It’s lovely when one chance encounter leads to something that is laden with possibilities. Each year, I MC an event called Scribes at the West, a literary gathering that has seen the likes of Marian Keyes, Alexis Sayle, Pauline McLynn and Duke Special visit West Belfast to talk about their books or their song lyrics. …
Category Archives: The whole caboodle
Aspects literature festival
The Aspects Irish Literature Festival is a lovely wee five-day celebration of some of our finest writers in English. The festival was launched at Nick’s Warehouse in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter yesterday with Ciarán Carson’s recital of Londubh Loch Lao/The Blackbird of Belfast Lough, a poem written in Irish by a monk in the 9th Century, …
Ian Berry, photographer
It was quite a coincidence that Ian Berry should be in Belfast on the day the findings of the Saville Inquiry were made public. Berry is one of the world’s best-known photographers, invited to join Magnum on the invitation of Henri Cartier Bresson himself. Despite being born in England, the Lancastrian made his name working …
We are children of the stars
We are stardust, we are golden … Little did I think the line from the Joni Mitchell song about Woodstock could be taken literally! We humans actually are all made up of stars. I’d heard the theory before, a TED lecture probably, but watching the wonderful first programme in the Beautiful Minds series on BBC …
Aontroim Abú
He no doubt knew it was going to be a bumpy ride when the the Baker decided to shape the future of footballing in Antrim, but he couldn’t have imagined it would have been so exciting. On Saturday night, the senior football squad secured promotion to Division 2 by beating Louth after being in Division …