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Irish Examiner
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Author interview: 'What are the politics of belonging if you don't have it'
Back in 2020, anxious to escape from post-Brexit Britain, Sarah Moss left Coventry, where she was teaching, and brought her family to live in Dún Laoghaire. The novelist had accepted a post teaching creative writing at University College Dublin and, in spite of the lingering covid restrictions, the family felt happy and settled at once. But it got her thinking of the whole theme of belonging. 'My father was Russian-American Jewish, and my mother is Yorkshire working class,' she says. 'I grew up in a bunch of places and have lived in a bunch of places. I've never been able to say, 'that, there, is where I come from'.' This had never much bothered Sarah, because her friends are also internationally mobile, but coming to Ireland where there is more investment in belonging, ownership, identity, and land made her investigate her sense of place. 'Can you make belonging if you don't have it?' she wondered. 'What are the politics of making belonging if you don't have it, and particularly if you are an English person in Ireland? 'It's not up to me to say, 'I belong here now'. That doesn't have a good history.' We're in a Dublin's Brooks Hotel talking about Sarah's ninth novel, Ripeness, which centres on Edith, a happily divorced 73-year-old who has found utter contentment since settling in the Burren. Daughter of a woman who lost most of her family in the Holocaust, she's wondering if she's finally found a place to call home. Why did she choose an older woman as the third person narrator? 'It never feels like a decision,' says Sarah, explaining that she has characters living in her head. I've been living with Edith for years in different ways. I tried to write about her in the forties, but that didn't work, and she sits quite nicely here Alternating chapters take us back to the sixties, when, at 17 and soon to start at Oxford University, Edith spends a summer at an Italian villa, helping her sister Lydia through late pregnancy and childbirth. Lydia's friends, fellow dancers from her company, are also there. Although on holiday, dance practice remains a constant in their lives. Sarah had been thinking about writing a ballet book for years, and seeing photos of Margot Fonteyn taken by Joan Leigh Fermor — the wife of the famous writer scholar and soldier, Sir Patrick — gave her a focus. The couple, living in Greece, had set up a glamorous bohemian house. 'There is a sequence of photos of Fonteyn on holiday, including a set of her with Frederick Ashton on a boat. 'They are practising, using the side of the boat as a bar. You can see the sails behind them. There's another of Fonteyn sunbathing naked. Her poise is exquisite — she is totally in control, and that gave me the idea of dancers at play. They are still inhabiting the dance with their bodies, though not with discipline.' This idea came to Sarah when she was on a six-week writing retreat on the shores of Lake Como in the spring of 2023. 'Ripeness' is a gorgeous book; sunny, sensual and absorbing. The author writes so brilliantly about the physicality of dance, and the scenes of childbirth and new life are exquisitely described. 'The villa was absolutely gorgeous. It had been used for artists since the 19th century as a place to go to support yourself in the summer, and that gave me the setting. 'But being liberated for six weeks didn't work for me at all. It turns out that I actually need the rhythms of domestic life. I need to be cooking and doing laundry and looking after people. Though, obviously you need a balance.' Sarah's first novel, Cold Earth, was published when her two sons were small. 'My entire career has been as a parent. I have never known it any other way. It's a shifting balance, like standing on a wobble board.' The Burren was the obvious Irish setting because, having lived for a year in Iceland, Sarah adores the barren limestone landscape. Which isn't to say that she doesn't find it frustrating. 'These walking guides say: 'This is 10k, and it will take you five hours.' You think, don't be ridiculous, what nonsense, but it does! 