SPEAKERS’ CORNER

Paul Kestell reads from ‘The Baby Farm’

Local author Paul Kestell will be reading from his novel ‘The Baby Farm’ with some discussion afterwards. Hear him at the West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen on Wednesday 29th January 2020. It starts at 7pm and goes till 8pm. Paul Kestell published his debut novel Viaréggio in October 2009, this novel has received excellent […]

The Days of Jael by Paul Kestell

I wanted to leave home loads of times. I think the first time I was about seven years old; we were living with grandad then and I woke to hear his soft music fill the house. I slide down the stairs and pushed the door of the sitting room open using my shoulder. He was […]

An excerpt from The Jailbird by Jaki McCarrick

An excerpt from my short story “The Jailbird”, from my debut short story collection The Scattering. That night I arrived home to find Ma had bolted the door. I’d had a few jars with Martha in town and had walked her back on the balmy night to Josie’s, her aunt’s place. (In the pub, we’d […]

The Desecration By Trudy Hayes

Elsie is sitting on a bench. She does not look up as a man approaches. He skirts around her playfully, watching her, smiling.     Paddy whistling breaks into song        ‘When I fall in love, it will be forever’ He takes Elsie into his arms and waltzes her, owning her in the dance, his hands on her body. […]

Six poems by multiple award winner Anton Floyd

At Lough Allua You dipped gently your hand into the lake to test the colour of the lapping water. It was the purest blue an intense ultramarine as if time had processed the world’s store of lapis and had lavished this gift this mesmerising pigment remaking this place as all encompassing as the frescoes adorning […]

Bonny Braeside – Letters from my Father

“Every dark cloud is having its backside warmed by the sun” ‘Come up and see my etchings,’ he said. It was 1963 and the young man was an assistant where I was staying at the Derwentwater Youth Hostel. And there were etchings! Replying to my letter home dad wrote that he would have viewed such […]

Grey Deafening by Caroline Farrell

Memory wandering Twice a year, in summer and at Christmas, I replenish my elderly father’s wardrobe with the essentials. Vests. Pyjamas. Jumpers. Shirts. Trousers. Socks. I don’t expect to get any thanks for it. He doesn’t know me anymore. His personal awareness diminished, the man I grew up fearing has shut down, cocooned in mysterious […]

Poems by Italian poet Daniele Serafini

Return to Campoformido to my father Tullio, aviator Returning to Campoformido it is as if your photo (the one in your flying jacket Your comrades close by & your face unguarded to the future) had never been taken. Returning to Campoformido it was as if, unexpectedly, you stepped from the family album to retrieve, this […]

John Devoy on RTE Nationwide

Local author John Devoy read from his acclaimed travel book “Quondam” which is an account of his epic bicycle journey across two continents.  RTE Nationwide have made a short interview film which airs on 16th December at 7pm. John’s Biography John Devoy grew up in the 1960’s, on the shores of Cork harbour. He studied […]

Jim- a poem by Philomena Barry

I am the grains of sand You carry home from the beach, I am the spider’s web That you can’t quite reach, I am the fragment of dream That you almost remember, I am the light from the fire And the crackling embers, I am the rain on your face And the wind in your […]

Excerpt from Darkling by Fiona Cooke Hogan

Excerpt from Darkling, a dark faerie tale taken from The Lights Went Out and Other Stories by Fiona Cooke Hogan She slipped through the woods with the agility of one well used to nocturnal ramblings, knowing how to pick her way along the meandering path regardless of the moon’s milky glow that shone through the […]

Padraig Belton introduces the Story Slam 2019

I am a journalist, and here to report that the art of storytelling is alive and thriving in West Cork.  As a reporter I am a paid storyteller, some of them, hopefully, true. We are all storytellers, in this country—telling stories, some of them true. With a charming inattention to mere facts and an unfailing […]

Suzy Suzy – a new novel by William Wall

The Irish Times review of the new novel Suzy Suzy by William Wall says  Suzy Suzy is “Everything a great book should be.  William Wall’s central character is vulnerable, unwittingly hilarious with a powerful voice. The book is set in post Celtic Tiger Ireland, where Suzy’s property developer dad is another source of constant irritation […]

Three Extracts from Daniel Wade

Extract 1: Port of Kinsale Sonata A harbour chain once hovered heavily underwater where yachts now lie in watch, like jangling centurions. Past shorefront restaurants, sun-seeking day trippers hoist their selfie sticks like battle ensigns over a pier that time and tide sponge down together, identikit ‘keep-out’ signs blocking each gangway. But you’ll find me […]

Any Day Now by Miriam O’Donovan

Any Day Now Yesterday, for instance, I spoke to my daughter from my hospital bed. It was a happy phone call, we ebbed and flowed as we have done since she was conceived. Today, in a coma, assisted at points of ingress and egress, from me according to my ability, to me according to my […]

JOHN COTTON POET (Read by Bev Cotton)

  JOHN COTTON 1925-2003 POET (Read by Bev Cotton) Obituary, The Guardian, April 2003 From “Here’s Looking At You Kid” Headland, 1992 CHERNOBYL At night the darkening maze of branches Threatens as the forest broods They heard it fidget, breathe And tried to estimate its moods Read omens as the ghost-owl mothed Its way across […]

A story by Nick Smith: My Father.

My Father was a big man. He measured over six-foot-three and weighed as much, but his hero’s stature was stunted, his shoulders rounded by the burdens of several life-times. Now he lay, almost un-burdened. My Father smiled at the two visitors who rested their hands on the foot-board of his bed, one short, the other […]

Riding Against the Lizard by William Wall

ON THE NEED FOR ANGER NOW ‘Anger is the political sentiment par excellence. It brings out the qualities of the inadmissible, the intolerable. It is a refusal and a resistance that with one step goes beyond all that can be accomplished reasonably in order to open possible paths for a new negotiation of the reasonable […]