2019February

Brazil’s Struggle for Life is a Global Concern

The year began darkly in Brazil. On January 1st, 2019, Jair Messias Bolsonaro was sworn in as President of the largest and richest nation in South America. In his inauguration speech, Bolsonaro stressed his commitment to liberate Brazil, ‘from socialism, inverted values, the bloated state and political correctness’, and called for ‘Brazil above everything, and … Read more

Confronting ‘the Russia in Ourselves’

The Russian bear looms in the English-speaking imagination as savage and barbaric, but with a native cunning in need of taming. Throughout the nineteenth century British imperialists looked on their seemingly ursine counterparts with a mixture of dread and superiority. William Makepeace Thackery’s poem ‘The Legend Of St. Sophia Of Kioff’ (1855) contains a typical … Read more

A Monk Manqué II: Thaura Mornton

Back to love and sex. Liking is preferable to loving – and less conducive to heartache. Youth is oblivious to that boring truth. The unbiddable first love of my life lived in Terenure, Dublin, a half a mile away from me and I called her Thaura Mornton. We were equally devoted to amateur theatricals. She … Read more

Kaleida’s Vesper Wood on her First Solo Album ‘Instar’

C.V.: Your album is entitled ‘Instar’, meaning ‘a phase between two periods of moulting’, which might indicate that you are at a vulnerable stage in your personal life. Can you explain a little about this? C.W.: I chose the title less to mean vulnerable, and more to indicate growth and transformation…and the process of presenting … Read more

Fintan O’Toole’s Brexit Myopia

As a freshly UK-embedded Irish barrister I am adjusting from confronting Ireland’s problems to addressing those of my new home. Worlds’apart, in a global village. In terms of Brexit, as far as the Irish media is concerned the Backstop, and a recrudescence of the ‘Irish Question’, is the only story, but from my perspective the … Read more

How Irish Propaganda Operates III – the Inversion of the Food Pyramid

How Irish Propaganda Operates Part I (HIPO I) identifies an ‘essential constituency’ of farmers, which offer an overwhelmingly preponderance of their support to representatives of the political duopoly in rural constituencies. Upsetting this cohort frays a brittle alliance maintaining the dominant consensus of steady economic growth, and rising rents. As a result the media and … Read more

Double Take

In 1973, my first time here, I’d stood in wonder with my head strained back As dizzily I’d tried to see how high The buildings had to reach to scrape the sky, Then lowered my gaze just like a steeplejack, Who staring straight ahead finds nothing sheer. Instead now I’m a resident who knows To … Read more

Numb

Dublin, October 1992. Well he hugged me and he said that it was time for a change. We need to get closer to nature, to believe in hope and he started saying things about the harvest and… Where was he this time? South Africa. It seems that he spent an afternoon in Mandela’s farm and … Read more

Stayers’ Hurdle

His eyes squint as the 6am light reflects off the plastic bags, cans and crisp packets of the Grand Canal. Portobello has never looked so good, as his legs struggle up the incline away from the city. The sound of the water makes him suddenly acutely aware of the thirst in his mouth, the remnants … Read more

Sic Transit Gloria

I learned to drive in a field when I was five, from the same grandfather who taught me how to ride a horse and chew tobacco. At age ten, I took my other grandfather’s El Camino out on Highway 1, the longest road in Louisiana, from church camp all the way to vacation bible school. … Read more

Artist of the Month – Ruth Lyons

Salarium 230 million BCE – Ongoing – We are salted by the salt of this palace The Zechstein Sea is an ancient body of salt water, now existing as a geological seam of salt extending across Northern Europe from Ireland to Russia. As the seam progresses eastwards and deepens into what was a body of … Read more

Cassandra Voices
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