Blackbird column
Hello my archery fanatics and those among you, young bloods and not so young, who indulge in this inexplicable obsession that is simply Archery 😀😃. I hope you are all well and if not… well, I wish you well. Enough…...
Category TIFAM Archive
The Aim of Being: Women’s Archery in Ireland hundred years ago and earlier
“The qualities which make a good archer are the qualities which make a good man or woman,” wrote the Honourable Artillery Company’s H. Walrond in his 1894 Archery for Beginners. While penned across the water, the sentiment found its most…...
Empowering Women through Archery: A Journey of Passion, Perseverance, and Pride.
Archer Margaret Donnelly gives us a sporting insight into the life of her Dunbrody club mate and WBHC 2025 Bronze medallist Catherine Power From: The Rower Co. Kilkenny Club: Dunbrody Archers Shooting style: Bowhunter Recurve World Bowhunter Championships 2025 South…
War of the Feathers Part 6
Day 3 I It was painful to comprehend, a tight knot stuck in General Aedion Teague’s sternum, but here he was, still incamped on the northern most part of the Mayne Peninsula on what had just become the third day…
The Vanishing Archery Of Emerald Isle
It started with a slip of the tongue, as the most troublesome truths often do. Myself and Andrew Wayland, we were in the main hall of the New Ross Library, the air thick with that familiar scent of paper and…
Colum Cille 3D 2025
I was excited to be back at Ballywalter for a couple of reasons, one of which was because of the new species of pheasant introduced to the estate. This species is known as Reeve’s Pheasant and comes from China. And…
The Code Beneath the Grip
(AI and the Emergent Ritual of Archery in the Age of Symbiotic Agency) Matter and mind meet wherever a purpose touches a tool. Sensation flows outward through crafted form, and the world responds with patterns the nerves accept as their…...
War Without Footsteps
Well now, dear readers—today I bring you something a touch off the beaten path. I’d been deep in the bones of a forthcoming book of essays when a strange thing happened: a piece arrived, unbidden, that took even me by…
War of the Feathers – Part 5
X It was too much to hope that the Xellcarrians would have let them have the rest of the afternoon, Evander lamented. Then again, there was more desperation behind them than General Aedion had let on. On the horizon, like…
conor’s Epic charity voyage!!!
It was a very noble challenge and an epic journey where the popular (Donegal Archer) Conor O’ Connor aimed to raise €5000 or more for Solace Cancer Care Donegal. The challenge was to canoe from Ballyshannon County Donegal to Ballyhack…
Between Bow and Being: Plato, Aristotle, and the Archer’s Path
“ There is no fault nor detriment / in facing bare the cruelty of world…” — We’ll Go Asleep Imagine, now, not just a tool or a sport, but a whisper that’s survived since we first dared to shape the…
When the French came to town…
29th April saw a contingent of six archers from The Les Archers Béarnais club in France travel to Ireland for a whistle-stop archery tour of the South East. By saying it was a whistle-stop tour, I mean over the course…...
This Whisper Of Cobwebs…
Hello Crackers, my friends and Archery fans, are you all good? I hope so, I truly do, and I have some good news for myself—yes I do—as I have managed to book my place at the national champs in Dunbrody,…...
Lion, Bolt, Torn Scroll
The last winds of March in the year of 1199 must have stirred through the valleys of Limousin with no particular burden, no whisper of what tremor would so soon ripple out across the aching spine of the Angevin world.…
An Arrow for the Earl
strange heat it was, the summer of 1399. The kind of heat that presses down on the land and makes the air thick with waiting. You could feel it in the quiet of the fields and the low murmur of…...
War of the Feathers – Part 4
V It was the same horse that had thrown Evander from its saddle not long ago. But that hardly mattered to him as he spurred it on, past the dead splayed across the battlefield, after the rider. He didn’t need…
War of the Feathers – Part 3
Day 2 I It had been too long a night. For General Casey Aiza his restlessness was now searing into something more tangible, a solid force he could finally apply. Still, it was bittersweet in a way. Since he was…
Bluebell Shoot 2025
It is now summer, which in Ireland means the weather likes to behave in more of a bipolar manner. Summer in Ireland is different from the other two seasons – I’m convinced we don’t really get Spring, just a mildish…
The Wounds That Never Heal
A meditation on hurt, ritual, and the intimate violence of archery “Then the English archers stept forth one pace and let fly their arrows so wholly [together] and so thick, that it seemed snow. When the Genoways felt the arrows…...
Between War and Wonder
“I do not fight because I seek glory. I fight because I must protect what is mine.”— Tigrevurmud Vorn, Lord Marksman and Vanadis There’s something curious about the quiet books that stick. They arrive without noise, sit down across from…...