In November 2012, President Michael D Higgins visited the Northwest of England and made a number of speeches, including this address at the University of Manchester, which we are delighted to publish for the first time.
Itinerary
You don’t really stay here; a hotel is a place at which you arrive and from which you depart.
The West Stand
The Fitzsimonses’ house, about the size of an English manor, was on the middle stretch of Avoca Avenue …
Three Poems
They told you stand barefoot, the cool grass
spreading for the soles of your feet; weight
Two Poems
It’s not that he’s too old, he just doesn’t want it,
the practice being enough and sometimes
making the cut. Top half of the leader-board
The Children’s Story
The Tree reading in the street: ‘The Frome children, who all even the boys bore the names of flowers, were making a trifle …
Two Poems
Those spacious months when we lived
continents apart, pens were back in,
our letters made days more bearable.
A Season in Paradise
I find him in Empangeni. My father lies on his back at the edge of the sugar-cane valley, one arm under his head, the other flung out, fingers plaiting scrub and yellow weed flowers.
The Traffic Noir
The films were usually shown, where I grew up, in school libraries during the normal run of the school day …
End of Watch (2012), dir. David Ayer, reviewed by Janet Rogerson
by Janet Rogerson
Laura Ellen Joyce, The Museum of Atheism (Salt Publishing), reviewed by Alex Johnson
by Alec Johnson
MR9 Editorial
As we move to this newly designed site, we are keen to maintain the onscreen integrity of the poems and prose we publish …
Between My Father and the King
My father fought in the First World War that used to be called ‘Great’ until the truth of its greatness was questioned and the denial of its greatness accepted.
Worthless Men
After one long winter dredging the waterways for Meek’s Steam Navigation Company, and a second short summer hauling ice …