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March 17, 2021 – With the pandemic lockdown still upon us, we are deprived of our “traditional” celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. This Paul Marion post from March 17, 2011, captures what Lowell is usually like today. For me, it evokes some nostalgia and brings some hopefulness for the not-too-distant…
Read More »In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, here’s a post from eleven years ago complete with some of the comments left at that time. Even though corned beef is not regularly consumed in Ireland, we eat a lot of it on St Patrick’s Day. But I have a couple of questions:…
Read More »ATLANTIC CURRENTS II Enter Your Original Writing—Compete for Cash Prizes Attention, writers! Alumni and students of UMass Lowell and University College Cork are invited to submit original prose or poetry for a writing competition this spring. Winners will be awarded a cash prize up to $500. The competition is…
Read More »STUFF YOU KNOW BUT CAN’T NAME The following is a cross-post from my own blog (PaulMarion.com) on January 4, 2021. It took more than a year, but I compiled the best comments from a discussion thread on social media provoked by a question I threw out to the crowd. With…
Read More »Gary Metras directed Adastra Press for many years. Now he fishes for trout and writes poems. This poem is from his recent collection Captive in the Here (Cervena Barva Press 2018). At Adastra, Gary brought out several books by Mike Casey and Tom Sexton, regular contributors to our blog. That…
Read More »Ernest Hebert posted this reflection on bookshops on Facebook on Feb. 20. When I asked him if he’d let me reprint it on the Howe blog, he gave me the green light. I told him that the gang at Howe shares his enthusiasm and reverence for books, authors, bookstores, and…
Read More »It is the oldest vernacular language in Europe; it is “unique,” “complex,” and “primal.” Those are some of the words author Manchán Magan uses to describe the Irish language. Throughout the month of March, Trasna is featuring Irish language writers. We begin with Manchán Magan and his recent 2020 publication,…
Read More »Susan April grew up in Lowell and Dracut. She is a scientist who lives in Maryland. She offered us this dream-like poem from 1989. End of Track by Susan April I’m running home again. The church off Shattuck Street smells like morning Mass. The granite curb feels cool…
Read More »My Mother, Smoking By David Daniel A recent editorial in the Sun reports how Massachusetts’ ban on menthol cigarettes has cost the state a lot of tax revenue, while, simultaneously, tobacco sales in neighboring states without such a ban have spiked. I know almost nothing about public tax policy and…
Read More »Poet, publisher, and bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti passed away this week at the age of 101. A friend and publisher of Jack Kerouac’s, Ferlinghetti in the late 1980s visited Lowell at least twice as a guest of the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! group. He began writing the poem below on a…
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