The Return of Irish Writers Online by Patrick Chapman
Philip Casey (1950–2018) was a poet, novelist and dramatist. He was also the tech-sage of Arran Street East. An innovator on the Irish literary scene, he took to the internet early and – whilst also crafting fine poems and expansive fictions – cultivated several websites like a digital gardener. The best known of these were his own personal site, one of the first by an Irish author, and Irish Writers Online, a working database of writers with an Irish connection.
The site was intended as a no-frills affair which gave a quick rundown of over 600 writers, their bios and bibliographies, as well as offering information on publishers. It was designed to spur further exploration and to spark connections. As a dedicated site it beat Wikipedia in three important respects: its entries were provided by the authors or their representatives, it was edited by a single curator, and it didn’t ask for donations.
Irish Writers Online
Irish Writers Online was already running when, twenty years ago, Philip and I set up another website, one aiming to bring back out-of-print works with the consent of their authors. This idea sprang from a conversation we had about doing something online that traditional publishers wouldn’t have the resources for. The phrase Irish Literary Revival popped into my head and Philip thought it sufficiently irreverent (with apologies to Yeats) that we went for it. Put simply, we offered a free online space in which authors and poets could revive their otherwise unavailable backlists.
This would be no Google, which had begun swashbuckling around the libraries of the world, scanning printed books to feed its nascent A.I. Unlike them, we didn’t believe it better to ask forgiveness than seek permission; we used Creative Commons licences to clear the rights to the works. Although several authors entrusted us with their books, after a few years the ILR was made redundant by the arrival of digital self-publishing, thanks to companies such as Lulu, Amazon, and, yes, Google.
Philip Casey
When Philip stepped back to concentrate on Irish Writers Online and his personal site, as well as an ambitious non-fiction book, we kept in touch. On my visits to Arran Street East, over tea and brown bread, sometimes with a pungent cheese he’d picked up from the Saturday market in Temple Bar, we’d discuss all kinds of everything.
Subjects ranged from poets and their works, to his preference for the Linux-based Ubuntu OS, the opposite of Apple’s hermetically sealed ecosystem. With Ubuntu you could go in under the hood to build the features you wanted, and he preferred the freedom of that. The philosophy of Open Source was close to his heart, and was partly what moved him to create his websites. He was in tune with the ideas of Cory Doctorow, and would have been amused to hear that author coin the phrase ‘enshittification’ to describe what has been happening to internet platforms in our time.
Irish Writers Online was true to the kind of internet Philip cared for. User-friendly, uncomplicated and free, it was perhaps his most popular resource. Without fuss or expectation, he offered it as a gift to the community. After his death in 2018, the site went dark, although the files were preserved, and last year his cousin Eamonn approached me about reviving Irish Writers Online as a tribute to Philip’s memory.
In bringing the site back we have retained both the aesthetic and the functionality as its originator left it. That seems a good starting point, respecting the work he did while allowing for evolution to include all kinds of writers representing Irish literary life as it flourishes today.
Welcome Back to Irish Writers Online
So, welcome back to Irish Writers Online. Students, writers, and the simply curious have all found it helpful in the past. Now we invite poets, novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, lyricists and dramatists – any published or produced writer who meets the guidelines – to send in their details or refresh their existing entry. This will be a living document, a growing repository of knowledge that everyone can use. And, we hope, an endeavour with which Philip would be pleased.
To find out more, visit www.irishwriters.online
Further reading: Philip Casey is known for his Bann River trilogy of novels – The Fabulists, The Water Star and The Fisher Child, as well as a series of poetry collections that contain work that is deep, powerful and compassionate. The Year of the Knife is a good place to start with the poems, then go exploring.
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