Book Review: Embassytown, China Miéville (Pan MacMillan) and Wittgenstein’s Antiphilosophy, Alain Badiou (Verso)
Words are a funny old kettle of fish and good sci fi has always been alert to this. In Heinlein’s novel The Whipping Star, what engages the reader’s attention throughout is the difficulty the central character has in communicating with Fannie [...]

Book Review: New Finnish Grammar,  Diego Marani  (Dedalus Books)

A man is found battered and close to death on the quayside in Trieste during World War II. His identity is unknown and the man himself has completely lost his memory. Who he is and why he was so violently attacked remains unknown.  Is he Sampo Karjalainen, [...]

What do you get after mixing shining stars of the independent cinema, the Irish Film Bord, Huston School of Film & Digital Media, BFCE Irish School of Animation and the Film School in Lodz? A dynamo playground for filmmakers.Play Poland - Irish/Polish Film Project is a unique festival celebrating independent Irish and Polish film art. [...]

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, [...]

With due observance to prudence, justice, and charity*…
Of course
we all stand together
whenever our nation
is threatened.

“Tiocfaidh ár lá!”

And we all stand together
whenever our pockets
are threatened.

Thou Art Weighed in the Balances…
This is the story of a bunny—
add batteries and watch him go
in every unforeseen direction.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
—

Someone whispers on my shoulder.
Angel? Devil? I don’t know.
Signs and wonders? Choices, choices!
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

—

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock, edited by Slavoj Žižek (Verso)
Hitchcock, piece by piece, by Laurent Bouzereau (Abrams)
Alfred Hitchcock Masters of the Cinema, by Krohn (Phaidon)
Hitchcock 14-Disc Box Set (Universal Pcitures)

Like a biro that leaks into a valued item of dress, some things [...]

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 [...]

Westland Row
The birthplace of the playwright and essayist Oscar Wilde, Westland Row is now, as you can see, much grubbier than it was in Bloom’s time, both graffitoed and vandalized. Built in 1776 by Jacob Epstein, it now appears to be the permanent home of unkempt students from Trinity College who congregate in indolent [...]

“What distinguishes The Wire most of all, however, setting it apart even from other high quality HBO productions, is that it is driven by a coherent worldview, by a social and historical analysis. The series signals the return of the grand narrative to the TV screen, but at a level of complexity and nuance never [...]