Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Coasting
A Reader from ‘Archipelago’, a review celebrating wild Britain and Ireland
Cometh the Day
The case for the union, and the case for respecting law and democracy
Tell us a Story
The pursuit of fictive pleasure: on not getting Fernando Pessoa
Station of the Cross
Irish television: a dangerous medium is launched in a Catholic country
The Smartest Boy
The moral failings and deep hypocrisy of an unusually able Taoiseach
Virtue Unrewarded
Jonathan Franzen’s America is a place of insecurity and confusion.
Sweating the Asset
The rise of private monopolies in the wake of the Thatcher ‘revolution’
The Road to Justice
The long fight for recognition of the Magdalene laundries survivors
Longing for Flight
Time on our hands: the locked-down poet raids memories of past travel
How much is enough?
Is a chapbook more likely to work as an organic whole than a full collection?
In That Dawn
The carefree days before Belfast became the capital of the Troubles
Vibrating Still
A poem where language is put behind bars and called upon to account for itself