'I cherish flutes as much as the waterbowls I use when I sit before my shrine'Michael Harding: 'I am a bad musician, but I play for the strange sensation of being alive'Tue Feb 28 2017 - 08:52
‘Closing the door one final time on the world where I was born’Michael Harding: Gathering up the discarded ornaments and junk, I thought I saw my mother againTue Feb 21 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘I wrapped the tiny body in a page from the Leitrim Observer’The mouse in the attic shared my passion for apples. What else did we have in common?Tue Feb 14 2017 - 06:00
'What my new guru showed me: I'd been looking at the world arseways'Michael Harding: The ultimate teaching is that there is no teaching, according to the 70-year-old with a greasy pony-tailTue Feb 07 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Trump is not relevant to Leitrim but there’s no escape from his windy guffEvery time I wake to go to the toilet I can’t resist looking at my phone to see if he has tweeted anything new since midnightTue Jan 31 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: 'You need a good rogering, it loosens everything''Advice from a poet a long time ago when I was young and chaste and full of inhibitions'Wed Jan 25 2017 - 06:07
Michael Harding: When even a ram trying to have sex ends in disappointmentDisappointment is everywhere and is not helped by listening to negativity on the airwavesTue Jan 17 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: The unbearable lightness of looking for garlic in TallaghtEvery time I try to walk to an exit I always end up back where I startedTue Jan 10 2017 - 06:00
The trouble with Donald Trump is I’m obsessed with himMichael Harding: he will make America new again in his own brash style of naked greedTue Jan 03 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Subtle and awkward silences as families say goodbye at Knock airportLoved ones bid farewell as emigrants leave Ireland following Christmas visitsSat Dec 31 2016 - 03:00
Michael Harding: The first time a woman asked me ‘do you want to shag?’New Year’s Eve, 1972. Of course we didn’t dare, but I’ll never forget the offer, or the girlTue Dec 27 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘If Trump realises the moon is his real enemy he is liable to nuke the heavens’Moonlight annoys the Trump because he associates it with Islam, hence his rants against Muslims, according to a wise Cavan manTue Dec 20 2016 - 06:00
Forestry swallows houses. Its onward march is unrelenting in the westIn rural Ireland it’s the animals as much as humans that make a person sociableTue Dec 13 2016 - 08:00
Michael Harding: Mary and Jesus have gone off on the bus and I want them backA child rearranged my crib, leaving only the donkey, ‘because it’s a stable and he’s a donkey’Tue Dec 06 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Trump’s election saw me take to the bed‘When I lie in bed, unwired from internet or iPhone, I worry about nothing’Tue Nov 29 2016 - 09:00
Michael Harding: Country people have no grammar other than intimacyThere was no point explaining that we tell lies all the time. It’s called codding.Wed Nov 23 2016 - 10:00
Michael Harding: A poetry evening made me want to talk to Patrick KavanaghI wanted to go to the poet and tell him how beautiful Monaghan can still beWed Nov 16 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘The first longing I had was for a bee’Our columnist revisits his childhood and muses about being as secular as BeckettWed Nov 09 2016 - 06:00
I’m not sexy in a rustic way – my cap frightens the horsesWearing an ‘Irish’ cap, Michael Harding was sneered at on the Dart. He should have had a copy of Waiting for Godot under his armWed Nov 02 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Maybe that’s where our souls are hiding, in our feetHere we are, holding the song and the pain together with the sly beat of a foot on the floorSun Oct 23 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Memories of the women I lost and that kiss on a sofa in EnnisMeeting years later, we were older and in less danger of setting each other on fireWed Oct 19 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: The older I get, the more susceptible I am to apparitionsThe nuns from Minsk never appeared, but a man came like an angel from heaven and built a shed for my logsWed Oct 12 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Airports are cathedrals of oppressive certaintyIt’s difficult to speculate on the meaning of life as people come and go with little bags on wheelsWed Oct 05 2016 - 06:00
'There's no avoiding what makes me a man ... I'm just selfish'How to be a Man: Sometimes masculinity can feel mechanicalWed Sept 28 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: geolocating the ditch Auntie Mary peed inWe’re using Google maps to find Auntie Mary’s lost phone in a ditch in WestmeathWed Sept 21 2016 - 04:00
