Categories
Archives
-
Recent Posts
- “All my work is about uncovering, especially uncovering of voices that speak without governance, or that speak without being heard.” — Seamus Deane
- “If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks.” – Happy Birthday, Brendan Behan
- How it’s going
- For James Dean’s Birthday
- The First Glimpse of The Guy Who Started It All
- “Since we do float on an unknown sea I think we should examine the other floating things that come our way very carefully.” — poet Elizabeth Bishop
- “The only people who ever called me a rebel were people who wanted me to do what they wanted.” — Nick Nolte
- Reviews: Suze (2025)
- “Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.” — Charles Dickens
- “For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth…” — Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine
Recent Comments
- Gemstone on How it’s going
- Mike Molloy on “All my work is about uncovering, especially uncovering of voices that speak without governance, or that speak without being heard.” — Seamus Deane
- Tom on How it’s going
- Melissa Sutherland on “Since we do float on an unknown sea I think we should examine the other floating things that come our way very carefully.” — poet Elizabeth Bishop
- Mike Molloy on “If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks.” – Happy Birthday, Brendan Behan
- sheila on “The only people who ever called me a rebel were people who wanted me to do what they wanted.” — Nick Nolte
- Roger O Green on February 3, 1959: The Day the Music Died
- Maddy on “The only people who ever called me a rebel were people who wanted me to do what they wanted.” — Nick Nolte
- sheila on December 2024 Viewing Diary
- Todd Restler on December 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on February 3, 1959: The Day the Music Died
- sheila on December 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on January 2025 Viewing Diary
- Kelly C Sedinger on February 3, 1959: The Day the Music Died
- Bill on All That Jazz: Remembering and Loving Erzebet Foldi
- Johnny on December 2024 Viewing Diary
- Todd Restler on January 2025 Viewing Diary
- sheila on “Since the beginning, I’ve said, ‘I’m not going to get involved with my image.’” – Charlotte Rampling
- sheila on “Since the beginning, I’ve said, ‘I’m not going to get involved with my image.’” – Charlotte Rampling
- sheila on “Often I pretended to a cameraman to know less than I did. That way I got more cooperation.” — Ida Lupino
-
Tag Archives: Belfast
“What’s the difference between an exile and an expatriate? It seems to me that an Englishman in France is an expat, but an Irishman is an exile.” — Derek Mahon
“When growing up, my bunch of friends would have thought of ourselves as anti-unionist because we were anti-establishment. We would have been vaguely all-Ireland republican socialists. But then, when theory turned into practice, we had to decide where we stood … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Belfast, Derek Mahon, Ireland, Irish poetry, poetry, Seamus Heaney
5 Comments
“Where am I coming from? Where am I going? A fusillade of question marks.” — Ciarán Carson
It’s Ciarán Carson’s birthday today. He died in 2019. Paul Muldoon’s name invariably comes up when Carson is mentioned (post about Muldoon here). They share similarities (Northern Irish settings/concerns, long chatty lines, postmodern accumulation of detail, the use of humor, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Belfast, Ireland, Irish poetry, poetry, The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry
6 Comments
“Poetry in my opinion must be honest before anything else and I refuse to be ‘objective’ or clear-cut at the cost of honesty.” — Louis MacNeice
“Self-assertion more often than not is vulgar, but a live and vulgar dog who keeps on barking is better than a dead lion, however dignified.” — Louis MacNeice Born in Belfast on this day in 1907, Louis MacNeice went to … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Belfast, Elizabeth Bishop, Hugh MacDiarmid, Ireland, Irish poetry, Louis MacNeice, Michael Schmidt, poetry, W.H. Auden
Leave a comment
“I like myself poems that are gentle rather than arrogant intellectually. Where language fades into cries or whispers.” — Medbh McGuckian
“Hate those two words together, they are so unwomanly and unpoetic together they cancel each other out. ‘Poet’ I don’t like or ‘woman’ or ‘man’ none of these words although I have had to use them. ‘Female’ not much better. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Belfast, Ireland, Irish poetry, poetry, Seamus Heaney
2 Comments
“I write out of a jumble of emotions and vague notions and scraps of knowledge. At some stage a form or, rather, a shape mysteriously emerges.” — Michael Longley
Poet Michael Longley was born on this day in Belfast in 1935. He is still going strong. He went to Trinity where he studied classics. Much of his poetry shows a classical influence, with references to the ancient Greek and … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Belfast, Eavan Boland, Ireland, Irish poetry, poetry
4 Comments
“I like variety in poetry. I love how it comes in so many guises. As rock lyric, as rap, as note on a fridge.” — Paul Muldoon
“I’m very much against expressing a categorical view of the world. I hope I can continue to discover something, and not to underline or bolster up what I already know.” – Paul Muldoon It’s his birthday today. Like Seamus Heaney … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Belfast, Ireland, Irish poetry, Michael Schmidt, Paul Muldoon, poetry, Seamus Heaney
2 Comments
“I wanted to deliver a work that could be read universally as the-thing-in-itself but that would also sustain those extensions of meaning that our disastrously complicated local predicament made both urgent and desirable.” — Seamus Heaney
It’s his birthday today. Jean and I went to visit Siobhan in Ireland. Siobhan was in school, so while she was in classes Jean and I rented a car and drove across the country to Galway, and other Western points. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, Personal, writers
Tagged Belfast, Ireland, Irish poetry, poetry, Seamus Heaney
4 Comments
“Here’s to better times ahead and saying goodbye to bombs and bullets once and for all.” — Lyra McKee
Born on this day, investigative journalist Lyra McKee was shot and killed in Derry in 2019, during a standoff between police officers and dissident republicans. She was there as a journalist, covering the events. A masked person fired a shot … Continue reading
Photo of the Day: Graffiti on another level
In the mid-2000s, I went to Ireland. I bummed around in the Republic and then took the train north to visit my friend Carrie and her husband Anthony. They lived in Belfast, in the Catholic neighborhood always in the news … Continue reading
2020 Books Read
What a year, huh. What a dumpster-fire year. I read a lot, mostly in the mornings, and it helped create rituals for the days, which often seemed endlessly the same, interchangeable. I read a lot of long and challenging books … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Austria, ballet, Ballets Russes, Belfast, Biography, books read, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Czeslaw Milosz, dance, Dubravka Ugrešić, Elinor Lipman, Elizabeth Bishop, Eminem, essays, Ezra Pound, fiction, H.D., Hannah Arendt, Hitler, Ireland, Jane Austen, Jean Arthur, Marcel Proust, Nick Tosches, nonfiction, Olivia Laing, poetry, Poland, politics, Rebecca West, Robert Kaplan, Roman empire, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shirley Jackson, Stalin, true crime, Ukraine, war, WWII, Yugoslavia
38 Comments