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Irish winterlude
We had an unusually cold winter in the west of Ireland. Layers were worn, walks were taken, fires were lit. It felt like this, and it looked like this: Ghostly faces in a frozen puddle. How many do you...
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Hoover, the “talking” harbour seal
“Imitation is as crucial to the acquisition of speech as it is to learning gesture,” writes Christine Kenneally in The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language. As infants we mimic our...
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Garden haiku
. . Bright yellow-white cup Hover ever closer… Now! Liquid lunch aloft. . (Comments in haiku form, though not compulsory, would please me very much!) Filed under: nature, photography, poetry Tagged:...
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Darling starling
. Sturnus vulgaris: an ill-fitting name for so genial a bird (though you’re not quite tame) From treetop to rooftop on sorties incessant With firework-like feathers of dark iridescence. . The second...
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On a wing and a poem
. You may glare And cry “Unfair!” I do not care. I will not share. . A damselfly in no distress Pauses now to take a rest. . Pink-purple funnels, A hovering visitor: Summer encounter. . [Previously:...
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Octopoem
On Twitter some time ago, I had a chat with Kory Stamper and Jeremy Kahn about the plural of octopus (octopuses? octopi? octopodes?) This prompted Jeremy to write a rhyme, Plurals of the many-footed,...
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Ancient people names in Ireland
Gearóid Mac Niocaill’s book Ireland before the Vikings (Gill and Macmillan, 1972) has an interesting passage on the names adopted on the island during the 4th, 5th and early 6th centuries. He refers to...
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