'I like to stride out and cover ground and get there, but the limestone won't let you. It insists that you slow down, pay attention, and read the land under your feet. If you don't, you're going to fall over or fall down a hole. I really love that. It's frustrating, but I think it's good for me, both as a hiker and as a writer.' Ripeness is a gorgeous book; sunny, sensual and absorbing. The author writes so brilliantly about the physicality of dance, and the scenes of childbirth and new life are exquisitely described. 'I was a friend's birth companion shortly after my son was born, and it made me realise that most women never see birth. 'My son was five months old, so it was vivid. I knew exactly what she was going through and how it felt, but it made me think that the only women who see birth now are professionals, and it must have been so different in the days when you helped your friend or your sister and would have known what was going to happen.' Lydia's baby is going for adoption, and she refuses to see him. My second son was a home birth, and the midwife told me that one of her most important roles, straight after the birth, was to hand the baby to the mother. She said that otherwise the mother might walk off 'I thought, how could anybody do such a thing, but I can, kind of, imagine it. All that work; hours and hours and hours of it — and you just want to lie down and have a cup of tea.' Sarah has always taught and has no trouble with public speaking. 'Put me in front of an audience of 500 and tell me to talk for an hour — I will be fine. But send me to a party, and I will want to hide behind a curtain with a book. I met the woman who is still my best friend at somebody's seventh birthday party. 'I hid behind one end of the curtain, and she hid behind the other. We met in the middle.' Currently on a year's break from UCD, Sarah is doing some freelance teaching. 'I absolutely love it,' she says, 'and can't imagine not doing it in some form. I find it very generative because it forces me to think properly about what I'm doing. So much of my practice is playful and experimental. It's a good being made to think rigorously about it.' What is the benefit to students of an MA in creative writing? 'It won't make a good writer out of people who are not, but it can intensify a process that would have happened over a long time. 'You can help people to experiment, to think well about reading and writing, and to bounce off each other. Done well, it can be exciting, productive, and generative, but that's not to say that it produces publishing contracts.' As someone who came from England half my lifetime ago, I can vouch for Edith's feelings about a dual nationality. I tell Sarah that she has got Edith's emotions exactly right. Currently applying for an Irish passport, Sarah says she wrote the novel as a hymn to Ireland, and to the Burren in particular. Does she intend to stay in the country indefinitely? 'I hope so,' she says. 'Friendship is hugely important in my life, and I have good friends here. They're the joy of my life. I have the occasional yearning, but you have to stop somewhere and its pretty good here.'
NBC News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
Golfers, guile and gifts: South Africa's president follows the new playbook for handling Trump
After maulings for Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy and King Abdullah of Jordan, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa may have just shown other world leaders how to prepare for President Donald Trump's Oval Office bear pit. Historically, these White House sit-downs were dull affairs, replete with grip-and-grin platitudes and geopolitical jargon. Not so during the second term of Trump, who has transformed his office into a gladiatorial arena. There was February's stunning bust-up by Vice President JD Vance against Zelenskyy. The same month, Jordan's Abdullah could not hide his chagrin as Trump spoke at length about his plans to take control of the Gaza Strip. So South Africa's Ramaphosa seemed unsurprised when Trump ambushed him Wednesday — the U.S. president even dimmed the lights for a screening of news clips alleging that white farmers are victims of a genocide in South Africa. Most experts agree this is a false, baseless claim, seized upon by Trump since employing as an adviser the South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, who was in the Oval Office on Wednesday. 'It's a terrible sight — I've never seen anything like it,' Trump commentated while the footage played. Unlike other leaders, Ramaphosa — a former trade union leader and ally of Nelson Mandela who helped end apartheid — was clearly prepared. He spoke calmly and without interruption, politely but firmly disagreeing with Trump. 