Culture

Sara Keating: From Cork to Texas via LA, Irish stars take a stand over Gaza

In the run-up to the St Patrick’s festival season, Irish performers have been using their ‘green’ platforms and cultural capital to speak up about the crisis

Kneecap: the Irish-language hip hop group was the first of ten Irish music acts to withdraw from this year’s prestigious South by Southwest festival because of its sponsorship by the US Army and other military-industrial groups

This column was supposed to be about St Patrick's Day, the annual celebration of Irish culture and its diasporic impact across the world. It was going to mention the incredible force of Irish film, music and literary stars in the contemporary global cultural industry and the various successes of this week alone.

It was going to talk about Cillian Murphy's Oscar win, and congratulate author-illustrator Steve McCarthy for making the prestigious Carnegie shortlist for his picture book WIlderness, and poet Jessica Traynor for featuring in the Guardian’s prestigious Poem of the Week column for her lyric Holidaying With Dad During the Divorce.