Most Irish people could not imagine what links their country with Colombia, or even the extent to which their electricity is still comes from coal into the 21st century. But the Electricity Supply Board (ESB), and therefore Ireland as a whole, is complicit in human rights violations, as well as ongoing air and water pollution … Read more
In this second article Lorcan Mac Mathuna discusses his An Bhuatais & The Meaning of Life a book and CD collection of contemplative songs and essays. Lorcan Mac Mathuna's An Bhuatais & The Meaning of Life draws on the exquisite portrayal of drama and character archetype in ancient Irish mythology.https://t.co/T1Uzo3FZJH@broadsheet_ie @IlsaCarter1 @wadeinthewate11 @Andrea_Rey48 @diarmuidlyng — … Read more
Al-Quds (‘the holy sanctuary’), Jerusalem is the red line for the Palestinian people, the wider diaspora and the Arab collective. It is the capital of Palestine and home to the third holiest shrine in Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Muslims believe Muhammad was transported from the Great Mosque in Mecca to Al-Aqsa during the Night Journey. … Read more
I have nothing to say, and I am saying it. And that is poetry. As I needed it. John Cage ‘Nothing to do, nowhere to be?’ This is the space where the best stuff – the best musical stuff – shows its face, ugly, beautiful or otherwise. At first glance, this appears quite simple but … Read more
In the morning before waking, I dream of vast empty plains of flatland and red undulating weather systems in the far distance. It is a dream I have often which leads me to wake with a nameless anxiety, and while the images quickly dissipate like dreams do, the nervousness persists. It is before dawn and … Read more
Unlike Bob Dylan who is still actively making music, Leonard Cohen has not released a new song from beyond the grave. Cohen is dead. Of course he was from an older generation than Dylan. If Dylan represents the Baby Boomers then the Canadian national poet and songster represents the preceding Beat or Beatnik generation of … Read more
I’ve never needed a reason to write a song. There have never been any conscious considerations of failure or success during the process. If anything, I can say that what I discover through writing is that there are endless landscapes of discovery. This feeling has not changed in the eleven years I’ve been writing and … Read more
We’ve lost Fionn and his Fianna, the stories that were told for hundreds, thousands of generations by firesides in Ireland and Scotland. Our language gone from us, and with it these science-fiction-like stories have drained away. The stories of the poets and hunters and warriors may, it seems to me, have been part of a … Read more
This drastic, clean-cut deprivation and our complete ignorance of what the future held in store, had taken us unawares; we were unable to react against the mute appeal of presences, still so clear and already so far, which haunted us daylong … The plague forced inactivity on them, limiting their movements to the same dull … Read more
Today it is shameful to be unemployed and regarded as an achievement to sell oneself into part-time slavery, meekly accepting as natural that one is not free for half one’s waking hours. Theodore Zeldin, The Hidden Pleasures of Life – A New Way of Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future (2015). With an Irish … Read more