'It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends,' he said, when asked what would convince the American leader he was mistaken. And there was a flourish of his own. Ramaphosa had brought with him Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, two white South African golfers who are both in the Hall of Fame and have won six U.S. Open titles between them. At a meeting alongside the golf-fanatic Trump, the intention behind the maneuver was unmistakable. 'If there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here,' the South African leader said in the Oval Office, pointing to the white members of his entourage that also included John Steenhuisen, his agriculture minister. 'It will take him, President Trump, listening to their stories, to their perspective.' Whereas the Zelenskyy fiasco caught 'everyone off guard with its intensity and its destructiveness,' Trump's 'planned attack' on Ramaphosa 'took the stakes up a level,' said Scott Lucas, a politics professor at Ireland's University College Dublin. 'Ramaphosa seemed to have been very well briefed and he kept his cool,' he said. 'Leaders around the world now have a playbook for how they deal with Trump.' This is not to say other leaders have not had similar successes already. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer unfurled from his breast pocket a letter from King Charles III when he came to town in February — a gambit mocked back in Britain for being sycophantic, but one that seemed to go down well with Trump. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba huddled with advisers for more than 20 hours of preparatory meetings ahead of his showdown the same month, a person familiar with the planning said. That too seemed to pay off: Ishiba arrived armed with charts clearly and colorfully illustrating Japan's investments in America and the kind of visual aids that Trump prefers. Like Starmer, he played to Trump's appetite for a theatrical gift, bringing with him a golden samurai helmet, which in Japan often signifies prayers for prosperity and longevity. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron appears to have mastered the art keeping a rapport with Trump while maintaining a macho-style resistance to some of his statements. During his own February Oval Office sit-down, he put his hand on Trump's arm and gently corrected his mistaken statement that European countries had merely 'loaned' money to Ukraine. Even more stern, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney kept a straight back, clenched jaw and — though often struggling to get a word in edgewise — made it clear through words and firm hand gestures that 'Canada is not for sale.' Even against this field, Ramaphosa's poise has been widely praised. 'It is one thing preparing to be ambushed and another being able to manage the situation,' said Nic Cheeseman, a professor of democracy at England's University of Birmingham. 'Most people seem to think that Ramaphosa came out of it well,' he added. 'That may also be because he has good people skills, which meant that he was better placed than some world leaders to diffuse the situation.' However artful a sparring partner Ramaphosa was, it's still unclear how effective his tactics will be. 'You wanted to see drama and something really big happening,' Ramaphosa told reporters afterward, downplaying the episode. 'I'm sorry that we disappointed you somewhat when it comes to that.' But it was still a bruising and concerning encounter for a country that dearly needs American financial help. Hours before the Oval Office meeting, South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said his government did not have the necessary funds to cover a $430 million shortfall caused by Trump's cuts to foreign aid. In Trump, the country faces a president who sees a 'perfect trifecta' in the white-farmer genocide claim, Patrick Gaspard, ex-U.S. ambassador to South Africa, told MSNBC later Wednesday. It allows Trump 'to play to a domestic political audience that is obsessed with white, existential threats,' while distracting from domestic economic issues and promoting Musk's attempts to get a South African license for Starlink, Gaspard said. He called the encounter not only 'deeply offensive and hurtful to a partnership that we have with a really important nation in sub-Saharan Africa,' but also 'does a major disservice to that Oval Office, that sacred space.'
