Ireland’s Dark Tourism

What ghostly traces do poets leave behind, and how do we curate their legacy? Dr Katie Mishler speaks to poet Vona Groake, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, about the life and writing of MoLI’s resident ghost, poet and Jesuit Priest Gerard Manly Hopkins. In 1884, Hopkins became Professor of Classics at University College Dublin, and lived and worked in Newman House, now the home of MoLI, until his death of typhoid fever in 1889 at the age of 44. As an Englishman, Hopkins felt lonely and isolated in Dublin and at the University, where he worked extremely long and grueling hours. Out of this misery, however, he wrote some of his most celebrated poetry, the ‘terrible sonnets’, so-called because of their expression of pain and isolation. His poetry also expresses queer desire that is at odds with his faith. By visiting MoLI’s hidden corridors, including the Hopkins bedroom that Groake curated in the 1990s, the two discuss Hopkins’ enduring contribution to poetry, his difficult life and death in Dublin, and whether or not he haunts the halls of MoLI. Do you enjoy reading ghost stories alone at night? Have you ever binged an entire true crime series? Or do you unwind watching horror films like The Exorcist, or reading the supernatural novels of Stephen King? The Dublin Gothic Podcast is a series looking at the intersection between art, psychology, folklore, architecture, natural history and Ireland’s urban gothic writing.

In this episode, Dr Katie Mishler sits down with novelist and UCD Professor of Creative Writing Sarah Moss to discuss her novel The Fell, isolation, and writing history.

ampires, ghosts, and the undead have an enduring cultural legacy. These uncanny figures inform, or perhaps infect, depictions of the body, maternity, and sexuality in contemporary Irish women’s writing. This panel discussion, recorded live in MoLI's Old Physics Theatre, led by Dr Katie Mishler and featuring Sarah Davis-Goff, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, and Sophie White, uncovers how the gothic monstrosities of Bram Stoker and others continue to be a powerful metaphor for social anxieties, marginalisation, and historical erasure.

Do you enjoy reading ghost stories alone at night? Have you ever binged an entire true crime series? Or do you unwind watching horror films like The Exorcist, or reading the supernatural novels of Stephen King? The Dublin Gothic Podcast is a series looking at the intersection between art, psychology, folklore, architecture, natural history and Ireland’s urban gothic writing.

Dr Katie Mishler talks to Dr Noreen Giffney and Brian J. Showers about why we find comfort in experiencing fear.