Ireland – the home of my formative years – has become the first country to legalise gay marriage through referendum. This has been a great step forward for a country that only officially legalised homosexuality twenty-five years ago. It’s a victory for Ireland and a further loosening of the grip that the Catholic Church holds on the throats of Ireland’s people. However, it must be analysed what a vote against gay marriage actually advocates.
Filed under Observations
I am by no means a poet. Though I have a great interest in poetry. I wanted to share with everyone a little poem I put together for my girlfriend on her birthday. I hope you enjoy.
Te Iubesc
Pentru Gabi
Love…
Simple in feeling,
But words,
Disintegrate, sandy against
Concrete emotion.
Filed under Fictional Pieces
It’s that time of the year again when I’ve got to prep students on how to do their external exams. I say prep them for the exams because technique takes precedence over knowledge and skill. It’s a sad fact of teaching that creativity must ultimately be stifled in order to facilitate the answering of a question ‘correctly’. This doesn’t necessarily encompass teaching young adults the conventions of literary criticism and the importance of this knowledge in further study nor the enjoyment of literature and an appreciation of its process. Instead there are certain conventions – varied across different exam boards – which students must follow. If the students fail to follow these then their grade will invariably decrease. This brings me to the central question of this article: Is life an exam?
Filed under Observations
I’ve made a few major decisions this week, as I feel awoken from some self-induced trance. I’ve abandoned the alcohol binges that characterised the majority of my adult weekends. This – it would seem – has been the catalyst of those changes. My Sunday’s have been transformed from an alcohol-coated vegetation into a renewal of life. I’ve started learning Spanish – the official language of the country I’ve called home for the past eighteen months. In doing so, I’ve been attempting to eradicate a lifetime of failed attempts towards competently communicating in a foreign tongue. However, the greatest change is related to my novel.
Filed under Scribbling a Path
Scribblings and Broken Glass 