Leaf-ladder to the Sky Dusk drums down the harbour, Seagull sirens sound alarms, A quiet motor sings; Shards of mingling words slip away Where huddled houses hug the bay; A fish flops on the scalloped sea, Ripples spreadly ring, Ring, and ring, diminishing, to me: Here are all enchantments reined, Stowed within this compassed, solitary … Read more
I sit at the piano and a melody flows smoothly from my mind. I think “How great,” and quickly write it down, then continue playing and writing, playing and writing. Feels like I came up with something special this time. I become emotional with excitement and am very pleased. Then a moment passes, and nothingness. … Read more
This is the first instalment of a three part essay on the legacy of the Great Depression.. The Great Depression began in 1929, leading Wall Street bankers literally to throw themselves from windows. I was shown one such exit site on 45th Street 5th Avenue in Manhattan. Lives were destroyed as a favourable market collapsed. … Read more
Three Poems by Charles Baudelaire IV – L’ALBATROS Souvent, pour s’amuser, les hommes d’equipage Prennent des albatross, vates oiseaux des mers, Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage, Le navire glissent sur les gouffres amers. A peien les ont-ils deposes sur les planches, Que ces rois de l’azur, maladroit et honteux, Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes … Read more
What do I want from you? Why do I write this text? Is it because I want to share something, or because I was told to? In considering how ‘you’ will read it, (‘you’ hopefully being someone other than ‘me,’) I would like to share some things relating to the development of viewership and audience … Read more
I have a mild neurosis, situated in Utopian wish-fulfillment, of the ideal that I often step in a prelapsarian coppice with slats of warm-light breaking the gentle canopy and then filtering on down through the trees to come to a swirling perceptible rest and thus luxuriating golden on the forest floor. The morning fontanelle, in … Read more
Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost. Dante Alighieri Religion is an emotional need of mankind. The rationalist may not want it, but he has to admit that other people may… Let’s not leave out a single god! […] Let’s be … Read more
For Christmas two years ago, my mother bought me a copy of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People (2018). I tried to read it, I really did, but gave up after twenty pages. Looking back now, I can’t remember exactly what it was that turned me off it. I recall saying something along the lines of … Read more
Whenever I think about Literature I think about Love. Both are written with big Ls. The Elles. Like an enjambment of run on legs, going on ad infinitum. And when I think of Love I think also, inevitably, of betrayal. One cannot be without the other; the two legs upon which humanity stands. Only in … Read more
It is often said the current Irish housing crisis is mainly the result of a lack of supply of new houses; a supply that slowed down and never really fully recovered following the burst of the property bubble in 2008. Developers lament a lack of initiative in governments past and present; housing plans replace one … Read more