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
Filed under review …
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
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
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
Vale Edna O’Brien (1930-2024): an Irish country girl
Edna was a fearless teller of truths, a superb writer possessed of the moral courage to confront Irish society with realities long ignored and suppressed. Continue reading
New Irish Australian Research: Irish Women in the Antipodes
What struck me particularly about these stories was the spirit and fight of women in the face of discrimination and adversity. Continue reading
Would You Like to Write for Us?
We have subscribers in 117 countries and on every continent. Our authors have been Irish-born and Irish resident; Irish-born and Australian resident or resident in other countries; Australian-born of Irish descent; or simply interested and involved in the Australian-Irish connection. Continue reading
Eamonn Wall: transatlantic poet part two
Much commemorated in literature and music, the 1798 legend lives on in the town because the geography and townscape have changed little. Wall walks the same trails meandering alongside the Slaney. That is his Enniscorthy, a place of enduring pain, and ancient prayer represented here by his poem, ‘Night Heron’ Continue reading
Re-reading At Swim-Two-Birds.
The longer the book went on, the more convinced I was that I had not read it before, but then I found on the bottom of page 189 a note in my pencilled handwriting. Continue reading
Two Books to Make us Think
What it really meant to be poor and how to survive it. And a book about a priest who fathered a child with nun. Continue reading