Words on Fire
In the beginning, 4.4 billion years ago on Planet Earth, there is the incredible fact, of life. Life with only one job that life cares about ever since and evermore; making more life. Life, not being much of a gambler, tries every which way and provides the living organism with irresistible desire which will rule […]
Read More IN THE BEGINNING #sexuality #reflectionAll night longI’ve been listening to his racket,now Uncle Georgie’s making tea again, same craic every night of his week old visit, home alone from lonely London. Toda la nochelo escuché roncar,ahora el tío George está haciendo té de nuevo,cada noche de su visita semanal, la misma diversiónde hombre que vive solo en una Londres solitaria. First […]
Read More TEA/TE #poetry #trsTURN DOWN THE MUSIC I SAID TURN DOWN THE FUCKIN MUSIC. C’mon lads. Shush will ye? Actually I’m goin to turn the music off, turn it right fuckin off for a minute actually, right? Pass me the end o’ that joint Slev will ya, till I tell ye me story. I wanna tell ye this […]
Read More Black IS THE COLOUR #homelessnessNEW POEMS, TRS, & ESSAY ON MY WORK A special feature on my poetry just published in the Irish Studies Journal of The University of Florence, including a detailed introduction to my work by Michael O Sullivan, and four new poems in English, with parallel translations by Rubina Valli. Many thanks to Michael, Rubina, and […]
Read More DAVE LORDAN & THE POETRY OF SHAME, OUTRAGE, & TRAUMA.In recent days several Traveller children, one aged 9, have killed themselves. Maybe someone has a formula of words to console for this. I don’t. I have merely the words of a grief that is clear-eyed only because it is old and constantly refreshed since the days of my own childhood. A couple of weeks […]
Read More IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO BREAK A CHILDToday is national poetry day in Ireland. I hope ye all enjoy it. I wrote my first poem in Jan 88 at age 12. Thank you Mrs O Sullivan, the English teacher who encouraged me that day! And thank you everyone who has read, listened, encouraged ever since – far far too many to name. […]
Read More POETRY DAY IRELAND #PoetryDayIrl“Your Merlin – Dave Lordan – the teacher, word-wizard, mentor and friend who will change your life” The Irish Times With the literary scene, Mentoring is the contemporary form for the ancient practice of bardic apprenticeship, whereby more experienced writers work with less experienced writers in a tailored, encouraging way to improve the latter’s practice. […]
Read More LITERARY MENTORING – WHAT’S THE STORY?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 […]
Read More Cannabis. My 4/20 Manifesto!Just recieved a few copies of a German translation of an extract from my memoir of early 90s West Cork, THE DEAD FRIENDSs included in a literary guide book just published in Germany, and which has already received a rave review in the Süddeutsche Zeitung Newspaper, the german equivalent to The Guardian. Oh, and I’m […]
Read More SPRECHEN SIE DEUTSCH? 👇🏼🇮🇪❤️👇🏼The thought of another, second, eternal life must be as old as thought itself. The conception of a greater and perfect life to come, redeeming and justifying the sufferings and the failings of this lightning flash of first existence – this is I believe the first thought, the founding thought of thought itself. Thought is […]
Read More NOTES ON RESURRECTION #ritual #resurrection #Easter #Art #deathI was 14 & in a bar in a west of Ireland town downing pints with two girl peers of mine, who were 13. It was the 1/8th final of Italia 1990 & we were on the way to beating Romania & getting farther in an international competition than would have been dreamed of a […]
Read More THE SMACKING #nottheoscars #isviolencealwayswrongProofs have come through of the Spanish trs of my First Book of Frags by Ulisses Fairlie of Santiago’s Los Perros Romanticos publishing house. Book out in couple of weeks – keep an eye out for launch.
Read More Primer Libro De FragmentosIn this latest video I look at the history & present of St Patrick’s Day, in the context of the global history of carnival & the carnivalesque. likes, shares & feedbacks very much appreciated by independent, self-funded artist!
