An indispensable oeuvre

Seamus Heaney salutes Patrick Kavanagh, and a new Collected Poems, in today’s Guardian Books. Edited and introduced by Antoinette Quinn, Kavanagh’s biographer and best advocate, [the new Collected] should help not only the English critics but the whole English-speaking crowd to read Kavanagh with new regard and maybe even to start believing in him. In Heaney’s view, it’s a vindication of Kavanagh’s indomitable faith in himself and in the art that made him so much more than himself Pete Baker

On the banks of the Rubicon

Thanks to Arnold Wesker on this morning’s Home Truths for the quote of the day. It’s from Louis MacNeice’s seminal piece, Autumn Journal. It seems to just about cover where we are at this same moment – though the new year he’s talking of is the ominous one of 1939.It’s the last eight lines of the poem: If you have honour to spare, employ it on the living; The dead are as dead as Nineteen-Thirty-Eight. Sleep to the noise of …

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Government Change in 2005 ?

Ryle Dwyer in tomorrow’s Irish Examiner takes a frank look at the role played by politicians in the Republic in respect of attitudes to partition, northern politics and the British Government. Sunningdale’s history lessons still have warnings for slow learners. Ambrose Uprichard

Happy New Year all…

We’re having a quiet time at home ourselves. It’s been a quiet year for NI politics and (outside picking up the odd gong), a comparatively quiet one for Slugger too. I’m saving all my predictions for a guest slot in Fortnight’s political column, but I wouldn’t be giving much away if I suggested that 2005 should be another quiet one – if all goes well. Thanks to all of you, whatever your persuasion, politics or faction, for your dedication to …

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Long term obectives with short term aid?

The Uk has raised £45 million in three days. The Republic’s government is facing criticism over the low levels of aid proffered. But as the FT points out it its leader today, the first responses are not the important ones, it’s the long term that matters.In fact the problem of bringing relief lies in the fact that most of the victims lie on the edge of a globalised economy (not unlike the majority of the victims of the Irish famine): …

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Crimbo

How did we all get on with the Crimbo Pressies ? I got the socks and sweets and a 25 years of Viz book.(Rude link) The late presents are arriving – yesterday a copy of what looks to be a fascinating book, Oracles of God by Patrick Murray, reviewed here by Fern Lane in AP/RN.Today two excellent cds by Irish artists new to me, O by Damien Rice and the especially wonderful Season of the Hurricane by Juliet Turner, reviewed …

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On the banks of the Rubicon

Thanks to Arnold Wesker on this morning’s Home Truths for the quote of the day. It’s from Louis MacNeice’s seminal piece, Autumn Journal. It seems to just about cover where we are at this same moment – though the new year he’s talking of is the ominous one of 1939. It’s the last eight lines of the poem: If you have honour to spare, employ it on the living; The dead are as dead as Nineteen-Thirty-Eight. Sleep to the noise …

Read more…

An indispensable oeuvre

Seamus Heaney salutes Patrick Kavanagh, and a new Collected Poems, in today’s Guardian Books. Edited and introduced by Antoinette Quinn, Kavanagh’s biographer and best advocate, [the new Collected] should help not only the English critics but the whole English-speaking crowd to read Kavanagh with new regard and maybe even to start believing in him. In Heaney’s view, it’s a vindication of Kavanagh’s indomitable faith in himself and in the art that made him so much more than himself adminA slightly …

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