is a suitable beginning for a collection of stories about betrayal, deception, disappointment, and secrets. Many of these secrets are made possible because of distance. Continue reading
Antarctica – Ciorcal Comhrá: a traveller’s tale
Creidimid this is the most southerly Pop-Up Gaeltacht and Ciorcal Comhrá in the world. Continue reading
Irish-Australian Women Writers: 1. Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796–1880)
Eliza was obviously interested in people who came from different cultures, and she tried to understand them by studying their languages. We see this in some of her first poems written in Ireland. For instance, she made a point of using Irish placename spellings, rather than anglicised ones, when describing the impressive natural features of south County Down, including the Mourne Mountains. Continue reading
‘Hear the echo from the barn barrel’: learning Irish in Newfoundland
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
Poetry/Filíocht Hugh Curran, Patrick O’Sullivan, Michael Patrick Moore, Kevin McClung
My whistle calls the drops,
till they tumble down in torrents,
pounding on the rocks and on the craggy shore.
Then the flood runs swirling brown through every creek and channel,
as though it cannot wait to fill them to the brim, Continue reading
