“I’m leaving.” “Oh?” “Yes. I’m moving on. Been puttin’it off, but gotta go today.” “Baggage ready?” “Gonna do that now because it’s getting late.” “Why don’t I pack you a tuna fish sandwich, just in case?” “Yep. Good idea.” In the bedroom, I flung the doors of all three floor-to-ceiling closets open wide, which were … Read more
Poetry editor Edward Clarke selects poems from Paul Curran, Billy O Hanluain, Haley Hodges Schmid, Ned Denny and his own work to mark Holy Week. A corona Sonnet With no less haste than the crisis deserves, All faces one mask of consternation, We’ve learnt, through conversing in spikes and curves, This virus respects no … Read more
Master of children’s small fingers & of the indestructible hair of girls & of the transparent shields of the gendarmes – today I saw videos of children with broken heads & fingers broken, I saw girls dragged by their shiny & indestructible hair by gendarmes with shields transparent as your indestructible light, I saw indestructible … Read more
We’re living in a time where musical forms and styles are fusing more than ever. However, this is an ancient process that has been happening ever since humans have sang, travelled, and interacted with each other. People have always moved around the world with their songs, dances, instruments, and thus, the music evolves. With technology, … Read more
I have been to four of Bob Dylan’s concerts in various places around the world, and bar one where Ronnie Wood lightened the misery in Kilkenny, they were uniformly awful. He persists in reinterpreting and mangling his great songs, and hardly engages with the audience. It begs the question: why does he persist with the … Read more
Sucked in by day-to-day dramas, or absorbed by the most closely studied pandemic in the history of medicine, the mental space to muse idly is severely circumscribed. But we may find a portal, removed from the daily thud of mortality lists and the slow grind of lockdowns, to raise the spirit. Art is more important … Read more
Sé Merry Doyle’s 2001 documentary film, ‘Alive Alive O – A Requiem For Dublin’ chronicles the lives of Dublin Street Traders. Their patron saint ‘Molly Molone’ became the inspiration for Dublin’s unofficial anthem, ‘Cockles and Mussels, Alive Alive O’. The final stanza remains poignant in our troubled times: She died of a fever, And no … Read more
Prescription: Isolation No man is an island? Go to your room. Sweat for three days through your clothes, and gaze at the sky idling through its wardrobe. Wait, while species-wide delirium registers tremors in the earth’s heart. Dream, with Ravel, of the radio’s skirling fantasies, one ear awake to the bells tolling over Italy. Angels … Read more
In association with The Loopline Collection, we are introducing a free documentary film every week during this period of social isolation for you to enjoy. For this St. Patrick’s night we bring you Sé Merry Doyle’s intimate portrait of the poet Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967): ‘Patrick Kavanagh – No Man’s Fool’. Kavanagh’s best-known works include the … Read more