A Little Book of Ledwidge: A Selection of Poems and Letters of Francis Ledwidge compiled by John Quinn, with an assessment by Seamus Heaney (Veritas, €9.99) India to Ithaca by Paula Lahiff (€10.00; €12.50 including postage, contact paulalahiff@gmail.com) Santiago Sketches by David McLoghlin (Salmon Poetry, €12.00) In Ireland the role of the poet has been respected since prehistoric…
A Parent’s Perspective In the coming weeks and months we’ll be hearing a lot about the Eighth Amendment and the right to life of our smallest human beings. It’ll be a tough time for anyone who puts themselves out there to speak on all the issues involved. I’m a bit of a social media…
The social action arm of the Catholic Church in the Philippines has appealed for donations for the relief and rehabilitation of families affected by the ongoing eruption of Mount Mayon in Albay province. Over 70,000 people have already been evacuated to temporary shelters as the volcano started spewing columns of ashes as high as ten kilometers this…
Teresa Devlin When a crisis occurs within families, parents tend to look to trusted advisors; the people who have given them good and sensible counsel in the past. An expanding contributory factor to the crises that can affect families is the internet. The import of this is that if the Catholic Church wishes to…
New cancer-fighting test is announced In Ireland, an average of 40,000 new cases of cancer are diagnosed each year, so it’s good news that a recently developed blood test is making leaps and bounds in changing the way doctors screen for cancer. Scientists at Johns Hopkins University in the US have developed a test that screens for…
In 1997, Pope St John Paul II instituted a day of prayer for women and men in consecrated life. This celebration is attached to the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord on February 2. The Feast is also known as Candlemas Day, the day on which candles are blessed symbolising Christ who is the light of…
Love’s Doorway to Life: An Alternative Biography of Patrick Kavanagh boxed set of three discs, scripted and narrated by Úna Agnew and Art Agnew (Éist Audio Productions; www.eist.ie, €25.00) These days, with perhaps fewer young people reading books, this three-disc set may well be the ideal modern way of presenting a great poet. The creators are…
The starting pistol has been fired on the referendum on whether or not to give politicians the power to legislate to provide for abortion on demand. Truth be told, the battle started a long time ago – a media largely sympathetic with the push for wider access to abortion has been engaged in ‘softening up’…
Journey’s End (12A) They wait. They joke about soup. They snap off one another. Days pass. The spring offensive looms… We’re in France in March 1918, the last year of World War I. The ‘Boche’ still has some fight left in him and is about to descend on a group of British soldiers in a trench…
The World of Books – By the books editor For a man holding what many still see as the most powerful position in the world, President Trump has an uncanny instinct to express in the brutal language of the bar and locker-room the opinions of some of the most uninformed people in the United…
Peter Costello
Maria Byrne
Michael Kelly
Aubrey Malone