Dublin-born Thomas Moore (1779-1852) is still recognized as Ireland’s National Bard; he was once as famous a romantic poet as his best friend Lord Byron. While studying law in London in 1801 he published, anonymously, a book of naughty verses, The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little. The author was “the most licentious ofRead more..
Five years ago this summer, a dream came true – but not quite the way the daydreamer envisioned it might. A decade earlier, I approached the poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, proposing a magazine profile of him and requesting an interview in Dublin. An enthusiastic admirer of his work, I’d just published an assessmentRead more..
The Final Pass By John James Reid She held the ball for two and a half weeks, unable to move, unwanting to pass. Each breath, each save, knowing, the game was almost over. Her players, watching their Goalkeeper In her final attempt to save herself. Weakened, withered, wasted, against a powerful pneumonic team. White refereesRead more..
Richard B. Evans, an American-born composer and musician, has been immersed in Irish music and culture for decades, and his exploration of the events leading to 1916 is about to come to American audiences in a live, full-length musical production commemorating the Centennial. ℘℘℘ Ireland’s Poet-Patriots is a full evening’s concert marking the centennial ofRead more..
Three of the men who signed the Proclamation of the Irish Republic had published poetry before the Rising. But many more revolutionaries who participated were writers, scholars, and artists, including several notable women. ℘℘℘ I am come of the seed of the people, the people that sorrow; Who have no treasure but hope, No richesRead more..
On the anniversary of W.B. Yeats’s birth (June 13, 1865), we look at some of the places in Sligo that inspired his best-loved poems. 1. BENBULBEN and DRUMCLIFFE CHURCHYARD: At his request, Yeats’s body was laid to rest in France and later removed to the churchyard in Drumcliffe, under Ben Bulben mountain, where his great-grand- father hadRead more..
A recent RTÉ poll identified Seamus Heaney’s sonnet, “When all the others were away at Mass,” as Ireland’s favorite poem of the last hundred years. The sonnet, published in 1987, comes from “Clearances In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984,” a sequence Heaney composed on the death of his mother. In ‘When all the others were away atRead more..
The literary world welcomed a new talent in September when the prestigious Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award was given to UCC librarian John Fitzgerald. A virtual unknown, having no previous publications, Fitzgerald was quoted in the Irish Times as saying, “I wasn’t into publishing anything, mainly because I did not think it was up to standard.”Read more..
SHORT FICTION Belfast Noir Edited by Adrian McKinty & Stuart Neville Belfast, a city of conflicting allegiances and a dark and turbulent past, seems a perfect setting for Akashic’s latest “noir” anthology. Belfast Noir is presented as “an important snapshot” of the city’s burgeoning crime-writing community featuring stories from some of Ireland’s best-known crime writers includingRead more..
She said she’d lost the knack—not the recipe, which had never been written down— but the knack of mixing the dough just so, not too much, not too little, so that the moist, buttery loaves rose into their perfectly rounded shapes, the cross impressed in the top revealing itself as the crust hardened, sure asRead more..