Words on Fire
In America, as in so many other countries, police stations are sanctuaries for the worst kind of criminals, including a huge ammount of serially violent & serial-killer cops. In Ireland, for example, the main job of the Gardai for many decades was to kidnap the infants & children of the poor & of Travellers & […]
Read More THE AMERICAN RISING IS JUST AND ITS SUCCESS IS OUR SUCCESSHere’s my contribution to last nights campaigning meeting on the Arts hosted by People Before Profit, also featuring Emmett Kirwan, Jesse Jones, Alana Daly Mulligan, Bressie & others. Watch it at https://www.facebook.com/peopleb4profit/videos/1121761028216906/?vh=e&d=n
Read More STAND UP FOR THE ARTSLost Tribe of The Wicklow Mountains #1798 This week marks the 222nd anniversary of the great rising of the United Irishmen against the cruel & barbarous British Empire. This poem was inspired by events in the aftermath of our defeat, when a small group of Partisans took to the Wicklow Mountains to continue the struggle. […]
Read More Lost Tribe of The Wicklow Mountains #1798Snowflakes – A Poem by Dave Lordan Written after I got called a snowflake on the internet by some right wing troll. I was quite flattered, as of course a snowflake means a person with a conscience, but also it’s an insult that is usually thrown at people much younger than me! It’s such a […]
Read More SNOWFLAKESIt has taken Sinn Feīn 13 years to repent for a slur cast by a senior party official against a youngster who was beaten to death by a gang of bloodthirsty thugs. On the other leg, it has taken the FFG party, by way of their propaganda department in RTE, 13 years to uncover the […]
Read More No-one is smelling of roses. Everyone is smelling of corpses.The Black & Tans were part of an international phenomenon of right-wing and fascist governments using irregular & paramilitary forces against left wing people’s revolts all over Europe. In Italy these became Mussolini’s blackshirts. In Germany they became Hitler’s Brownshirts. They locked up the commies, the jews, the gays, the artists… The descendants of the […]
Read More HOW NOT TO BE A BLACK AND TAN TODAYChristy Moore’s sung version of my poem Lost Tribe of the Wicklow Mountains, first released on the album Lily in 2016, features on the soundtrack of the new sports documentary- Coming Home – Ag Teacht Abhaile. “Paddy O’Leary was raised on a dairy farm in County Wexford, Ireland, and grew up playing on the local […]
Read More SOUNDTRACK OF THE WICKLOW MOUNTAINSAbove is the sad tale of two irish ‘natives’, long-ago broken into warring little pieces by poverty and oppression, verbally assaulting and inciting hatred against a person of colour going about their job. The bulk of the 150 or so strong fascist mob at the Dail last week was made up of people like these. […]
Read More THE IVORY COAST FREEDOM PARTY AT IT AGAINThere were fairies in Ireland then, & I grew up there, thinking that fairy life was something that was inseparable from Irish life. Fairy stories would be told that were to me & to those around me as much realities of Irish life as are the stories that I now read in books called “Realities […]
Read More SHIPWRECKS, SEASHELLS & THE MOTHER OF GOD – The Dead Friends Part 3 #memoir #90s #westcorkAll I can recall about Timmy the night of the party in his gaff in Dunmanway is him sitting in the corner with a fag burning away in his mouth & a flagon on the dresser beside him, neither smiling nor frowning, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with what any of the rest of us were […]
Read More The Dead Friends – Part 2 – Chill Out Timmy #memoir #westcork #90s #suicideMillions of good people are feeling gutted this morning at the unexpected size of the Tory victory, & the sharpness of the blow to the electoral hopes of socialists. We are right to keen and grieve. The immediate effect of the victory will see an increased assault by the Tories on the living and working […]
Read More WHAT CAN THE IRISH LEFT LEARN FROM THE CORYBYN DEFEAT?The party happened in a second floor bedsit in Dunmanway, West Cork, above a chipper on Castle Street, on a Friday night in October 1993, getting on for halloween but not quite. This was four years since the Berlin Wall & the concurrent outbreak of hope all over Europe that led to a record vote […]
Read More The Dead Friends (part 1 of 5) #memoir #westcork #90sI had my grandfather’s mouth.In famine he was told to thrive on hunger.He wouldn’t swallow it.They cut his tongue out. I had my father’s eyebrows.They arced like blackbird’s wingsand nearly touched across his brow.He kept his head down. I had my mother’s lips.She sang true songs of long ago.Now my lips are blue,she sews her’s […]
Read More An Only Child. (i.m. 18yo Zhao Liu Tao murdered by racists in Dublin in January 2002.)Ever hear of the village of Myrsina. No? It’s a dying village in Northern Greece with a rapidly declining, elderly, infirm, & utterly demoralised population of 263. If & when it becomes entirely derelict, nobody apart from those tiny few directly concerned will even notice. “In 2001, every literary fiction title written in English sold […]
Read More Population 263 – the twilight of literary fiction.(for Denis O Driscoll) A skinny, gummy old guy selling bric-a-brac splayed out upon sagging porta-tables along a boarded-up stretch of the East Village. He sits to one side overseeing, half-sunk into a well-frayed leather seat, chewing nothing but spittle and air, chewing and watching and ruminating. He has been hawker and watcher and ruminator […]
