Tag Archives: John Montague

“I was going upstream, against the current. I was coming from the North before the North had broken”. — Northern Irish poet John Montague

It’s his birthday today. John Montague has great sentimental value to me. He was one of my father’s favorite poets. I remember being at home – some years ago, it had to be pre-covid (sob) – and Mum pulled out … Continue reading

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“Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.” — Irish poet Austin Clarke

“He cleared a non-Yeatsian space in which an Irish poet might build a confident poetry in English for which the term ‘Anglo-Irish’ is meaningless.” – Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets Austin Clarke was born in Dublin on this day … Continue reading

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“Is there any virtue, for literature, for poetry, in the simple continuity of a tradition? I believe there is not.” — Irish poet Thomas Kinsella

The Dolmen Press, operated out of Dublin, was founded in 1951 by Liam Miller, and played a crucial part in the development of Irish poetry in the mid-20th century. It was a strictly nationalist operation; before The Dolmen Press, poets … Continue reading

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Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people

A couple years ago, my father told me to read this poem. It was one of his favorites. Like Dolmens Round My Childhood, The Old People by John Montague Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people. Jamie MacCrystal sang … Continue reading

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Books I bought online in a fugue state on December 29

They are all arriving now, and it feels, already, like visitations from a ghost of the long-distant past. — The letters of Maud Gonne and WB Yeats — Maud Gonne’s autobiography — Shane Leslie’s memoirs — Conor Cruise O’Brien’s memoirs … Continue reading

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Like Dolmens

In honor of National Poetry Month – and in honor of my father, who told me to read this poem, here is: Like Dolmens Round My Childhood, The Old People by John Montague Like dolmens round my childhood, the old … Continue reading

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