Nótaí na nEagarthóirí: Editors’ Notes

Soccer—or football, as non-North Americans call it—makes a claim on being the world’s game; chess must surely contend for that title as well. In a consciously fragmented essay (in the mode of David Shields), Dr. Shawn Gillen provides vignettes that speak of the many ways in which chess has opened his eyes to other cultures. In his life, chess has also been a bridge to other people—when his father schooled him in competitive play, when immigrant co-workers brought him into their gatherings, and disturbingly, when he found himself sitting across the chessboard from unabashed Nazis. Gillen also introduces the story of Paul Morphy, a nineteenth-century Irish American who was the best player of his time. A scholar of far-ranging interests, Shawn Gillen has published articles on Captain America, Henry James, and Edith Wharton; he last appeared in these pages in 2007, writing on Synge’s The Aran Islands.

As recent critical interventions by Kelly Matthews, Brad Kent, Mark Quigley, and others have shown, Sean O’Faolain stands as one of Ireland’s foremost public intellectuals in the twentieth century. Here, Michael Beebe examines a work that has been overshadowed by O’Faolain’s fiction and his editorship of The Bell—his 1943 volume An Irish Journey. Beebe shows that O’Faolain’s travelogue coalesces out of a pivotal moment in postcolonial Irish economic history, though the book’s accessible, anecdotal tone in some ways mask its serious concerns. An Irish Journey gathers numerous strands of political, cultural, and historical discourse, with a particular eye on the state of the provincial Irish town. As such, it also demonstrates O’Faolain’s prescient grasp of the transformations taking place in Irish industry and labor—including the seismic changes to be wrought by mass tourism. Michael Beebe’s scholarship and reviews have previously appeared in Breac and in PopMatters.

A local democratic republican tradition flourished in Belfast during the period 1846 to 1848, when, as Dr. Kerron Ó Luain observes, a distinct and independent strain of nationalism came into being. The Belfast leaders, he writes, “were by no means mere hangers-on who blindly followed the [Dublin-based] national intellectual leadership cadre of Young Ireland.” In the northern city, the Confederate Clubs opposed the antidemocratic tendencies of the O’Connellite leadership and made a point of reaching out to the Protestant community. Over the span of a few years, though, such conciliatory efforts flagged. Repeal politics in the North grew ever more hotly contested, and rearguard elements were often disruptive: but the insurrectionary goals of Belfast’s nationalists would continue unabated. Kerron Ó Luain has lately been a historical consultant for a documentary on the Irish Republican Brotherhood; more recently, he has taken up a position as a Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant in Irish at Villanova University.

“It’s probably fair to say that there has never been a time when Irish-language publishing was not in crisis,” remarks Dr. Philip O’Leary, one of four contributors to a roundtable convened by New Hibernia Review in the wake of this summer’s stunning announcement that Cois Life—a publisher known for high production values and book design, and for innovative distribution—would close its doors in 2019. The reason, in large part, is declining literacy in Irish. The shuttering of Cois Life will undoubtedly change the landscape of Irish publishing. Our panelists are Dr. Brian Ó Conchubhair, the Irish-language advisory editor for this journal; the writer Micheál Ó Conghaile who is the creative force behind the Clo Iar-Connacht publishing house; Dr. Máirín Nic Eoin, the author of widely respected critical works on Irish literature, several of which were published by Cois Life; and O’Leary, whose books on modern Irish literature are considered definitive. None of these distinguished commentators is quite ready to declare the sky is falling—but all would concur with Máirín Nic Eoin that “there is no room for complacency.”

Across six collections, starting with Oar (1990) though Keats Lives (2015), Moya Cannon has consistently crafted poems of quiet concentration, informed by her preoccupation with the elemental. The sea...