The groups Nun Attax, Five Go Down To The Sea? and Beethoven were formed around the musical partnership of singer Finbarr Donnelly and guitarist Ricky Dineen. All three groups have received considerable coverage in the past decade with the radio documentary/podcast ‘Get That Monster Off The Stage’ and Mark McAvoy’s ‘Cork Rock’ book.
Much of this [...]

Luca Artioli, Andrea Garbin, Fabio Barcellandi and their translator Dave Lordan will be reading in venues across Ireland as part of a national tour to promote the book Poethree-New Italian Voices (Thauma Edizioni, 2011).
Sat 18th 3.30pm Dublin
…Poetry in Process Conference
Discussion and reading at Mater Dei College,
Mon 20th Dublin
The Glor Sessions
International bar

9pm
Thursday 23 June, [...]

Song for the Minister of Education
…underneath them is swirling confusion
Financial Times 5th oct 2010
a hole a hole a whirlin hole,
frame for you, darkhaloing all
frame for you, darkhaloing all
a hole a hole a whirlin hole,
Ah Minister!
Hierarchical propagator!
Great Tamer of natural wildness!
Play us again
your hymn about targets,
your chant about measures,
your hum about grades and performance
and pluck us [...]

Book Review: Riotous Assemblies: Rebels, Riots and Revolts in Ireland, Edited by William Sheehan & Maura Cronin, Mercier 2011
Riots get a bad press.
After the rubble is removed, rioters tend not to have a press office established to spin their take on events. But it’s not principally this lack of media savvy that means their narrative [...]

HEROIC FIGURE, FROM “HEIMAT”

But where’s the New Jerusalem I remember,
alternatives once sought and then rejected
for another term of college in September?
And where’s the hope, now vaguely recollected,
for something to emerge from history,
a savior, just so long as it wasn’t me?
Where’s the activist who would create
a city that I don’t quite recognize,
but sense beneath the scaffold [...]

1) The fawning and fluttering of the rulers and chatterers of These Island’s over the Queen’s ‘apology’ AS IF SHE WERE SINCERE and AS IF SHE WROTE IT HERSELF shows their amazing capacity to suspend their disbelief as long as they are allowed to be part of the pageant themselves. The Irish ruling class are [...]

Irish Left Review has heard with regret of the death of poet, playwright and memoirist Patrick Galvin who died last night. He is survived by his wife Mary Johnston and his five children. Born in Cork in 1927, Galvin was the author of numerous plays and seven volumes of poetry. A selection of his work [...]

The death of Rachel Peavoy in Shangan Flats, Dublin, on the night of January 10th 2011, a bitterly cold night in the coldest winter in living memory, stands in so many ways as a metaphor for Ireland itself. She died, according to the pathologist, of hypothermia. There is no avoiding that judgement. According to her [...]

Salmon Poetry would like to invite you to the launch of new collections by Gabriel Fitzmaurice, John McKeown, Stephen Murray & William Wall.
The launch will be in the Irish Writers’ Centre, Friday 13th May, at 7pm.

Click here to read more about the new collections.
In addition, further details of each of these titles can be found [...]