{"id":654595,"date":"2026-10-23T06:36:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T06:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/654595\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T06:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T06:36:14","slug":"seeing-whats-hidden-by-manchan-magan-authors-last-words-mingle-trademark-lyricism-and-rigour-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/654595\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing What\u2019s Hidden by Manch\u00e1n Magan: Author\u2019s last words mingle trademark lyricism and rigour \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Seeing What\u2019s Hidden: Uncovering Ireland\u2019s Ancient Ways of Knowing  <\/p>\n<p>Author: Manch\u00e1n Magan<\/p>\n<p>ISBN-13: 9781804586013<\/p>\n<p>Publisher:  Gill <\/p>\n<p>Guideline Price: \u20ac22.99, 320pp<\/p>\n<p>Those Who Listen: New Irish Writing on the Bog  <\/p>\n<p>Author: Alice Kinsella (ed.)<\/p>\n<p>ISBN-13: 9781914596582 <\/p>\n<p>Publisher: Mayo Books<\/p>\n<p>Guideline Price: \u20ac15; 116pp<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In his introduction to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/manchan-magan\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/manchan-magan\">Manch\u00e1n Magan<\/a>\u2019s Seeing What\u2019s Hidden, Robert Macfarlane encapsulates Magan\u2019s relationship with our world. Our existence, Macfarlane writes, \u201cis an ongoing, unfurling, iridescent miracle, happening around and within us every moment\u201d; and our connection with our surroundings can be renewed by being aware of the lives of tree, stone, river, and of the myriad ways in which these lives intersect with our own. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Magan himself \u2013 in these, the last words we shall have from him \u2013 continues this thread, arguing with his trademark mingling of lyricism and rigour that the Irish have all the tools necessary \u2013 language, lore, deep knowledge \u2013 to rediscover this miracle. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The experiences of a history of colonisation have traumatised the land, Magan observes, but have by no means ruptured the connections between nature and people. The book was unfinished at the time of Magan\u2019s death, but a sequence of satisfying essays by Merlin Sheldrake, Kerri N\u00ed Dochartaigh and others complete a luminous text.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/2026\/09\/19\/manchan-magans-last-published-words-ireland-was-believed-to-be-the-outer-limit-of-the-known-world\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Manch\u00e1n Magan\u2019s final part of his trilogy: Ireland was believed to be the outer limit of the known worldOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Magan\u2019s ideas are also taken up and explored in the series of moving texts gathered by Alice Kinsella in Those Who Listen. Kinsella\u2019s fine introduction addresses the layered relationship between the Irish and our bog landscapes, with the latter regarded as simultaneously a place of work, nature, secrets, history and potential menace, \u201cas both a living presence and a site of labour, memory, and culture\u201d \u2013 and each of these layers is amply explored in the work that follows. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cOh Christ, it was misery,\u201d writes Belinda McKeon in Endless, remembering the exhausting labour associated with the bog, \u201cI wish I could pretend otherwise, but when I think about the rows of turf and how they stretched out into the future, I can feel it still in my back and in my legs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Dean Black\u2019s Bog Bodies addresses directly the tortured relationship between the Troubles and the bog; while other pieces echo Magan\u2019s call for a renewed relationship between humans and world, completing the circle with stirring lyricism. As Jane Clarke reminds us in Large Marsh Grasshopper, all we need do is pay attention: \u201cSomewhere a grasshopper \/ clings to white beak-sedge. \/ Yellow-green with red legs \/ and black knees, he flicks \/ his tibia against the tips \/ of flexed wings. Somewhere \/ a grasshopper sings.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seeing What\u2019s Hidden: Uncovering Ireland\u2019s Ancient Ways of Knowing Author: Manch\u00e1n Magan ISBN-13: 9781804586013 Publisher: Gill Guideline Price:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[866,146,85,46,294442],"class_list":["post-654595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-book-reviews","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-manchan-magan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}