Read More Paddy’s Day – True Cultural Carnival or Gombeen Man Jamboree?MEETING AT THE WAKE from BACK TO NORMAL, the new joint poetry collection from Dave Lordan & Karl Parkinson. Limited print run. Signed Copies available on request – €15 euro pnp. DM or email dlordan@hotmail.com Launch in The Cobblestone, Smithfield, Dublin kicking off at 8pm on Fri March 11th, with special guests & noble call. […]
Read More MEETING AT THE WAKEClick on photo to see the whole poem. Normal Newsday, from BACK TO NORMAL the new joint poetry collection from Dave Lordan & Karl Parkinson. Limited print run. Signed Copies available on request – €15 euro pnp, DM or email dlordan@hotmail.com Launch in The Cobblestone, Smithfield, Dublin kicking off at 8pm on Fri March 11th, […]
Read More NORMAL NEWSDAYDug With Spoons Remember the ones who dug with spoons They dug & dug & dug with spoons They dug nights & they dug noons They Dug They dug They Dug with spoons They dug and as they dug they hummed They hummed because they couldn’t sing They couldn’t sing their people’s songs Their nana’s […]
Read More DUG WITH SPOONS #resistempire #standwithukraineCongratulations to the Glorious Armed Forces of The Christian Nation of Poland. Yesterday they managed to defeat starving, unarmed men, women, & above all children who had been stampeded at them in the manner of an ancient buffalo hunt by the equally glorious & honourable Armed Forces of The Even More Christian Nation of Byelorussia. […]
Read More ONWARDS CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS!!!! UPON THE GLORY OF THE POLISH ARMED FORCES #borderbattle #onwardchristiansoldiersChristy Moore – Chief of All The Bards – second installment of the ongoing DeBarras Folk Club Oral History Project featuring the voices of musicians, crew, & audience. https://bit.ly/3BRC47R Optimist of The Pessimists – a blackly comic thought-experiment riffing on climate/extinction denial. Published thanks to political editor Poet Kevin Higgins by the new experimental press […]
Read More RECENT WRITINGS ROUND-UPSince the youth Climate uprising led by the hero Greta Thunberg kicked off a few years ago, mainstream media and politicians have gotten a little bit more honest about climate change. Now everyone who wants to keep a straight face in public life admits that we are in trouble and we have to do something […]
Read More THE SITUATION IS FAR WORSE THAN YOU ARE BEING TOLD #COP26 #neartermhumanextinctionThe phenomenon of Climate Change, the global & worsening effects of which will dominate the rest of everyone’s lives, is a challenge to the foundations & values of all human activities. It threatens to wipe us out completely, in which case everything humans ever did, ever achieved, will be nothing more than a fart in […]
Read More POETRY & CLIMATE CATASTROPHE #COP26GlasgowDear Community, Really sorry I haven’t updated this last while. Not because I didn’t want to share with you but because, for once, I went through a period where nothing extraordinary happened to me, or near me, to tell you about. The munDane of our lives we should keep to ourselves, right? Else language would […]
Read More SKIP/REPEAT #witchcraft #dublinspooks #urbandivils #ghostpopes #halloweentalesAnd so he was quiet, & that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black; And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he open’d the coffins & set them […]
Read More Dave Lordan: Consoling AngelThe decision by the CIA & Pentagon to publicly release some of their UFO footage has finally & absolutely convinced me that UFO’s do not exist and that humans are very probably the sole conscious species in our Galaxy. Why is conscious life so rare? Countless barriers exist to the development of conscious life in […]
Read More NOTES ON ALIENS #UAP #ufo #alienLife began on Earth about 3.4 billion years ago. That’s older than we can really take in. We can describe this length of time, we can write it out & tote it up, but we can’t really comprehend it. This is one of the signs of the mismatch between individual human consciousness and the vast […]
Read More HAS GAIA GOT ALZHEIMER’S? ARE WE IT? #humanity #adaptation #climatecatastropheSad to hear of the passing of Kerry’s great Poet, Brendan Kennelly at the age of 85, and within months of his daughter, Doodle. I had the great good fortune to study Poetry Composition under Brendan at the Oscar Wilde Centre in Trinity College Dublin in 2000-01, part of the Mphil in Creative Writing. He […]
Read More SEE YOU IN HYBRASSIL, BRENDAN KENNELLY #RIPMargaret Atwood says that the origins of the writing personality lie in childhood, in a disposition to prefer living in the world of dreams and daydreams to living in the real world. Whether this is because one simply loves dreaming, or because your real world is too difficult a place, does not seem to matter […]
