Soccer Guy nails it. 🇺🇸

‘In line with economic success, Irish self-confidence and self-belief has soared. A united Ireland might be a leap in the dark, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.’ Patrick Cockburn on the case for Irish reunification. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Now this is poetry. youtu.be/zprRZ2wFQD4?...

I've been reading a number of poetry magazines lately. What strikes me is how dull most of them are. There is a terrible sameness to them. I think they are a very good illustration of what Don Paterson was getting at when he said these day publishers place more importance on identity than talent.

I was in Clones recently and was surprised to see the ground was still named after him.

Summer has come to Rossknowlagh.

Iconic backdrop to Eoin's race in Derry #392.

My son was complaining about the anti- social hours of his summer job. I told him he doesn't know he's living. In my day....

Italo Calvino: escapism.

A Frank Ormsby poem in today's Irish Times.

Italo Calvino, writing home after crossing the Atlantic on a luxury ocean liner filled with aging rich people: “Long live Socialism. Long live Aviation.”

Hydration Break.

Don Paterson in Poetry London.

Came across photos from long ago today. New York 1989.

Italo Calvino: The Literature Machine. I've never read "Ulysses".

From The Down Recorder 1837.

40 years ago today. "Dear God, long live football."🇦🇷

I watched Army of Shadows again this evening. A magnificent film . Melville is a wonderful filmmaker. This is one of the greatest openings to any film I have ever seen. youtu.be/1jKOdYC6-O4?...

It wouldn't be the Donegal rally without some young lad hanging out of an old Lexus swigging a bottle of Buckie.

In town yesterday and it was like being back in the summer of 1985.

Guillaume Apollinaire

Back from Frank Ormsby's book launch in the Seamus Heaney Homeplace. I really like this poem. A nod to the Chinese poets of the Tang dynasty.

When in London recently I picked this up for a fiver at one of the last remaining second-hand bookshops on Charing Cross Road. A great find.

John Fuller. Such a fine poet.

The Daily Telegraph thinks God is English. Eamon Dunphy and Bill O'Herlihy were great.

A photograph I took of Dermot Healy on a visit we made to the grave of W.B. Yeats in Drumcliffe in the summer of 1991.

Another Dermot Healy.

Dermot Healy

Interview with Frank Ormsby.

Waylon was born 89 years ago today. youtu.be/Qf_HoB6RRKI?...

Having a 70s Saturday night. youtu.be/rf8GjhXvOjU?...

I'm in Monaghan tonight and I can hear the sound of silage being cut in the darkness.

Michael Donaghy.

🎶Absolutely amazing scenes in Wales as Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth - set to be Wales's first pro-independence first minister - is interrupted by an impromptu rendition of the Welsh national anthem

Poem about Belfast by Maurice Craig. On my mind a lot these days.

So fine words from Naomi Long and other politicians in the six counties. But what are they going to do now about the threat to democracy which Loyalist paramilitaries pose!

I am tonight, as the younger generation say, triggered. In 1976 my family were put out of our home in North Belfast by Loyalist paramilitaries. I understand the fear and despair those poor people who were intimidated last night feel.

It's not the Irish border. It's the British border in Ireland.

What has been seen in Belfast is nothing new. Ulster Loyalism has always been predicated upon hatred of the other and of those from within their own community who refuse to follow its hate-filled agenda. What has been done since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement to address this? Very little.

'Walk over to the hill in the forest. Read yourself away to these clouds while there is time.' This poem by Harry Martinson is one to take solace in . It is for me anyway.

What a dysfunctional place Northern Ireland is. The care assistants from other countries in my father's nursing home were sent home early yesterday with letters stating their occupation in case they were illegally stopped by masked racist thugs.

Westlink

Annaghmakerrig big sky.