Bag Lady Speaks

Review of Trade

2011-10-13T21:06:00.002+01:00

It’s a strange paradox that confessionals largely occur either with the priest or the prostitute. Trade makes use of the confessional between an older man and a young rent boy whose services he has procured previously. The play is stripped back to its bare essentials with a minimalist dialogue, a dingy B&B bedroom and two characters that remain nameless. Yet despite the simplicity of the

A way with words - connecting the traditional with the digital

2011-08-31T13:10:00.002+01:00

In his essay ‘Story-telling: The Gaelic tradition’ Declan Kiberd states that for “the past eighty years in Ireland, the short story has been the most popular form of all literary forms with readers,” and that it has “been the form most widely exploited by writers”. Kiberd highlights that Patrick Pearse saw with “uncanny accuracy” that the future of Irish literature lay in the short story rather

Letting Go?

2011-03-26T19:52:00.002Z

In the good mother’s way with her sons; The fledged bird is thrown From the nest – on its own But the peasant in his little acres is tied To a mother’s womb by the wind-toughened navel-cord (excerpt from The Great Hunger by Patrick Kavanagh) In the summer of 2002 I visited an unusual place in the Garden County. Just outside Roundwood is an Indian Sculpture park called Victor’s way (

Rejection: a fact of life

2011-02-05T17:54:00.003Z

There are things we have to do in life and things we have to experience in life. In order to survive we have to breathe, drink, eat, sleep and shelter from the elements. As we develop emotionally and psychologically we experience a wide range of emotions, navigate relationships and ourselves. To a greater or lesser degree we can control our emotions, avoid relationships and avoid experiences.

Success - To fear or not to fear

2010-03-14T17:24:00.006Z

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

The two realities of Christmas

2009-12-23T12:55:00.003Z

Christmas is a magical time; a time of being with family, friends, loved ones. A time of sitting round an open fire or a gas fire or an electric fire or no fire. A time of stuffing our faces with rich laden food, drinking too much alcohol and too many fizzy drinks. A time for experiencing the delight in children’s faces when they open their presents. It is a time of getting in touch with our

The Demise of the Letter

2009-11-11T17:05:00.005Z

In The Celebrated Letters of John B. Keane, Keane opens with a preface on the humble letter, stating that it is “the simplest and most permanent form of communication”. Furthermore, he sees the epistolary form as a vastly underused resource in the literary world. Keane put together a collection of ‘novelettes’ as he terms them from a series of “stock” Irish characters that includes the farmer,

Film Review: Adam & Paul

2009-09-15T20:17:00.044+01:00