Icarus magazine currently holds the reputation of being Trinity College’s — if not Ireland’s — premier poetry journal. In yesteryear, it has been edited by such litterateurs as David Norris, Derek Mahon and Brendan Kennelly, and with contributions from Seamus Heaney and John Montague.
Published biannually with costs dutifully charged to the student purse, the editorship of Icarus for this year has fallen to long-time friend of the publication and current SU president-elect Ms Gabi Fullam, as well as her masculine American colleague Alex Mountfield.
A bit of backstory: a devotee of Ireland’s anti-racism industry, Ms Fullam was so enticed by the output of this publication she penned a rather zany tribute play featuring our good selves and the psychological effects our articles have on certain people. We of course, are ever-grateful for the publicity.
Considering how the pair’s publication is open to contributions from students and miscellaneous individuals alike, we here at The Burkean decided to toss our hat in the ring, conscious of Ms Fullam’s commitment to promoting POC and indigenous voices like ours.
Following this, our writers concocted various alter egos — POC and otherwise — to send in the most woeful poetry imaginable, hoping our diverse credentials would get our literary horrors over the line in the final cut for the Icarus print edition. The results didn’t disappoint.
To be clear, these contributions are woeful by any metric and fact they were considered for print is an indictment to any artistic rigour practised by Icarus and its stewards.
Among the poems printed was an erotic tribute to Ebun Joseph as well as an anti-racist screed by a woman named Adaku Dyport-a-me, documenting structural racism in the Direct Provision system and the fact Ireland’s original inhabitants were a race of black pygmies.
What’s more, one poem even opens with a direct reference to a long-debunked fake news story revolving around Direct Provision residents being served their meals in plastic bags, which we are frankly surprised didn’t serve as a massive red flag for the pair of Icarus editors. Footage of some of the readings can be found here.
We had the pleasure of meeting the Icarus crew at their launch, even getting to hand their editors a Burkean card expressing our thanks for platforming POC writers. The reaction was as you’d expect.
The Burkean would of course like to thank many of our long-term writers — including the well renowned Ulick Fitzhugh, Ciaran Brennan and Daithí O’Duibhne, among many others — for their contribution to the small project, as well as congratulate them on their new status as poetry masters published by Icarus Magazine.
We are only following in the footsteps of greatness with inspiration for this endeavour coming from a similar subterfuge pulled by Oliver St John Gogarty on unionist magazines a century ago.
Ultimately, this project, though small, is significant in showing that the prestige given to far-left cultural figures is largely undeserved. While many claim that the art the likes of Icarus and other magazines publish are exemplary pieces of the postmodern age, this project proves how utterly untrue this claim is. The mere fact that Ulick Fitzhugh of all people has developed a unique schizo-poetry career should speak volumes.
Of course, how could this ever be the case if a few edgy right-wing college students could get published in a premier journal such as Icarus? Our writers are either extremely talented poetry writers (unlikely, as none of them have any experience at poetry writing), or these prestigious vestiges of leftist art are scraping the bottom of the ideological barrel. We will leave it up to the reader to decide the truth of the matter.
Regardless, what is indisputable is that the fact poetry heralding black pygmies as the original Irish got published at all proves one thing that our national elite desperately don’t want the general public to know:
Those who rule us aren’t as smart as they — or you — think they are.
Nice one. Maybe slightly too easy a target though.
Is that Ebun Joseeph still around. How many times do you need to be exposed as a fraud before these idiots cop on?
At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about this, since poetry in an Irish context is sacred to me, but then I remembered the rightful place of satire among the Ollamhs. You have unleashed the glam dícenn against fools wielding power and influence they don’t deserve.
You have raised boils on a lot of faces.
What a joke the arts have become! Well done guys for exposing their absurdity.
Wonderful hoax, exposing wokery and virtue signalling. Maybe as a next move the diverse Burkean bards can pen a few hymnic lines about the blessed Ukraine’s bravery in the face of the bare chested horseman of the Apocalypse? Maybe a gestalt poem in the shape of a Z?
Thank you for this service to the arts.
Go bhfága Dia an tsláinte agaibh faoin tseirbhís seo ar son na n-ealaíon.
[…] “Our writers concocted various alter egos — POC and otherwise — to send in the most woeful poetry imaginable, hoping our diverse credentials would get our literary horrors over the line in the final cut for the Icarus print edition. The results didn’t disappoint,” reports The Burkean. […]
[…] “Our writers concocted various alter egos — POC and otherwise — to send in the most woeful poetry imaginable, hoping our diverse credentials would get our literary horrors over the line in the final cut for the Icarus print edition. The results didn’t disappoint,” reports The Burkean. […]
[…] “Our writers concocted various alter egos — POC and otherwise — to send in the most woeful poetry imaginable, hoping our diverse credentials would get our literary horrors over the line in the final cut for the Icarus print edition. The results didn’t disappoint,” reports The Burkean. […]
[…] “Our writers concocted various alter egos — POC and otherwise — to send in the most woeful poetry imaginable, hoping our diverse credentials would get our literary horrors over the line in the final cut for the Icarus print edition. The results didn’t disappoint,” reports The Burkean. […]
[…] the final reduce for the Icarus print release. The results didn’t disappoint, ” reports The particular Burkean […]
[…] “Our writers concocted various alter egos — POC and otherwise — to send in the most woeful poetry imaginable, hoping our diverse credentials would get our literary horrors over the line in the final cut for the Icarus print edition. The results didn’t disappoint,” reports The Burkean. […]
[…] “Our writers concocted various alter egos — POC and otherwise — to send in the most woeful poetry imaginable, hoping our diverse credentials would get our literary horrors over the line in the final cut for the Icarus print edition. The results didn’t disappoint,” reports The Burkean. […]
[…] From The Burkean: […]
[…] studies, it would be what moonbats have done to the art of poetry. So countermoonbats at the Burkean trolled Icarus Magazine, considered the most respected poetry journal of Trinity College Dublin, by […]
” they wander lonely as a cloud that floats on high oer vales and hills ”
Got busted and fell flat on their faces to earth.
Such is Poetic Justice…a tribute to the Burkean
WHERE THE PEN PROVES might ire than a sword.
Gabi clearly hasn’t learned about seperating the art from the artist