Atlantic Currents II: Connecting Cork & Lowell

Prize-winning prose and poetry by alumni and 

students of University College Cork in Ireland

and University of Massachusetts, Lowell, in the

U.S. This collection of stories, essays, and poems by emerging and established writers is

introduced by U.S. Ambassador to Ireland

Claire Cronin and the Republic of Ireland's 

Ambassador to the U.S. David Mulhall. Defined

broadly, the theme of the book is learning and education, both formal and informal as described by the authors. Both universities are critical to their home communities, and the selections showcase the talent on campus now and among the graduates of the schools. The writers investigate their respective locales and document memorable learning experiences in a wide array of situations, from sailing voyages to strife-torn countries and among the familiar people in their lives as well as characters imganied. 

Paul Marion (b. 1954) is the author of Union River: Poems and Sketches (2017) and editor of Jack Kerouac’s early writing, Atop an Underwood (1999). His book Mill Power (2014) documents the twentieth-century revival of the iconic factory city where he was born, Lowell, Massachusetts. His recent book is Portraits Along the Way: 1976-2024, fifty profiles of people he has met in person or encountered in books, on stage, in history or otherwise, some of them public figures and others who are not household names. His work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Ireland, and England. With his wife, Rosemary Noon, he lives on a high hill in Amesbury, Mass., in sight of the seacoast and uplands of New Hampshire and Maine.