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Cracking Up
Kevin Breathnach
‘It has been several weeks since I slept for more than an hour, and lately I’ve been feeling on the verge of cracking up.’
Introduction
Sigrid Rausing
‘But Ireland is Ireland. It resists and relishes its own national images in equal measure.’
The Raingod’s Green, Dark as Passion
Kevin Barry
‘If cities are sexed, as Jan Morris believes, then Cork is a male place. Personified further, I would cast him as low-sized, disputatious and stoutly built, a hard-to-knock-over type.’
The Mask of Night
Lorna Gibb
‘I puzzled over the language but disentangled its meaning slowly, carefully, eager to connect’ Lorna Gibb on Shakespeare’s Juliet.
Hell and Night
Noelle Kocot-Tomblin
‘The implication of Iago’s silence is that there is no hope for his redemption’ Noelle Kocot-Tomblin on ‘Othello’.
On Sonnet 50
Paula Bohince
‘I love Shakespeare’s slow insistence, which mirrors the action within the poem: there is nothing but grief to reach.’ Paula Bohince on Shakespeare’s sonnet 50.
To Thine Own Self Be True
David Flusfeder
‘If Shakespeare’s characters stand for anything, it’s for a slipperiness of identity.’ David Flusfeder on a dog named Shakespeare.
On Shakespeare and Aemilia Lanyer
Sandra Simonds
‘I gently propose that for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death we stop reading Shakespeare and shift our attention to the poems of Aemilia Lanyer’. Sandra Simonds on Shakespeare and Aemilia Lanyer.
Ariel’s Song
Romesh Gunesekera
‘It is to Shakespeare’s pages I return whenever I feel I am sinking. There I can be sure to find a lifeline.’
Fugee
Hawa Jande Golakai
‘Now we’ve fizzled into a ridiculous unsaid, a flaccid tale of love, or lack thereof, in the time of Ebola.’
Torn Silk and Garlands of Garlic
Teffi
Teffi remembers the Armenian refugees in Novorossiisk during the Russian Revolution.
