Michael Hinds
Articles by Michael Hinds
2019
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Ciaran Carson 1948-2019
Ciaran Carson drew on the supple lines of narrative, melody and rhythm that run through traditional music. As with other great modernist poets, he brought…
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World Literature
Look at Me
The sonnet emerged in the Renaissance just as the concept of an explorable and variable self became culturally pervasive. Like a multi-barred cage within which…
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World Literature
Funny Ah! Aah!
To write comic fiction in a context where everything seems risible, to orchestrate chaos in the necessary fashion, you have to be incredibly smart, in…
2018
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World Literature
A Gift of Cleverness
In 1931 William Empson arrived to teach at the Imperial University of Tokyo. Unable to speak Japanese and undoubtedly intimidated by officialdom, he turned inward…
2017
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World Literature
So Many Haters
Plato did not hate poetry, though he wished to ban poets from the ideal Republic. In such a state you would not want to let…
2016
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No Sweat
James Joyce and Walter Benjamin worked hard over decades to evolve idiosyncratic methods apt for the city-text they wanted to communicate. But Kenneth Goldsmith’s montage…
2015
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World Literature
Wee Book, Big Muscles
Don Paterson should be recognised as a poet who offers us strenuousness and sweetness in a way that nobody has since John Donne; he kills…
2014
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World Literature
Mister Perfect
The frequently quoted descriptions of Michael Donaghy as a modern metaphysical may make prospective readers nervous; yet in the main there is nothing ostentatiously intellectual…
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Irish Literature
The Big Cabbage
In the original Chandler novels, mansions, money and manicured lawns did not necessarily presage either virtue or happiness. In Black-Banville’s remake we seem to have…
2013
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The Sexual Caterwaul
It is difficult, in a permissive society, to define what is obscene. But to find at least something obscene shows that you are a sentient…
2010
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Genius For Erasure
Cary Grant’s raised eyebrows were admittedly an awesome spectacle, but you wonder how they might have been harnessed to hasten the building of the Hoover…