Heaney’s poem ‘Punishment’ will also be removed from the OCR’s GCSE poetry anthology from September 2022. GCSEs are the basic level of qualification in British education, while A-levels are taken by secondary school students aged between 16 and 18. Continue reading
Filed under War poetry …
‘Built by the Irish People’: reflections on the 1798 memorial at Waverley and the Irish Famine Memorial at Hyde Park Barracks
There are two significant memorials erected in Sydney in response to major events in Irish history: the 1798 Memorial at Waverley Cemetery built at the time of the centenary of the ’98 uprising, and the Australia Memorial to the Great Irish Famine unveiled in 1999. Continue reading
Poetry
Poems full of time telling of many stories and of many lives. Continue reading
Poetry
No one can threaten hunger with bullets. Continue reading
Beyond the Romance of the Soldier-Poet
One puts the book down, numb beyond weeping, for it goes well beyond the romance of being a soldier-poet ‘in the tradition of Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon’…. Continue reading
Commemorations and Protest Poetry
Many of the participating poets had been enthusiastic supporters of the Gaelic League – Irish language advocates, poets, playwrights, newspaper writers on cultural and socialist matters. Their loss must have been a severe one to the emergent Free State. Continue reading
Poetry by Michael Whelan
These poems tell a powerful story. Continue reading
‘Peacekeeper’ by Michael Whelan
The poems were inspired by my tours of duty as a United Nations Peacekeeper with the Irish Defence Forces in South Lebanon and Kosovo. Continue reading
WINDHARP. Poems of Ireland since 1916
if this was all we had a thousand years from now, it would be the basis for a sound reconstruction of the political, social and economic life in Ireland in the century since 1916. Continue reading
Poetry
does God not see
our tears falling on the ground
near the stony road Continue reading