July 19, 1969 By Steve O’Connor Saturday night. Jack Lee stopped at the corner of Westford and Coral and leaned against the street sign. “Out of shape,” he muttered. He should never have taken the desk job at the Post Office. Up until five years ago, and for the…
If 2020 is the year for armchair travel, Maeve O’Sullivan’s Elsewhere provides readers with an epic trip. Now in its fourth edition, it features haiku, haibun (a mix of prose and haiku), and long-form poetry. The writing captures a solo, around-the-world journey that took place in the fall of 2016…
Chath pierSath is a contributor to this blog who lives and works on a family farm in Bolton, Mass. His new book On Earth Beneath Sky, a collection of poems and prose sketches, will be published by Loom Press. The book is available now for pre-ordering at www.loompress.com — The…
Car Wash Dreams By David Daniel It was in August before my senior year in high school when the new car wash came to our small town. A fresh concept in automobile care is how it was advertised, and it opened with a lot of fanfare. Robo-Kleen’s promise was to…
Tom Sexton has two poetry books due in the next several months, Snowy Egret Rising (Chester Creek Press) and Cummiskey Alley: New and Selected Lowell Poems (Loom Press). He’s in Alaska this season, but he and his wife, Sharyn, also keep a home in Eastport, Maine, where they often stay…
A Dream of Food by Frank Wagner . I will feel what I believe, I will believe what I know, I will know after I have discovered after I have observed, I have tested, I have touched and become certain. This was the message from the dream I had when…
This week Trasna is pleased to feature a new poem by Jean O’Brien, “Rupture,” and present two other readings. Jean is an award-winning poet residing in Dublin. She was a founding member of the celebrated Dublin Writers’ Workshop, and has taught in numerous other creative writing programs. She is the author…
In today’s Trasna we have three poems by Clonmel writer, storyteller and farmer, Joe Whelan. In the poems below Joe brings the reader full circle, from his Uncle Davie in “My Uncle’s Coat”, and the farm at Harney’s Cross where he spent happy childhood summers, on to the experience of…
CROSS OF SNOW By Nicholas Basbanes 461 pp. Knopf. For many years my relationship with poetry might best be described as admiration from a distance so I would not normally pick up the biography of a poet. But the city of Lowell is a constant tug on my attention which…
For the month of July, here on Trasna, we will be highlighting some of the literary and artistic events cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Featured this week is the West Cork Literary Festival, an annual, weeklong celebration of writing workshops offered by some of the finest Irish and international writers.…