There is a big announcement being made on Saturday about the literary pages of The Irish Times but it is embargoed until then so all I can do is tantalise you mercilessly, I'm afraid.
What I can tell you is that we are devoting an entire page to a review by the writer Brian Lynch of James Barry's Murals at the Royal Society of Arts – Envisioning a New Public Art because the illustrations in William Pressly's book are so sumptuous.
Our second page is devoted almost exclusively to original poetry selected by our Poetry Editor Gerry Smyth, with new poems by John FitzGerald, Tom French, Mark Granier, Catherine Phil MacCarthy, Richard W Halperin, Brian Kirk, Kerrie O' Brien and Mary O'Donnell. John McAuliffe's poetry column is devoted to a review of Paul Muldoon's new collection, One Thousand Things Worth Knowing.
Katherine Zappone, an Independent Senator and plaintiff in the case Zappone & Gilligan v Ireland, reviews Una Mullally's In the Name of Love: The Movement for Marriage Equality in Ireland, An Oral History. Sinéad Gleeson reviews Rebecca Solnit's groundbreaking feminist essays Men Explain Thing to Me. Cathy Dillon's Word for Word column celebrates Maria Popova's influential Brain Pickings website.
Eileen Battersby reviews A Stranger in My Country – The 1944 Prison Diary by Hans Fallada and Sarah Gilmartin's New Fiction column looks at The Lightning Tree by Emily Woof.
