Patrick Kavanagh: a Reader’s Experience For generations of Irish readers—for this one certainly—the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh is inextricably associated with Soundings, the anthology of prescribed poetry for the Leaving Certificate English curriculum that was a staple of Irish secondary education from the end of the 1960s until the mid-1990s.…
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about:blank is a piece of writing that both defies categorization and pays homage to the great literary innovators of the 20th and early-21st century. It’s chimera-like, engaging in a process of making and remaking, of peeling away and collaging different viewpoints, times and experiences. It’s experience without ego, with the…
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Our friend and occasional contributor to this blog Tom Sexton in Alaska sent us a poem that he brought back from a recent walk near his home in Anchorage. Tom’s latest book is a collection of his best poems about Lowell, Cummiskey Alley, available at loompress.com, on amazon, and at…
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A Wicked Good Book of Poems: Michael Casey’s Millrat A Review by Stephen O’Connor A professor of mine said James Joyce wrote, “of the common man, but not for the common man.” Who but a graduate student in English would ever attempt more than two pages of Finnegans Wake? And…
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The Poetry of Mapmaking: Retracing Maps of Northern Maine and Elsewhere By Christine O’Connor Detail from Phillips’ Map of the ‘Moosehead – Allagash Region of Northern Maine’ (1978) This past summer I visited Harding’s Bookstore in Wells, Maine. It was the first time since the start of the pandemic.…
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Trasna is pleased to announce that poet Daniel Murphy will join its team of editors. This week we feature four of his poems. Whether it’s a “rusty gate in a field of rock,” or “the cream cheese on your cheek,” Murphy explores the expansive to the intimate. There is a rhythm in…
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Our regular contributor from Alaska, Tom Sexton, sent us a new poem that shines a light in the darkness in these days that are getting shorter, with the news often disturbing. As he wrote on Sunday, October 24th, “At least the Pats won.” We need every and any reason to…
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This week on Trasna we feature a new publication by Beir Bua Press, ‘Only Connect,’ an anthology of poetry and prose written during the pandemic and shared weekly with a group of writers on Zoom sessions led by Margaret O’Brien. Featured here is the introduction to ‘Only Connect’ and four…
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Lunch.Break.Haiku. By Doug Sparks After leaving my job for a publishing company last month, I began picking up odd hours working as a substitute teacher in the public schools. You may have heard, there’s a shortage. While this job doesn’t give me a lot of spare time, I get a…
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Autumn is the season that embraces reflection: thoughtful persons give thanks for their harvest even as they mourn the [human] losses that befell them during the time past. In the poems she reads for Trasna, works from her newly published collection Reshaping the Light, Irish writer Breda Joyce voices the…
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