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Farewell, Bob Martin We learned this week that Bob Martin, singer-songwriter of the first rank, passed away after a long illness. Music guru Dave Perry has a tribute on Facebook. Bob was a friend of mine for a long time. I met him in the 1980s when he was already…
Read More »Alexander Fhionnuisce is a writer in the Republic of Ireland. He is a past contributor to this blog. On Invasions II – 01/08/2022 by Alexander Fhionnuisce I told myself to build the monument and let it shine like the sun, After I’d watched it settle, the cement, and all…
Read More »We’ll be posting all kinds of material related to the Jack Kerouac Centennial through the year. Here are 15 haiku by Roger West, a poet and musician in France who has been to Lowell a few times for the annual Kerouac festival. With friends, he celebrated the 100th birthday of…
Read More »Two days before the 100th birthday of Jack Kerouac on March 12th, I was asked by poet and musician Roger West in France if I could connect people in Lowell with his tribute to Kerouac planned for the hour of the author’s birth 100 years ago, 5 p.m. at home…
Read More »‘Man on a Cloisonné Vase’ By Tom Sexton When I was still a boy with two good legs, the emperor’s men snatched me from my parent’s yard and sent me to the distant frontier to fight. An old man now, I sit unnoticed by a small pond…
Read More »Broken Through The world has a compound fracture. We are a body in pain. Bone broken through skin in a vital part. My Boy Scout Handbook described first aid for this wound. End of a snapped white bone, ragged as a snapped pine branch. Bloody punctured flesh, the victim…
Read More »What does a poet do when the war is all over the news? He responds, she responds. Writers everywhere are responding to the horrific war in Ukraine, posting new work of their own and sharing poems by Ukrainian poets of today and the past. Artists of all kinds are telling…
Read More »Irish poet Alexander Fhionnuisce’s writing deals with the intersection of technology, alienation, and meaning in modern life. He was awarded University College Cork’s Patricia Coughlan award for his writing in 2017. His work is included in the anthology Atlantic Currents: Connecting Cork and Lowell (Loom Press, 2020). On Invasions (February…
Read More »Paul Tsongas (photo courtesy of the Paul Tsongas Congressional Papers, UMass Lowell Libraries) With our eyes on TV coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine today, I was reminded of past fighting by Russians under the USSR banner at the time in the cities and hills of Afghanistan. The Soviets…
Read More »Creamer’s Field Wildlife Refuge by Tom Sexton Beyond the wide fields planted with barley for the cranes, a speck of boreal forest with nature trails, wild strawberries, pale iris, seasonal marsh crossed by boardwalks now jumbled like pick-up sticks thrown down by a witless hand. The permafrost is melting.…
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