The Irish Pages Press
@irishpages
Biannual journal, edited in Belfast, publishing writing from Ireland and overseas. Publisher of The Irish Pages Press. Edited by Chris Agee and Kathleen Jamie.
“The blackberries fall into our palms from touch alone. We pick only those exposed to the sun. The hedge is cold on the inside, and hisses. Our hands are blue and sticky. The sweet-and-sour red juice flows in our throats.” ~ Magdalena Blažević, ‘In Late Summer’: irishpages.org/product/vol-...
“Britain created the conditions that made the Palestinian Nakba possible.” ~ Avi Shlaim 📚 irishpages.org/product/geno...
“For the hour or two they spent together the world around them did not exist. Is it possible yearning alone could bestow such intense pleasure? While she looked at him from the other side of the table, she knew that this is possible.” ~ Slavenka Drakulić irishpages.org/product/invi... #WITmonth
“... who are the real marauders & plunderers of British society? Shouldn’t it be the multinationals that warehouse their profits in various special-purpose vehicles? Shouldn’t it be the MPs who fix their expense claims to make a quick buck?” ~ Ahmed Olayinka Sule 📚 irishpages.org/product/rott...
“... but the mountain thyme is in flames, / and our bonny purple heather.” ~ from ‘In the Cairngorms’ by Kathleen Jamie, a new #poem published in yesterday’s @observeruk.bsky.social: observer.co.uk/culture/book...
“One task of literature is to formulate questions and construct counter-statements to the reigning pieties. Even when art is not oppositional, the arts gravitate toward contrariness.” ~ Susan Sontag (2003) irishpages.org/product/empi...
For anyone who missed the online launch of Garry MacKenzie’s ‘Firth’ during the week, there are still tickets going for his in-person reading at Topping & Co. (St Andrews) on Thursday, Sept 3rd 📚 It promises to be a splendid evening (details here): www.toppingbooks.co.uk/events/st-an... #booksky
“Beginnings: the sky brought down into the secrecy of fox-hole, taproot; water tabernacled with the wren in limestone crevices...” ~ Garry MacKenzie, ‘Firth’ 🌊 Do join us for the online launch of this superbly original book tomorrow (Thursday)! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/online-lau... @asls.org.uk
A #poem from ‘Prophetstown’ by @corourke91.bsky.social, a book that examines (in his words) “the relationship of the nature poem to patterns & infrastructures of exploitation that continue to fuel what most of us think of as civilisation”🌻 Now available: irishpages.org/product/prop... #Booksky
“Writing does not have to be intellectual, but it does help if it is intelligent.” ~ Eileen Battersby (1956-2018), writing in our inaugural issue 📚 irishpages.org/product/belf...
“I don’t know what historians in the future will call this historical period. The world order, based on the UN Charter and international law, is collapsing before our eyes...” ~ @avalaina.bsky.social (2024) irishpages.org/product/vol-...
“The ‘Odyssey’ and the ‘Iliad’ seem to me bottomless, endless... I relish those moments of delayed recognition and reunion in the ‘Odyssey’, reunions with his father, wife, nurse, his dog. I began to realize that Homer could open many doors into my life and memory.” ~ Michael Longley (2015)
“For most of us, our Protestant noses may be modified by our Catholic eyebrows, or vice versa. In other words, the myth of denominational purity in Northern Ireland is a myth... a blending has occurred.” ~ Patricia Craig 🌳 irishpages.org/product/kilc...
Irish Pages author @corourke91.bsky.social joined the "Books for Breakfast" podcast recently to review 4 #poetry titles from @salmonpoetry.bsky.social (going strong at 45), & to talk about his own new collection, ‘Prophetstown’ 📚 Listen here: booksforbreakfastireland.buzzsprout.com/1162427/epis...
“Trump Is a Ham / Trump Inhabits Trumpistan” ~ from ‘Trump Rant’ by Chris Agee 🔥 irishpages.org/product/trum... #FourthOfJuly #USA
A wide-ranging interview with Chris Agee, covering the origins of Irish Pages, as well as upcoming titles and projects: “Chris is particularly excited by the forthcoming book ‘The Ink of Survival: The Diary of a Girl in Gaza 2023-2025’ by Farah Nafez...” www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-li...
“Elephants call to each other in bass rumbles too deep for human hearing... Maybe they have emotions, too, which we cannot imagine, or social and even moral feelings, beyond the rainbow of our own.” ~ Ruth Padel (2021) irishpages.org/product/the-...
“War is not the natural condition of humanity, cooperation is. We must recover and assert this principle at every level – nationally, regionally and internationally.” ~ Michael D. Higgins (former President of Ireland) 🕊 Our ‘Genocide’ issue is now available to order: irishpages.org/product/vol-...
“The consumer is essentially somebody who feels or is made to feel lost unless he or she is consuming. Brand names and logos become the place names of the Nowhere.” ~ John Berger, ‘Ten Dispatches About Place’ (2006) irishpages.org/product/the-...
“One radiant June morning...” ~ Caroline Clarke, ‘The Burren’ (2011) irishpages.org/product/self...
A #poem from Ciarán O’Rourke’s third collection “Prophetstown” 📚 Now available: irishpages.org/product/prop... #Poetry @irishlittimes.bsky.social @corourke91.bsky.social
“It was always those with almost nothing else to carry / who carried the songs / to Babylon, to the Mississippi…” ~ from the #poem ‘Carrying the Songs’ by Moya Cannon, published in our Empire issue (2003): irishpages.org/product/the-... @irishlittimes.bsky.social
“I often wonder what the government’s game plan is as far as the Windrush generation is concerned...” ~ Ahmed Olayinka Sule, ‘Rotten London, Rotten Elsewhere’ (2026) irishpages.org/product/rott...
“Our country has been undone. The national purpose is in a heap of fragments.” ~ Thomas McCarthy, ‘The Years of Forgetting’ (2009) irishpages.org/product/irel...
Our new journal issue offers an essential defence of humanity and literature in an age of seemingly perpetual crisis – marked by mounting levels of degradation, savagery and violence that too often seem irreparable and systemic 📚 Details here: irishpages.org/product/vol-...
‘Documentary will always exist, because we need to understand ourselves...’ Fascinating interview with film-maker Mark Cousins from @headstuff.bsky.social: headstuff.org/entertainmen... We are proud to publish Mark’s ‘Dear Orson Welles’: irishpages.org/product/dear... @brian-bowe.bsky.social
‘Irish Pages: The Genocide Issue’ is a unique & compelling compendium of writing of the highest contemporary & historical relevance (which also tracks the palpable swerve towards new authoritarian & totalitarian norms in nominally democratic countries). More here: irishpages.org/product/vol-...
“My cheek on its bark felt the suffering the tree had borne and the grace of small fissures... I sat on a tree root and watched the water trip the moonlight, breaking it into a hundred crescents.” ~ Sonia Jarema (2024) irishpages.org/product/vol-...
“Israel and Palestine are not neighbours. Israel is built not next to Palestine but on top of it… We are living in cages, and all around the cages is Israel.” ~ The great Mahmoud Darwish, dreaming of a #FreePalestine in 2000 (reprinted in our 2015 issue): irishpages.org/product/isra...