(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. […]

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

Read More 96FM Interview re #NoelRedding #WestCork #DeBarrasFolkClub

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 […]

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

(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 […]

Read More ON BEING A COPYCAT SURVIVOR OF SUICIDE #Darknessintolight #Darknessintolight2021

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 […]

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

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, […]

Read More FOCUS ON THE NEGATIVE #poetry #negativethinking #clichéinversion

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 […]

Read More STICKS #poetry #ruralchildhood #AntiCiv #NewBook

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 […]

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

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 […]

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

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 […]

Read More MUHAMMED ALI & SHANNON WARPORT

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

Read More INTO THE TWILIGHT #PoetryDayIRL #newdirections

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 […]

Read More BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES – poetry sampler #PoetryDayIrl

“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 […]

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

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!

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 […]

Read More THE MAN WITH NO MASK #antifascist

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 […]

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

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 […]

Read More JIANG QING’s ADVICE TO YOUNG COMMUNISTS

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 […]

Read More RENOVATIONS IN HELL. #princephillip #tw

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 […]

Read More THE UPRIGHT FISH

Out of the seven signatories to The Proclamation, five were Bardic artists. Pearse, Mcdonogh, Plunkett were poets of the bookish sort, Connolly wrote performance poems & ballads, Ceannt was a renowned on the Uillean Pipes – an instrument of poetic miltancy if ever there were one. It is no wonder then that The Proclamation is […]

Read More THE RISING OF THE BARDS

Return is the demonic opposite of resurrection. Whereas resurrection transforms, return repeats. Not once or twice, but indefinitely in a process which demeans existence – first as tragedy, second as farce, thereafter over & over as farcical tragedy. Human existence, as lived by humans in our day, is a succession of phenomenon we have already […]

Read More RETURN OR RESURRECTION?

WHAT happened to Christ on Holy Saturday as he lay dead between The Crucifixion & The Resurrection is known as The Harrowing of Hell. Christ descends into Hell, where all dead pre-christian humans since the beginning of time have been stored, to divide them into the damned and the saved and lead the Righteous in […]

Read More THE HARROWING OF HELL – why Panti Bliss is going to Heaven, & David Quinn is not.

There are four deaths recounted in the Bible in the story of Good Friday. Jesus own death. The implied death’s of Good & Bad, the two flanking thieves. & the suicide of Judas. Judas betrayed Jesus to the Jewish Priests & Elders on Spy Wednesday in return for 30 pieces of silver, & on Holy […]

Read More GOOD FRIDAY’S OTHER MARTYR – JUDAS

Read More Sara’s Badges #TransDayOfVisibility

A young Irish woman is making a name for herself as a sassy online outlaw in wake of endangering lives for a prolonged period on the motorways around Dublin. The tabloids have gone along with & encouraged the fast-developing show, & she is making a few bob out of an onlyfans account. Nowhere near as […]

Read More THE BALLAD OF THE OUTLAW GEMMA GREENE

“There 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 THE VIRGIN MARY & THE WRECK OF THE GALLEON

The other day I passed an unfortunate person I used to know a few years ago on the live arts scene. They didnt recognise me or pretended not to – i don’t mind that, i often do that myself if I’m not in the form for people. Sometimes I wish everybody else would do it […]

Read More FAILURE AS AN ART FORM OF OUR TIMES

It is 1984 & I am 9 & in a small bedroom in my neighborhood belonging to my hero, alongside him & a few of his friends, who are all about 13. My hero is great at soccer & fighting, though he sometimes loses at both & always has a purple eye or a scabby […]

Read More THE BLOODING #childhood #initiation

Finished wankin.Out of everythin.Tossin & turnin& goofin on the Ket. Let’s go find a targeton the internet. Me ex detests me.Me kids won’t see me.Friends with no-one,& everyone wants me bet. Let’s go spray me brainshiton the internet. I do me own research.Click click click til I find what hurts,launch it on me profilelike a […]

Read More BOLLOCKSONARO AKA THE PAYTRIOT AKA THE RUBBER GOON AKA KETMAN21. #worldantiracismday

The Doors The detective calls door-to-door investigating a killing so brilliantly simple it could have been committed by anyone who can ring a doorbell. Over three twelve-hour days, 676 doors. The same questions in the same order at every door, asked of a man or a woman, or a man and a woman. Aside from […]

Read More OUR PRIVATE ESTATE | DAVE LORDAN

In the middle of the night the county manager called to my door. I murdered him with the ceremonial dagger I always bring when answering my door, whether or no it is in the middle of the night. I stabbed him in the voice-box. It was an efficient kill, then, although also, with hindsight, in […]

Read More The County Manager #truecrime

DINOSAURS? Not yet, but I wouldn’t rule it out with all the inbreeding. #royalfamily There are 600 title-holding aristocratic families in the UK, sharing 2000 titles between them, each worth an average of 16 million pounds sterling to its holder. The monarchy alone cost the Uk Treasury 67 million pounds sterling in 2020. I can […]

Read More DINOSAURS?

On International Women’s day I’d like to celebrate some of my favourite Irish Women Writers.  The intersection of class prejudice and patriarchy in Ireland’s literature industry means the perspective of middle and upper class women has always dominated in our publishing industry, leaving out the stories and perspectives of the majority of women in ireland, […]

Read More RECOMMENDING IRISH WOMEN WRITERS WITH A DIFFERENCE

(i.m Bobby Sands who began Hunger Strike against the British Empire on March 1st 1981.) This is my body my pale body my hairy body my stinking body my body with its moles and leaks my body with its scars and sores and sweats my body with its itches and its aches my longing body […]

Read More THE HUNGER STRIKER SINGS HIS DEATH #bobbysands

Following on from current workshop with the designer Shane Sutton, Irish National Opera and the Civic are delighted to launch another series of weekly workshops taking place in March with the writer Dave Lordan. These workshops are perfect for any adults looking for something new and creative to try out in their evenings. Participation is […]

Read More FREE CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOPS FOR ADULTS WITH THE CIVIC THEATRE AND THE IRISH NATIONAL OPERA

Oh it all might seem funny, between the exorcisms & the magic ointments, & to an extent it is. It’s funny but it’s also scary. It’s scary that the Examiner – normally the most trustworthy of the the Irish dailies – calls these gangsters nuns & refers to them as Sr in captions. In fact, […]

Read More Why are these walking chemical weapons allowed roam free in West Cork?

Please find below pdf & word versions of my pamphlet On Being An Irish Working Class Writer Buy me a coffee @ paypal.me/DaveLordan Excerpt….. PART 1 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 […]

Read More On Being An Irish Working Class Writer – pamphlet

VOLUNTEER EDWARD O BRIEN AND THE HYPOCRISY OF PIRA COMMEMORATIONS. Following a campaign by Fine Gael and their media supporters, Sinn Fein have cancelled a commemoration for PIRA Volunteer Edward O Brien, who ‘accidentally’ suicide bombed a London Bus in 1994, killing himself and injuring several others. A massacre was narrowly avoided. There is simply […]

Read More VOLUNTEER EDWARD O BRIEN AND THE HYPOCRISY OF PIRA COMMEMORATIONS.

NEW TEACHING ADVENTURE ❤️😊👇🏻 This morning I lead my first workshop of a six-week course in Storytelling & Local Folklore with Bray Area Partnership, which is free to participants as part of Co Wicklow’s Resilience program Stories & Lore keep alive what would otherwise irrevocably vanish from human memory & collective experience. This morning’s intro […]

Read More NEW TEACHING ADVENTURE

Read More RECOVERY #mentalhealth #poetry