Two weeks ago I got an email telling me my short story, 'The Girl Behind the Bar', was runner-up in the 2021 Radio New Zealand Nine to Noon Short Story Competition. The delay in letting me know was apparently due to COVID lockdowns and resultant recording studio delays, but now all systems were go, and…
Beauty and bullets: My Ireland
The road leading to one of my father's churches. Ireland 1972 Next to the fresh grave of my beloved grandmotherThe grave of my firstlove murdered by my brotherPaul Durcan Today the world celebrates St Patrick's Day. Covid restrictions permitted, people around the world with precisely no Irish heritage, or a sliver of it, or a…
The Joy of Sadness
"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” -W.B. Yeats I want to say a brief word today about the importance of making space for sadness. I'm not going to give a lecture about being brave enough to face our sad feelings in order to work…
The Beginning
2017 was a turbulent, strange, unexpected year for me. The highlight was going home to Ireland for a month by myself. I'm still processing the journey and what it meant to me, and you can follow along as I write about it in installments. I've posted four already, and more will be on their way…
A Writer in Ireland: Part Four
In Crossmaglen the fire burns true The patriotic flame will never die And when you hear the battle cry It will be the fighting men of Crossmaglen. -“The Fighting Men of Crossmaglen”, IRA ballad, 1970s Armagh and Crossmaglen After a wildly comfortable night in a country B & B just outside Armagh (I had it…
A Writer in Ireland: Part Three
Newry Nestled between the Ring of Gullion and the spectacular Mourne Mountains, Newry doesn’t make many headlines these days. I drove into the city with a load of wet washing drying on the back seat and vague memories of grey stone and dullness and necessity. Over the next two days, however, I was to become…
A Writer in Ireland: Part Two
Castles are never how you imagine they're going to be. You picture yourself wafting from medieval great hall to windswept rampart, the imagined accompanying strains of Enya or Clannad making you feel ever so slightly weepy, when in reality you find yourself in rubbish-strewn, freezing ruins with Sam and Betty from Wisconsin, their shell-suited thighs…
A Writer in Ireland: Part One
Born in this island, maimed by history and creed-infected, by my father taught the stubborn habit of unfettered thought I dreamed, like him, all people should be free. -John Hewitt, "The Dilemma" There was a surreal, joyful melancholy to this homecoming. As we punched through the haze above a sweltering London and soared left, easing to…
An Irish family history
It's now just over two weeks until I get on a plane to Ireland. In preparation for my trip back to my birthplace, I've been talking at length to my father about our life in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Around two weeks ago I asked him to give me directions to our old house, my old…
Beginnings
I'm going home next June. I was born in Northern Ireland, and lived with my Protestant minister father and my mother and two siblings in County Armagh, just by the border. In the seventies (yes I am that old) South Armagh was known as “bandit country” because it was such a dangerous place to be during…
Patricia Bell, Author 