Michael Harding: Clowns! That’s what we need. More clownsClowns were seen as the laughing stocks who would never make anything of themselvesWed Sept 14 2016 - 08:13
Michael Harding: I believe in Richard Dawkins and religious iconographyI know the universe is empty but I still slide back into a devotional life if I’m given half a chanceWed Sept 07 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: Belief in banshees marked my mother outAll the orthodoxies of Christianity were to my mother as naught compared with her conviction in this single truth about bansheesSun Aug 28 2016 - 08:00
Michael Harding: Seeing a beautiful man naked can be intenseImagining young men without clothes is no problem, but the older men are, the harder it gets to fantasise them out of their suitsTue Aug 23 2016 - 14:55
Michael Harding: The mysterious promise of a room with a corpseThere is always a hint of something invisible in a room where human remains lie in reposeWed Aug 17 2016 - 10:33
Michael Harding: How I cracked the mystery of the smelly feetI got out of bed and checked the laundry basket, pressing my nose into each sock and assuring myself that the smell was definitely not coming from thereWed Aug 10 2016 - 06:27
Michael Harding: I finally made it inside the big houseI began to feel not so much like a lord of the manor as a monkey in heavenWed Aug 03 2016 - 01:00
Leland Bardwell had the softest wildness I’ve ever seen in human eyesMichael Harding: Bardwell’s life was a poem and her poetry was simply the truth spoken with passionWed Jul 27 2016 - 07:30
Michael Harding: The champions of Brexit are like distressed orangutansMichael Gove sounded like a cross between a schoolmaster in a Harry Potter story and a ferocious Christian Brother recently escaped from a wardrobeWed Jul 20 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: The brutal killing of a fish brought it all homeIn a few moments the fish had been filleted into two halves of white flesh, from which a pastel of pale-pink blood seeped out on to the floorWed Jul 13 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: The S-word was a weapon that I fearedIt was a single-syllable knife that often sliced the air in front of my face to shame and silence meWed Jul 06 2016 - 01:00
'The magic of Cavan is that strangers talk to each other'Michael Harding is glad he lives in the present because, unlike the General, he's too squeamish to be a hunterWed Jun 29 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: I found Jesus in the woods as I was hugging a treeAs I grow old there is something in the gods I collect around me I am loath to renounceWed Jun 22 2016 - 07:00
Michael Harding: The beggar’s words horrified meI wasn’t certain what she meant, but my brain was in overdrive with the possibilitiesWed Jun 15 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: Ireland was fertile ground for the involuntary yelpIt was the only release we had from anxietyWed Jun 08 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: You can only go so far with a strange woman at 8am‘You’ll kill yourself with that junk,’ the woman said as she saw me ordering breakfast. The situation escalated from thereWed Jun 01 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: Some men play piano naked, some wear thermals in MayYears ago, when the General played the piano, I would frequently find him entirely nude in the drawing roomWed May 25 2016 - 08:05
Michael Harding: For men, growing old can be a solitary experienceI use Facebook to look in at all that intimacy without undermining my own solitudeWed Mar 23 2016 - 10:23
Michael Harding: I still have regrets about St Patrick’s Day 1976I could have gone in and shared my flask of whiskey with him at the fire, but I didn’tWed Mar 16 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: I could happily sit under a tree all day scratching myselfThe trouble with Homo sapiens seems to have started when we began eating wheat and became farmersWed Mar 09 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: I found comfort at a funeral after the isolation of winterThat’s one of the lovely things about rural Ireland: people know each other like old treesWed Mar 02 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: The small calamities of our mediocre existenceOne night in Warsaw I was lying in bed when an old man knocked on the door. He looked distraughtWed Feb 24 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: At home with the devout squirrels of WarsawI am writing about the absence of God but I didn’t want to be too grim in the face of Mrs Squirrel’s renowned religiosityWed Feb 17 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: Even death can’t uncouple my soul friends and meFRIENDSHIP WEEK: I am what my friends have made of me and I exist only in relation to themWed Feb 10 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: Awkward sex therapy in the doctor’s waiting roomWhile waiting it occurred to me that everyone must eventually arrive at the last orgasmWed Feb 03 2016 - 01:00