Irish Independent
21-05-2025
- General
- Irish Independent
‘I've had so many parents come to me with near-miss stories', says principal
Pupils at Harold's Cross Educate Together NS are using GoPro cameras as part of a new research project aimed at highlighting dangerous conditions for young pedestrians and cyclists. Cameras mounted on bikes, scooters and backpacks record the hazards schoolchildren face on their daily commutes, from speeding cars and poor infrastructure to risky junctions. The footage will be analysed to identify patterns and build a data-driven case for road safety improvements near schools. The initiative, launched during National Bike Week, is being led by University College Dublin's Professor Francesco Pilla. 'One of the main barriers to cycling – [cited by] around 50pc of participants in our previous project – said they're afraid to cycle because of driver behaviour and poor infrastructure. That's why people don't go on bikes,' he said. 'You lose ten years of life every time you go to school with your kids. The road is completely unsafe. 'Even on the footpath, things can go wrong. Cars and bikes don't stop at red lights, and we've had near misses and even children hit by other bikes. 'By capturing their unfiltered perspectives, we gain crucial insight into the challenges children face on the road, whether it's speeding, near misses or poor crossings,' he added. Harold's Cross Educate Together NS, which currently operates from temporary buildings and has no car parking, has a strong active travel culture. The school's Parents and Staff Association collaborated with Professor Pilla, whose own children attend the school, to launch the project, which aims to strengthen the case for changes such as pedestrian crossings or the appointment of a traffic warden. Most pupils and staff walk, cycle or use public transport, but principal Aoife Kelly says they are doing so in unsafe conditions. 'We've been raising this for years,' she said. 'There's no pedestrian crossing at the junction of Harold's Cross Road and Leinster Road. It's chaos in the mornings, with drivers turning while the light is red, cars flying past. The kids are now able to capture that on camera.' But she believes that without proper infrastructure, enthusiasm alone isn't enough. 'When I joined the school last year, it reminded me of Amsterdam. There are cargo bikes everywhere, it's amazing,' she said. 'But the safety just isn't there. We don't have parking, so everyone either walks, cycles or uses public transport. That should be a good thing, but the roads make it dangerous. 'I've had so many parents come to me with near-miss stories, and now the kids are telling me their own. It's got to a point where something has to change,' she added. Following the initial pilot phase, which will last as long as is necessary to test equipment and collect data, the project plans to expand to other schools across the country. 'These aren't isolated issues,' said Professor Pilla. 'We're already getting interest from other schools. The goal is to create a model that can be replicated, one that empowers children and their families to demand change.'
NDTV
20-05-2025
- Business
- NDTV
Planning To Study In Ireland? Check Top Universities, Key Points To Consider
Ireland is emerging as a favorite destination for Indian students to study, due to its excellent quality of life, secure surroundings, and robust emphasis on education and self-growth. For Indians who wish to study overseas, Ireland provides an array of globally recognised institutions of learning and industry-oriented courses. Top Universities in Ireland (QS World University Rankings 2025) According to the latest QS Rankings 2025, these are the leading universities in Ireland: Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin University College Dublin University College Cork University of Galway Dublin City University University of Limerick Maynooth University Technological University Dublin These institutions are renowned for their academic excellence, research output, and strong international student support systems. Popular Fields of Study Ireland is especially known for its programs in STEM disciplines, particularly in Big Data and Cybersecurity. Other high-demand areas include Law, Nursing, and Hospitality Management. Students also have access to several scholarship options, such as the Government of Ireland International Education Scholarship, which supports outstanding international students. Important Factors To Consider Before Applying Course Selection Carefully explore available courses to ensure they match your interests and qualifications. Each program may have different eligibility criteria and application deadlines, so thorough research is essential. Visa and Residency Requirements Indian students must apply for a student visa before traveling and obtain a residence permit after arriving in Ireland. It's also worth checking if your university offers support with post-study work visas, which are valuable for gaining international job experience. Language Requirements English is the primary medium of instruction and communication in Ireland. While Irish is also spoken, a strong grasp of English is essential for academic success and daily interactions. Internship Opportunities Look into whether your chosen institution offers internship placements. These can provide hands-on experience, industry connections, and sometimes financial assistance during your studies. Part-Time Work Regulations International students in Ireland are allowed to work part-time. This can help offset living expenses, but it's important to understand the legal limitations on student employment hours. Scholarships and Financial Aid Explore scholarships offered by the universities and the Irish government. These can significantly reduce tuition and living costs and ease the financial pressure of studying abroad. Studying in Ireland offers students a unique blend of academic excellence, cultural richness, and career opportunities. With the right planning and preparation, it can be a rewarding educational journey.
