Icarus Magazine 75th Anniversary Edition (Vol LXXV | Issue III)

I was happy to contribute new work to the landmark 75th Anniversary Edition of Icarus, Trinity College Dublin's student literary magazine, as one of eight featured contemporary writers.

This edition, published in the last week of August 2025, also includes material from current Trinity College students, and a number of legacy contributions reproduced from the magazine's archives. The other featured writers are Paula Meehan, Paul Lynch, Catherine Prasifka, Eoin McNamee, Louise Nealon, Paul Durcan, and Gustav Parker Hibbett.

Icarus is "the oldest continuous literary journal in Ireland and the UK". Since 1950 it has been publishing poetry, prose, drama, personal essays and visual art from students, staff and alumni of Trinity College Dublin, including work by Simon Armitage, William Burroughs, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Paul Muldoon, and Louis MacNeice. Former editors include Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Brendan Kennelly, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Iain Sinclair, David Norris, Maurice Scully, Sebastian Barry, David Wheatley, and Selina Guinness.

My previous appearance in Icarus, as featured writer alongside the late Maurice Scully, came in issue 67.1 in 2016, with 'Five Poems' that went on to become five non-consecutive sections of my 2019 book this is no longer entertainment.

My contribution to the current anniversary issue (75.3) represents the first outing of material from a new book-length work-in-progress with title nobody is going to be unique. The three non-consecutive excerpts, taken from different sections of the manuscript, are hybrid-form poems blending original writing and low-res, arbitrary digital cuts.

My thanks to current/outgoing Icarus editors Louise Norris and Cat Grogan for their invitation.

The print edition of the issue can be picked up for free around Trinity College Dublin [I have a couple of extra copies - if you'd like one get in touch with your postal address]. It can also be read in digital form here, as part of an ongoing effort to make as many past issues of the magazine available in their entirety online.