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Green Rebel is ready to set sail

A Killaloe Sailing Club member is on the crest of a wave preparing for the second time to become the first Irish person to complete an around-the-world race known as the “Voyage for Madmen”. Pat Lawless now has a driving desire more than ever to try and win the 2026 Golden Globe Race, after he had to retire from the 2022 race when his self-steering failed 1,200 nautical miles west of Cape Town. With a heavy heart, after repairs he sailed Green Rebel back home to Ireland. Without a self-steering system, he was unable to achieve his dream. He could have made repairs and continued the voyage under Chichester Class as a one-stop circumnavigation, but decided to retire. “I felt terrible shame because of all the support I received. You learn from shame because you don’t want to feel it again. I was heartbroken, I was trying to fix it. When I got into Cape Town everyone was so nice …

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Kelly watch the stars

Ennis actor, Kelly Gough, will star in the Irish television premier of a new feature film in the Irish language later this week. Tarrac, which was written by Eugene O’Brien, tells the story of Aoife Ni Bhraoin, played by Gough, who returns home to Kerry when her father becomes ill. Her father, Brendan ‘The Bear’ O’Briain, played by Lorcan Cranitch, is in recovery following a serious heart attack and Aoife must return home to look after him. While at home, Aoife is forced to face the grief of her mother’s death, which she has been ignoring for years. A lot has been left unsaid between Aoife and her father and this must be rectified before Aoife can truly start to heal. While all of this is happening, Aoife reconnects with a group of rowers who form an all-female rowing team. Against all odds, the team decides to take on the high-stakes Naomhóg rowing competition. Set on the Dingle Peninsula, the …

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North Clare short set for world premiere at Los Angeles film festival

The Covid 19 pandemic had a massive impact on the lives of North Clare woman, Aoife Corry, and her American fiancé, Tom Jorgensen. On March 13, 2020, then American president Donald Trump signed an executive order which, among other things, made it impossible for the couple to return to America together for 14 long months. It was a time of great uncertainty for everyone, but also a time when creativity was almost forced to blossom. Later this week, the world premier of Homestead, a film made by Aoife and Tom, will take place at the Los Angeles Irish Film Festival. The short horror film, which was shot over two days in Corofin in 2021, is a reflection of the isolation felt by so many people during those long days of lockdown. “We were stuck. Trump signed an executive order which meant that we couldn’t go back to America at that time. We ended up in Ireland for 14 months,” Aoife …

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Darragh McKeon explores the prose of memory

MILTOWN Malbay based author, Darragh McKeon, was one of the highlights of this year’s Ennis Book Club Festival. Now based Clare, he grew up in Offaly and his debut novel All That Is Solid Melts Into Air was published in 2014 to international acclaim. It was translated into nine different languages, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and in France it won the Lire Prize for Best International Debut. His second novel Remembrance Sunday was published last year to further acclaim, with the Irish Times stating that the book’s “imaginative storytelling and fine prose of Remembrance Sunday puts McKeon in the big leagues.” Born in 1979, he is just about old enough to have a vague memory of the IRA bombing of Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday, 1987, which saw 12 deaths. It was one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles and saw an outcry across Ireland and the UK. However when he first began work on what would …

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Kilshanny author delves into the memoirs of our famine immigrants

A NEW book by Mary Immaculate College academic and Kilshanny resident, Dr Sarah O’Brien, tells the stories of Irish immigrants in post-Famine America. Of Memory and the Misplaced draws from 30 memoirs written between 1900 and 1970 and shows the prevalence of intimate and taboo themes in ordinary immigrants’ writing, such as domestic violence, same-sex love and famine-induced trauma. Combining literary and historical theory, Of Memory and the Misplaced highlights voices that have traditionally been silenced and offers a rare and unexplored collection of primary source autobiographical texts to better understand the experiences of Irish immigrants in the United States. “In the early twentieth century, memoir-writing was a craze in the US. It became fashionable for older people to write down their life stories,” she said. “Luckily, some of the memoirs written by Irish emigrants during this era survived. They offer a rare glimpse into the remembering mind of those who left after the Famine. “The memoirs I write about …

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Twin Headed Wolf in the theatre of sound

It has been a long and exciting road for Lahinch twins Julie and Branwen Kavanagh on their way to Altarwise. The duo, who make music under the name Twin Headed Wolf, began creating their debut album way back in 2013, and after more than a decade of off-and-on recording, mastering and remastering, Altarwise will meet the world this week. This is an album like none you are likely he hear this year. The songs are much more than individual, musical expressions. The Lahinch singer-songwriters have crafted a world for every song to inhabit, with textures and characters unique to that particular place and time. “This album got lost in time a bit. We started recording it back in Clare with Simon O’Reilly, we had so many mad things that we wanted to include in the album. We wanted [to record] wheelbarrows in doors and old pianos and things like that, so it took a long time to get the sound …

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The Poetry Collective in motion

For more than 30 years The Poetry Collective has been bringing together writers from across Clare and the Mid West. After taking a break during Covid the Collective are now back, recently hosting their biggest ever poetry reading and open mic event in glór, which co-founder Arthur Watson describes as being “like the Guinness Book of Records for poetry”. The Clare Champion is sitting down with Arthur and fellow poets Patrick Stack, Marion Moynihan, John Killeen and Sinead Nic Seoda who reflect on what it means to be a part of the group, the growth of poetry in Clare, the Collective’s history and its plans for the future. By its very nature creating poetry is a solitary endeavour, however through the Collective vital positive connections are being made bridging together a wide range of diverse writers. Patrick explains, “Writing poetry is a lonely thing. You don’t know, at least from my experience, if the writing is any good or not. …

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Claire Kilroy is soldiering along

After four critically acclaimed, award winning novels, Claire Kilroy went missing for 11 years, or so it seemed. Finally in 2023 she resurfaced with another acclaimed work, the theme of which gave an indication as to why she had been absent from the literary scene for so long. In Soldier Sailor, which was described by The Observer as “an astonishing high wire act” and by the London Times as containing “the best 30 pages of fiction you’ll read this year” , she delves into the chaotic early years of motherhood, and how a woman’s sense of identity can be deeply challenged at that time. It’s something many parents will relate to, and she has loved the feedback she has received. “I’m doing a thing a writer isn’t meant to do and reading Goodreads. Readers put up their thoughts on Goodreads and some of the comments are moving to me, genuinely moving,” she said. “It’s so long since I published a …

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