Marjorie Brennan looks back on the year that was and selects her highlights of 2018.

The higher-level English paper two for Leaving Certificate students was deemed fair and appropriately challenging by one teacher yesterday evening.

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

Cork was a big winner at last night’s Bord Gáis Energy Book Awards, as the critically acclaimed history tome Atlas of the Irish Revolution picked up the Best Irish Published Book of the Year.

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

COMING to poetry for the first time can be challenging, especially when the meaning of the writer’s verse is buried in the soul of its creator. 

The daunting experience of a second English exam came and passed for this year’s Leaving Certificate students yesterday afternoon.

There has been a 3% increase in students opting to take the higher level English paper this year, here are some reactions to today’s paper.

THE story of how Doireann Ní Ghríofa started writing poetry six years ago is bizarre but also somewhat fitting for this warm, dreamy and gentle writer who was awarded the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary 2014-2015 by Ireland Professor of Poetry, Paula Meehan.

Poetry readings, art, music, and photography will be the subject of free public events over the coming months to coincide with the display of the $1m Great Book of Ireland at University College Cork.

Thomas McCarthy on a perceptive analysis of Eavan Boland’s work and an attempt “to put the layers of gold back into contemporary poetry”.

Here's your quick guide to five things that will keep you entertained this week.

New Selected Poems

The poetry imprint’s founder has just opened a bookshop and literary centre in Ennistymon, Co Clare, says Colette Sheridan

The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine is one of the most comprehensive studies of the greatest catastrophe in modern Irish history. One of its editors, William J Smyth, examines the scale of the disaster and the rationale behind the project: Trying to understand the Famine’s contemporary impact and how profoundly it shaped today’s Ireland

A Journey With Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet

The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story

FROM medieval jousting to a bone- crunching game of American football – Cork lived up to its reputation as Ireland’s festival capital this weekend.

Had Irish emigrants been entitled to vote, and if even a small fraction of them had exercised that right, undoubtedly they could have been the deciding factor in general elections here given the size of the country and the closeness of election results.