Laura Kennedy: ‘On the supermarket shelf, Mr Tayto felt as relatable as any other Irish immigrant in a new country. Out of place’Mr Tayto felt as relatable as any other Irish immigrant in a new country – out of placeWed Jul 31 2024 - 06:01
These are the key signs an apology isn’t sincereUnthinkable: Don’t say ‘sorry’ the way former US secret service director Kimberly Cheatle didMon Jul 29 2024 - 06:11
For the sake of your mental health, stop trying to have an opinion on everything all the timeUnthinkable: People are panicking, theorising and condemning on social media in every imaginable direction. But it’s all right not to have a view on everything all the time. In fact, it’s healthyMon Jul 22 2024 - 06:00
Laura Kennedy: You can’t escape yourself abroad, but you can find someone you’re less eager to escape fromWhen you emigrate, you shed the version of yourself that others consider to be who you areWed Jul 17 2024 - 06:01
It’s no wonder so many of us are lonely. Friendship has become harder and more complexUnthinkable: Young people now spend less time in one another’s physical company than ever before and the experience of successive lockdowns deprived them of crucial social developmentMon Jul 15 2024 - 06:15
Here’s what the world doesn’t need: another woman writer complaining about masculinityWe tend to discuss what men are and should be, while suggesting it is inappropriate for men to comment on femininity or womanhoodMon Jul 08 2024 - 06:00
I suspect the constant talk about Australia and spiders is a conspiracy to keep the sons and daughters of Éireann at homeIrish folks are obsessed with how living in Australia means constantly coping with arachnids. Well, I am now able to say, that’s a bit madWed Jul 03 2024 - 06:01
Cases like Natasha O’Brien’s prompt a sudden, disquieting voice in collective consciousnessSuspended sentence for Cathal Crotty has raised questions about the nature of justice. It is easier to say when we feel its absence than to define itMon Jul 01 2024 - 06:00
My friend has done everything right but soon they will be homelessWhen we emigrants speak critically of home, we are often met with a defensive toneWed Jun 26 2024 - 06:00
I watched my grandmother disappear into mental illness and believed I was doomed to followIreland is struggling with a mental health crisis, while we are flooded with fluffy, often pseudoscientific therapeutic advice through social mediaSun Jun 23 2024 - 05:00
Our relationship with Britain will always be a bit weird, like making friends with your former school bullyIn Australia, people I talk to seem slightly embarrassed by the fact that the king is still knocking aroundWed Jun 19 2024 - 06:00
‘An Irish accent carries a level of privilege here in Australia’It’s a delight to realise that your voice evokes for strangers a beloved parent who is now goneWed Jun 12 2024 - 06:01
As an Irish emigrant, I’m not supposed to talk about butter. I’m supposed to talk about James Joyce and Seamus HeaneyThe rules change when you emigrate: your moaning card, if not your passport, is revokedWed Jun 05 2024 - 06:00
Laura Kennedy: Australia leaves me longing for older buildings to carry me into the pastLife in Canberra is convenient and comfortable but when I miss home, it is the sense of age that I missWed May 29 2024 - 06:01
Seeing the GP in Australia: ‘It’s dispiriting how utterly luxurious it feels’Figuring out the healthcare system in Australia has certainly been the most complex part of movingWed May 22 2024 - 06:01
Moving back to Ireland would mean working till 10pm, no home of my own and bad coffeeIt’s sad when the numbers say you’re better off leaving IrelandWed May 15 2024 - 06:01
The landlord asked where his ‘antique toilet brush’ was and demanded recompense from our deposit‘When you own a house, you are allowed to live in it ... without worrying that the house is starting to look occupied’Wed May 08 2024 - 06:01
Laura Kennedy: It’s hard to put my finger on what’s different about the atmosphere in this gymI shuffled into the gym that first day, hunched up and embarrassed, feeling puffy and conspicuous in my leggingsWed May 01 2024 - 06:01
Laura Kennedy: In Australia, my heart is broken for want of a spice bagThe essence of this delicacy will not be found in Foxrock, but in true multiculturalism — enterprising Chinese restaurant ownersWed Apr 24 2024 - 06:01
Laura Kennedy: Will I ever get used to having winter in August and Christmas in summer?There’s no warm spicy beverage to comfort us while we pull our hats and gloves out of storage. Will the year ever stop feeling backwards here?Wed Apr 17 2024 - 06:00
When you move to Australia, you must work to understand it from the little things upLaura Kennedy in Australia: At home we take our sense of place for granted – when we emigrate, we have to create itWed Apr 10 2024 - 06:01
A guide for those left behind: four small things you can do after a loved one emigratesIf they were the person you’d send silly cat videos to before, keep sending themWed Apr 03 2024 - 06:01
Irishness is as vague a concept as there is. When you leave, that vagueness only escalatesLaura Kennedy: Our jealous grip on Irish identity at home is perhaps because half the world seems to lay claim to itWed Mar 27 2024 - 06:00
Facing into my first Australian autumn feels like winding down at the wrong timeI must remember that people do not emigrate to maintain their ‘before’ livesWed Mar 20 2024 - 06:01
Moving to Australia has shown me emigration means relationships at home will inevitably degradeIf Irish emigrants are honest, it is fair enough that loved ones at home feel rejectedWed Mar 13 2024 - 06:01
