Irish Pages: A Journal of Contemporary Writing, Vol. 2, No. 1: Empire

Irish Pages is a biannual journal, edited in Belfast and publishing, in equal measure, writing from Ireland and overseas.Its policy is to publish poetry, short fiction, essays, creative non-fiction, memoir, essay reviews, nature-writing, translated work, literary journalism, and other autobiographical, historical, religious and scientific writing of literary distinction.There are no standard reviews or narrowly academic articles. Irish Language and Ulster Scots writing are published in the original, with English translations or glosses.IRISH PAGES is a non-partisan, non-sectarian, culturally ecumenical, and wholly independent journal. It seeks to create a novel literary space in the North adequate to the unfolding cultural potential of the new political dispensation. The magazine is cognisant of the need to reflect in its pages the various meshed levels of human the regional (Ulster), the national (Ireland and Britain), the continental (the whole of Europe), and the global.This issue:*Tim Robinson on the death of Irish placenames*Susan Sontag on literature as freedom and the emergence of American empire*An excerpt from Brian Friel's new play*New fiction by Robin Glendinning and Askold Melnyczuk*Zen Wisdom Poems from Vietnam*Essays by Chris Arthur, Gerald Dawe, Fred Marchant and Gabriel Rosenstock*New poems from Paul Muldoon, Sarah Maguire, Charles Wright, Moya Cannon, Gary Allen & Michael Hamburger*“Landscapes of Absence”A remarkable photographic portfolio by Paul Seawright