Read More OUTSIDE ALL CURRICULUMS – Teaching Teenagers Creative WritingI’m a middle-aged man born nearly 50 years ago who has been a socialist since my early teens. So I’m about a quarter the age of socialism itself. I have a lot of rural rebel heritage. Lordan’s played an important role in the Irish revolution’s most successful flying column – The 3rd West Cork Brigade, […]
Read More SOCIALISM AND COLLAPSEGreat to be invited to participate in the The Frederick Douglass Wexford Civil Rights Festival 2021 alongside Senator Eileen Flynn, Deirdre Wadding & Sindy Joyce & Jimi Cullen Mighty program – take a peek! And wexford is very cool it you are looking for a mid-winter trip! I will be performing some poetry on the […]
Read More HEADING TO WEXICO TO BREAK SOME CHAINSI 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. Compared to the imprisoned Palestinian people themselves and to those taking part in flotillas and other perilous anti-apartheid activities in Palestine our contribution and risk […]
Read More AN ARTIST’S PLEDGE TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL #standupforsally #BoycottApartheid #sallyrooneyThree traditionally anti-Irish and pro-apartheid UK propaganda outlets – the Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Times – have launched a co-ordinated campaign this morning against Irish novelist Sally Rooney due to her support for the widespread cultural boycott of Apartheid Israel – a stand she shares with thousands of other Irish artists of all stripes. […]
Read More STAND UP FOR SALLY ROONEY #BoycottApartheidThe pre-budget submissions from the opposition parties are somewhat pythonesque. They promise to fulfil all our needs and desires, and barely stop short of offering free space flights to the unemployed. The fewer seats you have in the Dáil and the less likely you are to ever hold power, the more you promise. That’s the […]
Read More PRE-BUDGET BULLSHIT FROM THE LEFT #salvagenotgrowthI wrote a novel once, back in 2009, when I lived in Mantova in Northern Italy. I had to do it to find out if i could write them, if i was a novelist as well as a poet. It took 9 months, maybe ten months, solid writing, maybe 20 hrs a week on avg. […]
Read More ON MY FAILURE AS A NOVELISTSinn Fein at 32%, ahead of FG at 22% & FF at 20% Solidarity-PBP are at 2% It is hard to see Sinn Fein going anywhere but up – all they have to do is sit back & enjoy the own-goal thrashing FFG will no doubt continue to give themselves. The prospect of a Sinn […]
Read More NOTES ON THE LATEST IRISH ELECTORAL POLL – implications for the far left.The late Michael McClure, a prolific American poet in the visionary tradition involved with The Beats, spent much of his time researching pre-history and writing about our fallen world in the light of pre-history. He was ahead of his time with regard to the critique of civilisation. Back in the 70s, during the first wave […]
Read More Have humans been bred for extinction? #apocalypsebiologyPlease find above e-book version of my latest collection Medium. Free to download but donations appreciated and you can send money here: paypal.me/DaveLordan Small number of signed, limited run hardcopies available – dlordan@hotmail.com Audiobook at xmas For permissions e-mail dlordan@hotmail.com
Read More Medium e-book #poetry #freebookPerforming my Lost Tribe of The Wicklow Mountains in Parnell Square as part of The Frank Harte Singing Festival, which this year celebrated the rebel songs of County Wicklow in a new singing movie called ‘Beyond the Pale’ Celebrating Wicklow’s history in traditional song. For more great Irish poems and songs performed by a whole […]
Read More BEYOND THE PALE – AT THE FRANK HARTE SINGING FESTIVALMedium, my collection published by Frontline Press over the summer, has sold out its print run, aside from a couple of dozen held back for readings. Thanks everybody who bought it! E-book up this week. An audio version coming soon. In the meantime check-out my many audiobooks here: https://davelordan.bandcamp.com Frontline Press’s next project will be […]
Read More Creativity Update #poetry #memoir #drama #documentary #songOver the years I have done hundreds of free gigs for left-wing orgs, homeless charities including serial rapist Anthony Flynn’s ICHH, campaign groups, squats, occupations etc, and roped dozens of other poets into doing same. I’ve done free gigs for trots, tankies, anarchists, republicans, ecosocialists. The whole lot, because I support the working class left […]
Read More CHARITY NO MORE? THE PREDICAMENT OF SAINT ANTHONY FLYNN #Anthonyflynn20 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 […]
Read More SAVE YOUR TEARS FOR TMROS ATROCITIES INSTEAD #9eleven #September11I have mixed feelings about Patrick Kavanagh.He wrote some of the first poems I fell in love with – guided by my incredible English teacher the novelist Eamon McGrath, who knew Kavanagh. The Patrick Kavanagh Award named after him has long been Ireland’s top poetry prize and played an important role in encouraging my own […]
Read More MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT PADDY THE POET
Lordan’s Lit 