Kerry was my first taste of freedom. My parents left me with my aunty from the age of nine. My son is nine now, but the Irish college is gone, the shop is closed, and the once bustling church looks sad, like a forgotten song.

A coalition of business leaders, hoteliers, publicans and restaurateurs in Cork say their focus remains on doing everything possible to ensure the delivery of the Cork event centre as it faces yet about obstacle.

So much will happen between lunch time today and dinner time tomorrow that looking backwards to last week and as far back as last weekend seems pointless with how much the future has to offer.

Conference “ambassadors” who helped generate €10m for Cork’s economy this year have been honoured amid renewed calls for delivery of the city’s long-awaited events centre.

As she approaches her 90th year, the bestselling Irish writer has been named the winner of the 2019 David Cohen Prize for Literature.

One made us laugh at times; the other cry at times but, best of all, they always made us think.

North Clare and its Burren landscape is a barren, yet breath taking part of the country, writes Mimi Murray.

As the weather turns cooler, people will be paying over the counter for cures for seasonal colds and sniffles. But we don’t have to look far for free vitamin C.

“And we believe in football, As we believe in song”

Here is a selection of people who have moved into interesting new roles.

Musician and broadcaster Philip King is originally from Cork, but has been living on the Dingle peninsula for many years.

Perhaps as the two of them relaxed some evening in Cambridge, Seamus Heaney enlightened Derek Walcott about hurling and Croke Park and what happens when the known universe narrows into a man standing over a sideline cut with time running out on another season.

After paper-one left many English students 'beaming', paper-two provided a much more stern challenge.

Two visitor experience assistants are required to work within the high-profile, long-running National Library of Ireland exhibition, Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again, celebrating the life and work of the renowned poet in Bank of Ireland Cultural and Heritage Centre, Westmoreland St. These are “specified purpose”. contracts due to expire in December 2021.

Jazz and punk rock may seem like opposite ends of the musical spectrum, but to drummer Brian Chase, switching between genres is all in a day’s work.

In Digging, one of Seamus Heaney’s most memorable poems, he writes about watching his father “stooping in rhythm through potato drills” and concludes: “By God, the old man could handle a spade/Just like his old man.”

€2,187,500 worth of parking tickets.

Global and national challenges are set to be explored at the local level at an inaugural autumn school in West Cork.

James Finnegan's first collection of poetry is the work of a mature man with a teaching career behind him. His work has been highly commended by the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry competition, and published in Cyphers and The Irish Times, among others, writes Alannah Hopkin

The opening of the new Kevin Street Garda Station is a timely boost for the force, writes Security Correspondent Cormac O’Keeffe

The arts festival in Galway has a series of talks and discussions on the subject of ‘home’. Here, three of the participants offer Richard Fitzpatrick their thoughts.

A man who dipped his toe in the adventure boat business after beating cancer hopes to create waves with his new Cork Harbour tour-boat venture linking the city to Cobh.

A poem about the pub’s social importance to rural Ireland is being broadcast to Tube passengers in London this St Patrick’s Day.

The death of uilleann piper Liam O’Flynn prompted tributes to his talent, his dedication to musical heritage and his inspiration to rising musicians.

O'Flynn is acknowledged as Ireland's foremost exponent of the uilleann pipes and has brought the music of the instrument to a worldwide audience.

A portrait of the late John Montague by artist Colin Davidson will be unveiled in UCC today.

Iraqi poet, Adnan al-Sayegh (born in 1955) has paid a heavy price for his poetry which denounces the devastation of wars and the horrors of dictatorship, writes Colette Sheridan

David Creedon has been nominated for the Hennessy Portrait Prize for his picture of Billy Ramsell. It’s the latest addition to his hugely impressive body of work, writes Marjorie Brennan.

Bernadette Kiely’s proximity to the Nore has had a huge influence on her art, writes Marjorie Brennan.

Kazuo Ishiguro has won the Nobel Prize in literature for his novels of "great emotional force".

The Cork Opera House stage must feel like a second home to Lisa Hannigan. 

Olivia O’Leary is about to begin the latest installment in her broadcasting career as the new presenter of The Poetry Show, writes Marjorie Brennan

The fourth anniversary of Seamus Heaney’s death falls next Wednesday but the service he celebrated in The Shipping Forecast is celebrating 150 years of saving lives.

The National Library is to undergo a major redevelopment having received €10m in grant funding for refurbishment.

FAMILIARITY with contemporary poetry writing in English eases one’s passage through this most enjoyable tome, and even a nodding acquaintance with Cal Lowell and his contemporaries, including Berryman and Elizabeth Bishop, or, closer to home, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, helps distil the purity from the precis-like quality of the analysis. 

Cork and Kerry can capitalise on current momentum by securing thousands of business tourists from the US east coast and the Asian market, tourist industry leaders have said.

Business tourism is a burgeoning industry, worth €11.5m to the Cork economy in 2016. Pádraig Hoare hears from the Cork Convention Bureau that it can be worth infinitely more in the future

Shane Nestor pitches his Act Up company at people who want to act, but don’t necessarily want to be famous

The Government now has to “step up to the plate” to rescue tourism from the impact of Brexit in the wake of the UK election because it is “much too important to the regional economy to be taken for granted”, according to a national industry body.

Paddy Armstrong’s account of his wrongful imprisonment as part of the Guildford Four is harrowing. As a politically disengaged teenager of the ’70s, he was always an unlikely IRA man, as Anne Lucey discovers.