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SAVE YOUR TEARS FOR TMROS ATROCITIES INSTEAD #9eleven #September11

20 years after September 11th, it is becoming clearer than ever that the attacks were a huge strategic success for Al-Qaeda. They spectacularly accelerated both the decline of America power in the wide-world, and the political polarisation within the US itself. Two decades of bloody defeats in Iraq & Afghanistan has shown the world that […]

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THE RUBBERNECKERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD #WallyTheWalrus #westcork #climatecatastrophe

The Arctic dissolves, quicker and quicker, in the human heatwave, hotter and hotter. This is a catastrophe for Arctic animals before it is one for humans, the last of the animals, the most animal animal of them all. As a result, an Arctic walrus, hu-named Wally, loses its bearings, and turns up in West Cork, […]

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THE MOVING STATUES AND THE MIRACLE OF THE CHIP VAN #virginmary #feastoftheassumption

If there’s one thing miracles are good for, it’s business. Without miracles, the likes of Knock, Fatima, & Lourdes would be run-down small towns at best. Perhaps they would have disappeared altogether, as many similiar little places have over the centuries – when they had no miracles to keep them going. Instead, they are popular […]

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NEW AUTUMN EVENING COURSE – EXPLORING POETRY

Six week online (zoom) autumn evening course, kicking off Tuesday 21st of September. The course is a deep-dive into the history & variety of world poetry, with an emphasis on making poetry a beneficial part of your life. It is for anyone interested in poetry whether or not they write it & consists of live […]

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WITH FFG IN FOR THE LONG HAUL, WHAT NOW FOR THE LEFT?

Last week the Irish Government, through the office of the Attorney General, changed the law retrospectively in order to get its second-in-command, already under criminal investigation for corruption, off the hook. Whatever moral authority FFG had left has now vanished. We are clearly ruled by criminals and criminal accomplices. But their political control of the […]

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THE FREEDOM OF EEJITS #FarRight #antivaxx #freedom

I met a 50 year old lady last week who wasn’t taking the vaccine because ‘it would take away my freedom’. Now, I do believe people should be free to choose to take the vaccine or not take it. I also believe people should be free to stab themselves in the eye with a knitting […]

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Convergence Centre Genoa. Friday 21 July 2001 #CarloGiuliani #genoa2001 #acab

( In memory of Carlo Giuliani, murdered by paramilitary police on speed) #CarloGiuliani #genoa2001 #acab A hundred yards behind usthe Mediterranean heaves its wasteagainst a limestone barricade.Condoms, nappies, bottle tops,diesel cans and tamponsrising to mock our gas stung eyeslike the unlearned lessons of past mistakes. Rumours sicken our panic,spreading through the campas fast as microbesthrough […]

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Ain’t no poor relation…#The32 #workingclassliterature

I’m interviewed by Aisling Meath in The Echo about ‘Revelations’, my contribution to The 32, the smash hit anthology of Irish Working Class Voices. Revelations is about my experience of the Clonakilty Busking Festival of 1988, when a convoy of New Age Travellers turned up to liberate us from the priests! Pretty wide-ranging interview, including […]

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IT BEING ON THE 23rd of JUNE – notes on Michael Considine. #spancilhill

“He used to play the old melodeon and the fiddle in the old days and he used to cater for all sorts of hooleys and American Wakes and the fair at Spancil Hill and he went to America…” “Robbie McMahon, traditional singer and storyteller, on Michael Considine.” Michael Considine was born at home in Spancil […]

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Fathers

FATHERS.Human families come in many varieties, not only in the here & now, but over the millennia too. The idea of a ‘Father’ has not always been with us, & what it is and does when it is around was and is various.Some anthropologists think – & it makes sense to me – that for […]

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DA, THE MELODEON #FathersDay

DA, THE MELODEON for Joe Lordan Of quavers and keys Da haven’t a notion But still an’all he plays the melodeon. He can white-puddin the moon Beamish the ocean Fry seventeen eggs and play the melodeon. Ignorin gales and floods and coastal erosion He climbs up Saint Fin Barre’s and plays the melodeon. He hammers […]

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Karl and Dave Go To Hell

KARL & DAVE GO TO HELL A new podcast on a mutual love of ours, William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell. Part of a larger work, The Marriage of Heaven & Hell, The Proverbs emerged between 1790 & 93 as part of Blake’s intense theological and political engagement with the French Revolution, which greatly inspired him. […]

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GENOA & THE HOPES OF A GENERATION #g8 #g7 #genoa2001

20 years ago this July approximately 300 Irish activists joined in with demonstrations against the G8 in Genoa. The demos, taking place over three days, turned out to be something of a bloody street war between the leading political militants of a continental generation & the heavily-armed Italian security forces. That it could turn out […]

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How to deal with bein stoned #resilience

“Lordan moves Irish poetry forward, looking at modern realities rather than the Platonic ideals many poets are still relying on. His poems are built using startling images, expert restraint and energetic lines. They wake you up, shake you, insist you pay attention.” Southword MEDIUM, my new collection, out in a few weeks, free audio/e-book. Order […]

