It’s a little bit of dark, a little bit of chaos, a lot of imagination, and a stick to shake at the arriving winter. Dwell in the dark, take refuge in the symbols, there is energy and density in the bulbous, the twisted, the animal, and the shadow. The first set of black and white…
Spring Fishing Am I in a trap? Did I build it myself? The punt bobs on the waves between Broochen and the point of Fournaugh This is no weather for fishing; no weather for anything bar the Seat next to the Stanley and the kettle hissing for tea And the steam of decades sunk in…
There’s little to match the potential incrimination of video footage. A camera sensor cannot lie; it offers a view so much more objective than the darts of our biased theorizing eyes as they read scenes and situations by projecting out a lifetime of fears and expectations. The camera is a grid of light-sensitive pixels that…
It is the last race of the road season for me, but I don’t know it. I don’t know it until halfway through stage 2 when the bunch is going down a straight descent into Dungarvin. A rider comes down somewhere in front on the left, and a dominoes game of falling cyclists begins. Given…
A big blue tent, in a grassy field, between a cathedral and the River Corrib, July 2015. The Little Green Cars open for St Vincent’s Digital Witness, the feature preeesentation. For a change it’s not raining, though it’s not exactly balmy. Good enough! On with the gig, and better than good enough. You know it’s…
Kennedy’s Bar, Galway, July 2015, during the Galway Arts Festival. But this isn’t the official Arts Festival. This is the low budget tagalong sibling, raised on handmedowns and shorn of ‘big’ names: the Galway Fringe Festival. Smaller venues, smaller fuss, more variety: trade your big top tent and big-rig logistics for a dark backbar stage…
When I lived out in the village near the mountains I would go hiking by the swift river, over the soft bogs, and up the rocky slopes, weather and work permitting. I got to know the most popular routes and the ways onto and off them, and some of these ways on and off crossed…
June 23rd: with little to no rain and generally no wind, conditions were perfect for this year’s National Rubbish Burning Night. Despite a downturn in the tradition over recent years, there was still a large turnout all over the country, particularly in smaller communities where specimen rubbish items tend to be hoarded away in old…
Máméan, Pass of the Birds According to legend, St. Patrick blessed Connemara from a well at the top of the pass, and slept there (“Leaba Padraic”=”Patrick’s bed”), though to my limited knowledge there was stuff going on there before that too. There is now a little chapel next to the well and mounds of stones…
The Glann road follows the western edge of Lough Corrib from Oughterard towards Maam, ending close to the foothills of the Maamturk mountains. The lake narrows towards its Northwestern corner, with peninsulas like the Hill of Doon coming within a few hundred metres of the opposite shore. The Ends of Glann A stonestrewn shore below…
Daffodils rising, raising yellow heads to bob in March winds. Driving from Aberdeen across a Scottish Motorway, Over the Irish sea in the belly of a ferry South from Belfast and west from Dublin West to Galway City and beyond, Until the road narrows to to an end by the lake Where grass still grows…
A driver in South Dublin was still in shock today following a narrow escape with a speeding bicycle. While returning from work yesterday evening, Mr. David Gilroy was involved in a collision with an unmarked bicycle, which caused severe upset and further lateness to an already delayed schedule. Witnesses to the event reported a bicycle…
First song in a while. Don’t have time but couldn’t help myself. It feels like familiar territory, but something is new. A lot of the time I am retreading old ground anyway, looking to maybe strip away another layer of the onion and get something more real from the looking. I guess it does a…
W.B. Yeats visited a public school in Waterford in 1926, and there, as an ageing man among the young children, his mind wanders, first to Maud Gonne, to youth, and in an unexpected way, to something universal and beautiful: Among School Children How can we know the dancer from the dance? The poem is an…
Symphony for the Restless: Let the Night in, let the night out It moves slowly, eerily, growing from a small blob to the right of the cathedral, into a more distinct giant head as it crosses the Salmon Weir bridge. With hollering and boom, behind the brassy siren of a high-perched saxophone, under a darkening…
Act Dance Sing is a dance academy in Galway. This year the group got together for their annual summer show ‘Stars on the Rise’ in Leisureland, Salthill
The Mistake (a very short story) Wasn’t like the daydreams at all. They chased me up Taylor’s street and left down St. Kilda’s Avenue and over the grassy wall into Finny Park where the trees were just beginning to leaf and for a change nobody was walking a dog. I had my heavy work shoes…
The smallest thing; flap of a finch’s wing Dart of a blackbird’s eye Rising of spring from buried roots with a cry Strange to be here again Late, behind schedule, delayed, out of time, Yet back at the beginning, where we met Busy but immobile The beat of your long-absent feathers Only memory’s furrows to…
Dr Malthus and Dr Richards were very excited about something. They leaned over each other to get a better look at the microscope. The film crew, squashed along the other side of the capsule, paid them no attention. They had already broken through several ceilings of boredom. At first, the jerking motion of the T79ix2…
An artist regrets having never committed Streets outside the curtains Draw me back A bad sketch of a hollow tune Hums above the others in the room For her, my vacant ruin. Waking in a strange old bed can be lonely Is this where all those veining streets lead? I might have said: my one,…