Culture

All Cassandras Parties

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In this benighted ‘Republic,’ spectral beggars haunt the streets of Dublin, soup kitchens multiply, and the sick lie in agony on hospital trolleys. The ‘booming’ economy is really a country where working people are known to live in cars, and some of the nation’s children bring toilet paper to school (no, it’s not Venezuela). The … Read more

The Firstborn

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_          I thought that I would read the beginning _                      Of the last gospel, but _                      The book fell open at The beginning of the first, my thoughts misdeeming _                      What I needed to write this poem, _          But the book satisfying them. _          My intention was to write about _                      A father and a … Read more

Gluttony, Gastronomy, and the Origins of ‘French’ Food

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As French President, François Mitterrand enjoyed his fair share of sumptuous feasts in the haute cuisine tradition. His enduring esteem reflects a wider French anxiety, in an era of Globalisation, expressed by Pascal Ory, as to whether French cuisine will be ‘all that remains when everything else has been forgotten?’[i] Thus, in 1996, for his … Read more

A Confederacy of Vegetables

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St. Helens University agronomy department was not the stuff of which headlines are made, but as a professor of horticultural science, he knew that his recent discovery, and the terrifying message he was entrusted to deliver, had to reach people with maximum impact. There was no time for academic papers. It had to be hammered … Read more

Musician of the Month – Paul Gilgunn

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Over the past year I developed a musical work reflecting the precarious times we are living through. This composition HERE WE ARE NOW is music for an ensemble of four electric guitars, bass, drums, percussion, and saxophonics. My aim was to produce art with radical import. As well as creating an engaging, innovative, and powerful … Read more

Cassandra Classics: ‘The Lottery’ (1948) by Shirley Jackson

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At Cassandra Voices we believe in contrasting the original work of our contemporary contributors with accomplished authors from yesteryear. Perennial favourites of such mastery, they appear as fresh and modern as the day they were first published. For our May edition we bring you Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’. A short story from 1948, and notorious … Read more

Artist of the Month – Jota Castro

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I feel Irish today, No decent future, maybe just money and a new distillery The new hotel to fuck my view in Dublin 8 is empty The enormous student residence is as windy as a Hong Kong typhoon. And empty like my pockets. How is it possible to live without depression in Dublin 8? Rents … Read more