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Class and Precarity in a New World Order: Writers and Artists Respond – CALL FOR PAPERS

deadline for submissions: September 30, 2021full name / name of organization: Dave Lordan & Michael O Sullivan email: osullivan@cuhk.edu.hk What can a book on class & precarity written by artists and researchers achieve today? What actual or immanent overlaps & solidarities are there between ‘artists’ & the ‘precariat’? between part-time academics and the ‘precariat’? […]

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LOCKDOWN ANIMALS #downfall #darkage

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HAPPY #Pride2021

Happy #pride month to all my friends & acquaintances in the LGBTQIA+ communities. I remember the 80s, when it was still a crime to be anything but straight-married with children. Straight-only Ireland was a deeply sick Ireland – the Ireland in which dumping babies in sewers was perfectly respectable, but holding hands with your true […]

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LOVE #palestine #grief #apartheid #murdermostfoul

(For H.G) She rushes screaming from the sparkling sea the little girl all gone her father on all fours laying out the chicken,hummus, salad, olives, bread, drooping bellytender to the broiling sand warmth her two brothers start to kick a ball into the sun laughter soon as she finishes chapter 12 her older sister will […]

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LITERATURE & THE ANTHROPOCENE – Part 1

“Writing appears to be necessary for the centralized, stratified state to reproduce itself. . . . Writing is a strange thing. . . . The one phenomenon which has invariably accompanied it is the formation of cities and empires: the integration into a political system, that is to say, of a considerable number of individuals […]

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THE CAMPERVANS ARE COMING #staycation #takedownthebarriers

News reaches me from all corners of the land of people (who have by luck or pluck the 10k+ it takes) buying up second hand campervans with the intention of taking to the roads & staycationing in Ireland this summer. No surprise after us all being locked up in our limited zones for so long, […]

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Optimism of the Intellect, Pessimism of The Will.

‘What kind of monster is she who does not despair?’ Killian Turner, Berlin Notebooks (1982) As a thought experiment, imagine yourself in a mob of lemmings headed for the Cliffs of Moher. If it helps, imagine the other lemmings in the mob being everyone you have ever known on first name terms – classmates, workmates, […]

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MARTIN/A CUMMINS APPEARS TO THE VIRGIN MARY. #trans #unique #truestory #selfborn #westcork #virginmary

This is how it starts: Assumption afternoon in eighty-six, Martin A Cummins clacking high-heel homeward towards that Inchadoney Crib they’ve slathered indoors black, exterior mauve, in imitation of a rumour about Prince. The sea in retreat behind the Island filling in the oncoming distance; its searing ridge, its grassy, sparkling, quartzy flank, stone-wall-stitched and scarred by ditch… […]

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I ONLY RUN IF THERE IS A OR A BULL OR A BATON CHARGE BEHIND ME MYSELF BUT HEH….

One of the great things about poems is that they are so adaptable & lend themselves so easily to being translated into other mediums. I have been lucky to have lots of mine put to great use by other people & turned into songs, short film scripts, performance texts and so on. Following my poems’ […]

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SILENCE ON PALESTINE IS SILENCE ON HUMANITY

PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT PUBLIC FIGURES ARE SAYING ABOUT PALESTINE. To turn your back on Palestine is to turn your back on humanity. If your TD or councillor is silent in the face of the war crimes of Israeli Apartheid, they will be silent too when – & it is when, not if – catastrophe […]

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WHEN I WAS A MONK #AntiCiv #silence #God #nature

When I was a monk or whatever it is that I was for a breeze in the big wooded days out the west there was only one book which I portioned aloud to myself on a Sunday, cud-chewed the rest of the week. For art and characters I lay on the moss-swaddled slab of a […]

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AN ARTIST”S PLEDGE TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL #boycottapartheid #palestinianlivesmatter

(I was asked by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign to write a call out to help launch their anti-apartheid Boycott Campaign back in 2010, reprinted here) I am proud to be among the many Irish and Ireland-based artists from across creative disciplines who have chosen to publicly support the growing campaign of boycott against apartheid Israel. […]

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96FM Interview re #NoelRedding #WestCork #DeBarrasFolkClub

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ONE YEAR IN AND IMMA TALKIN TO CLIFFS #mentalhealth #lockdownpoetry #talkincliffsideblues

ONE YEAR IN AND IMMA TALKIN TO CLIFFS In which, a year into lock down, & driven daft by the isolation, feeling very down in myself, a 500 million year old cliff gives me a pep talk. Stand up, go on ya little bollix says The Cliff sure look at me houlding tough in all […]

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ON BEING A COPYCAT SURVIVOR OF SUICIDE #Darknessintolight #Darknessintolight2021

(I am a survivor of a teenage suicide attempt – while on ERASMUS student exchange in Greece in 1994. Below is the text of a radio essay I wrote for RTE Arena reflecting on my experience two decades later. PS lots of people are asking my permission to share – if you think its worth […]

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THE SHAMAN OF CHARLESLAND #DMT #Construction #drugs #work #splitpersonality #God #aliens #hipsterbullshit

THE SHAMAN OF CHARLESLAND The Shaman of Charlesland is about a guy who takes DMT in the evenings, & builds houses in the mornings. It explores the radical disjunction between the world we live in, & the one we wish we lived in. It’s from my forthcoming book MEDIUM, which will be available free on […]

