Pennsound at the University of Pennsylvania continue their fine series of poetry recordings with the collected poetry recordings of Ezra Pound. (see also Tributes to Two Great American Poets in this blog.)
Pound’s poetry and voice, whatever you might think of his political views, are extraordinary. The way he rolls his Rs is fabulous. I wonder [...]

Extraordinary video by Andy Huang, who’s a senior Fine Arts major and Animation minor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Doll’s Face is reminiscent of Björk’s All is Full of Love video, another amazing work, but is nevertheless distinctive and original.

I’m sure you’ve had friends and/or family die of cancer. I certainly have had friends die of both brain and breast tumours. I came across this report about the US government suppression of evidence that marijuana kills tumours, which, if true, will make me very angry indeed.
Of course because the site promotes the [...]

The poet Mark Granier rang me up about a literary matter the other day and in the course of our conversation mentioned his photo blog on blipfoto, which I must confess I never heard of.
It’s called Skyroad,
after his forthcoming collection from Salmon. I logged into it while were talking and was blown away, [...]

Some years ago - it must have been the mid-eighties - Paula Meehan and I were invited to read in Donegal (Ramelton, I think). Our host brought us to the top of a beautiful stone building where there was a roaring fire, and into a back room where we were invited to drink a [...]

When I published my last novel, The Fisher Child in November 2000, the omens seemed good. It sold a stack of copies at the launch, it had a number of nice reviews, including in the TLS, and then…
It was published on the 14th of November, a date etched on my mind, and despite [...]

Just about a year ago, Patrick Chapman and I set up an experiment called Irish Literary Revival. As we put it in our introduction,
This is where out-of-print and out-of-circulation Irish books are brought back into the world. Although our name is a pun, our intentions are serious.
Would that we both had more time to [...]

Years ago, when times were simpler and we had time to regularly see multiple friends and have parties and go to them, two of the great hosts were Emer and David Singleton.
David had a great line in Beatles and Bob Dylan songs; he knew every damn one of them by heart and assumed I did [...]

See New York Times obit (may require registration)
Kurt Vonnegut, Writer of Classics of the American Counterculture, Dies at 84

If you have 23 minutes to spare, and I would strongly urge you to have them, then have a look at this beautiful and important talk on TED.
Author Janine Benyus provides fascinating examples of biomimicry - humans mimicking nature in the products we build and the systems we implement. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, [...]