We went early this morning to the small estuary-side town of Tarbert—home of one of my favorite Irish modernists (poet, curator-librarian & friend of Jack Yeats, Joyce, Beckett & Stevens), Thomas McGreevy. The ferry there has been running for hundreds of years. We took it, with the car, across the...
Today we explored the first half of the Ring of Kerry—driving, hiking, exploring from Kenmare to Valentia Island. Click on any image for a larger view.
Today we bade farewell to the Irish Sea-facing city of Waterford (with the quay view from our hotel room balcony) and drove all the way through Cork and out the other side of County Cork (and the town of Glengarriff, where we had lunch in a very old pub) and...
After walking around the remains of the first monastic community in Ireland (settled in the 6th century) we went on a 5 1/4 mile hike about the Upper Lake. Then we drove to Avoca (a tiny Wicklow Mountains town which was the home of the very first Irish woollen mill)...
Remains of houses & chapels in the monastic village (founded in the 500s) in the beautiful mountain valley of Glendalough, which Jane and I visited today in the Wicklow Mountains. Click on any image for a larger view.
Gravestones at the monastic village in Glendalough (in the Wicklow Mountains). The monastic village was founded in the 6th century, but of course these gravestones are mostly from hundreds of years later. Click on any image for a larger view.
We drove into the Wicklow Mountains and found ourselves driving many km along a road called “Wicklow Way.” We’re staying at a B&B here and this afternoon did a 2-mile hike among the hills. The gorse was out in full yellow! Click on any image for a larger view.
We drove an hour north of Dublin to spend the morning visiting New Grange, the 5200-year-old Neolithic passage tomb, an acre big. Click on an image for a larger view.
Today we saw Beckett’s telephone at the Irish Writers Museum and encountered Joyce in St. Stephens Green. At the Chester Beatty Museum we were awed by his collection of early paper and early book bindings. The post-impressionist paintings at the Hugh Lane Gallery were ones we’d never seen. The map...
Arrived in Dublin today — and spent most of the day (despite jet-lag) walking around the city, dodging raindrops and then enjoying the sudden sun. We stopped in at the National Gallery, walked across the Liffey for dinner, strolled Grafton street, had a few pub pints. Click on any image...
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. His new book is 1960: When Art & Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II & Remade the Modern (Columbia University Press, 2021). He is currently writing a book about online pedagogy. He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 265,000 participants in 192 countries since 2012.
Founder/Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House—intro video ][ events calendar
Convener/teacher, “ModPo.” an open online course on modern & contemporary U.S. poetry—overview of the course ][ intro video
Publisher of Jacket2 magazine—my Jacket2 commentary series ][ "First Readings"
Producer/host, PoemTalk podcast series—co-sponsored by Kelly Writers House & the Poetry Foundation
Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing—Creative Writing ][ RealArts internships ]
Co-founder & co-director of PennSound—50,000 files ][ 15 million downloads annually
Teacher & host, "Kelly Writers House Fellows"—since 1999 ][ Susan Sontag, John Ashbery, Jamaica Kincaid, Laurie Anderson, Adrienne Rich, Joan Didion, John Edgar Wideman & more
Teacher, "Representations of the Holocaust"—a course on survivor testimony ][ my holocaust site
Click on the image for information about the book.