‘I think the world has changed rather than me’

Thu, Jul 02, 2015

The world - or at least the Western world - is a very different place now in July to what it was in May. In the space of around six weeks, Ireland became the first State where same-sex marriage was endorsed by the public through a referendum - kickstarting calls in Germany and Australia for the same; while the United States voted to approve gay marriage following a Supreme Court decision.

'I think the world has changed rather than me'

Tue, Jun 30, 2015

The world - or at least the Western world - is a very different place now in July to what it was in May. In the space of around six weeks, Ireland became the first State where same-sex marriage was endorsed by the public through a referendum - kickstarting calls in Germany and Australia for the same; while the United States voted to approve gay marriage following a Supreme Court decision.

When the Saint goes marching in

Thu, Jun 25, 2015

St Vincent, aka Annie Clark, is one of the hottest acts on the rock circuit at the moment with her last album, 2014’s St Vincent, featuring highly in best-of-the-year lists for Pitchfork, New York Times, NME, and Rolling Stone, while The Guardian named it as its album of the year.

'I was a working class boy'

Thu, Jun 18, 2015

One of the notable shows in this year’s Galway International Arts Festival is Maum at An Taibhdhearc, starring David Heap, who is best known for his role in Fair City. The play is based on a true story, this compelling new drama dares to uncover little known facts about a case that is still clothed in secrets and shame.

'When I was growing up you’d have thought the Australians had won at Gallipoli'

Thu, Jun 11, 2015

These are eventful times for Australian-Irish poet Robyn Rowland. Not only has she published two new collections of verse, but, after more than three decades in which she has spent half of each year in Connemara, she has also received Irish citizenship.

'Our music takes influences from the past, but our songs are about now, about our lives'

Thu, Jun 04, 2015

Music runs in the blood of siblings Kitty, Daisy, and Lewis Durham. It was inescapable, permeating all areas of home and family life. Even on their local streets of Kentish Town in Camden, where they grew up and still live, it was the air they breathed and the sound they heard from every corner.

'I wanted to discover the world, not read about the interior of our house'

Thu, May 21, 2015

Eamon Morrissey, one of our best loved actors, comes to the Town Hall Theatre next week with his latest, much acclaimed, one-man show, Maeve’s House, inspired by the writings of the brilliant short story writer Maeve Brennan.

‘I’ve come to terms with poetry being my job’

Thu, May 07, 2015

The question “Where do you come from?” can be a funny one for poet Hollie McNish. As her name indicates her roots are firmly in Scotland, but her accent is clearly English, highlighting a geographical proximity to London.

Drums, clowns, refugees …and sacrilegious lesbians

Thu, Apr 30, 2015

Among the highlights of the Galway Theatre Festival is the trilogy of acclaimed one-man shows from percussionist and performer Brian Fleming; Gis a Shot of Your Bongos Mister, Have Yis No Homes to Go To, and A Sacrilegious Lesbian and Homosexual Parade.

‘I’m a novelist who briefly blogged, rather than a blogger turned novelist’

Thu, Apr 23, 2015

Galway writer Lisa McInerney has been hailed by The Irish Times as “the most talented writer at work today in Ireland”. For several years, as Sweary Lady, she penned the award-winning blog The Arse End of Ireland, about life on a Galway council estate.

‘As a writer you see something from the outside, but you also have the view from inside’

Thu, Apr 16, 2015

When award winning English novelist and short story writer Jon McGregor comes to Galway, to read at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature, it will be his second visit to the county in less than a month.

'I love bringing a story to life on the cinema screen’

Thu, Apr 09, 2015

Driving home to County Kerry, to help his father with some cattle farming, was not the time Gerard Barrett expected to receive a call from Hollywood A-lister Charlize Theron, asking him to script and direct a film she is producing.

‘Cré na Cille is a hymn to the Irish of Connemara’

Thu, Mar 26, 2015

Since its publication in 1949, Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Cré na Cille has been hailed as a masterpiece. Yet the novel has, in the words of John Banville, “remained locked away from non-Irish speakers”.

‘My duty is to build bridges’

Wed, Mar 11, 2015

Rarely a week goes by when the strife in Israel/Palestine does not make headlines in the media. In recent years the conflict has seemed ever more intractable, the people increasingly polarised and entrenched. Yet in spite of all, there are still those on both sides of the divide working for mutual understanding and a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

‘I Belonged To Glasgow’

Thu, Mar 05, 2015

Some weeks ago Little John Nee captivated the Town Hall studio with his autobiographical show The Galway Years, and he returns to the venue next weekend with more engrossing memoirs in The Glasgow Years in which he will revisit his 1960s childhood.

‘There are many ways to connect - for me music is the one’

Thu, Feb 26, 2015

ANDRES MARTORELL is a man on the move. Sunday night found the singer in Carna, where he was taking part in a traditional singers circle. The following morning comes this interview. An hour later he is en route to Dublin to catch a flight to Denmark.

‘Life led me away from writing another novel until now’

Thu, Feb 19, 2015

Percy Bysse Shelley once famously declared that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”. While he may have been boosting his own profession with the remark, history furnishes quite a few examples of authors who were actual legislators.

‘I’m proud to have Connemara blood in me’

Thu, Feb 12, 2015

FOR SOME 25 years, Gary Lydon has been among the most stalwart of Irish actors with a string of acclaimed performances on stage, television, and film. His credits include leading roles in Billy Roche’s Wexford Trilogy, TV series The Clinic - for which he won two IFTAs - and the films Calvary, Small Engine Repair, and Michael Collins.

‘I have no regrets and it’s not over yet’

Thu, Jan 29, 2015

MARY BLACK describes Galway as “a particular favourite place of mine”, but it is no idle platitude. It was here, and more specifically during her tenure with De Dannan, where she came of age as both singer and performer, setting her on the path to her now unassailable position as Ireland’s leading contemporary folk artist.

The Pub Landlord - twenty years of ‘behaving appallingly humbly’

Thu, Jan 22, 2015

IT WAS 20 years ago this year that Al Murray introduced the world to the Pub Landlord, his pompously loveable, slightly jingoistic, opinionated font of ‘common sense’, who espouses a ‘Thank God I’m an Englishman’ view of the world, and is hopelessly in love with being British!

E-paper

Read this weeks E-paper. Past editions also available from within this weeks digital copy.