Lectures – Martin Smallridge Writer Blog

Lecture on Liam O’Flaherty’s The Informer: The Turf Spade and the Economy of Betrayal

A turf cutting tool resting beside a hearth projects a distinct theology of exertion. The ash shaft rises bearing the […]

Imagine reaching sixty at the point where the body enters contention with the will, while memory, desire, and public dignity

A pencil lay on my desk while I read James¹, its yellow lacquer chipped near the ferrule, cedar showing through

Lecture on Beowulf under the oath’s weather What, in truth, passes from Beowulf into modern English when a translator bends

Lecture on Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying Rain pressed against the seminar windows as though the sky had wanted a

Lecture on King Lear and Mercy Through Exposure A crown behaved, in every polity I had encountered with clean hands,

Lecture on Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches and the Moral Machinery of Prose A riddle for the gentlemen nearest the door,

Lecture on Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov and the struggle between record and mercy Which sovereign clenched that square: warm breath passing

Lecture on Euripides’ Medea as a Civic Autopsy of Oath, Exile, and Maternal Sovereignty If a bond held by oath

Lecture on Antigone and Conscience’s Cost. The iron peg had bitten into the lime-washed wall before any of us learned