This year’s Belfast Book Festival sees a number of events exploring different cultural experiences. There is Romanian writing, poetry about motherhood, queer poetry, and an inter-generational event. Poet Nandi Jola and author Sue Divin will both be there to share from their recent publications – two texts which on the surface seem very different but which both have something to say about our wee country. Continue Reading…
Documentary filmmaking is often considered the rawest configuration of the cinematic form. This raw sincerity can be found throughout the work of Elspeth Vischer or Vish Films – a Belfast-based director whose focus lies between both factual and experimental film traditions.
In 2020, Elspeth embarked on her first documentary feature film as a Creative-Practise PhD Candidate at Queen’s University Belfast, titled Let Us Be Seen; Analysing and Documenting the Development of Grassroots Feminism in Belfast. Continue Reading…
Ewen Friers recounts the fraught story of Bella Pacifica, the third album by Axis Of.
In early 2016 I sat on a Provence-bound flight, awash with a strange feeling of relief, sadness and optimism. With the sweat on my forehead barely dry from the show the night before at the Limelight, I had rushed the Axis Of gear to our lock-up on the North Coast and closed the door on it for good before heading to City Airport, waving goodbye to Mr Tayto and heading for sunnier climes. Continue Reading…
The 19-year-old says that she’s absolutely voting Green. Moments later, a 92-year-old tells them she will read the party leaflet and have a good think about it. These doorstep reactions are noted on the campaign sheet and to the team moves from Kingsway towards Parkvue Manor and potential victory. Electioneering is on.
A question-and-answer session with Rory Friers about the making of And So I Watch You From Afar’s Jettison album and the pioneering audio-visual experience that launched it.
By Addison Patterson. Continue Reading…
“I was dreaming in my dreaming
Of an aspect bright and fair
And my sleeping it was broken
But my dream it lingered near…”
Patti Smith, ‘People Have The Power’
Patti Smith, Conor Hall, Belfast, 2003. Image by Stuart Bailie
Gavin Martin, 1961-2022. Music writer, NME mainstay, poet, cuss, proclaimer, natural mystic. Raised in Bangor, Co Down. Co-founder of the Alternative Ulster fanzine with Dave McCullough (also RIP). First published in the NME letters page when he was 13. Wrote for the paper when he was still at school at Bangor Grammar. Moved as a teenager to London to work alongside Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill and Danny Baker. Continue Reading…
We hear that Ukrainian writers are holding out in basements and some are offline for their own safety. In Odessa, they’re working on a literary magazine between bombardments. Several authors are in exile, understandably anxious about their family. And tonight we’re glad to know that some of these artists are viewing a live stream of a tribute night at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast.
Charlie Hanlon is laughing in the corner of a quiet cafe in Belfast. In a few days time the singer-songwriter from Downpatrick will celebrate his seventeenth birthday, a milestone for more reasons than one.
“It’s going to be two years since I wrote ‘I Lost Myself’. I remember so clearly writing that song on my fifteenth birthday. I didn’t want to have a party, I just wanted to sit with my guitar and record. I stuck a demo of the track on Soundcloud and the next day ATL Introducing played it, I couldn’t believe it. I remember asking myself ‘how have I blagged this one?’. It was such a feeling, that was the start for me.”
Wynona Bleach led me to learn of saudade – an untranslatable Portuguese term designed to capture a simultaneously melancholy and euphoric nostalgia. According to one particular Portuguese writer it is – “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.”
Wynona Bleach make music which shouldn’t sound as it does. They nod to faintly miserable bands, most of whom peaked during that most confusing decade (the 90s) – Smashing Pumpkins, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and the like. The lyrics are often quite dark, the artwork a touch goth, the videos a little creepy. It absolutely should not be fun.
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