Throughout the month of March, Trasna is featuring Irish language writers. This week, we are pleased to share the work of Aifric Mac Aodha, an accomplished Irish-language poet. We are also pleased to share the spoken word, two readings, each in Irish and English, by the poet. For many Americans,…
This week Trasna is pleased to feature the work of K.T. Slattery. A native of Tennessee, who now lives in the West of Ireland, Slattery is a familiar with Transatlantic crossings. “My biggest regret / Moving across the wide ocean- / I missed that glorious day / Red Sox World Champions!!!!” We commend Slattery not…
Award winning poet Grace Wells has brought her considerable poetic sensibility to bear on her latest creative work, in which she uses poetic video in a manner that both deepens our awareness of what we might lose and have lost, and also lends her voice to the urgency of the…
Atlantic Currents is an anthology of sixty-five writers from Ireland and the United States. The book grew from the efforts of John Wooding, a former Provost at UMass, to have Lowell designated a UNESCO Learning City. Working with co-editors Paul Marion of Loom Press and Tina Neylon of the Cork…
Atlantic Currents: Connecting Cork and Lowell, brings together sixty-five writers from both sides of the Atlantic, featuring a collection of stories, poems, essays, songs, and parts of novels. This January, Trasna features selected writings from this 2020 anthology. Featured this week, the poetry of Alex Hayes. FR8879, 42 (Warsaw…
“Where Now Begins” This week, on January 6th, the United States Capitol was attacked. It houses the meeting chambers of the United States Senate and the Congress. It is one of the most symbolically important buildings in the nation. At the time of the attack, a joint session of Congress was…
From: “A Christmas Childhood,” Patrick Kavanagh (1943) “Outside the cow-house my mother Made the music of milking; The light of her stable-lamp was a star And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle. A water-hen screeched in the bog, Mass-going feet Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes, Somebody wistfully…
Former Alaskan poet Laureate Tom Sexton’s latest volume of poetry is “Cummiskey Alley.” The collection is named after Lowell’s first Irishman, Hugh Cummiskey, who walked from Boston to Lowell with a group of Irish laborers. Cummiskey and many other Irish labors dug miles of canals in Lowell, and helped birth…
THE 2020 ‘AN POST’ IRISH BOOK AWARDS Every year, the Irish Book Awards celebrate “the extraordinary quality of Irish writing” and help bring those books judged to be the best to a wider readership. These annual awards are also intended to promote the Irish publishing and book-selling industries. The awards include an…
The month of November, with its decreasing hours of daylight and lengthening nights, offers an opportunity to turn inwards. It is traditionally a month in Ireland when we remember those who have passed on, indeed the 1st and 2nd of November are known respectively as All Saints and All Souls…