HIgh brow
low brow
*raises eyebrows
the fifth province
In Irish folklore, the “fifth province” refers to an imaginative, symbolic space beyond the four traditional provinces—Leinster, Munster, Connacht, and Ulster.
Traditionally situated in the centre of the island (Mide or Meath), it was a place for the rulers of various kingdoms to come together. During the period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney and Brian Friel held the Fifth Province as a kind of neutral territory where people of different persuasions could meet and reconcile.
We think there is urgent need to reinvent the Fifth Province to protect and promote the arts against the encroachment of artificial intelligence and a shrinking creative ecosystem.
The fifth province is for everyone.
Our Story
This is the kind of idea you get after one too many rejections and one too many glasses of vino.
Nevertheless, here we are, a group of writers and artists who don’t wish to see the end of good writing or good art.
What would be the worst possible time to start a print publication? Probably now.
We’ve been told for years that print is dead, no one wants analog, art is dead, music is dead, AI reigns supreme.
Well, as part of the last gasp of human creativity we are launching the thing that we want to see.
So what’s the pitch? What’s this all entail?
You.
You the reading public, the paying public.
We operate on subscriptions, if you subscribe we get to pay the contributors, simple as that.
The more readers we have the more opportunities we can get to interview the people you want to hear from and commission works from the voices of the day who are writing interesting stuff.
The thing is you, the reading public, if you want to continue to read good stuff: deep, in-depth, interesting and human produced writing, it’s going to get harder and harder to find it.
This publication is a collection of humanly produced works. helping to fund people, actual people, who need money to pay their bills.
