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Language of Cancer, Leontia Flynn, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Rituals, Seamus Heaney, Themes of childhood
Poetry: Works like a Charm
Ukrainian-American poet, Ilya Kaminsky, writes in the New York Times, of his desperation to find ways out of Ukraine for his friends - writers, poets, and translators. Many of them do not want to leave their homes, even as Russia continues to bombard their cities: I ask how I can help. Finally, an older friend, a lifelong journalist, writes back:…
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How to Open a Book
Some years ago, science fiction writer, John Scalzi, penned a homage to the libraries of his life prompting me to do the same today, World Books Day. Not a bricks and mortar library, my childhood library was a bus full of magic that visited a housing estate on Antrim’s Dublin Road every week. Although a world away from the United States,…
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Being a Widow, Facebook, Friendship, Loss, Love, Memoir, Milestones, Rites of passage, Rituals, Social Media, Themes of childhood, Valentines Day, widowed
the write stuff … for valentine’s day
I have conducted many of the most significant relationships in my life almost entirely by telephone. With so many miles of ocean or freeway stretching between our houses, it has been easier to carry on conversations from the comfort of our own homes. There is always something to talk about even when there is nothing to talk about. Once upon…
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Aging, Art, Children's Books, Coming of age, Death of parent, Education, Fatherless daughters, learning to drive, Memoir, Milestones, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mr. Jones, Poetry, Rituals, The Gone of You
walking away on the last first day of school
WALKING AWAY – Cecil Day Lewis It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day – A sunny day with leaves just turning, The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play Your first game of football, then, like a satellite Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away Behind a scatter of boys. I can see You walking away from…
