Fantastic gig at BelloBar last night. After being exposed to the worst of what Dublin has to offer - i.e. Brown Thomas (I only go there to use the loo) - I really needed a cure for despair. @theocelots.bsky.social restored my faith. Tongue-in-cheek Elvis was just the icing on the cake.

Micah Thorp’s Aegolius Creek doesn’t just describe land — it interrogates it. Wildfire, capitalism, grief & the vole that detonates it all. Read the full review: thebrokenspine.co.uk/2025/08/24/f... #PromoteIndieLir

‘Adventures, then home for tea. The strikes into Scotland or Ireland or Wales are just that – strikes, then retreats. Cambridge is still the centre of the world: we started there and will end there, albeit up a tree.’ Kathleen Jamie on Robert Macfarlane, from 2008: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...

Today!

"The modelling predicts an ongoing “extinction of experience” with future generations continuing to lose an awareness of nature because it is not present in increasingly built-up neighbourhoods......" www.theguardian.com/environment/...

"The National Development Plan announced by the government this week has allocated nothing to nature, instead taking 3.15 billion euro from the Climate +Nature Fund for infrastructure." Ireland disgracing itself on nature *yet again*. This is NOT what people want, but we keep getting the same. Why?

Soon, this serene woodland may be gone — sacrificed for a car park of 300 spaces. Even the sparrowhawks seem to mourn, their cries echoing through the morning mist. #thicktrunktuesday #birds #nature www.change.org/p/save-the-h...

“keep on loving / don’t be afraid” ~ Ukrainian poet Oksana Lutsyshyna (trans. Oleana Jennings) 🕊️ irishpages.org/product/vol-... @scottishpen.bsky.social @irishpen.bsky.social

‘Growing up in England, you had an inferiority complex. Our dads were judged as scruffy Paddies’ In Bless Me Father, his new memoir, the Dexys leader reflects on his Irish lineage, difficult relationship with his father, music success, addiction and more www.irishtimes.com/culture/musi...

‘Stone suits the poetry. Or perhaps it’s the other way round. I think poetry suits stone, more than it suits paper, certainly more than it suits a screen. The poetry releases something latent in the stone.’ Kathleen Jamie visits the Canongate Wall in Edinburgh: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

“What does ‘dúchas’ mean / and why has such violence / been wreaked in its gentle name?” ~ ‘Dúchas’ by Moya Cannon (included in our War in Europe issue) 🍃 irishpages.org/product/vol-... @poetryireland.bsky.social @irishlittimes.bsky.social @irishpen.bsky.social

“The cave-dark we were born in / calls us back.” ~ ‘Swifts’ by Kathleen Jamie (2007) irishpages.org/product/the-... @byleaveswelive.bsky.social @paperboatswriters.bsky.social @asls.org.uk

"It’s really cool to be doing a Sligo story on the Abbey stage given one of the founders of the place [WB Yeats] had that connection. For the opening night of The Cave, I’ll be sitting bang centre in the audience." www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

New episode of The Glimpse today! Listen to Nithy Kasa speak with host Seán Hewitt about carrying two countries, line breaks, and the taboo of black female sexuality in Congolese culture. Nithy reads her poem “My People Dance by Their Hips” & C. P. Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka.” www.brinkerhoffpoetr...