New writing about a quiet tree, a brash dictionary, and blackberries

Latest in The Irish Independent’s New Irish Writing, the Boston Sunday Globe, and more

“Look, tiny Dada…” Trying not to buy every copy of The Irish Independent at our local shop.

If TL;DR isn’t yet passé, here’s a “too long, didn’t read” version of what to read up top:

• “What’s in a name? In Ireland, a host of letters that Americans find hard to pronounce,” the Boston Sunday Globe (p. 3 of the Ideas section today in print; note: if you encounter a subscription sign-in, refresh / try again and it should work.)

• “California Redwood in Killarney,” New Irish Writing in the Irish Independent

• “Blackberry trellis,” Autumn Moon Haiku Journal (easier on: Twitter or Facebook)

Since sending my first Substack newsletter a couple of weeks ago, I ported over a good number of previous subscribers from the now-defunct TinyLetter list. For all of the family, friends, colleagues, and/or generally curious or entirely new here, I hope you stick around for what I aim to be a roughly monthly update related to my writing — the book (reminder: a family memoir / social history of Irish migration) as well as essays, poems, and, if it’s picked up, my first attempt at fiction. If you know anybody who’d appreciate being subscribed, please let them know they can sign up here.

Today, I’m writing from Koprivshtitsa, Bulgaria, where I’m still pinching myself to think I’m here as one of the 2024 Elizabeth Kostova Foundation poetry fellows. If you had told me a year ago that I would not only be in such company but also reading my own work at a literary festival in Sofia, accompanied by gorgeous Bulgarian translations by Rumen Pavlov, I would have said, oh, what a beautiful daydream. 

I’ve long thought of poetry as something of a personal passion. I wrote my first research paper in high school on the influence of bebop on Langston Hughes. (Thank you, Mr. Klein!) I still treasure having listened to Seamus Heaney and Robert Pinsky read at AGNI’s 30th anniversary party when I was an undergrad at Boston University. (Great literary journals deserve memorable birthday bashes!) Especially while living in New York and during our Covid containments, I’d often wind down at night with a poem by the likes of Federico García Lorca, Wisława Szymborska, and Leonard Cohen, appreciating the vastness contained within the arrangements of their words.

Since I was a child, I’ve dabbled with writing my own poetry. I recently resurfaced this one, “The Greatest of Ease,” written when I was 17 or 18 and published in Clarion a couple of years later. But almost always, any lines I sketched knew no more than the confines of an old notebook or an old hard drive or old scraps of paper. Unexpectedly, while I’ve been living in Kerry for the past couple of years, I found myself responding to more of the world around me through poetry, and am heartened by the response.

So in this edition, I have two recently published poems and an essay to share with you:

• First off, I must admit to feeling downright giddy when I received an email from editor Ciaran Carty letting me know that a poem of mine, “California Redwood in Killarney,” had been selected as May’s winner of the monthly New Irish Writing competition. Sure enough, on Saturday, May 25th, I snuck out of the house early in the morning with my two youngest children to buy copies of the Irish Independent at our local newsagent. Unfortunately, in the online version here the formatting breaks and is interrupted by dynamic ads, but you can find a clean cutout from the print edition hosted by the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies on their Facebook page here. (Vis social if you’d like to like / reshare: LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Facebook, Threads, BlueSky.) Highlights include listening to Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) professor Gayatri Devi read this poem on Facebook, and doing a reading of my own at the Poet’s Corner, an event hosted by Sean Lyons at Christy’s the Well bar during the 2024 Listowel Writers’ Week. 

• Around the same time as “California Redwood in Killarney” published in the Irish Independent, Autumn Moon Haiku Journal included three lines from me amongst a peaceful collection in their Spring/Summer issue. (It’s a bit easier to find and to read through the snapshots I shared on social:, via Twitter/X and/or Facebook) As we head back to Rhode Island this summer, “Blackberry trellis” feels apt.

• And to end with today’s highlight: if you live in, or are presently visiting, New England, please pick up a copy of the print edition of the Boston Sunday Globe (June 16th). You’ll find an essay of mine on p. 3 of the Ideas section. You can also read “What’s in a name? In Ireland, a host of letters that Americans find hard to pronounce” online here (and like or reshare via social: LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Facebook, Threads, BlueSky). If you encounter a paywall / subscription sign-in, you should be able to simply refresh the page or click the link a second time and be able to read it without any issue. As for the backstory on this one: longstanding dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster recently tweeted out a joke about the name Siobhan, which triggered a bit of blowback. At the time, I was out in Dingle at the Bealtaine festival with Cathlin and our children and met a contingent from Western Massachusetts who represented local arts, culture, and tourism organizations that were focused on the past and present connections between the two regions. I began to think about the disconnect between Merriam-Webster’s headquarters being in Springfield at the same time as I listened to a curator from the Springfield Museums read Dr. Seuss books to a room of children at the Dingle Bookshop. For anybody who has visited the tremendous Great Blasket Centre, just beyond Dingle, you’ll also appreciate the central role Springfield, Mass. played in the history of immigration and exile known so deeply by the Irish-speaking community who left the Great Blasket Island. So I wrote an essay originally pegged to that particular connection, and I couldn’t have found a better home for this piece reflecting on the Irish language — and the English language — not only in the Boston Globe, but also in its always thoughtful and provocative Ideas section. For all the Siobháns out there, my mom Nuala, and everybody else from any background who has so often needed to explain the pronunciation or spelling of their names, including the reader who emailed me about little Róisín who was announced as Raisin at a doctor’s appointment, hope you enjoy.

Write back with your own tales of butchered names, Killarney holiday memories, Bulgarian travel tips, experiences with learning Irish, or anything else. I’d love to hear.

Otherwise, I should have another poem coming out any day now, as well as updates from Listowel Writers’ Week and the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation fellowship, but that’s all for now. Go raibh maith agaibh!

- Sean