Five miles outside the County Mayo town of Westport, a conically-shaped mountain looms over the surrounding countryside. This is Croagh Patrick. It’s 2,500 feet high. It’s a place of ancient history. It’s associated with Ireland’s patron saint and on a rainy day this June, I was determined to climb it. The rain was lashing from the heavens when I began my ascent. The summit … [Read more...] about The Pain and the Pleasure
August September 2016 Issue
Sláinte! The Doors of Dublin
The story behind the Georgian houses in Dublin City and why no two adjacent doors are alike. Mention the word “doors” to someone of the Boomer Generation (me, for instance) and the first free association response could easily be The Doors, that late 1960s music trio featuring Irish American lead singer Jim Morrison, whose iconic song “Light My Fire” earned the group a … [Read more...] about Sláinte! The Doors of Dublin
The Touch of The Poet
Five years ago this summer, a dream came true – but not quite the way the daydreamer envisioned it might. A decade earlier, I approached the poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, proposing a magazine profile of him and requesting an interview in Dublin. An enthusiastic admirer of his work, I’d just published an assessment of his translation of Beowulf – “a cross-cultural … [Read more...] about The Touch of The Poet
Review of Books
Books of Irish and Irish American interest. ℘℘℘ FICTION Pond By Claire-Louise Bennett English writer Claire-Louise Bennett’s debut novel Pond is a through-the-looking-glass experience of the human psyche in its most cloistered state, where the commonplace is ignited into something far brighter and stranger. Some time after an academia-induced breakdown, an anonymous young … [Read more...] about Review of Books
Those We Lost
Leland Bardwell 1922 – 2016 Leland Bardwell, an Irish poet and novelist, died in June at the age of 94. She had a prolific literary career that spanned over five decades. Bardwell’s first collection of poetry, The Mad Cyclist, was published by the New Writer’s Press in 1970. In 1975, she co-founded the literary journal Cyphers and later helped establish the Irish Writer’s … [Read more...] about Those We Lost