From In The Museums
in the money museum
they have the skeleton
of a fund manager
his joints are wired
like nature
he articulates perfectly
above our heads
he swings
like a fiscal acrobat
over the banks
of carefully conserved
legal tender
folding money
& plastic money
& specie
but at night he weeps
the pity of it
tender rain
on the glass screens
his weird sobbing
his bones tinkling
the derivatives he cries
the private equity
the toxic [...]

Risteard O’Dohmnaill’s film The Pipe encapsulates the balance of power in this shambolic republic - on the one hand the not inconsiderable determination and strength both personal and communal of ordinary people, and on the other the massive force of the state as expressed by the police, the judiciary, the army, the navy, the transnational [...]

The property developer’s wet dream
I dreamed I was
driving a kompressor
through amberley
ashley
hazeldene
kenley
berkeley
willowmere
castletreasure
bellevue
heather lawn
heather crescent
ashley mount
hunter’s way
kingsway
welwyn way
the paddocks
hazelmere close
wyndham close
ashley close
oh
brierly
kensington downs
endsleigh

Armageddon Sunday morning
& to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges
King James Version, Revelation, 2.12
I dream of the collapse
of everything we hold dear
probably on a Sunday morning
things will just stop

the last man will walk
the suburbs
on feet of brass
& will be defeated

Book Review: Giovanni Arrighi’s Adam Smith In Beijing (Verso: 2008)
Giovanni Arrighi argues convincingly (in Adam Smith In Beijing) that we are seeing the end of the most rapacious social and economic system the world has ever known. What he calls ‘destructive capitalism’ is, he argues, a peculiarly Western form of accumulation that has almost destroyed [...]

I recently posted a satirical response to An Taoiseach’s call for poets to do the state some service, and I would now like to return to the question in a more direct way. The call was widely reported because it coincided with the installation of Harry Clifton as Ireland Professor of Poetry, most notably it [...]

Wall supports Brand Ireland
Following on recent calls by An Taoiseach Brian Cowen and journalist Enda O’Doherty for Irish writers to ‘do the state some service’ (and leaving aside the fact that the first man to use the expression [see footnote] committed suicide immediately afterwards), I want to say: Good Taoiseach (as Joe Higgins used to [...]

José Saramago 1922 - 2010
One of the many startling things about José Saramago was that he was an overtly political writer in a literary world in which being political does not pay. Remarkably, at the age of 85 he began a highly controversial blog and these occasional pieces, collected in The Notebook (Verso, 2010) - [...]

I return again, like a dog to a buried bone, to the subject of the Grey Party (sorry Green Party). I took the opportunity, recently, of republishing their 2007 manifesto lest it be forgotten, and among its declarations was the Grey Party’s determination to:
‘Ensure the delivery of 10,000 social and affordable housing units a year [...]

At this time of hardship, unemployment, emigration and even negative equity, the Greys have secured a famous victory and guaranteed their place in history. Last night, in a nail-biting near-finale they and their coalition partner FF The Corruption Party forced through a vitally important Bill to save Ireland from the terrible fate of Stag Hunting. [...]