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FOCUS ON THE NEGATIVE #poetry #negativethinking #clichéinversion

FOCUS ON THE NEGATIVE #poetry #darkmatter #clichéinversion Sometimes I like to invert a cliché & see what happens. Focus on The Positive is good advice much of the time. However, many things happen to humans & are done by humans which have no positive side, and to suggest they do is an evasion at best, […]

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STICKS #poetry #ruralchildhood #AntiCiv #NewBook

As a child I lived outside from morning until nightfall, exploring & playing in a dreamy landscape of bog & marginal land full of unprofitable plants & animals & the kind of WestIrish characters who no longer exist. I loved sticks. And sticks are the first tool, & the first science. We humans are a […]

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PARTITION – THE WOUND THAT NEVER STOPS BLEEDING #orangestate #partition #NI100 #Sectarianism

Today elites North and South of the border are gearing up to celebrate the centenary of partition, and expecting the rest of us to go along with it, or at least shut-up about what partition really means. Here, in the Manchester Guardian of 1921, is a succinct account of what we are asked to clap […]

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ON THE BLIP – HUMAN GEOLOGY & THE PERSPECTIVE OF SUPRAHISTORICAL MATERIALISM.

Due to habits picked up while working in a bakery as a teenager, I am an early riser. I hear the dawn chorus most mornings. Birds are singing dinosaurs, 150 million years working on their melodies & harmonies. No human music could ever come near. Humans appropriated music & song from birds, & then wiped […]

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MUHAMMED ALI & SHANNON WARPORT

55 years this week since Ali refused the Vietnam draft. He did so knowing he faced the ruination of his career & the possibility of a long jail sentence. He recieved a four year suspension at the height of his physical prime, sacrificing much glory & untold millions to show solidarity with people whose names […]

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INTO THE TWILIGHT #PoetryDayIRL #newdirections

Click link for a free album of soundscaped Yeat’s. For Poetry Day Ireland! Click link below. https://davelordan.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-twilight

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES – poetry sampler #PoetryDayIrl

6 poem sampler from the forthcoming collection Medium, available soon in audio/e-book/print formats dlordan@hotmail.com to interview me or book a reading Praise for previous books: ‘Compelling & overwhelmingly brilliant – A masterpiece’ Thomas McCarthy, Aosdana ‘There are some of his poems I love to sing’ Christy Moore The most original, incendiary and impassioned voice writing […]

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NOTES ON THE LITERATURE OF HOMELESSNESS – TIME FOR THE BARDS TO RETURN TO THE BATTLEFIELD #NationalPoetryMonth #PoemsforHomes #HomesForAll #HousingCrisis #Homelessness

“Before you enter the city of Skibbereen, the tall new Poorhouse presents itself to the eye of the traveller; of the common model, being a bastard-Gothic edifice, with a profusion of cottage-ornée (is cottage masculine or feminine in French?)—of cottage-orné roofs, and pinnacles, and insolent-looking stacks of chimneys. It is built for 900 people, but […]

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Cannabis. My 4/20 Manifesto!

I am for immediate legalisation & for a combination of nationalised & grant aided small-scale private & local producers, to ramp up cannabis production in Ireland, making prority use of marginal land in depressed rural areas. This will keep families on the land in vital areas for the conservation of our rural heritage, & provide […]

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THE MAN WITH NO MASK #antifascist

When, following the big win- the real biggie-uncountable zeros after his name-he stands his friends an endless reservoir of stoutand decrees every churcha twenty-four-hour shebeen abolishes retching and reflux and coughsplugs the ancient flow of anal bleedingdecrees the removal of sleep from the brain and promises the people that noneneed ever stop drinking and smoking […]

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THE UTTER FAILURE OF THE IRISH FAR RIGHT’s PANDEMIC STRATEGY.

The impressive fact that a quarter of all 69 year olds in the state registered for their Covid19 vaccination within an hour of the registration portal opening is very good news in terms of the state of mass conciousness in Ireland. It illustrates that the anti-science arguments of the far-right & of their media enablers […]

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JIANG QING’s ADVICE TO YOUNG COMMUNISTS

If good people beat bad people,it serves them right; if bad people beat good people,the good people achieve glory; if good people beat good people,it is a misunderstanding; without beatings,you do not get acquainted; with beatings you no longer needto beat them. Translation of a quote from Jianq Qinq, who was Mao Zedong’s 4th Wife […]

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RENOVATIONS IN HELL. #princephillip #tw

The arrival of Philip in Hell triggered some troubling reflections on the part of the real Prince on the increasingly urgent matters of categorization & accommodation in his majestic domain. Charlemagne had already said Philip was not welcome in the section reserved for European royalty & their associated bad bastards. ‘No-one can stand the cnut […]

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THE UPRIGHT FISH

It happened as of a sudden that The Fish got totally fed up of the horizontal plane & decided trying out being An Upright Fish for a while. & if you saw The Upright Fish as it funnelled itself up from the utterdark of the lower depths through ever brightening ultramarine towards the open air […]