David Marshall
words · music · craft
mind · art · hand
I work across words, music and craft — the things you can see, hear or hold. Behind them sit mind, art and hand, the quieter pattern that shapes how I think, and make.
If you’ve arrived here looking for the mathematician, the hairdresser or the IT specialist, you’ve found a different David Marshall entirely — but you may already have encountered my work.
Publications
Marshall On Policy
Independent Irish policy analysis and commentary. Policy Briefings examine energy, housing, health, governance and public administration, exploring both individual policy domains and the ways they interact to shape Ireland’s future choices.
Marshall Review
Reduced obfuscation, re-used punctuation, recycled commentary & sustainable argument.
An Activist’s Notebook
A working notebook for people who organise, speak up, and try to make things happen. To steady confidence, sharpen judgement, and help you see the ground you’re standing on.
An Activist’s Notebook
A working notebook for people who organise, speak up, and try to make things happen. To steady confidence, sharpen judgement, and help you see the ground you’re standing on.
The Marginalia of Sigi
Notes and stories from the margins of working on the fictional novella series: “The Chronicles of Sigi”. Spin-offs from the fictional cannon.
INQ
Unfiltered. Unboxed. Unbordered David Marshall on Things. Life continually presents things that sit beyond my writing streams. A queue. A speed bump. A campervan parked outside the house.. An assumption nobody seems to question. A small irritation that turns out to reveal something larger.
Essays
On society and the shape of life. Essays: Slow-arriving, slow-forming, with well-sedimented reflections.
Bearings
An orientation from which navigation becomes possible.
Essayist
An exploration of how significance is discovered, organised and shared.- The essay as method. – For now, I’m mostly observing myself at work.
Publication Architect
Writing works at the level of sentences and stories. Publication architecture works at the level of systems: how ideas are organised, connected and presented so that they accumulate meaning and influence over time. – awaiting a comprehensive rewrite
Thinking
Field Notes
Field Notes is the public notebook behind the essays. It records observations, evidence and lines of inquiry that later find their way into Marshall on Policy, Radar Signals and other publications.
An Essayist’s Notebook
Ad hoc notes on essayism as method: observations, tensions, and fragments from an essayist’s working notebook.
Ontology
Me at the workbench, trying to make sense of the world – mostly for myself. The deeper thinking that sits beneath “Essays”.
Home & Spaces
These are the places where conversations happen — about writing, music, making, and the shifting world we move through.
Projects
My Guitar
Best explained by exploring the project. This link brings you to an overview of the spaces it contains and helps you find your way through them.
Ukulele
The project is young and vibrant — much like the instrument itself. This link will steer you toward an overview of the spaces it gathers and help you find your way through them. (development pending)
Walking
Walking is changing now. After decades moving through landscapes, hills, mountains, nature, and the built world — and delivering it to the page — the project is entering a new phase, reshaping itself as my movement through it changes. (pending)
go.beswalks.ie/walking-project