‘Rain in Australia is not the poetic, misty smattering we get at home… it’s aggressive, sudden and often unsettlingly warm’Australians are inclined to run about in search of shelter to escape a downpour, but for those who hail from Ireland, such a deluge is grist to the millWed Mar 06 2024 - 06:01
In the late 1980s my pregnant, underpaid mother had what was then called a ‘nervous breakdown’Women don’t have ‘nervous breakdowns’ now, but we do get ‘burnt out’ in astonishing numbersFri Mar 01 2024 - 15:22
Meaningful multiculturalism can be hard to find, but maybe there’s a good reason for thatAlthough there have been rumblings against immigration in Dublin, I don’t hear the same here in the Australian capitalWed Feb 28 2024 - 06:00
Mabel: the small, weird, taciturn cat friend who lives in my houseEveryone said we were mad to save her life and then to bring her to Australia, and so we wereWed Feb 21 2024 - 06:01
These days, the emigration experience is both alien and familiar at the same timeThe effects of growing globalisation make being somewhere else feel a little less of a shockWed Feb 14 2024 - 06:00
Five months on, the truth is that I don’t know if I feel like I live in Australia yetI wonder if this waiting is just how emigration feelsWed Feb 07 2024 - 06:00
‘Emigrating is one of those life-changing experiences that represent a change from which you can never return’Laura Kennedy: Every emigrant has a little of Joyce in them — the longing for home and awareness of why some leaveWed Jan 31 2024 - 06:01
‘Australian people are tougher than we are. They just are’A country of extremes requires residents to become durable and versatile in ways we cannot imagine in IrelandWed Jan 24 2024 - 06:01
Food became a crutch for me. I did not feel in control of my compulsion to eatThis is about my own experience of the one body I’ll ever live inFri Jan 19 2024 - 06:15
Thousands of young Irish are leaving but it’s not ‘for the craic’ Laura Kennedy: More than 21,000 of Ireland’s young people received working holiday visas between July 2022 and June 2023. Apparently, this the highest recorded figure in 16 yearsWed Jan 17 2024 - 06:00
The arrival of our belongings changes the move to Australia from experiment to realitySo much has happened since we left that I’ve forgotten most of what was packedWed Jan 10 2024 - 06:01
I feel that same old new year pressure even in the midst of a burning Australian summerSo much has been new since we emigrated that there hasn’t been much time for immersing ourselves in the present. The new year seems as good a time as any to change thatWed Jan 03 2024 - 06:00
Laura Kennedy: This time of year feels very familiar … and yet everything is differentIn Canberra, Australia, everything except the people seems to be so much more intense than at homeWed Dec 27 2023 - 06:01
Sometimes, particularly at Christmas, home is more perfect in imagination than realityIt is easier to focus on the wonderful things when you step away from gripes you faced when you lived thereWed Dec 20 2023 - 06:01
E-scooters are perfect for getting around Canberra but I wouldn’t use one in DublinThe vast pavements of the planned Australian city allow for safe use - even when the rules are floutedWed Dec 13 2023 - 05:31
‘Our first Christmas in Australia will undoubtedly be an odd one’If you’re raised over here, where December is the height of a hot summer, then Christmas in the sun is standardWed Dec 06 2023 - 06:01
‘This is a difficult time to be Irish, no matter where you live’It has been unpleasant to witness from Australia, though I can’t imagine it has been less so closer to homeWed Nov 29 2023 - 05:00
The emotional toll of living so far away: ‘Someday, something dreadful will happen to one of those at home I love’The price emigrants pay for eluding some of the challenges of family is being on the outsideWed Nov 22 2023 - 06:01
Laura Kennedy: Emigrants are running, even if they claim otherwiseIrish people have a complex relationship with our home country - a bit like my relationship with my brotherTue Nov 14 2023 - 06:01
In Australia, my Irish accent carries less weight than it did in the UKIt is less politicised here, less burdensome to carry. Most people are simply not interested in it. This, it turns out, is far preferableWed Nov 08 2023 - 06:01
Avocados cost only about €1 in Australia and yet young people here cannot afford to buy houses eitherThough home ownership is as much of a pipe dream, the rental market works differently in Australia, and I find that fascinatingWed Nov 01 2023 - 09:17
‘You fit into Limerick – it won’t change for you. Nor should it’Laura Kennedy: Sydney may be cool, but Canberra has ‘Limerick weather’. I prefer a bit of rain. I don’t recognise myself without itWed Oct 25 2023 - 06:01
‘I was surprised to discover it is easier to be Irish in Australia than it is in Britain’Laura Kennedy: Australians I’ve interacted have encountered my accent with a sort of gentle disinterestWed Oct 18 2023 - 06:01
Emigrating is an exercise in unfamiliarity and discomfort. I don’t intend to go looking for Irish people just yetLaura Kennedy: How could it be that the first person I meet after landing in Australia is from KerryWed Oct 11 2023 - 06:01
Laura Kennedy: I didn’t expect to move to Australia. I have no idea what I’m doing‘They swoop you from behind and they will draw blood’: the magpies are the strongest signifier that I’m not in Limerick anymoreWed Oct 04 2023 - 11:45
