Tagged: “The Irish Times”
Introducing Geis by Caitríona O’Reilly
In her third collection of poetry, Caitríona O’Reilly presents a cabinet of curiosities, landscapes ranging from Iceland to Iowa, and a cast of characters including Jackson Pollock, Camille Claudel, and Clint Eastwood. Moving between the scientific and the supernatural, O’Reilly is consistently sharp with language that is Latinate, tactile, and intuitive, what Michael Longley has…
Continue ReadingIrish: A Dying Language?
An article published yesterday in The Irish Times titled “Have Irish-Language books fallen off the shelf?” poses an interesting inquiry for bilingual presses. As a press specializing in Irish poetry, we take pride in publishing works both in our native English tongue, as well as in the guttural, consonant-strewn language of Irish Gaelic. Since for a large part of the 19th…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week, with congrats to Conor O’Callaghan
I wanted his sky-blue Ford, its sheetrock, its transmission issues.
I listened to his low-down yodelling skimming sunk studs
and snake rattles like wind chimes round his mantle in the hills
and parables waiting for windows to arrive where some lunchbox
was always asked what sort of lunchbox he took Roy for.
Ireland ranks 1st in “Good Country Index”
Today, Ireland was ranked #1 on a new report called the Good Country Index, released by British policy advisor Simon Anholt. And what makes a Good Country, you ask? The Index measures how countries contribute to the planet and the human race. Ireland ranked within the top 10 in four of the seven categories, securing…
Continue ReadingThe Falls Road: Carson’s childhood neighborhood
WFUP poet Ciaran Carson, native of Belfast and resident still, has written intimately about his experiences in the most urban sections of the city. This week, The Irish Times published a review of a new book of photographs taken in the late 1960s through the 1970s on the Falls Road, a portion of Belfast known for violent clashes,…
Continue ReadingPoetry in Pop Culture: “poems change people’s understanding of what’s going on in the world”
Who said the technological age is taking people further away from literature? Perhaps it is true that millennials are reading fewer tangible books and more electronic books, but according to an article by The Irish Times this past weekend, poetry is popping up in pop culture all over the place. Maureen Kennelly, director of Poetry…
Continue ReadingNuala Ní Dhomhnaíll featured on passport
Ireland revealed its new passport design on Monday, and people are talking. The majority of the media hype revolves around the borderless map of Ireland on page three. The map’s subtle disregard of Ireland’s political north-south divide in favour of the topographical depiction of the island as a whole is meant to emphasize citizenship over territoriality, a spokesman…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week, plus Paula Meehan’s Appointment as Ireland Professor of Poetry
The View from Under the Table was the best view and the table itself kept the sky from falling. The world was fringed with red velvet tassels; whatever play ran in that room the tablecloth was curtains for. I was the audience. Listen to me laughing. Listen to me weeping. I was a child. What…
Continue ReadingRealizing a Destiny in Full: On the Death of a Friend
“When asked to pronounce on Seamus’s death, a phrase coalesced in my mind: he did his work.” This, according to poet John Montague in his Sept. 7 memorial in the Irish Times, is the most succinct way to describe the late Seamus Heaney. But his description, which seems so far removed from the beauty and…
Continue ReadingTravel
Lara Marlowe, author and Washington correspondent to The Irish Times, stated in an interview with the Irish Echo that you’re Irish if “you delight in language, enjoy good company and never lose touch with the sadness that runs through all things.” Although Marlowe is American, she maintains a residence in Ireland and is a world-traveled journalist. In the interview, Marlowe…
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