Seamus Heaney and the Music of What Happens

January 09, 2020 by Julian Girdham in Poetry

Adam Low's documentary on Séamus Heaney for Arena went out on the BBC recently, and before Christmas at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin it received a big-screen showing to a packed audience, including many members of the poet's family. Afterwards (pictured above) Professor Margaret Kelleher, Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature & Drama at UCD and Chair of the board of the IFI, led a discussion with Marie and Catherine Heaney, as well as Adam Low.

Books of the Year 2019

January 09, 2020 by Julian Girdham in Books

This is my selection of new books I read last year, published for the first time in either hardback or paperback.
Book of the Year
Robert Macfarlane: Underland: a Deep Time Journey. Macfarlane is simply one of the best writers working today, and this immense achievement shows again how close he is to the most important issue of our time.

INOTE Conference 2019

January 08, 2020 by Julian Girdham in English Teaching

I gave the keynote presentation at the Irish National Organisation of Teachers of English annual conference in October 2019 in Portlaoise. It’s below (I hope plenty of it doesn’t make sense, since it depends on the commentary).

‘The Building Blocks of the English Classroom’ looked at vocabulary, how cognitive science can assist us, ways of increasing reading, and how modelling can help.

Download the presentation

English Meet, April 23rd

January 07, 2020 by Julian Girdham in English Teaching

A new venture for Thursday 23rd April 2020 (Shakespeare's birthday): an evening dedicated to sharing ideas about teaching Leaving Certificate English.

Venue: Whispering House at our school, www.stcolumbas.ie (which was the venue on October 5th for the first-ever Irish researchED) in South Dublin. 7.00pm to 9.00pm. It will be free to attend, but will be ticketed (ticketing via EventBrite later down the line). See the venue here.