Neil Burns Bullies can take many shapes, forms, and disguises. It seems a daily occurrence that can be defined as repeated behaviours that are intentional or have malicious intent to cause fear or to instil feelings of superiority in the bully, while also causing anxiety and hopelessness in the victim, due to the bully’s relentless behaviour. Northern … Read more
Back in 2016, I was embarking on a road towards sobriety after nearly eighteen years of committed alcoholism, homelessness, depression, and, in many ways, desperation. I needed to change. However, I did not know how or where to begin. I started with ‘one day at a time,’ taking small, manageable steps. If I don’t drink … Read more
In George Orwell’s 1939 novel Coming Up For Air, at the beginning of chapter 4, issue is taken with substandard food products, which do not taste like the product promoted and, indeed, taste like something else: At this moment I bit into one of my frankfurters, and—Christ! I can’t honestly say that I’d expected the … Read more
One must begin by asking a begging question: is literary criticism, in Ireland, dead? Recently, reading Susan Sontag’s 1966 essay ‘Against Interpretation’, this reviewer noticed the absence of the pronoun ‘I’, which has become ingratiated in the ‘I’ singular, the most fantastic, the singular phenomenological self-view. The singular ‘I’ – the Me, Myself, and I … Read more
Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures… There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating … Read more
This piece is not intended to provoke. It is more a look at the way people’s minds are shaped, how people think, and how that is articulated towards others. I realized something was ‘ratten’ in the state of ‘Norn Ireland’ when I was about four. My half-brother of about six or so and I were … Read more
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity, but I know none, therefore am no beast. William Shakespeare, Richard III I anticipated the takeover of the vast majority of the publishing industry by fourth or fifth-wave feminism. It has been in the mix for five years or so, and it dominates this arena; … Read more
Belfast writer, and poet, Ciaran Carson carried a black flute with silver keys on its main body, which he would screw together to play sometimes. In class. At Queen’s University, Belfast. He once asked me, “What would you have liked to become in life?” I answered: “Either a master carpenter, a mathematician, or a pianist.” … Read more
In the insular, it felt like it at times, enforced statelet of Northern Ireland, sexual repression was a thing. (And probably still is.) Faggot. Queer. Bent. Gayboy. Bender. Fruit. OOOOooooooooo like an effeminate caricature: going around, mincing, limp-wristed, and nothing but a bum-watching, bumboy. These were some of the names I heard levied at me … Read more
Try to envisage Odysseus, on stiff headland, on the Western Atlantic coast of Ireland, tilling the soil with an ancient looking hoe. His hands are dry, chapped and his thick fingers curled around a parched shaft, steady palms supporting the implement, with which he works effortlessly. The slap, jut, and pull of the short blade … Read more