Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Reading”
by BERNARD O’DONOGHUE 1986 was a dramatic year in the history of anthologies of Irish poetry in English. There were several well-regarded anthologies already, by Donagh MacDonagh and Lennox Robinson (Oxford), by Derek Mahon and Peter Fallon (Pan), by John Montague (Faber) and Brendan Kennelly (Penguin). But two of these four publishers produced new anthologies in 1986, each of them …
By ANTON THOMPSON-MCCORMICK There was no point trying to be calm the night I first crossed paths with Lyra McKee. It was February 2019, and here we were in a former Pentecostal Church in central London to celebrate Anna Burns becoming Northern Ireland’s first winner of the Man Booker Prize, for Milkman. It was Burns’ first big post-Booker event and …
By ANDREW MCGUINNESS Samuel Beckett raps hard at my house. I hear him, but can’t see through the glassy eyes of the door. A package juts half-in, half-out of the mouth of it, poking fun through the letterbox like a rascally, white-furred tongue. My wife slips a fresh pair of surgical gloves on, sprays the surface with disinfectant, wipes it …
By DOROTHY ALLEN The last time I was in isolation, I had the whooping cough. I must have been aged eight or nine, in Sister Consilio’s class and laid up for so long in April, May, June, I was worried I wouldn’t be “promoted” come July. The first weeks are a blur of coughing, whooping, tossing and turning in a …
