Jane Clarke - So much more than a pastoral poet

Literature Reviews Thu, Nov 05, 2015

IN WHAT is probably the best poem in Jane Clarke’s debut collection, The River, published by Bloodaxe, the narrator asks “Who owns the field?//Is it the one who is named in the deeds/whose hands never touched the clay/or is it the one who gathers the sheaves//takes a scythe to the thistles, plants the beech?"

Book review - Nuala O’Connor's Miss Emily

Literature Reviews Thu, Oct 01, 2015

AT FIRST glance, Miss Emily by Nuala O’Connor - aka Nuala Ni Chonchúir - is a relatively simple tale of a growing relationship, not to say friendship, between two women, one the daughter of a working class Irish family who decides America offers her a better future than the humdrum poverty stricken life in late 19th century Dublin, and the other a somewhat withdrawn daughter of a middle class New England family, in whose house the Irishwoman finds a job as a housekeeper.

Book Reviews: Robyn Rowland and Elaine Gaston

Literature Reviews Thu, Oct 01, 2015

FROM WHAT some would consider inauspicious beginnings, Doire Press has flourished to become a professionally run publisher of quality new fiction and poetry. One of its publications was last year shortlisted for the massively prestigious UK based Forward poetry prize; and Doire is now, quite rightly, in receipt of Arts Council funding.

The ten mile reversal into Irish rural life

Literature Reviews Thu, Sep 10, 2015

TWENTY-NINE years later, the route directions still resonate: “You drive as far as Malin Head and reverse 10 mile”. These were given to my brother Tom in 1986 when he received an invitation to what turned out to be one of the more singular book launches he ever attended.

Padraic McCormack - 'a writer in the John B Keane mode'

Literature Reviews Thu, Sep 03, 2015

PETER MANDLESON'S autobiography includes a photograph of him relaxing at Mick Jagger’s house. It is hard to imagine former Galway West Fine Gael TD Padraic McCormack ever wanting to hang around with rock stars. Instead McCormack has a genuine interest in the eccentricities that make otherwise unremarkable people, in unremarkable places, far more interesting than anyone photographed with the late Princess Margaret.

The ghosts of 1916 get up and walk

Literature Reviews Thu, Aug 06, 2015

THERE HAS been much quiet paranoia among the political and arts establishments on the subject of how to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising. The difficulty is the Rising was a revolutionary event to which most of our political class, and your average arts sector salary drawer, are spiritually opposed.

Moon’s Corner and The Stoic Man

Literature Reviews Thu, Aug 06, 2015

THE STRUCTURE of Gerald Dawe’s memoir The Stoic Man, recently published by the Lagan Press, follows much the same general outline of his Selected Poems, published in 2012, and could easily be subtitled A Tale of Three Cities, beginning in the troubled city of Belfast, continuing on to the cultural melting pot that was Galway during the 1970s and 1980s, before moving on the comfortable avenues of Dún Laoghaire and the ivory towers of Trinity College.

Has Jack Taylor met his match?

Literature Reviews Thu, Jun 11, 2015

JACK TAYLOR was always a man with few close friends. These days he has none. Stewart is dead and Ban Garda Ridge has had enough of him, but the whiff of sulphur around this former guard turned vigilante for hire, is always enough to lure people to him.

From Market Street to a brave new world…..and back

Literature Reviews Thu, Jun 04, 2015

SINCE 1900 Galway has produced a number of quality children’s authors, beginning with Pádraic Ó Conaire on his M'Asal Beag Dubh, and continuing with Eilis Dillon's The Lost Island and Island of the Horses; Walter Macken's Flight of the Doves and The Island of the Great Yellow Ox, and, of course, Pat O’Shea from Bohermore, with her now classic The Hounds of The Morrigan.

Buskers, beggars, and degenerates of every persuasion

Literature Reviews Thu, Jun 04, 2015

IT HAS been said elsewhere, but bears repeating, that Galway city is probably the most important character in Máire T Robinson’s debut novel Skin Paper Stone, published by New Island.

Book review: Claire-Louise Bennett's Pond

Literature Reviews Thu, May 14, 2015

"THERE WERE lines across the pages but they were imperceptible because of how dark it had become and once a word was written it was irretrievable, as if abducted. I went on, sinking words into the pages, perhaps wondering what or who was taking them in. And, then, for the first time that day, just as it was ending, I knew where I was – I was beneath the ground. I was far beneath the ground at last, and my blood thronged and my heart flounced back and forth bewitchingly. The pen came to settle in the seam of my notebook. Sooner or later, I thought, you’re going to have to speak up.”

Poet leaves Enniscorthy to drive around America

Literature Reviews Thu, May 14, 2015

EAMONN WALL has, over the past two decades, written a body of work that has made him one of Ireland’s leading diaspora poets, though he is nothing like as famous as he should be.

On being autistic: a personal witness

Literature Reviews Thu, Apr 02, 2015

IN HIS extraordinary book, The Reason I Jump - One Boy’s Voice From The Silence Of Autism, Naoki Higashida, an autistic boy aged 13, writes: “We are misunderstood and we’d give anything if only we could be understood properly...Please, understand what we really are, and what we’re going through.”

The stormy life of Granuaile

Literature Reviews Thu, Mar 05, 2015

IRISH HISTORY and mythology, and indeed the points where they intersect, are rich materials for the graphic novel, leading, over the last number of years, to Irish writers and artists exploring the potentialities of such as Cúchulainn and The Táin.

Book review: John O’Donohue

Literature Reviews Thu, Mar 05, 2015

THERE WAS a day in January 2008 when suddenly the valleys, streams, rivers, and lakes of Connemara and the Burren lost their colour and blackened, when the silent music of the stones, hills, and mountains abated for just a moment, for at that moment, in far off Italy one of the few men who fully understood their physical and spiritual presence experienced, to quote his own words,

Book review: Spill Simmer Falter Wither

Literature Reviews Thu, Feb 05, 2015

IT IS every publisher’s dream s/he should “discover” the author who will be as iconic as James Joyce, as commercially successful as JK Rowling, and as prolific as Charles Dickens. So when a potential candidate appears above the parapet the publisher will - rightly - not hesitate to sing loud and clear that the new literary protégé will out-Joyce Joyce, out sell Rowling, and outwrite Dickens.

Book review: I Remember, I Remember: Galway Stories and Sketches

Literature Reviews Thu, Feb 05, 2015

NOSTALGIA IS defined as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past.” Tales of bygone years when the sun seemed to shine forever, and childhood days were filled with laughter are always trying to tell the reader some sort of lie.

Mr Yeats, we salute you

Literature Reviews Thu, Jan 08, 2015

ON A wet morning in 1948, a woman of about 30 and a man of 18 were cycling as fast as they could along Grattan Road. They were watching a boat make its way around Mutton Island, hoping they could make it to the docks before it docked.

Sexing up Greek myths and facing down the bank

Literature Reviews Thu, Jan 08, 2015

THERE ARE those for whom being a poet is, to paraphrase Angela Carr’s fine poem ‘Occupied’, “the new black”. If you are young and fit, all you need do is write long poems about what is going on at street level and wave your arms around when you read them.

Old Galway’s hidden urban landscape

Literature Reviews Thu, Dec 04, 2014

ONE OF the great pleasures of the early morning walk, jog, or run through the streets of Galway is that you can experience our urban landscape unencumbered with either human or motorised traffic.

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