by Orna Ross | Nov 13, 2013 | Fiction |
On Saturday, I did an interview with Marese O'Sullivan, a young Irish student here in London who is fascinated by the Gonnes' relationship with WB Yeats and wanted to know more about my motivation for writing the trilogy. Marese had a lot of questions, so we're...
by Orna Ross | Nov 9, 2013 | Fiction |
In “A Memory of Youth” Yeats acknowledged how his poetic inspiration had dried until the intervention of “a most ridiculous little bird [who] Tore from the skies his marvelous moon.” The little bird was Iseult Gonne, who saw herself as both pupil and teacher to Yeats....
by Orna Ross | Nov 9, 2013 | Fiction |
Willie, Maud and Iseult, three of the most imaginative people who ever lived, never imagined the Internet or Twitter. If they were alive today, I imagine Maud would leap on Twitter for PR purposes, Iseult would shun it, and Willie would dismiss it for a time, with a...
by Orna Ross | Mar 17, 2024 | Poetry |
Maud Gonne was a formidable activist and generous philanthropist, whose feminism and nationalism altered the course of Irish history, but she is still best known as the muse of the first Irish nobel laureate for literature, the great poet WB Yeats. This post is about...
by Orna Ross | Nov 4, 2013 | Fiction |
I wrote last time about first hearing of the strange love triangle between WB Yeats, Maud Gonne and her daughter, Iseult. Iseult is less well known than her mother though her life story is equally dramatic, in a different sort of way. Born on August 6, 1894, she was...
by Orna Ross | Nov 3, 2013 | Fiction |
Now that the Go Creative! Books are at the editing and formatting phase, I'm back writing fiction again – specifically the books based on the extraordinary triangle at the heart of the love life of the Irish poet WB Yeats. When I was 13 or 14 I was introduced, as all...
by Orna Ross | Oct 24, 2013 | The Rest |
Creative presence is the simple act of yielding to, rather than opposing, blocking or running away from, the flow of life. It is inherently linked with the present, the moment we call “Now”. To be present, to summon creative presence, is to drop deeply...
by Orna Ross | Oct 17, 2013 | The Rest |
It's no coincidence that in my novels both Jo and Norah in After The Rising and Mercy in Blue Mercy write their way to resolution. This was my way of paying tribute to the power of writing to heal, transform and liberate. It’s such a miracle, that through marks on a...
by Orna Ross | Oct 14, 2013 | Poetry |
I'm honoured to be reading at the London Irish Centre's Tribute to Seamus Heaney tomorrow evening. I'm thinking of reading “Ballynahinch Lake” and “Postscript”, two poems that I think of as companion pieces and the two that, for me, best...
by Orna Ross | Oct 10, 2013 | Poetry |
My brother, Conor, used them as they should be used, the rings. Hoops of grey rubber to throw at numbered hooks on a board and make the grownups who came to our place for their daily drink call out. Well done! when one caught on. To me, one was a thing to twirl...