Irish Pages

About Irish Pages

Irish Pages: A Journal of Contemporary Writing is a literary magazine published in Belfast — the island's premier literary journal, edited by Chris Agee, Kathleen Jamie and Meg Bateman. Since its full-scale launch in 2003, it has combined a large general readership with outstanding writing from Ireland and overseas, publishing poetry, short fiction, essays, creative non-fiction, memoir, nature-writing, translated work and literary journalism. Widely considered the Irish equivalent of Granta or The Paris Review, its website is irishpages.org.

The inaugural issue — "Belfast in Europe" — appeared in 2002. With a print run of 3,000, the biannual journal is increasingly read outside Ireland and Britain. In late 2018 it launched the Irish Pages Press/Cló an Mhíl Bhuí, an annual programme of major book-publishing in English and Irish.

First Issue 2002, Full-Scale Launch 2003

The inaugural issue of Irish Pages — "Belfast in Europe," a 240-page paperback edited by Chris Agee — was published in 2002. Since its full-scale launch in 2003, Irish Pages has established itself as the island's premier literary journal.

The journal is edited in Belfast and based at the Linen Hall Library — the historic Belfast institution founded in 1788 — placing it at the heart of the city's literary life.

The Island's Premier Literary Journal

Irish Pages combines a large general readership with outstanding writing from Ireland and overseas. Widely considered the Irish equivalent of Granta in England or The Paris Review in the United States, it offers "an unrivalled window on the literary and cultural life of the British Isles — and further afield."

Its policy is to publish poetry, short fiction, essays, creative non-fiction, memoir, essay reviews, nature-writing, translated work, literary journalism, and other autobiographical, historical, religious and scientific writing of literary distinction — with no standard reviews or narrowly academic articles. Irish-language and Ulster Scots writing appear in the original, with English translations or glosses.

Edited by Chris Agee, Kathleen Jamie and Meg Bateman

The journal is edited by Chris Agee — born in San Francisco in 1956, living in Ireland since 1979, author of three books of poems and editor of Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia — alongside Kathleen Jamie, the Scottish poet, essayist and travel writer, and Meg Bateman, the Gaelic scholar and poet.

The editorial triumvirate reflects the journal's bilingual, cross-cultural character: English and Irish, Ireland and Scotland, the local and the international.

A Non-Partisan, Culturally Ecumenical Journal

Irish Pages is a non-partisan, non-sectarian, culturally ecumenical and wholly independent journal. It seeks "to create a novel literary space in the North adequate to the unfolding cultural potential of the new political dispensation" — cognisant of the need to reflect the meshed levels of human experience: the regional (Ulster), the national (Ireland and Britain), the continental (Europe) and the global.

In post-ceasefire Northern Ireland, that positioning — above sectarian division, open to the world — gave the journal a distinctive and vital role.

The Irish Pages Press

Late 2018 saw the launch of the Press in the sense of an annual programme of major book-publishing, under the bilingual imprint The Irish Pages Press/Cló an Mhíl Bhuí. The Press is limited to poetry, essays, memoir and other forms of non-fiction — including the graphic novel form — in both English and Irish.

The Irish Times has noted Irish Pages as "distinctly an all-Ireland press," in its cross-border state funding and its list of authors.

Irish Pages Today

From the 2002 "Belfast in Europe" inaugural to today's biannual journal and book press, Irish Pages has been the premier literary journal of the island of Ireland for over two decades — publishing the best new writing from Ireland and the world, in English and Irish, from its Belfast home.

Biannual in print and online at irishpages.org, it remains the unrivalled window on the literary life of these islands.

Belfast in Europe: The Inaugural Issue

The inaugural issue of Irish Pages, published in 2002, announced the journal's ambitions in its very title: 'Belfast in Europe'. Its contents showed what the new journal meant by that — an extract from W. G. Sebald; Tom Paulin on Belfast and its vernaculars; an Irish epilogue by Helen Lewis; George Watson on 'countries of the mind'; Chris Agee on the Good Friday Agreement; one of Hubert Butler's uncollected essays; translations from the Arabic; Wendell Berry's 'thoughts in the presence of fear'; and new poetry and prose by Seamus Heaney, Harry Clifton, Deirdre Madden, John Gray, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Daniel Tobin, Samuel Menashe, Neal Ascherson, Tim Robinson, Medbh McGuckian, John Montague and John Burnside.

The issue also carried 'Portraits of Writers', a photographic portfolio by John Minihan — a reminder that the journal's visual sense was as considered as its literary one. It was, by any measure, a remarkable debut: international in scope, rooted in Belfast, and unwilling to observe the usual boundaries between the Irish, the British, the European and the global.

That first issue set the template. Each number since has assembled a carefully edited mix of English and Irish, prose and poetry, fiction and non-fiction — the cover theme emerging, as one Irish Times reviewer put it of the Justice Issue, from the writing itself rather than being forced upon it.

Agee's Full-Time Commitment

In 2007 Chris Agee gave up his professional career in adult education to devote himself full-time to editing Irish Pages. It was a significant sacrifice: he had worked as a lecturer in adult literacy, as a tutor for the Open University — including tutorials in HMP Maze and HMP Maghaberry — and as a senior lecturer directing the Northern Irish branch of a British trade-union education programme. The journal, based at the Linen Hall Library in Belfast, became his life's work.

Agee is himself a poet of distinction. His third collection, Next to Nothing (2008) — written in the aftermath of his daughter Miriam's death in 2001 — was shortlisted in Britain for the 2009 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry; its sequel, Blue Sandbar Moon, appeared in 2018, followed by the poetic non-fiction Trump Rant (2021). He had earlier edited Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia (1998), Unfinished Ireland: Essays on Hubert Butler (2003) and The New North: Contemporary Poetry from Northern Ireland (2008).

Born in San Francisco in 1956, educated at Harvard, living in Ireland since 1979, Agee holds dual Irish and American citizenship and spends part of each year at his house near Dubrovnik in Croatia. His co-editors are the poet and essayist Kathleen Jamie — Scotland's Makar, the national poet — as Scottish Editor, and the poet and scholar Meg Bateman as Scottish Gaelic Editor.

The Editorial Policy in Full

Irish Pages describes its policy with unusual precision. It publishes poetry, short fiction, essays, creative non-fiction, memoir, essay reviews, nature-writing, translated work, literary journalism, and other autobiographical, historical, religious and scientific writing of literary distinction. There are no standard reviews and no narrowly academic articles. Irish Language and Ulster Scots writing are published in the original, with English translations or glosses.

The journal is non-partisan, non-sectarian, culturally ecumenical and wholly independent — and it seeks, in its own phrase, 'to create a novel literary space in the North adequate to the unfolding cultural potential of the new political dispensation.' It is cognisant, the editors say, of the need to reflect the various meshed levels of human relations: the regional (Ulster), the national (Ireland and Britain), the continental (the whole of Europe), and the global.

With a print run of 3,000, the journal is increasingly read outside Ireland and Britain — widely considered, in the familiar formulation, the Irish equivalent of Granta in England or The Paris Review in the United States.