by Orna Ross | May 31, 2021 | FICTION |
Maud Gonne's father, Tommy, was a Cavalry Major, which was how the English born Maud ended up living in Ireland, when he was posted there. In 1879, he was posted to India, and the motherless Maud and her sister Kathleen were moved to relatives in the South of France....
by Orna Ross | May 29, 2021 | FICTION |
There is a new online biography of Maud Gonne for children, created by Sophie Harkin for Lottie.com. Unfortunately, a few of the details are wrong — Maud founded “L'Irelande Libre” in the 1890s, not 1910s, and she never won a Nobel peace prize (that went...
by Orna Ross | May 26, 2021 | FICTION |
Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. Consider the discrepancies between the actual writing of the Greek poets and dramatists, and the theories of the Graeco-Roman grammarians, concocted to explain their metres....
by Orna Ross | May 24, 2021 | FICTION |
Ezra Pound had many famous sayings. The one that has always been most useful to me is “literature is news that stays news”, a reminder to concentrate on what's lasting, perhaps even permanent, in the human condition. The husband of the artist Dorothy...
by Orna Ross | May 21, 2021 | FICTION |
Willie Yeats was not the only poet to be attracted to Iseult Gonne. His young secretary, Ezra Pound, though married, also set about winning her favour and in the same way–through their shared love of books and writing. This is another snippet from my work in...
by Orna Ross | May 18, 2021 | FICTION |
Some fabulous unpublished photographs of Maud Gonne have appeared in a new Irish documentary on TG4, Scéalta Grá na hÉireann, including a picture she carried around with her all her life of her son Georges, who died aged two. (And whom she attempted to reincarnate in...