This morning we set out for Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin’s “dead city,” brimming with over 1.5 million resting residents. Among them are Daniel O’Connell (whose grave students were invited to touch briefly for good luck), Charles Parnell (who’s buried in a mass cholera pit as per his final wish to be interred among Ireland’s poor), Maude Gonne (inspiration of many an unrequited W. B. Yeats poem), and Irish nationalist hero Michael Collins (whose grave sits seven stones over from his former fiancée, Kitty Kiernan). After a blistering tour of this historic spot, we picnicked under the yew trees and took on a couple of site-specific writing exercises. It was an absolutely beautiful day to wander among the stones and feel lucky to visit here, and doubly so to be able to leave.