Chris Agee, Editor
Cathal Ó Searcaigh, Irish Language Editor
Sean Mac Aindreasa, Managing Editor
General Information
IRISH PAGES is a Belfast journal combining
Irish, European and international perspectives. 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 relations: the regional (Ulster), the
national (Ireland and Britain), the continental (the whole of
Europe), and the global. It is based at the Linen Hall Library,
Belfast and appears biannually.
Since its launch in Summer
2002, IRISH PAGES has established itself as the leading quality
literary journal in the North, as well as one of the foremost
Irish periodicals. With a print-run now standing at 1400, it
represents – uniquely for the island – the combination
of a large general readership with outstanding writing from
both Ireland and overseas. Increasingly, the journal is also
read outside Ireland and Britain, with a sizable number of individual
and institutional subscribers in France, Italy, Germany, Sweden,
Spain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary, USA, Canada, Australia
and Japan.
Each issue assembles a carefully
edited mix of English and Irish, prose and poetry, fiction and
non-fiction, style and subject matter, in an overall fit aimed
at a wide range of reading tastes. The cover theme suggests
some of the content, and emerges from the editorial process
– the blend of what is selected from submissions, and
what is sought or commissioned. Of “The Justice Issue”,
one reviewer remarked, “There is a sense that the theme
emerged from the writing, from the deepest preoccupations of
poets, essayists, novelists and artists, rather than being forced
upon them. The theme, rather, is gleaned in the reading, in
the alchemy that can result when work from very diverse perspectives
is well aligned” (The Irish Times).
In addition, IRISH PAGES
includes a number of regular features: The View from the
Linen Hall, an editorial commenting on cultural or political
issues in Ireland or overseas; From the Irish Archive,
an extract of writing from a non-contemporary Irish writer,
accompanied by a brief biographical note; In Other Words,
a selection of translated work from a particular country; and
The Publishing Scene, a commissioned piece taking a
critical look at some aspect of the literary world in Ireland,
Britain or the United States.
Each issue also contains
a portfolio of photographs from a leading Irish photographer;
an article on Belfast or Northern Ireland; work from at least
one emergent or new writer; writing on the natural world; and
a major essay of literary distinction on an ethical, historical,
religious, social or scientific topic. 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.
The Policy
on Poetry
Although IRISH PAGES is mainly a prose
journal, poetry is, of course, a major component of the journal’s
mix of genres. On average, about a third of contributors (10-12
poets) and about a quarter of each issue (55-60 pages) have
been given over to poetry, in both Irish and English, and including
translations from other languages. Each issue has additionally
carried a substantial essay on the poetic art by a noted practitioner.
This distinct but circumscribed space for poetry reflects the
view of both poet-editors that in the context of a general-readership
journal such as ours, a lean selection of poetry is likely to
be read more attentively within the overall mix.
The sole criteria for inclusion
in the journal are the distinction of the writing and the integrity
of the individual voice. There are no favoured styles, themes,
schools, publishers, critical hierarchies, and so on. Equal
attention will be given to established, emergent and new writers.
Some Different
Things About IRISH PAGES
There are, in fact, very few literary
journals that avoid reviews and cognate varieties of academic
criticism (although we do publish the occasional “essay-review”
or critical essay). Why attempt what the TLS or LRB
will always do better? IRISH PAGES represents a new paradigm
focussing entirely on the reading of “primary” writing,
rather than its critical or “secondary” mediation.
We wish the journal to be
read widely and each issue’s careful mix of genres and
styles is essential to the magazine’s appeal outside the
ghetto of the literati. There is an especial commitment –
uniquely for Ireland and perhaps Britain, at least in a literary
journal – to nature/ecological writing as well as “creative
non-fiction”/the essay. And although each issue will carry
at least one and often two pieces of fiction, part of the thinking
behind this mix is to provide an antidote or alternative to
the enormous critical and commercial attention that is given
to the various genres of fiction, at the expense clearly of
other genres, whose historical/ethical/social value is surely
no less.
Writing in Irish is integral
to the editorial mix. To date we have published poetry, drama
and fiction in Irish; we have also published first translations
from the Irish by the Managing Editor (Seán MacAindreasa,
one of the founders of the Belfast Gaeltacht) of a clutch of
important essays by Eoghan Ó Tuairisc, Gabriel Rosenstock
and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. We attempt to place the two
languages in seamless juxtaposition, to suggest their parity
in any definition of the “Irish” in IRISH PAGES.
Outside the Irish language world per se, the publishing of Irish
language writing in journals is often tinged with tokenism;
we pursue a much more active bilingualism.
One wider background aim
is to give the journal a distinctly dissident edge – to
inhabit “the space outside” the Pale of the Received
– business-as-usual in all its (especially Western) forms:
literary, intellectual, cultural, social, political. Thus, the
journal has a particular (though hardly exclusive) commitment
to work informed by “the ethical imagination”. I
believe that there is a huge thirst for this kind of writing
– writing of “high artistic consciousness”,
but in the thick of the world and its dilemmas – and that
it is immensely important for our increasingly complex global
life. You might call it the literary equivalent of an NGO audience:
all those potential readers for whom ethical issues count.
Chris Agee