Irish Independent
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
BBC Gladiators star presents awards to students of her former Wexford school
Opening up the Junior Awards was teacher Muireann Nagle, who commended the dedication and hard work of the students all year round. "We encourage them to be inspired to reach their goals, to realise their ambitions, to develop their natural talents and to work to the absolute best of their abilities.' 'Thanks to the high calibre of our students, and our strong work ethic, Coláiste Bríde has much occasion to celebrate. Once again, we enjoy the pleasure of honouring an exceptional group of young ladies,' she added. As such, they were greatly honoured to be joined by past student Lystus Ebosele, who made history by becoming the first-ever Irish Gladiator on the revamped version of the cult classic tv show. Gladiators is a high-profile sports entertainment show where members of the public battle against the show's gladiators in an array of events to win points. Contestants eventually dwindle down through a series of heats until the quarter finals, semi-finals, and grand final. Going by the name Cyclone, she wowed audiences and made an immediate impact by winning both her bouts against the contenders in her first episode. A undeniable role model for women everywhere, she encourages fellow women to be proud of their achievements. "It's OK to want to win, and it's OK to take up space and be seen,' she said. Introducing her on the day, Ms Nagle described how her star power was evident even as a young student. "During her time at Coláiste Bríde, Lystus stood out as a dedicated student, a natural leader, and a talented athlete. After graduating, she went on to study Biomedical, Health and Life Sciences at University College Dublin, combining her passion for science with her commitment to making a difference,' she stated. ADVERTISEMENT "At the same time, Lystus has continued to pursue her sporting career with great success. And now, she's become a household name as Gladiator Cyclone on the BBC's hit revival of Gladiators, impressing audiences with her strength, energy, and determination. We are so proud of everything she's achieved — and even prouder to welcome her back to inspire our next generation of Coláiste Bríde students.' Continuing to champion those around her, Lystus encouraged the students to take pride in the awards that are the result of their time and effort. "When you are getting these awards, it highlights your strength and the effort you have put into the work you do. It is this work ethic that will carry you through and help you read your goals.' Giving insight into her career, she said: 'I have lived many lives and the plan is to live many more. To just keep doing what inspires me and what my passions are. Everyone always asks me if I enjoy what I am doing and I genuinely do. My work does not feel like work and that is something i want for everyone.' Leaving the students with some advice, she motivated students to find themselves and to live authentically, highlighting how the journey forwards starts internally. Amongst the awards, Mr Martin's second year business class were recognised for the money saving app they created and launched, which has earned them numerous awards over the last few months. Furthermore, the staff introduced another award in honour of the Mercy sisters' contribution to the creation and longevity of the school. "Sadly, some years ago saw the departure of the Mercy Sisters from Enniscorthy. In recognition of the many years of dedication to education in the town, and in particular to Coláiste Bríde, we have a special award in their honour.' !The staff award The Mercy Cup each year to a third year student who they feel has truly embodied the Mercy ethos of love and service to others. The Mercy Cup Award will acknowledge a young woman who has met the challenge of living a life where Mercy values are lived and not just spoken,' she explained. This award was presented to Crystal Connolly. Hosted by teacher Olive McGuinness, the Senior portion of the awards began with the presentation of Junior Cert certificates and awards for outstanding results. Recipients of the John Paul II Award were also awarded – the award is a faith achievement for young people, particularly those in Transition Year. It's designed to encourage participation in the Church, community, and society, helping young people enhance their spiritual, physical, emotional, and social development. One of the most coveted awards of the year is the Attendance Award, given to the student who has, at most, only missed one day in the entire school year. Mr Moynihan proudly handed the award to fifth year student Jessica Mitten. Former student Katie Prunty was also celebrated for her outstanding achievement in sport through her dedication to swimming. Over the past three years, Katie has also proudly represented the school with great success at the Leinster Senior Schools Championships. "Her accomplishments are a shining example of what can be achieved through hard work, determination, and resilience,' Ms McGuinness said. As a result, Katie has also been awarded a scholarship to the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis where she will be studying nutrition and joining the university swim team in August. Rounding out the ceremony, was the final award presentation by Principal Keira O'Sullivan for Student of the Year to Lauren Doyle, who was recognised for the high honour.
