Words from Ireland

He styles her Blessed, Beloved, straddles her to feel her exquisite torque; when she won’t turn over he wheedles in tones a spinster might use on a cat: ‘Whisha, come on, girl, be good now.’ She thrums to life...

It’s the air that hits, immediately you step through the door. The throat gags, just like the last time, and the first time. It refuses the tepid disinfected atmosphere on which floats a spoor...

we climb up to fog where the Plain of Lombardy is not plain they are talking about sleet it sounds like the end of everything the station clock is haunted by Benito Mussolini the time is 1922 but we’re not going to Roma Termini no...

I have to say I was sworn to secrecy of course, my boss insisted on that. So that makes it, to say the least, difficult maybe even impossible for me to be totally...

  Introduction A poet, short-story writer and novelist with many books and collections to her name, Mary O’Donnell is in the enviable position of having the respect and admiration of the contemporary Irish literary community as...

Introduction for Angela Carr’s poems I first saw Angela Carr perform some of her poems at a Stinging Fly launch in the Irish Writers Centre last year. Her performance and her words held the audience...

Introduction Here at the Irish Writers Centre, we are always looking for new ways of supporting writers in their work. In my role as director, I hear time and again that there are certain things...

Introduction A grey-haired plastic-bag-carrying intellectual wanderer invites himself to stay in a faded country mansion where bohemians Bartholomew and Bella live in elegant dilapidation. They dine on fish and on a diet of homemade dandelion...

Founded in 1991, the Irish Writers’ Centre is the national resource centre for Irish literature.  Our mission is to support and promote writers at all stages of their development, however we welcome all those...

Introduction It is with great pleasure to introduce Brendan Mac Evilly in this issue of Inkroci and to feature an extract of his story “Chauncey” – a Dublin story if ever there was one.  We...