No Más This is what he tells me. He was married before but the soldiers shot his first wife, and only later did he marry our Mamá. At least half my life gone and only today I am hearing this, from a professional liar. The old dilemma: how can I be sure if it’s honesty […]
Sound City, Dave Grohl’s documentary on a Hollywood recording studio doesn’t promise much, on the surface, and yet it turns out to be a heartfelt and eloquent history of something that, with the digital revolution, we seem to have lost – sound. The film doesn’t promise much?Have I gone mad?? It’s got Dave Grohl (of […]
Take doses of Jerry Lee Lewis, AC/DC, Lynnrd Skynnrd – add a couple of gramms of Paul Westberg’s crisp ear for a tune, and mix with a dancing dervish and you’ll come close to getting the good-time boogie and blues of J. Roddy Walston and the Business – officially this Monkey’s favourite new band. The […]
Laura Marling has announced the release of her fourth album, Once I was an Eagle for May 2013. Details of the new album first came to light during Marling’s US tour, where she explained to NME that it would be a stripped back affair featuring just herself, her producer Ethan Johns (Kings of Leon,Ryan Adams, […]
Mary Costello is the author of The China Factory, a collection of short stories which was published by The Stinging Fly Press. It has received much acclaim and renown for its intensity and sensitivity. Costello has an amazing capacity to reveal characters’ lives through understated encounters, be it the restraint of two strangers in The […]
One of the nicest things about Sarah Slean is that she is both talented and prolific- something which makes the creative world smile. Slean has made eight albums, starred in two short films and a movie musical, published two volumes of poetry, held exhibitions of her paintings, written two string quartets, and shared the stage […]
To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong. William Wordsworth. And so Bella stopped crying; Stopped waking in the night Stopped being the person she had been for all of her thirty-seven years years. Bella became someone else. The softness inside her […]
“The flesh is the surface of the unknown.” – Victor Hugo On January 15th, The Food Safety Authority of Ireland announced the discovery of horse meat tainted beef being produced, packed, and shipped from slaughterhouses in the UK and Ireland. ABP Food Group, the company deemed responsible, suspended production in its Co. Monaghan plant. As […]
RAINDROP I hold on by day, but in the night when lonely shepherds tend their flocks bending low from arching lights under an iron sky, the blackness criss-crossed with prayers, laced with phosphorous tracer and laden with soldiers metal, I listen to mosquitoes choosing their moment. The sirens begin to wail but I am dead […]