Tag Archives: Ireland

“Something is gone and that’s why you write.” — Eamon Grennan

Posted on November 13, 2025 by sheila

“I have a double sense of things, but I tend to write about what’s under my nose. I write about here when I’m here and when I go back to Ireland I write about what’s there. I regard myself not … Continue reading →

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Fedelma Cullen: the greatest performance I’ve ever seen

Posted on October 23, 2025 by sheila

When I was a kid, and my family was in Ireland, my mother took me and 2 of my siblings to a production of A Doll’s House at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Dad stayed home with Siobhan, who was … Continue reading →

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“Name and name and name the obscure places, people, or events.” — Patrick Kavanagh

Posted on October 21, 2025 by sheila

Patrick Kavanagh, titanically angry Irish poet, was born on this day in 1904. He came of age during the Celtic Renaissance and he thought it was all a bunch of bullshit. That is not a direct quote. He was much … Continue reading →

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Today, the Sheila Variations turns 23.

Posted on October 18, 2025 by sheila

I don’t even know what to say. And now I will proceed to say some shit. The above pic of me – taken by Michael – graced the top of my original blog, when I set it up 23 years … Continue reading →

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“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” — Oscar Wilde

Posted on October 16, 2025 by sheila

It’s his birthday today. One of my heroes. His mother, Jane Speranza Francesca Wilde (aka Lady Wilde, aka “Speranza”) was an incredible woman, in the Irish literary history canon, and there before her son. (She has a cameo in a … Continue reading →

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“You cannot write and answer the phone.” — Paul Durcan

Posted on October 16, 2025 by sheila

Today is his birthday. I love him. He died in May of this year. Paul Durcan’s poems are chatty, observant, scathing, often very funny. He uses long humorous titles: “The Divorce Referendum, Ireland, 1986”, or “Irish Hierarchy Bans Colour Photography”. … Continue reading →

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“Where am I coming from? Where am I going? A fusillade of question marks.” — Ciarán Carson

Posted on October 9, 2025 by sheila

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 →

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“[At Swim-Two-Birds is] just the book to give to your sister, if she is a dirty, boozey girl.” – Dylan Thomas on Flann O’Brien’s masterpiece

Posted on October 5, 2025 by sheila

When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put … Continue reading →

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“Our humour is armour… a shield used to deflect doom and gloom.” — John Lynch on Irish-ness

Posted on September 25, 2025 by sheila

It’s the birthday of the fine Irish actor John Lynch. He hails from Northern Island (County Armagh), and made a very striking debut in Cal, based on the novel by Bernard MacLaverty, a novel of “the Troubles”. Lynch plays a … Continue reading →

Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day | Tagged | 10 Comments

“I couldn’t accept the possibility that the life of the woman would not, or could not, be named in the poetry of my own nation.” — Eavan Boland

Posted on September 24, 2025 by sheila

“I began to know that I had to bring the poem I’d learned to write near to the life I was starting to live. And that if anything had to yield in that process, it was the poem not the … Continue reading →

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