How to Write an Aubade: The Dawn Poem That Refuses to Let the Night End
An aubade is a dawn poem, not a morning poem. A morning poem describes the morning. An aubade argues with it. Here is how to write one that works.
The Villanelle Has No Mercy
The villanelle is simple. The execution is not. Two refrains do all the work, and if you pick the wrong ones the poem collapses. How to write one that works.
Ireland Forgives: Why the Irish Language Still Matters
UNESCO calls Irish definitely endangered. Twenty thousand to forty thousand fluent speakers. Why what happens to the Irish language matters to the world.
Caoineadh: The Irish Lament Tradition Most Poets Have Never Read
In 1773 a woman stood over her murdered husband and composed the greatest poem written in these islands in the eighteenth century. Here is the tradition that produced it.
Why We Are Publishing Lebor Gabala Erenn Again
The Book of Invasions is the foundational text of Irish mythology. The Macalister scholarly edition has been the only option for 90 years. That is ending.
Dinnseanchas: The Irish Poetry of Place
Before Heaney on bogs, before the Nobel for a poem about a forge, there were 176 medieval Irish poems whose only job was to explain why a place was called what it was called.
Why Irish Fairy Tales Are Not Like Grimm
If you grew up with fairy tales, you almost certainly grew up with Grimm. Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Hansel and
What Kuno Meyer Actually Translated: An Introduction to Early Irish Lyric
A German philologist in 1911 translated a hundred early Irish lyrics and changed what anyone thought Irish poetry was. Most people have never read him.
Tain Bo Cuailnge: A Reader’s Guide to Ireland’s Great Epic
Ireland has one epic on the scale of the Iliad. It is older than Beowulf. Preserved in three medieval manuscripts. How to read the Tain Bo Cuailnge.
The Fenian Cycle in One Sitting: A Reader’s Guide to High Deeds of Finn
If you have never read Irish mythology and want to know where to start, here it is. The Fenian Cycle, High Deeds of Finn, and a practical reading plan.