‘Mad Mike’ Hoare believed you get more out of life by living dangerously. And yet about 35 family and friends gathered in Durban, South Africa, on 17 March, St Patrick’s Day, to honour Mike as he turned 100 years old. Among them were five of the Wild Geese who fought with him in the Congo in the…

A quick intro on research for my Irish roots:

As a child, my mother always told me that her father said his mother was from Ireland; he (my grandfather) never told my mom her name, birthplace in Ireland, age or anything else: All he told my mom was where she was buried. When I went to the cemetery, she was…

DEARDAOIN -- On Dec. 17, 1803, rebel leader Michael Dwyer, whose guerrilla attacks had maddened British colonial authorities since 1798, surrendered. Dwyer was born in County Wicklow and he participated in the 1798 Rising; however, unlike most of the leaders and…

When I was asked to write a series of poems for an art exhibition in Australia earlier this year, I embarked on a dark voyage of discovery into the lives of Irish immigrant children 150 years ago.

Image: 'Image Above: Falling' by Jane Theau (2017)

There is a special brand of human misery so steeped…

Very recently I heard a young Israeli called Yehuda Shaul being interviewed on Radio Ulster. Yehuda is the co-founder of Breaking the Silence, an organization that aims to expose the harsh realities of the Occupation to fellow Israelis. His words made such a deep impression on me that I made up my mind to put my…

I am surely not the first Irish emigrant to have heard these words from their heartbroken mother. Guilt at the impact of my decision to leave Ireland and grief at the loss of my beloved mother are central themes in my poetry collection…

Feast your eyes on the natural beauty that Ireland has to offer. From amazing stone landscapes, to breathtaking cliff faces to picturesque lakes and more.…

Quiet determination -- I think that's what he had.  He was passionate about the Irish language, Irish history and culture, the Irish way of life.

Above, oil painting of Patrick Pearse at Ros Muc, Connemara

He saw what the English education system was doing, trying to stamp…

Shortly after the death of Martin McGuinness, I listened to a radio discussion about the Provisional IRA and its origins. Among the contributors was Ruth Dudley Edwards, the self-professed revisionist historian. At one stage in the programme, I heard her say, “I can understand why people went out on civil rights marches…

"Tinteán Tréigthe no.32", 42 x 42cm, oil painting on canvas by Eoin Mac Lochlainn, 2017

It’s Irish Language Week in Ireland this week so I've written my post in Irish. But please scroll down to read the English translation down below, if you wish. 

Tá scéailín deas agam daoibh faoin bpictiúr seo ag barr.…

The first time I fell in love was in the children’s section of Brooke Park library. I was 11 and she was 10, and her name was Josephine and she had so many freckles on her face that she was a haze of delight.

It didn’t take long for me to work out that she changed…

I still remember the whole thing like it was yesterday. Summer of '73 and me standing on the kitchen table in my Uncle Dan’s house in Forest Park singing Bad, Bad Leroy Brown and the whole place…

'My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.' -- JFK

For JFK

May 29, 1917 - Nov 22,…

The ritual of cleansing oneself with water to begin anew is an old one.

From the seemingly simple act of taking a shower to the tradition of baptising a baby, water is seen as a nurturing source of life and a cyclical element. Its passage through the world, be it fresh or saltwater, is a constant variable…

My mother (God rest her) must have taken this photo. It was in Connemara and they were on their honeymoon… It was a long time ago, but we still had a copy in a dusty old photo album at home in Ranelagh. It was lovely to see it projected onto the gable end of Pearse’s Cottage in Ros Muc last weekend.

It’s a long story. But maybe today, I’ll just tell you about the short film that I produced as part of my artist’s…

There are two routes I can take to my office when I leave the train station to go to work. They both pass a large 18^th century building of Palladian, neoclassical design, which I used to admire as a child, long before I knew of its connection to my own family.

Now, as I pass it by, I…

Tinteán Tréigthe no.19, oil on canvas, 2016

Now if you’re searching for your great grandmother’s cottage in the country, you can follow the map to a certain extent, but, in the end, you just have to ask someone. So, after driving a crooked mile up a crooked mucky roadeen, searching for the dot beside the ‘S’ of…

Boy, we had us a whopping week of celebrations. There isn't a child in the country who can't now recite the Proclamation, nor an adult that cannot name everyone who fought in the GPO in 1916. We can all quote Yeats and Pearse, Connolly and Casement. We can sing songs that weren't sung in a century, and we can recite thumping…

(Scroll down to read the English translation of this post.)

Bhuel, bhí sé go h-iontach a bheith i láthair i Ros Muc i mbliana le hÉirí amach na Cásca a chomóradh, céad bhliain níos déanaí.  Bhí brat na hÉireann ag foluain i ngach gáirdín agus cuma álainn ar an cheantar ar fad.  Bhí gach sórt…

I know that many of you have been to Galway (or intend visiting) and I am…