What a beautiful evening here, peace.

Michael Longley

'Winter Sea' 1960 by UK painter Joan Eardley #WomensArt ❄️

'Hyden Hill' by contemporary Welsh painter Sarah Evans #womensart ❄️

A small elegy by Dennis O’Driscoll, who died OTD in 2012.

What a year, all round. For me, it ended with some good news, loved ones around, and some time for reading and walking. I hope I’ll see some of you in the Spring with the book. I wish you all well, and thank you as always for the company. The best part of here is seeing you thrive.

All Saints church, lost village of #Waterden 21/12

Hawk as a comma in the declension of wood

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He looks like an old school Mancunian who never got over the Hacienda closing.

Ghost of a low slung moon

Remember, Beckett is for life, not just for Christmas

Now available for purchase: W. B. Yeats’s Rapallo Notebooks. This special print edition guides readers through the Rapallo Notebooks as both artifacts and reflections of Yeats’s creative process. The digital version is, as always, open-access and available here: open.clemson.edu/iys/

For half the world, winter begins today. I love Rilke's notion of it as the season for "tending to your inner garden" www.themarginalian.org/2015/01/12/r...

A solstice dawn. 6 hours and 4 mins to do all that you need to do. With light. #Papay #Orkney

Fun fact: when Michael Flatley drinks champagne he turns into Michael Bublé.

And a pileated woodpecker, which I normally hear only by its whinnyng shrieks. It is warm and bright after a cool night, and no one around with the holidays coming in a college town. So great.

So much life in the woods, a beautiful big Coopers Hawk

Solstice, still blue and silver

Rare footage of St Paul’s Cathedral testing its giant flamethrower

Georgia O'Keeffe, You Are The Sun, 1977 #Womensart #Solstice

I have lived here a long time but when the man in the shop asked me my phone number when he got to 8 he actually typed in ‘it’

Once again thinking about the time Sinéad O'Connor attended an anti-Sinéad O'Connor demonstration in disguise 💛

The Holy Trinity.

Otter patrol, what joy on a beautiful morning

Oh my, I’m at the pond and what I took to be a beaver was a family of river otters

Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-67)

Just the thing for @whitbynats.bsky.social and @whitbymuseum.bsky.social and has a section on Stoker, the seaside and lighthouses. Looking forward to reading it over the weekend holidays.

Happiness lies in swiftness of feeling and thinking … since light is very swift, the man who could experience the movement of light would be a very happy man. -Nietzsche (tr. William Arrowsmith, quoted by Roger Shattuck in “The Bodily Presence of the Man” thanks to @lattaj.bsky.social

I have placed a few sets of Hookland Bookmark on my online shop. * Please note, these are for UK shipping only * I am hoping to print more bookmarks in the New Year and ship them internationally then. www.maria-strutz.co.uk/product/book...

A little oddity

Looking forward to Doolin Writers Weekend in January (16-18), here's the lineup:

Introducing our Winter/Spring 2026 Events Programme at HomePlace! A new season of poetry, music, conversation and creativity awaits featuring Simon Armitage, Sinéad Morrissey, Colin Davidson and more! Tickets on sale Wednesday 10th December at 10am > seamusheaneyhome.com/upcoming-eve...

Sky like a feather

I would recommend anyone read the Kenova Report published today, especially ps 123-4 in context of the headlines stating there is no evidence of collusion between the British state and loyalist paramilitaries. www.psni.police.uk/sites/defaul...

As if swimming north

My little book is dedicated to my friends, and its eclectic tour takes off with two of them at the Heaney HomePlace, where the great Iarla Ó Lionáird will sing and talk with the great Neil Hegarty and myself about Heaney, Derry, and the music of what happens. Tickets are on sale Wednesday morning.

‘Hamnet, the film about Hamlet’s son’, just now on Irish radio

Reading this I am reminded again that it is, and has more often been, the work of the literary and cultural scholars, in the visual arts particularly, to practice the scholarship that Irish historiography even now aspires to, still without recognizing.