Read More New York Impossible #elegy #non-fiction #deathofapoetLucheni, the world’s greatest artist-assassin, princess slaughterer, shock-inventor and philosopher of police has returned from the dead and been hired by the Becoming Polis to destroy Europe. He has also been granted a small allowance for a general assistant. These are his terms for hiring: Good English Essential. Romance languages an advantage. You must be […]
Read More BECOMING POLIS #prophecy #destructionofeuropeThis weather we all have our own way of being born. Wiccan ceremonies. Underwater cameras. Strap-on midwives. Laughing gas in near space orbit. You name it, somebody has got to be online streaming it. Well, I am a child of disaster like the rest of you, and this is my being-born story. It happened in […]
Read More Christmas Cracker #demonativity #blackmass #cocainexmasA Mr Alex Dyke, a radio disc jockey for the BBC outfit has decided to ban Fairytale of New York, a song written by Jem Finer and Shane Mcgowan, and sung by Kirsty McColl accompanying Mcgowan. Now before I go on, I’d best lay my cards on the table. When it comes to economics, politics, […]
Read More MR DYKE AND THE ‘FAGGOT’ #BBCfatwa #fairytaleofnewyorkFran glimpses Mac the Handsome for the last time from a packed 145 moving, in fits and starts, through traffic-choked Donnybrook. A Spring afternoon in 2009; it has just stopped drizzling & to avoid gawking at the passengers opposite him, Fran sleeves the human moisture from the window and, to see what he can see, […]
Read More The Only Real Irish Poet in Dublin #missing #murder?BYE BYE TO THE BY-ELECTIONS Good luck to the socialist candidates at today’s counts. The fact that low turnout favours the big parties, together with a lack of a grassroots movements such as the water charges to inspire working class people to come out and vote for a left candidate, means we do not expect […]
Read More BYE BYE TO THE BY-ELECTIONSI support the farmers 100%. I admire the militancy & determination of their protest. I call on all my friends and comrades to come out and publicly support them. A win for them will be a win for all grassroots movements – they are showing us all how it’s done. We have a lot to […]
Read More VICTORY TO THE REBEL FARMERSRED ENVOY I bring no songs of rolling drums Of pennons flying gaily I sing of filth and dirty slums Gaunt man with hunger crazy Canticles, not of virtue bright, nor holy austere lives. I chronicle consumption’s blight And the haggard face of wives Who gaze on children, pale and wan Who see no flowers […]
Read More BRENDAN BEHAN’S FIRST POEMTO ADD YOUR SIGNATURE email dlordan@hotmail.com We the undersigned are deeply concerned at the prospect of savage cuts at RTÉ and their implications for arts and culture coverage. RTÉ is the only network in Ireland which provides anything like a bare minimum of consistent & broad coverage of the diverse range of Irish & international […]
Read More Open Letter – In Defence of Public Service Arts CoveragePart 3 of a 3 part essay – read part 1 here, part 2 here. The ancient novelty of Working Class literature Working-class literature, that is literature produced chiefly by & for the working class, comes in many forms & in many mediums, many informal & ephemeral, others not so, but all defined by their […]
Read More On Being An Irish Working Class Writer – Part 3FIRE AND FLOOD MADE US This evening I will be on RTE radio 1’s Arena Arts Show discussing the art, literature & music of climate change. I will be talking about how major climate change/disruption events impacted on human culture in the past. For example, the universality of Flood (and to a lesser extent Fire) […]
Read More FIRE AND FLOOD MADE USBy Dave Lordan. Read Part 2 here, part three here On the same Easter Week of the 1916 rising, a Charlie Chaplin lookalike competition was held in Dublin. Chaplin, well-known to be a socialist as well as the world’s leading entertainer at the time, had a mass following among the Dublin working classes. Truth be […]
Read More On Being An Irish Working Class Writer Part 1Thunberg’s honest & impassioned speech to the UN has ben met with a furious backlash by those who feel threatened by the combination of truth and passion. The truth on its own is inert and does nothing. But combined with the revolutionary passion of the young it can up-end everything. Among what it threatens to […]
Read More SICKNESS IS HEALTH – Tubridy V ThunbergOnly Americans Burn in Hell is by Turkish-American writer, Jarett Kobek. It’s a second follow up to 2016’s surprise self-published hit, I Hate The Internet. Like that book, it is a scathing satire of contemporary society, institutions, and media. Kobek’s Fans include the radical comedian Stewart Lee & the anarchist writer Alan Moore, and he […]
Read More ONLY AMERICANS BURN IN HELL by Jarett Kobek – a review #twitterati #dmt #facebook #trump #posttruth #killerfairies #jarettkobekBecause I’m Human #antibullying #beatthebullies #youthpoetry See me? I’m a human Made of flesh and blood and feelings. Because of this you can hurt me. You can really hurt me. You can call me names. You can mock me. You make up lies about me. You can hit me. You can spit at me. You […]
Read More Because I’m Human – #anti-bullying #poetry